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Bloc Life: Stories from the Lost World of Communism
There was life before the fall.1989 was a year of astonishing and rapid the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and an end to an entire way of life for millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. Bloc Life collects first hand testimony of the people who lived in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania during the Cold War era, and reveals a rich tapestry of experience that goes beyond the headlines of spies and surveillance, secret police and political corruption. In fact, many of the people remember their lives under communism as 'perfectly ordinary' and even hanker for the 'security' that it offered.From political leaders, athletes and pop stars, to cooks, miners and cosmonauts, the stories collected in Bloc Life evoke the moods, preoccupations and experiences of a world that vanished almost overnight.
318 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
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May 20, 2015
This review is not hidden because of spoilers (though there are a lot), rather it is hidden because it is badly written. I want it here though to prop up my ageing memory...... +_______+
The Lost World of Communism centres on three members of the Eastern Bloc – East Germany, Romania and Czechoslovakia. It’s built on a framework of chapters covering different aspects of life in these countries. Each chapter carries an overview or synopsis of a specific topic, followed by interviews relevant to the topic.
Whilst there were some situations and attitudes that seem to be consistent across all countries, there were also big variables. For instance in Romania Ceausescu wanted to increase the population and introduced various measures to effect this – women were given financial rewards and medals for having lots of children, birth control options were banned, abortion was banned, women in the workplace had compulsory gynaecological check-ups ,(ostensibly for their general health, but really to see if they were pregnant.) On the other hand in East Germany birth control was widely available, marriage and sex counselling centres were established in the mid 1960s, and abortion on demand was legalized in 1972.
There were some things which seem to have been common to all states.
*The endless promotion of communist ideas (the old term “brain washing” seems appropriate here)
* Use of secret police and state spies.
*Lack of freedom of speech, with criticism of the state sometimes resulting in imprisonment or years spent in hard labour internment camps, or even being labelled insane and put in psychiatric hospitals.
* Media wholly harnessed to promoting the state rather than telling the truth.
*The celebration of manual workers and the working class. The middle class were penalised in career and life opportunities.
* The promotion of atheism. There was a strong dislike of religion and often violent persecution of clergy, and seizing of church land and buildings.
In East Germany there were some strong pluses.
* Female emancipation – things like the provision of crèches so that women could work.
*The banning of any sort of pornography, and generally,“no market interest in the commercialization of the female body – that simply didn’t exist.”
* Guaranteed work.
*Support for the arts (albeit art that was rather regimented. The book described the experiences of a pop group in Czechoslovakia……”At this time band were not able to play just like that. They had to pass an exam, and a committee had to decide whether the group could perform in public or not.”)
*Lots of building of flats, so more people had accommodation, and these flats were very secure in the sense you could not be evicted easily.
* An excellent organisation of holiday trips for working people – many of whom had never had holidays before.
* Improved hospital and medical care.
* Better education. Over 50% of university students were female, and at professional schools this rose to 90%.
* The encouragement of sport. (This had a big downside too, e.g., East Germany did brilliantly well in the 1976 Olympic Games, with 40 gold medals, but this was largely due to the drugging of their female athletes with steroids and male hormone boosters.)
East Germany also had some minuses
*The notorious behaviour of the Stasi and the spying networks they set up to watch ordinary citizens.
* The way it barricaded itself from the West, By 1952 the 1,381 kilometres inner German border had been constructed with its fearsome wire fences and armed guards. The defences faced inwards to keep the East Germans at bay.” Punishments for trying to escape were draconian, including the death penalty ”Only one in fifteen escape attempts from East Germany ever succeeded. …Best estimates are that 250 people died at the Berlin Wall. Another 370 died along the border dividing East from West Germany. 189 died trying to escape across the Baltic.
All in all Romania seems to have been a lot less positive.
Their leader Nicolae Ceausescu, (and his wife), appear to have been vain, self-deluded and quite batty.
*Ceausescu refused to acknowledge the presence of HIV/AIDs (he saw it as capitalist problem), and in Romania it affected mostly children – spread through infected blood transfusions, given to newly born babies who were underweight. As a result of Ceausescu's denial, at least 11,000 children were infected.
* The repercussions of Ceausescus’s banning of birth control and legal abortion were horrendous. After an initial level of increased babies, the figures soon decreased sharply. Women could not afford to have babies when they could not adequately support them. Instead there were high numbers of illegal abortions, often self-induced - and many hospitalizations and deaths due to botched abortions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bulk of people who were interviewed in the book either disliked their experience of communist rule, or even if they were enthusiastic communists at the time, were pleased that this era had ended.
Overall I found the book interesting, especially the synopses before the interviews. Next time though I think I need to read books on the individual countries. Whilst I’m sure there are valid generalisations to make across the Eastern bloc, I feel I’d probably do better learning about the history and individual situations concerning each country at a time.
