Iron Curtain
The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56
Allen Lane
Hardback
: 03 Oct 2012
£25.00
Synopsis
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag comes a major new work of historical and moral reckoning: the story of life behind the Iron Curtain.
Once the Nazis were defeated in 1945, the people of Central and Eastern Europe expected to recover the lives they had led before 1939. Instead, they found themselves subjected to a tyranny that was in many ways as inhuman as the one which they had just escaped. This book explains how Communism was imposed on these previously free societies in the decade after the end of the Second World War. Applebaum describes, in calm but devastating detail, how political parties, the church, the media, young people's organisations - the institutions of civil society on every level - were all quickly eviscerated. Ranging widely across new archival material and many sources unknown in English, she follows the communists' tactics as they bullied, threatened and murdered their way to power. She also chronicles individual lives to show the rapid choices people had to make - to fight, to flee, or to collaborate.
Within a remarkably short period after the end of the war, Eastern Europe had been ruthlessly Stalinised. Iron Curtain is a brilliant history of a brutal period in European history, but also a reminder of how fragile free societies are, and how vulnerable they can be to the predations of determined and unscrupulous enemies.
» Read the opening pages of Iron Curtain by downloading the Penguin Taster here
Product details
Format :
Hardback
ISBN: 9780713998689
Size : 153 x 234mm
Pages : 656
Published : 03 Oct 2012
Publisher : Allen Lane
Other formats for Iron Curtain:
» Paperback : £8.99
» ePub eBook: eBook : £5.99
Iron Curtain
The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56
£25.00
Related email updates
To keep up-to-date, input your email address, and we will contact you on publication or when the author releases another book.
Please alert me via email when:
