Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56

Price: £13.45
(as of Sep 18,2024 17:51:09 UTC – Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin (6 Jun. 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 656 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780141021874
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0141021874

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Reviewer: Dr. R. Brandon
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Magnificent Tour-de-Force, Full of Fascinating Detail
Review: This magnificent book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum took six years to research and write and it quickly becomes clear why this should be so. The breadth of research into many different country and language archives is quite astonishing and Applebaum acknowledges the extensive research help she received.The book is not a chronological narrative of the Communist overthrow and suppression of the Eastern Block after 1945 but rather it deals, in separate chapters, with different aspects of the Communist subversion of the democratic institutions and the supervision of all aspects of everyday life. The book confines itself to the period largely under the control of Stalin and does not deal with events running up to the collapse of 1989. Thus, the first half of the book includes chapters, amongst others, devoted to the establishment of the secret police, the role of violence, ethnic cleansing and the capture of the radio. The second half, which is aptly titled, `High Stalinism’ deals with the systematic identification and elimination of supposed enemies of the state, the control of the arts and architecture and how the ordinary rank and file accommodated to these changes. Finally the German and Hungarian revolutions of 1953 and 1956 are briefly described. Applebaum chooses to deal principally with East Germany, Poland and Hungary although some references are made to the other European Communist states such as Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. The informed reader will be familiar with the general sweep of history contained in this book as much has already been published on this subject, but the fascination and interest of this work derives from its attention to detail and the painstaking way in which the author describes the varied aspects of the all-enveloping, suffocating, spread of Communist control into virtually every part of life in Eastern Europe. Applebaum also gives excellent character sketches of the detestable leading figures in these countries. My only quibble with the historical content is that the author describes the expulsion of ethnic Germans, and those supposed to be ethnic Germans, from Poland and Czechoslovakia as better organised, more humane, and less chaotic than the facts would suggest. Applebaum is unduly generous to the 1945 Polish government and the downright nasty interim government of Edvard Benes in Czechoslovakia. A reading of `Orderly and Humane’ by R. M. Douglas, Yale, 2012, provides a good corrective to the somewhat orderly picture painted by Applebaum. I was disappointed that the book did not spend more time dealing with the privileged enclaves the leaders of these Communist regimes provided for themselves, particularly in the DDR, but perhaps that is a subject for a different book.This excellent book is very well written in a clear, lucid, style and I do not think I had to re-read a single sentence. Whilst rather weighty, it is very accessible and should appeal to all interested in this aspect of modern history.

Reviewer: Patrick
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: ‘Iron Curtain’ by Anne Applebaum
Review: Anne Applebaum’s last book, ‘Gulag’ related events that were so horrifying that you were almost glad when the book came to an end. The story here is also of cruelty and failure, but not on such a terrible scale. It shows how ordinary, decent people were made to conform, partly at least because of the threat of terror, and how the Soviet backed governments in Eastern Europe tried to divert attention from their failure to get public support or to significantly improve living standards. It ends with the doomed attempts at rebellion in East Germany and then Hungary. A lot of research must have gone into this book, but the author manages to present her ideas clearly and simply. Partly of necessity, she has to concentrate on only three countries, Hungary, Poland and East Germany. She shows that the conventional picture of the Cold War only breaking out in 1948-9 is misleading. The communists genuinely believed, after the War, that they could win popular elections. But they were soon disabused of these ideas. Instead, they effectively seized power and crushed any opposition. By relating the personal stories of many of the people that she was able to interview, the author is able to make the story that she is relating much more interesting. A major theme is how private institutions were not allowed to survive for very long under Communism. This book is well worth reading. It extends our knowledge of what happened in Eastern Europe after the War, and never fails to interest the reader.

