The countryside was always backwards. That said, I have family near Ryki and it was poor there but definitely not trash filled. Just poor and in a state of disrepair but that's different from being filled with trash.
I remember those times in neighboring Slovakia, many people in villages had literally 0 regard to ecology, unless it benefited them. Some people regularly threw garbage straight into rivers and streams, so they became clogged with plastic crap. Good luck eating a fish from there. Also industrial garbage was rarely properly disposed of, it was just laid to rot/dissolve out there. Nobody had any clue about long term consequences.
Industrial pollution was pretty horrible too - watching snow going gray nearby any factory or coal plant (back then we used to have proper winters with tons of snow). Or when wind blew in bad direction from huge smelters in Katowitz in Poland, that created quite a few ecological catastrophes and highly acidic rains in our national parks.