The Lost World of Communism centres on three members of the Eastern Bloc – East Germany, Romania and Czechoslovakia. It’s built on a framework of chapters covering different aspects of life in these countries. Each chapter carries an overview or synopsis of a specific topic, followed by interviews relevant to the topic.
Whilst there were some situations and attitudes that seem to be consistent across all countries, there were also big variables. For instance in Romania Ceausescu wanted to increase the population and introduced various measures to effect this – women were given financial rewards and medals for having lots of children, birth control options were banned, abortion was banned, women in the workplace had compulsory gynaecological check-ups ,(ostensibly for their general health, but really to see if they were pregnant.) On the other hand in East Germany birth control was widely available, marriage and sex counselling centres were established in the mid 1960s, and abortion on demand was legalized in 1972.
There were some things which seem to have been common to all states.
*The endless promotion of communist ideas (the old term “brain washing” seems appropriate here)
* Use of secret police and state spies.
*Lack of freedom of speech, with criticism of the state sometimes resulting in imprisonment or years spent in hard labour internment camps, or even being labelled insane and put in psychiatric hospitals.
* Media wholly harnessed to promoting the state rather than telling the truth.
*The celebration of manual workers and the working class. The middle class were penalised in career and life opportunities.
* The promotion of atheism. There was a strong dislike of religion and often violent persecution of clergy, and seizing of church land and buildings.
In East Germany there were some strong pluses.
* Female emancipation – things like the provision of crèches so that women could work.
*The banning of any sort of pornography, and generally,“no market interest in the commercialization of the female body – that simply didn’t exist.”
* Guaranteed work.
*Support for the arts (albeit art that was rather regimented. The book described the experiences of a pop group in Czechoslovakia……”At this time band were not able to play just like that. They had to pass an exam, and a committee had to decide whether the group could perform in public or not.”)
*Lots of building of flats, so more people had accommodation, and these flats were very secure in the sense you could not be evicted easily.
* An excellent organisation of holiday trips for working people – many of whom had never had holidays before.
* Improved hospital and medical care.
* Better education. Over 50% of university students were female, and at professional schools this rose to 90%.
* The encouragement of sport. (This had a big downside too, e.g., East Germany did brilliantly well in the 1976 Olympic Games, with 40 gold medals, but this was largely due to the drugging of their female athletes with steroids and male hormone boosters.)
East Germany also had some minuses
*The notorious behaviour of the Stasi and the spying networks they set up to watch ordinary citizens.
* The way it barricaded itself from the West, By 1952 the 1,381 kilometres inner German border had been constructed with its fearsome wire fences and armed guards. The defences faced inwards to keep the East Germans at bay.” Punishments for trying to escape were draconian, including the death penalty ”Only one in fifteen escape attempts from East Germany ever succeeded. …Best estimates are that 250 people died at the Berlin Wall. Another 370 died along the border dividing East from West Germany. 189 died trying to escape across the Baltic.
All in all Romania seems to have been a lot less positive.
Their leader Nicolae Ceausescu, (and his wife), appear to have been vain, self-deluded and quite batty.
*Ceausescu refused to acknowledge the presence of HIV/AIDs (he saw it as capitalist problem), and in Romania it affected mostly children – spread through infected blood transfusions, given to newly born babies who were underweight. As a result of Ceausescu's denial, at least 11,000 children were infected.
* The repercussions of Ceausescus’s banning of birth control and legal abortion were horrendous. After an initial level of increased babies, the figures soon decreased sharply. Women could not afford to have babies when they could not adequately support them. Instead there were high numbers of illegal abortions, often self-induced - and many hospitalizations and deaths due to botched abortions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bulk of people who were interviewed in the book either disliked their experience of communist rule, or even if they were enthusiastic communists at the time, were pleased that this era had ended.
Overall I found the book interesting, especially the synopses before the interviews. Next time though I think I need to read books on the individual countries. Whilst I’m sure there are valid generalisations to make across the Eastern bloc, I feel I’d probably do better learning about the history and individual situations concerning each country at a time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 29, 2020
I was born 1983 in West Germany. So whatever I remember from that time of history is just snippets of bigger news, stories as told by the adults around me and the general views and stereotypes people on the other side of the Iron Curtain used to hold about those in the Bloc.
Nevertheless my family's life was touched in many ways by this part of history. My mother grew up in West Berlin and to this day kind of misses the wall, because it was just part of 'how she knew' the city of her childhood. Her aunt ended up on the other side of the wall in East Berlin and they wouldn't be able to see each other from the construction of the wall until her aunt's retirement in the 80s - the DDR at some point granted senior citizens a lot more freedom as far as visiting the West or even migrating there was concerned.
It's from this very aunt - my great-aunt - that I learned most about life in the DDR from. For her the worst part of it was, that her adult son fled East Berlin short before the construction of the Wall. He didn't want her to get in trouble though, so he didn't tell her anything. Just dropped the keys in the letter box one day and was gone, and they too wouldn't meet again until the 80s.
