Visitors to Western Europe have grown accustomed to young male migrants hawking selfie sticks, demanding a few euros, or — most often — simply loitering. Cities behind the former Iron Curtain have largely avoided this transformation. In Warsaw and other Polish cities, slowly but perceptibly, it is occurring in real time.
On a recent day in Warsaw, a young African man hassled and blocked the paths of pedestrians crossing ulica Emilii Plater, in the shadow of the Palace of Culture and Science, Stalin’s infamous gift to the Polish people. “We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries,” once asserted the Soviet dictator. “We must make good this distance in ten years.”
