Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56 - Hardcover

Applebaum, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713998687 ISBN 13: 9780713998689

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2012

Synopsis

At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union found itself occupying half of Europe. Occupation swiftly became control and, in Churchill's words, an iron curtain descended across the continent. Drawing on recently released archives and interviews with participants, Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Applebaum offers a sobering lesson in how and why societies succumb to totalitarianism, explaining in chilling detail how the Soviets eliminated all opposition, converting the institutions of a dozen states into instruments of their power.

About this title

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

About the Author:

ANNE APPLEBAUM is a columnist for The Washington Post and Slate. Her previous book, Gulag, won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for three other major prizes. Her essays appear in The New York Review of Books, Slate, and The London Spectator. She lives in Washington, D.C., and Poland with her husband, Radek Sikorski, a Polish politician, and their two children.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0713998687
• ISBN 13: 9780713998689
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 614