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National Book Award Finalist
TIME Magazine's #1 Nonfiction Book of 2012
A New York Times Notable Book
A Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2012
Best Nonfiction of 2012: The Wall Street Journal, The Plain Dealer
In the much-anticipated follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. Iron Curtain describes how, spurred by Stalin and his secret police, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. Drawing on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time, Applebaum portrays in chilling detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. As a result the Soviet Bloc became a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in these electrifying pages.
- Sales Rank: #38449 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Anchor
- Published on: 2013-08-13
- Released on: 2013-08-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.98" h x 1.26" w x 5.18" l, 1.31 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 640 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2012: The gulags. The show trials. The boot stamping on a human face. These trappings of postwar totalitarianism have stayed in our collective memory--brutal and terrifying, yes, but after more than 50 years, also so detached from their context that they’ve almost become political bogeymen. Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain is a powerful attempt to show that totalitarianism was more than just its most public excesses. A complement to such big-picture histories as Tony Judt’s Postwar, this book is concerned with the details of totalitarian rule: the diaspora of party enforcers from the USSR to the rest of the Soviet Bloc; the sudden takeover of radio stations, universities, and youth groups by partisans; the conflicted response of Catholic leaders to Stalin’s methods. Thanks to Applebaum’s extensive interviews and archival research, Iron Curtain ensures that the everyday experiences of those in the Soviet Bloc will endure, even if they soon pass beyond living memory. --Darryl Campbell
From Booklist
Applebaum’s Gulag received a 2004 Pulitzer Prize, an accolade that accords prominence on her new, groundbreaking investigation of the history of communism. Examining Stalin’s imposition of totalitarian regimes on Poland, Hungary, and the Soviet zone of Germany, Applebaum depicts Communist parties that were remorselessly successful in destroying opposition but that failed to win widespread popular support. An interesting motif in Applebaum’s history is the awareness by Communist leaders of civil society’s rejection of Stalinist socialism, demonstrated by the communists’ losses in somewhat unfettered postwar elections. After redressing that problem with rigged polls and mini gulags, the regimes strove to improve communist ideology’s attractiveness through propaganda, mass demonstrations, socialist realism in art, and model communist cities. Some people became convinced supporters, but most did not and survived through personal compromises with communism. The latter’s individual stories, drawn from interviews and research into those suppressed by state security, infuse Applebaum’s account with perplexing human interest. What made for a collaborator, a true believer, a dissident? A masterful chronicle and analysis, Applebaum’s work is a history-shelf necessity. --Gilbert Taylor
Review
Praise for Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain
“Applebaum shines light into forgotten worlds of human hope, suffering and dignity. . . . One of the most compelling but also serious works on Europe’s past to appear in recent memory. . . . With extraordinary gifts for bringing distant, often exotic worlds to life, Applebaum tells us that Sovietization was never simply about political institutions or social structures.”
—The Washington Post
“Remarkable . . . a book that reanimates a world that was largely hidden from Western eyes, and that many people who lived and suffered in it would prefer to forget.”
—The New Yorker
“Epic but intimate history . . . [Applebaum] eloquently illuminates the methods by which Stalin’s state imprisoned half the European continent. . . . Applebaum offers us windows into the lives of the men and sometimes women who constructed the police states of Eastern Europe. She gives us a glimpse of those who resisted. But she also gives us a harrowing portrait of the rest—the majority of Eastern Europe’s population, who, having been caught up in the continent’s conflicts time and time again, now found themselves pawns in a global one.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Iron Curtain is a superb, revisionistic, brilliantly perceptive, often witty, totally gripping history. . . . The book is full of things I didn’t know—but should have.”
—London Evening Standard
“Illuminating. . . . Human beings, as Ms Applebaum rousingly concludes, do not acquire ‘totalitarian personalities’ with ease. Even when they seem bewitched by the cult of the leader or of the party, appearances can deceive, she writes. When it seems as if they buy into the most absurd propaganda—marching in parades, chanting slogans, singing that the party is always right—the spell can suddenly, unexpectedly, dramatically be broken.”
