Totally Gloomy

Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain:

The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

            Anne Applebaum’s “Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956,” sheds much light on a dark period, when the brutal Nazi occupation ended in Eastern Europe, only to be replaced by slightly less brutal communist rule.  Although Applebaum  covers the whole of Eastern Europe – the so-called “Eastern block,” those countries outside the Soviet Union that became communist – she concentrates during this 12-year period on Poland, Hungary and East Germany, which she has chosen “not because they were similar but because they were so different” (p.xxxii).  There are also occasional references to Czechoslovakia, Tito’s Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria and Romania.  Despite differences between countries, Applebaum highlights striking similarities among them and thereby provides an incisive overview of the gloomy and oppressive totalitarianism that prevailed across Eastern Europe during the period she covers. 

            Writing for general readers and…