Iron Curtain

My whole life, Eastern Europe has been of interest to me.  The Soviet Union and the countries of what was called the “Eastern bloc” were the enemies of America when I was a kid.  After the fall of the Soviet Union, I got to watch those formerly oppressed peoples give democracy a try.  Thanks to serving a mission in Russia and marrying a Czech woman, the interest in Eastern Europe has never really disappeared.  Considering the state of Russia’s government today, not to mention the regressions made in Western societies toward authoritarianism, it seems the subject of oppressive regimes is still very germane to modern life.  One thing that was always pretty clear to me, even as a kid, when I imagined people across the Soviet Union being told what their jobs were being something along the lines of graduating from high school and instead of getting a diploma, you got directed to your job, the worst one in my mind was someone whose job it was to endlessly go around an office building emptying the trash cans under everyone’s desks, was that, in most cases, it was those in power who were at fault for the lack of liberty, and not the everyday people.

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 by Anne Applebaum (ISBN: 978-1-4000-9593-3) discusses just how Communist regimes came to power in Europe following World War II.  The book chronicles how the Communists came to power in Eastern Europe, focusing on Hungary, Poland, and East Germany, with a fair number of examples from Czechoslovakia and occasionally Romania.  The Communists rose to power quickly in post-war Europe through a comprehensive strategy that thoroughly encompassed the lives of the people.  This included the police, youth organizations, the media, political organizations, the arts, and the economies of the countries where the Soviet Union was victorious over Germany.  In many cases, a combination of factors worked together to make the Communist takeover work.  First, it was the Soviet Union that was in control in these areas.  Even in places where there was arguable Allied control, it was the Soviets doing the day-to-day administration, so they worked to install people and organizations that were compatible with their ideas of how things should work.  Second, there had already been strong support for Communist, socialist, and other Left-leaning ideologies before and during the war.  This only continued after the war.  Third, the activists were the ones most involved.  They were also the ones who were willing to use violence to reach their goals.  While most regular people were concerned about getting a job, rebuilding their homes and businesses, and helping their friends and families, activists were getting involved in politics, unions, youth and religious organizations, and the media.  This helped them make sure that things were done they way they wanted.  In the rare cases when there was some push-back, the activists, often with help from the police or the newly formed secret police organizations, violently quashed any dissent.  Applebaum does discuss resistance a little, but this is a short section, which seems to accurately represent the proportions of active and passive support or acquiescence to the regime and resistance.

I thought the book was interesting, but not quite as impressive as Gulag: A History, Applebaum’s impressive earlier work.  I thought the book was comprehensive, and it was nice to read about the many different areas in which the Communists operated in order to come to power.  One area I thought it might have been nice to explore further was how such a small number of people could so quickly overtake these countries.  Of the three abovementioned factors, the author focused on the third, the activists and Communist party members, but I was often left pondering how such a small fraction of the total populations got so much power so quickly.  On the other hand, that factor is probably the most relevant to today’s political climate, especially in the West.  The book should serve as a warning to those who fall to the right of socialists on the political spectrum.  If they are too slow to step up their involvement and are too willing to be cowed by the Left’s willingness to resort to violence, it won’t be too long before books about “the crushing of Western Europe” or “the crushing of North America” will be possible to publish.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.