—The Economist
“A tragically intimate account of the imposition of communism in Central Europe. Here is a world in which political authorities shut down choral singing societies, bird-watching clubs, anything that might nourish an independent social sphere. The story is told both with artistry and scholarship.”
—David Frum, The Daily Beast, Favorite Books of 2012
“A meticulously researched and riveting account of the totalitarian mind-set and its impact on the citizens of East Germany, Poland and Hungary. . . . Even as it documents the consequences of force, fear and intimidation, however, Iron Curtain also provides evidence of resistance and resilience.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Deeply researched, exciting. . . . A masterful work that will be read profitably by both laymen and scholars. . . . It is the best book on its subject, and will remain so for quite a while.”
—Christian Science Monitor
“Disturbing but fascinating history. . . . With precision in her narration and penetrating analysis, Applebaum has written another masterful account of the brutality of Soviet rule.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review, Best Book of 2012
“A dark but hopeful chronicle that shows how even humanity’s worst can fracture and fall.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review, Best Book of 2012
“Magisterial . . . Anne Applebaum is exceptionally well qualified to tell [this story]. Her deep knowledge of the region, breadth of view and eye for human detail makes this as readable as her last book, on the Gulag.”
—Daily Mail (UK)
“A true masterpiece. . . . Impressive. . . . Applebaum’s description of this remarkable time is everything a good history book should be: brilliantly and comprehensively researched, beautifully and shockingly told, encyclopedic in scope, meticulous in detail. . . . First and foremost of [the book’s achievements] is Applebaum’s ability to take a dense and complex subject, replete with communist acronyms and impenetrable jargon, and make it not only informative but enjoyable—and even occasionally witty.”
—The Telegraph (UK)
“A masterly synthesis in English of recent research by scholars in these countries, and of the range of memoirs by participants and survivors.”
—The Guardian (UK)
“Applebaum’s excellent book tells with sympathy and sensitivity how unlucky Eastern Europe was: to be liberated from the Nazi dictatorship by the only regime that could rival it for inhumanity.”
—The Independent (UK)
“So much effort is spent trying to understand democratization these days, and so little is spent trying to understand the opposite processes. Anne Applebaum corrects that imbalance, explaining how and why societies succumb to totalitarian rule. Iron Curtain is a deeply researched and eloquent description of events which took place not long ago and in places not far away - events which contain many lessons for the present.”
—Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World
“Iron Curtain is an exceptionally important book which effectively challenges many of the myths of the origins of the Cold War. It is wise, perceptive, remarkably objective and brilliantly researched.”
—Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad and The Second World War
“This dramatic book gives us, for the first time, the testimony of dozens of men and women who found themselves in the middle of one of the most traumatic periods of European history. Anne Applebaum conveys the impact of politics and ideology on individual lives with extraordinary immediacy.”
—Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire and A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War
“Anne Applebaum’s highly readable book is distinguished by its ability to describe and evoke the personal, human experience of Sovietisation in vivid detail, based on extensive original research and interviews with those who remember.”
—Timothy Garton Ash, author of The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ‘89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague
Most helpful customer reviews
348 of 367 people found the following review helpful.
The Evils and Brutalities of Communism
By Paul Gelman
As a child living in Romania, I remember that my parents used to do everything so that the infamous Securitate would pry into our lives as little as possible. In the sixties, the Romanian dictator Dej did everything in order to please his Russian masters. His menu included a variety of things, such as beatings, torture, incarcerations, threats, illegal deportations and the suppression of human rights.Mind you, I was not even allowed to take with me my violin, since it was considered "state property".
During my university days, I decided to specialize in the history of the Cold War. Surprisingly, there were many revisionist books and other similar monographs which-up to the fall of Communism-painted a very rosy picture of the Communist "paradise". In fact, some scholars were sure that Communism had its bad points, but capitalism and its ideology represented by America were worse.
