Eastern Europe in the Postwar World

This book is a history of Eastern Europe from the terrible disasters of World War II to today's more hopeful, but still anxious, era.

Simons, currently the U.S. ambassador to Poland, has a 30-year diplomatic career dealing with East-West relations. During 1989-90 he was diplomat in residence at Brown University; his book is the outgrowth of a course on post-1945 Eastern Europe. He concentrates on Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria and stresses three themes: the peasant character of these societies, their legacy of dependence on outside powers, and nationalism. At some time during the 1970s, he asserts, the last links between the people and their respective governments snapped, and only force held the state together. Under such conditions, the intellectuals developed "anti-politics," political and social activity outside of the formal state apparatus. A competent survey, stressing what happened over why it happened. For subject collections.
- Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.