Post-PGR Farm, Pomerania, Poland (October 2009)
This is a field which prior to 1989 was a 100+ hectare PGR (a state farm). These PGRs had their workers living on the state property. After 1989, the PGRs became privatised but the PGR workers stayed on the property (some purchased their PGR homes, while others are still paying “rent” to the government Agencja Rynku Rolnego which seized state properties and has yet to “privatise” them in 2009). These post-PGR workers (but locally, they go by the name of “homoPGRicus” because they represent a specific mindset) are visibly poaching potatoes from the post-PGR properties because that was a regular activity during the Communist era (it was socially sanctioned to poach from the government and incorporate it into the subsistence level). It is not a case of them thinking that the potatoes are “theirs” as a result of their (past) labour (since the PGR workers were least attached from ownership of anything) but because they feel that the potatoes are public resources in the first place.
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