Enter Anne Applebaum's book, which totally destroys and naive theories of the revisionist scholars one by one. "Iron Curtain" explains in very simple words to what degree all the countries in Eastern Europe experienced the brutal process of becoming totalitarian states as ordered by Big Brother Stalin. As she claims, this process was a gradual one and did not happen overnight. Neither was it uniform everywhere.
By writing about more than fifteen relevant topics, Ms. Applebaum describes in great detail how tens of millions of people experienced the most terrible regimes known in that geographical part of Europe. She explains how, for example, political parties, the church, the young people, the radio and the economy of those countries were doomed from the very end of World War 2.
The book is divided into two parts:"False Dawn" and "High Stalinism". The first part is about the consolidation of the regimes. The second one is more interesting and focuses on the years 1948-1956. In general, the book is mainly about Central Europe and only three countries are broadly scrutinized: Hungary, Poland and East Germany, but the author makes sure to also write about the similar fate of other countries, such as Bulgaria, Romania, and to some extent Yugoslavia and the Czech nation. In a way, this book is an accusation
against the West, because it felt into the trap of Stalin and his cronies, thus allowing the rulers of Eastern Europe to conduct policies of suppression, of ethnic cleansing, of mass rape and of nationalization-steps which destroyed the lives of many millions of innocent victims. All of this was possible after conducting mass and false propaganda with the help of the secret services established in order to smash any possible resistance in this process of the so-called "utopia".
Take for example the crackdown on the church in Poland where priests were arrested en bloc.
A similar pattern of harassment and arrests followed in Hungary, where hundreds of church schools were nationalized within months, followed by the closure of monasteries. Nuns in the city of Gyor were given six hours to pack up and leave, while in Southern Hungary 800 monks and some 700 nuns were removed in the middle of the night, told they could only take 25 kilos of books, placed on a transport and deported to the Soviet Union.
In the winter of 1952-53, senior figures in the church of Krakow underwent a
trial featuring fabricated evidence and forged documents. In East Germany, many children were expelled from school for refusing publicly to renounce religion. It was Stalin who, at a Cominform meeting in Karlsbad in 1949, ordered the bloc's communist parties to adopt harsher policies, and it was imperative "to first isolate the Catholic hierarchy and drive a wedge between the Vatican and the believers" .We will have to fight a systematic war agaist the hierarchy; churches should be under our full control by December 1949".
The principle guiding these totalitarian regimes was simple: The party is always right, hence the party cannot make any mistakes.
A new term was invented: "Homo Sovieticus", which meant that this new species would never oppose communism, and would never even conceive of opposing it. No one was exmpt from this ideological instruction-not even the very youmgest citizens. Textbooks had to be rewritten to reflect and praise the new reality of Stalinism. Art in all of its forms was recruited to augment the false messianic credo of these dictatorships, thus the obliteration of free thought everywhere.
Conspirators were to be found in many places and paranoia was the name of the game. Clerics, workers, intellectuals, rural landowners who were all classified under the rubric of "internal enemies" were sent to Gulags, after conducting mock trials which included made-up evidence and false witnesses. Soviet advisers both wrote the scripts of these "trials" and helped persuade victims to make the necessary confessions, after using torture, beatings, confinement in dark chambers, the inculcation of fear about the fate of the prisoner's family, subtly staged confrontations, the use of stool pigeons and many more techniques. Ms. Applebaum singles out the example of Geza Supka, who was the leader of the Freemasons in Hungary. In 1950 this organization no longer existed, since it was considered a threat to the regime. Supka was described (in a thick file declassified only now) as being a "representative of Anglo-Saxon interests in Hungary" and a traitor plotting to overthrow the regime. The file also contains many false testimonies rendered by some of his friends, but the most harrowing element of the file includes the daily reports on Supka by informers. Even the report about his death in 1956 was to be included in that file. Similar modi operandi against other "enemies" were to be found in other counties as well.
Then some revolts in the fifties were immediately crushed in East Germany and Hungary in 1953 and 1956,respectively.
In the end, the communist leaders asked themselves the same questions they had posed after Stalin's death. Why did the system produce such poor economic results? Why was the propaganda unconvincing? What was the source of ongoing dissent and what was the best way to quash it?
