Wide context

Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)

The first signs of the marked shifts in the mentality and culture of Poles appeared in the 80's, when Poland actually started to get out of so called "socialist period". At that time many people started their small businesses at the market place, which were later developed into warehouses and finally, thanks to the ambition of their owners, became highly profitable chains of stores. To achieve such a success the traders did not need to be well educated, but extremely hard working and a bit lucky. They have always been relatively well off, although they still cannot be compared with their western counterparts as far as the contents of their bank accounts are concerned. However, the Polish "middle class" people seem to have a common passion in showing off their money in a way which is disgusting to others. The main problem here, in my opinion, lies in the fact that they try to distance themselves from they origin or anything which is valuable in the Polish tradition.