Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Easter Europe 1944-1956 | By Anne Applebaum
An arresting account of what happened in Eastern Europe post-World War II, and why the Communist system was bound to fail.
Anne Applebaum, historian and journalist, has written an arresting account of what actually happened in Eastern Europe after the “Iron Curtain”, to quote Churchill’s dramatic phrase, came down as the last war drew to its close. Many writers, most notably Arthur Koestler in “The God that Failed” have written of their disillusionment with Communism; Applebaum’s book details precisely how it worked in practice and why it was bound to fail.
She starts with the story of an organisation, the Polish Women’s League, which was, in 1945 a voluntary organisation to help women and children displaced by the War. By 1950, this excellent initiative had become a bureaucracy at the service of the state and the Communist Party. State interventions like this happened to all the affected countries of Eastern Europe – Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia. Choosing to focus on Poland, Hungary and East Germany, the author describes in sober detail what took place in such countries, with their very different languages, cultures and traditions, when Stalin was given “the unprecedented opportunity to impose his particular vision of communist society on his neighbours.”
Anne Applebaum, historian and journalist, has written an arresting account of what actually happened in Eastern Europe after the “Iron Curtain”, to quote Churchill’s dramatic phrase, came down as the last war drew to its close. Many writers, most notably Arthur Koestler in “The God that Failed” have written of their disillusionment with Communism; Applebaum’s book details precisely how it worked in practice and why it was bound to fail.
She starts with the story of an organisation, the Polish Women’s League, which was, in 1945 a voluntary organisation to help women and children displaced by the War. By 1950, this excellent initiative had become a bureaucracy at the service of the state and the Communist Party. State interventions like this happened to all the affected countries of Eastern Europe – Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia. Choosing to focus on Poland, Hungary and East Germany, the author describes in sober detail what took place in such countries, with their very different languages, cultures and traditions, when Stalin was given “the unprecedented opportunity to impose his particular vision of communist society on his neighbours.”
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