Iron Curtain
The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56
by Anne Applebaum · first published 2012
57% recommend43% neutral
In the follow-up to her previous book "Gulag," the author, a journalist delivers a 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. Josef Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In this book, the author describes how the Communist regimes of Easte
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…Miller, T. Christian, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35805861-a-false-report - The New Silk Roads by Frankopan, Peter, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40921633-the-new-silk-ro... History: - Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Applebaum, Anne, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13531848-iron-curtain - The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Montefiore, Simon Sebag, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26109020-the-romanovs…
on “Ask HN: Best books you've read in 2019?” ↗…Miller, T. Christian, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35805861-a-false-report - The New Silk Roads by Frankopan, Peter, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40921633-the-new-silk-ro.... History: - Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Applebaum, Anne, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13531848-iron-curtain - The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Montefiore, Simon Sebag, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26109020-the-romanovs…
on “Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2019?” ↗Anne Applebaum's "Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956" documents the process of imposing authoritarianism. Particularly important is the combination of surveillance and the threat of violence. You can't have a thug…
on “Employers are monitoring computers, toilet breaks, even emotions” ↗…forget to read Greg Lukanioff's Unlearning Liberty[1], a very detailed examination of basically the same forces at work in education and free speech. I read it not long after reading Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain[2], and was really disturbed by the parallels between what's happening naturally in universities (basically because individual actors such as administrators have no personal disincentive against violating…
on “Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private corporations” ↗…Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder was horrific reading and just gruesomely sad but also incredibly well researched and fascinating. I liked it so much I then when on an Ann Applebaum kick of Iron Curtain, Gulag and Red Famine, all of which were very good. If you were going to pick one of hers, I'd do Gulag. John Kraukauer's Into Thin Air and Under the Banner of Heaven are excellent, as is Crisis in the…
on “Where is the scrutiny over FDA’s role in the overdose epidemic?” ↗…secrets 04. League of denial 05. The Martian chronicles 06. The Sixth extinction 07. Lost stars 08. The Devil in the white city 09. China in ten words 10. The Fourth revolution 11. Red Mars 12. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 13. Grit: Passion, perseverance and the science of success 14. The Signal and the noise 15. The Third chimpanzee 16. The Willpower instinct 17. The Master algorithm…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗There was also a big issue of huge cooperation of the clergy. Don't know the concrete numbers but Anne Applebaum explains it in her "Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe". Our catholic church was the most penetrated one in the whole Warsaw pact. This means people literally didn't have anyone to trust. Just try to imagine that. Three generations…
on “A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)” ↗…practice -- it's actually extraordinarily rare to see physical violence used to suppress anything -- it's more of a learned response: The political historian and commentator Anne Applebaum wrote in “Iron Curtain” (2012) about how the Stalinization of Eastern Europe depended not primarily on the gulag and the firing squads, but on the intimidation of people who felt compelled to spew the same idiocy they heard,…
on “NYT: My Book Was Censored in China. Now It’s Blacklisted – In Texas” ↗