Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

National Book Award Finalist
TIME Magazine's #1 Nonfiction Book of 2012
A New York Times Notable Book
A Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2012
Best Nonfiction of 2012: The Wall Street Journal, The Plain Dealer

In the much-anticipated 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. Iron Curtain describes how, spurred by Stalin and his secret police, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. Drawing on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time, Applebaum portrays in chilling 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. As a result the Soviet Bloc became a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in these electrifying pages.

Review

Praise for Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain

“Applebaum shines light into forgotten worlds of human hope, suffering and dignity. . . . One of the most compelling but also serious works on Europe’s past to appear in recent memory. . . . With extraordinary gifts for bringing distant, often exotic worlds to life, Applebaum tells us that Sovietization was never simply about political institutions or social structures.”
—The Washington Post
 
“Remarkable . . . a book that reanimates a world that was largely hidden from Western eyes, and that many people who lived and suffered in it would prefer to forget.”
—The New Yorker
 
“Epic but intimate history . . . [Applebaum] eloquently illuminates the methods by which Stalin’s state imprisoned half the European continent. . . . Applebaum offers us windows into the lives of the men and sometimes women who constructed the police states of Eastern Europe. She gives us a glimpse of those who resisted. But she also gives us a harrowing portrait of the rest—the majority of Eastern Europe’s population, who, having been caught up in the continent’s conflicts time and time again, now found themselves pawns in a global one.”
—The Wall Street Journal
 
“Iron Curtain is a superb, revisionistic, brilliantly perceptive, often witty, totally gripping history. . . . The book is full of things I didn’t know—but should have.”
—London Evening StandardLondon Evening Standard

“Illuminating. . . . Human beings, as Ms Applebaum rousingly concludes, do not acquire ‘totalitarian personalities’ with ease. Even when they seem bewitched by the cult of the leader or of the party, appearances can deceive, she writes. When it seems as if they buy into the most absurd propaganda—marching in parades, chanting slogans, singing that the party is always right—the spell can suddenly, unexpectedly, dramatically be broken.”
—The Economist

“A tragically intimate account of the imposition of communism in Central Europe. Here is a world in which political authorities shut down choral singing societies, bird-watching clubs, anything that might nourish an independent social sphere. The story is told both with artistry and scholarship.”
—David Frum, The Daily Beast, Favorite Books of 2012

“A meticulously researched and riveting account of the totalitarian mind-set and its impact on the citizens of East Germany, Poland and Hungary. . . . Even as it documents the consequences of force, fear and intimidation, however, Iron Curtain also provides evidence of resistance and resilience.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Deeply researched, exciting. . . . A masterful work that will be read profitably by both laymen and scholars. . . . It is the best book on its subject, and will remain so for quite a while.”
—Christian Science Monitor

“Disturbing but fascinating history. . . . With precision in her narration and penetrating analysis, Applebaum has written another masterful account of the brutality of Soviet rule.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review, Best Book of 2012

“A dark but hopeful chronicle that shows how even humanity’s worst can fracture and fall.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review, Best Book of 2012

“Magisterial . . . Anne Applebaum is exceptionally well qualified to tell [this story]. Her deep knowledge of the region, breadth of view and eye for human detail makes this as readable as her last book, on the Gulag.”
—Daily Mail (UK)

“A true masterpiece. . . . Impressive. . . . Applebaum’s description of this remarkable time is everything a good history book should be: brilliantly and comprehensively researched, beautifully and shockingly told, encyclopedic in scope, meticulous in detail. . . . First and foremost of [the book’s achievements] is Applebaum’s ability to take a dense and complex subject, replete with communist acronyms and impenetrable jargon, and make it not only informative but enjoyable—and even occasionally witty.”
—The Telegraph (UK)

“A masterly synthesis in English of recent research by scholars in these countries, and of the range of memoirs by participants and survivors.”
—The Guardian (UK)

“Applebaum’s excellent book tells with sympathy and sensitivity how unlucky Eastern Europe was: to be liberated from the Nazi dictatorship by the only regime that could rival it for inhumanity.”
—The Independent (UK)

“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

“Anne Applebaum’s highly readable book is distinguished by its ability to describe and evoke the personal, human experience of Sovietisation in vivid detail, based on extensive original research and interviews with those who remember.”
—Timothy Garton Ash, author of The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ‘89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague

***

希特勒剛走，史達林就來了！
面對鋪天蓋地的黨政機器，拒絕活在謊言下的人還有什麼指望？
穿越冷戰與歷史的迷障，首度揭開鐵幕的神祕面紗。

你真的認識共產黨嗎？
破壞制度、分化社群、滲透媒體、打壓人民，
蘇聯老大哥如何全面接管東歐？
東歐老百姓為何服從，又為何抵抗？

如果《血色大地》有續作，肯定是安愛波邦的《鐵幕降臨》────
安愛波邦熟悉東歐，理解極權，更洞悉人性，
最重要的是，天生善於說書的她，有著娓娓道盡一切的敘事功力。

「本書滿是我應該要知道、卻從不曉得的事。」──《耶路撒冷三千年》作者Simon Sebag Montefiore

★美國國家圖書獎決選　
★全球獎金最高的歷史著作獎「坎迪爾獎」得獎作品
★《時代雜誌》《紐約時報》《經濟學人》等16家媒體年度選書
★翻譯超過20種語言

「納粹統治的最後歲月裡，我們所有人都是親俄的，都期盼著來自東方的勝利曙光。但這道曙光卻太過灼熱，灼熱到燒盡一切。」──某柏林市民

第二次世界大戰結束後，龐大的東歐世界落入蘇聯手中。史達林與他的祕密警察開始著手將十幾個原本樣貌完全不同的國家，轉變為一套全新的道德與政治體系：共產主義。最重要的是，這套統治模式並非直接複製俄羅斯本土，而是一場前所未見的大規模政治實驗。

本書帶領讀者看清東歐共產政權的底細，以及共產極權統治下人們的生活樣貌。本書一一追溯東歐各國的政黨、教會、學校、媒體、社運組織及公民社會的一切，如何遭到新政權的控制、分化或消滅，祕密警察及種族清洗又是如何變成鐵幕籠罩下的嶄新日常。

作者安愛波邦曾獲普立茲獎，她深入走訪東德、波蘭與匈牙利等東歐國家，訪問見證歷史者的生命經驗，結合東歐多國首次開放的檔案史料，寫出個人與集體在共產政權下的遭遇，描繪極權主義如何滲入生活中的每一個層面：人們受到領導人崇拜的欺瞞迷惑、相信最荒謬的政治宣傳、互相監視或在遊行隊伍中高呼「黨永遠是對的」。但安愛波邦也不忘捕捉東歐人民各式各樣的幽微反抗，挖掘出他們深藏在極權統治下的韌性與希望。