Word: polonia
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Most Communist nations in Eastern Europe treat their former citizens who have emigrated to the West like lost souls at best and traitors at worst. A notable exception is Poland. The 19-month-old regime of Edward Gierek has actively encouraged friendly ties between "Polonia," as the Polish Diaspora is known, and the Polish People's Republic. That campaign is being intensified this summer as Poland faces a special tourist boom: emigres and their descendants returning to the old country as visitors...
...chief instrument of Warsaw's policy of being friendly to Poles abroad is the Society for Liaison with Polonia, which sponsors an expanding number of cultural and educational exchanges, historical celebrations, tourist attractions and retirement plans. In effect, the Polonia Society's programs are a giant, state-run public relations venture, which the Polish government uses to make its peace with the approximately 1,500,000 native-born Poles living in other countries-many of whom fled when the Communists gained power after World War II-and the millions more of Polish descent whose parents and grandparents were...
...Polonia Society's projects overtly propagandize for Communism. Instead, most are clearly intended to cash in on the good will of Polish emigres by inducing them to spend their hard currency in Poland and lobby for better Polish trade opportunities in their adopted lands...
...Polonia Exposed. Last week two of the three finalists from the Palace of Culture made their debut in a crowded bar in Warsaw's Hotel Bristol. As the music progressed from a staid rendition of Mendelssohn's Wedding March to the sexy West European hit Je T'Aime . . . Moi Non Plus, a big-busted performer called Satana writhed her way out of a wedding dress, finally getting down to only...
Once before, in the mid-1950s, striptease was briefly encouraged by Warsaw as an indication of liberalism. But then one stripper caused a sensation by dressing in native costume as Polonia, the symbol of the Polish nation, and stripping in three stages until her only attire was a set of chains. That supposedly symbolized Poland's captivity after its partition by the Austrians, Germans and Russians in the 19th century. But the act could also have been interpreted as a comment on Poland's fate under the Communists. A short time later, stripping was prohibited in Poland...