Reviewer: O. G. M. Morgan
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Anne Applebaum’s Worthy Sequel to Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands”
Review: I have always admired Anne Applebaum’s writing. She mines mountains of research and then creates superbly reasoned articles, reviews, or, as here, books. Her history of Gulag was outstanding, but this is even better. I don’t think she consciously planned to follow Timothy Snyder’s brilliant and heart-breaking “Bloodlands”, but, in a sense, she has done so. Snyder’s harrowing book dealt with the pre-1939 borderland and Applebaum discusses the borderland, after the border jumped to the west in 1945. In both cases, the role of the soviet union is central. Ms Applebaum demonstrates time and again how the requirements of the Russian army, or those of the soviet secret police, often the whims of Stalin himself, controlled the lives of millions in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Romania and Bulgaria are treated less thoroughly, but get some dishonourable mentions. Applebaum disarmingly admits, early on, to being unable to read Hungarian; very few people can, outside Hungary and Transylvania. The research in Polish and Russian, on the other hand, is mainly her own work, although she makes good use of the set of Solidarity-era interviews published as “Oni” (“They”) by Teresa Toranska. Toranska spoke, among others, to Jakub Berman, who pops up frequently in these pages.History is written by the winners, it is often said. When it comes to the Central Europe of WWII, of the Holocaust and of the takeover by Stalin’s acolytes, it would be more true to say that history is written by the survivors. Applebaum points out, for instance, how a Polish secret policeman, Czeslaw Kiszczak, exploited his position, in the dying days of the communist regime, to fillet his record, missing only the items which, with characteristic communist incompetence, had been incorrectly filed. We also hear from those who fled from the communist tyranny (even after having once been part of it) and, thanks largely to Toranska, to communists who never regretted any of their actions.Anne Applebaum is wonderfully polite, but she demolishes “revisionist” versions of “history” with surgical skill. I’m not going to bother reading any leftie “reviews” of her book, since, unlike me, those “reviewers” won’t have bothered reading “Iron Curtain” in the first place. Some years back, a quangocrat called Jeremy Isaacs created an execrable television history of the Cold War, (listed as a continuation of the already atrocious “World at War” series, and broadcast by the BBC). Isaacs pretty much claimed that the Cold War didn’t happen and that, if it did, it was the West’s fault, anyway. Anne Applebaum rightly ignores Isaacs, but she does tackle his mentality head-on, proving that the communist takeover always preceded any western response.This comes as no surprise to me, since I am old enough to remember when reception for British radio in central Europe (e.g. in Austria) was jammed from the communist countries and when crossing into a communist country (or even from one communist country to another) took four hours. I remember all five of my childhood visits to the Romanian-Bulgarian border; it was always daylight, when we arrived at the Romanian side, always pitch dark, when we finally entered Bulgaria. It’s weird to have been five times through that part of Bulgaria, but to have absolutely no idea what it looks like. People who never experienced things like that claim that they didn’t happen. Well, they did. Anne Applebaum’s excellent book goes some way to explaining how and why.

Reviewer: Edimilson Mario
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A autora informa que o livro demorou 6 anos para ser escrito e tal fato pode ser observado pelas minúcias observadas no texto. Muitíssimo bem escrito e ao mesmo tempo informativo, o livro nos leva às loucuras impostas pelos comunistas aos países que ficaram sob o julgo dos soviéticos. Felizmente não vivemos um sistema onde o estado quer controlar cada aspecto da vida dos cidadãos.

Reviewer: Michael Jones
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I enjoy reading this ladies books. She tells things as they happened with eye witness accounts. Anyone who believes the world is being to hard on Russia 🇷🇺 just read this account of history coming from people who lived it. I think we should all inform ourselves about world affairs being as we are all part of the world. History is repeating itself now in the Ukraine 🇺🇦. Just devastating to read these things happening in our time. Very well done, lots of first hand accounts and many reference points to study for your self. Would recommend this to everyone who is truly interested in what happened and what is happening now in Europe. Read and be informed from reliable sources. Again just my humble opinion. Enjoy and reflect.

Reviewer: Mrs. A. MULLINS
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This book shows you how it really happened at the time of Cold War. Really good as I bought for my friend.

Reviewer: Cliente Amazon
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: País por país, se describe con detalle cómo lo que en su momento era un partido minoritario se inflitró en las distintas asociaciones, instituciones, medios de comunicación, combinando persuasión y coacción, para terminar dominando los países de Europa del Este durante décadas.

Reviewer: Deng Liqiang
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This book is timeless . It was about Eastern Europe after WWII . But it is relevant now more than ever. Totalitarianism will never die. Liberty is never permanently won . Each generation must fight for their own freedom.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 014102187X
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin (6 Jun. 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 656 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780141021874
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0141021874