Iron Curtain

The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

By: Anne Applebaum

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 26 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

In the long-awaited 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.

At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating 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. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.

©2012 Anne Applebaum (P)2012 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"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)

Great book but East European names get butchered

This is a great narrative history of the Stalinist era in Eastern Europe. It’s sad, though, that the reader repeatedly mispronounces German and Hungarian words. Not her fault, but still...

Clear and rich and mined

Clearly written, rich in detail, and mined with interviews, new available archival documents, and citing secondary authorities, Applebaum provides a significant classic on the USSR imposition of power over Eastern Europe, especially Poland, Hungary, and East Germany. A finalist for the National Book Award (she won it earlier with her very compelling book, GULAG), IRON CURTAIN is engaging and memorable. For those interested in USSR or European history this is essential reading.

Excellent And Helpful

Excellent review with facts interspersed with real, personal stories including some from the author's experience.

Fascinating

Superb overview of the devastation Stalinism wreaked upon all aspects of society in Eastern Europe after WWII. Well written and well read. Really it’s required reading or listening for anyone interested in what Communism was - what we’re seeing in Putin’s turn towards authoritarianism and his anti west stance. History, unfortunately for Russia (and Ukraine) is repeating itself.

Reliving the cold war...

What did you love best about Iron Curtain?

An insightful, well researched book. I grew up in a Siberian "closed" town in 1970s, which was build by Gulag prisoners before I was born. I spent my childhood behind three rows of barbed wires and had a happy childhood in this Soviet version of "gated community", which was not on the map. Interestingly, my home town Zheleznogorsk is still not on the map - Google maps missed it for some reason. My small town produced refined plutonium and spy satellites. In nearly 30 years I lived in the USSR before moving to the USA, I had no idea what was happening outside USSR, not only in the capitalist West, but even in the socialist East. We just never had a chance and thus did not even dream about traveling the world, until Soviet Union collapsed and suddenly everything become possible. Now I am trying to catch up with all the missed opportunities - and travel 30-40 times a year.

Book is a bit single sided though. I wish I could discuss it with the author. I live in Missouri now, not too far from Westminster College in Fulton MO, where the famous "Iron Curtain" speech was delivered by Winston Churchill in 1946. A week later the transcript of this speech was on Stalin's desk and infuriated him. It prompted Stalin to approve plans for building my home town among a network of similar "closed" cities of Siberia and for establishing my Alma mater - Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology - the best STEM school in former Soviet Union, which trained many outstanding physicists. It is impossible to go back in time, but what would have been without this speech? I am far from thinking that Stalin would have been different, but historical dynamics might have been not so dramatic in 1946 and on after the speech.

It is sad that the responsibility for rape of Eastern Europe by Stalin's Soviet Union is not acknowledged by the current Russian government, as it was by Germany. Without such a moral statement there will be no reconciliation.

Those that do not learn from history...

Would you listen to Iron Curtain again? Why?

Are we doomed to repeat it? The importance of the subject makes it worth the time investment. I wish it was part of everyone's education.

What did you like best about this story?

The frightening insights into state-ism. There really is no difference between them and any other group of fanatics who believe that their worldview should be forced on others, and the unbelievers should be shot. I learned a lot. I understand their mindset / paradigm better now.

A very solid introduction to Eastern Europe

Anne Applebaum manages to deliver a very solid introduction into the Eastern Europe's post WW II history. A period just as interesting as overlooked. The book offers a very multifaceted story encompassing various themes and subjects which at the end manage to create a very precise outline of the region in these times. Strongly recommend to any English speaker who wishes to know more about the region or technicalities and deficiencies of the Soviet system. Applebaum accurately portrays the destruction brought upon countries of Europe by socialism and debunks the so called "democratic socialism". The narrator does mostly a good job with Polish and German names, a huge improvement over the disastrous mispronunciation of the Gulag.

Would like more…

This book goes to 1956 chronologically. I will find 1956-1986 to be even more interesting and I’m currently looking for a book like this that continues the historical narrative. I learned quite a bit from listening to this book. The only criticism I have is that I would’ve liked more information on how the main countries’ secret police apparatus really worked. The author explains how the Party dismantled its opposition with arrests, harassment, intimidation, ethnic cleansing and relocation. I would’ve liked to have learned more detail, if possible, about the specific tactics used to infiltrate opposition groups, how informant networks worked, and what percentage of the population were informants and how much of the economy was dedicated to spying on their own people.

Really great

The details were excellent, great coverage of those times. Anne always nails it, and she did it again

From Stetin in the Baltic....

I had looked forward to listening to this and was a tad disappointed, but my expectations had been in the wrong direction. I had expected a much more detailed discussion of the policies crafted by Stalin and Zhdanov for the overlordship of their new satrapies. Instead this concentrated much more on the puppet governments themselves, and on the social movements that fulminated in their respective countries as the USSR felt its way through the first years of occupation, slowly strengthening its grip.

The book spends a fair amount of time on the backgrounds and policies of the "little Stalins", such as Ulbrecht in the DDR. Their local struggles in implementing the policies handed down by the Kremlin are discussed in depth, particularly in East Germany, Hungary and Poland. Their difficult positions - essentially acting as the local representatives of the USSR - might almost be pitiable were they not typically willing accomplices of the NKVD.

The narration was, to my ear, bland. It may be that I'm used to having my European History read to me by a male with a British accent, but I found the reader to be lacking.

As a companion piece to this, I would highly recommend "Revolution 1989" by Victor Sebestyen. After hearing about the establishment of these dystopias, a few hours listening to the story of their dismantlement will make you feel that some wrongs, in the end, are inevitably reversed.