In the end, as Ms. Applebaum concludes,"the gap between reality and ideology meant that the communist parties wound up spouting meaningless slogans which they themselves knew made no sense". Here the author comes, in my view, to the right conclusion that after Stalin's death none of the regimes were as cruel as they had been between 1945 and 1953, but "even post-Stalinist Eastern Europe could be harsh, arbitrary and formidably repressive". The Berlin Wall built in 1961 was just one example. Both Romania and Yugoslavia tried at differrent times to carve out individual roles in foreign policy, distancing themselves from the rest of the Soviet bloc, but not necessarily in very meaningful ways.
By using a lot of new archival material, and after interviewing numerous citizens in Germany, Hungary and Poland, the result is a riveting and enthralling book which also offers deep and extensive analysis of the various segments discussed in her book. This opus will become one of the best written on this topic and a classic of its kind. This in spite of the fact that it is not a comprehensive history of the whole Eastern communist bloc. Highly recommended.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
A Chronicle of When the Shadows Cross the Sky
By Richard Ranger
Anne Applebaum's writing is unfailingly lucid and honest. Her latest book presents the reader with a ground-level account of the arrival of Soviet dominion over the nations of Central Europe. Portions of her book have the vividness of conversations among neighbors witnessing the ascendance of the new regimes. With a keen balance between scholarship and journalism she describes how the establishment of the Iron Curtain's Communist regimes were not simply the result of Soviet military might but the outcome of a multitude of individual choices and individual decisions - to serve and to support; to collaborate; to resist; to seek the handful of hollow spaces within which the ends of ordinary human experience could be pursued in a time of diminishing freedom and diminishing hope. Everyone is familiar with the shopworn phrase "the banality of evil". Applebaum's book shows the reader that beneath the spaces routinely colored red on the maps from our youth, ordinary men and women found endurance if not strength, perseverance if not peace, as they coped with the transformation not just of their nations, but of their communities. At the same time others, whether motivated by ideology, or advantage-seeking, or a simple desire to put bread on their families' tables, built the socialist republics of Central Europe stone by stone. It is a sobering and soberly told book, that makes the reader thankful for his freedom, and at the same time conscious of its fragility in the face of overwhelming adversity. "Iron Curtain" joins the bookshelf of indispensable chronicles of the Twentieth Century, and when what happens when, as Auden wrote, "Defenceless under the night/Our world in stupor lies". Highly recommended.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent research and writing
By Dr Benjamin
This is one of the very best books of its type I have read. It is extremely well researched and authoritatively written and annotated and covers the vast expanse of the Communist takeover and consolidation of power throughout Eastern Europe following World War II under Stalin and his successors. The control, delusion and paranoia engendered is palpable and one develops a great sense of sadness and tragedy for those forced to live under the "big brother system of sham equality" which became so cannibalistic, myopic, self-indulged and hypocritcial. Ironically, for all the praise of workers slaving away for the great and almighty motherland and state, the party elites everywhere ended up as privileged and apart as those in the "terrible" and "predatory" capitalist system they had transplanted. Author Applebaum leaves no secret hidden in her masterly account which makes gripping reading. While communism sought to export a certain glamour through tight control of reality and the use of things such as sport and totally staged and choreographed rallies to engender a sense of superiority over all else and all others, it failed to work and the reality did gradually emerge, both at home and abroad. Of course, escapes and uprisings - although they were ruthlessly suppressed - indicated clearly and increasingly that all was not well. Further, the economic results simply failed to achieve the levels expected of an inherently "superior" system, and, although terror, torture and other controls could and did intimidate most, without exercise of free will, it was doomed and the cancer of doubt took hold and metastasised. The entire structure was inherently unstable. Another key element was that one totalitarian ideology could not easily be imposed over vast numbers of very diverse people and peoples with different national histories, characteristics and features. Ultimately it was merely a matter of painfully-lived time before the entire edifice crumbled, as it indeed did. In the meantime, the stage was littered with corpses and the painful injustices suffered by millions had to wait a book such as this in order to be fully acknowledged.
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