The way life in the DDR - and of course having lived through a World War - influenced my great-aunt you saw in many everyday habits that she wouldn't lose for the rest of her life. Like always having a few cloth bags in her purse, in case something was available cheap somewhere. Or having a whole arsenal of fabric leftovers and buttons, with which she'd craftily repair anything that most people would already have thrown away. She never complained about any of it, these things just had become second nature to her.
And it's not like every little thing was bad. In fact she was one of the first female underground train drivers in East Berlin, something that was unheard of still for the longest time in the West and has only become more normal over the last 10-15 years. She always remembered the uniform she got for the job very fondly. As far as emancipation was concerned the DDR was ahead in many ways by leaps and bounds.
For me personally, the time I remember most vividly - which is just a small snippet regardless - about the DDR is just after its collapse traveling with my mom to West Berlin by train in the winter of 1990. I was 7. The train was full of Russian families who were making their way via different routes back to Russia. My mom had to shoo some off our reserved seats. It was a 8 hour train ride from Munich to West Berlin and she had me along so she couldn't compromise on that. I just darkly remember feeling uncomfortable to making a bunch of people get up for my sake.
The biggest difference that stood out to her, as she told me much later, was that for that time for the first time no state security personnel came through the train to look for defectors. Before I was born she went also via train to West Berlin with my then teenage brother who had his pet hamster with him. The security guy heard the hamster rustling under the seat where they had put the cage and gave the entire compartment an extra thorough inspection just to find a happy well-fed rodent.
It was a crazy time in many ways and many people in Germany, especially along the old border to the east, could tell such stories. However, if you lived in the West you still have very little or no grasp of what it was actually like living in the Bloc. I loved the way this book approached the subject. It's a mix of anecdotal memories of both people of influence 'on the inside' as well as everyday people who by a bad strike of luck ended up on the respective ruling party's bad side which would change their lives forever. There are also memories and statements of those who still regard those times with a lot of nostalgia and regret the end of that failed experiment that was communism and socialism.
True, I also would have liked more Bloc countries to be touched upon. On the other side I think this way the information didn't become too confusing or overwhelming. I wish this book would turn out to be an ongoing series. Whatever the case, even for the three countries addressed in this book, you can tell how much research and work collecting all those interviews must have gone into writing it.
For me personally especially the parts about Romania were insanely interesting. By the time I developed a political consciousness, Romania in Germany was just known as a largely corrupt and impoverished nation that allover wasn't of much relevance politically. I had basically no notion about what its people went through during those days. No wonder it takes time to recover from their version of communist rule. I'm very grateful to finally have gotten a peek into their history.
All over I really liked the balance this book managed to strike, in showing the atrocities committed in those states against their own people clearly and without sugar-coating, but also giving some of the positive sides a voice. When we think of the old communist states we like to think of them in Hollywood-terms, black-and-white (or rather grey), with haggard tense people suffering continuously. The fact of the matter though is that for a big part people tried to lead their lives as well as they could and make the best of it. They lived, loved and had fun too. People in the West somehow often don't like to really acknowledge that.
There is a reason why communism/socialism collapsed in all of those states. However, 30 years later I've known so many people closely from the old DDR, from Russia, from the Ukraine etc and most of them share very lovable characteristics of being non-pretentious, down to earth, caring, humble yet ambitious, easy-going and having an incredibly great sense of humor. And I do believe strongly many of those characteristics are down to the way they grew up and the conditions they were presented with in their lives.
Nevertheless my family's life was touched in many ways by this part of history. My mother grew up in West Berlin and to this day kind of misses the wall, because it was just part of 'how she knew' the city of her childhood. Her aunt ended up on the other side of the wall in East Berlin and they wouldn't be able to see each other from the construction of the wall until her aunt's retirement in the 80s - the DDR at some point granted senior citizens a lot more freedom as far as visiting the West or even migrating there was concerned.
It's from this very aunt - my great-aunt - that I learned most about life in the DDR from. For her the worst part of it was, that her adult son fled East Berlin short before the construction of the Wall. He didn't want her to get in trouble though, so he didn't tell her anything. Just dropped the keys in the letter box one day and was gone, and they too wouldn't meet again until the 80s.
The way life in the DDR - and of course having lived through a World War - influenced my great-aunt you saw in many everyday habits that she wouldn't lose for the rest of her life. Like always having a few cloth bags in her purse, in case something was available cheap somewhere. Or having a whole arsenal of fabric leftovers and buttons, with which she'd craftily repair anything that most people would already have thrown away. She never complained about any of it, these things just had become second nature to her.
And it's not like every little thing was bad. In fact she was one of the first female underground train drivers in East Berlin, something that was unheard of still for the longest time in the West and has only become more normal over the last 10-15 years. She always remembered the uniform she got for the job very fondly. As far as emancipation was concerned the DDR was ahead in many ways by leaps and bounds.
For me personally, the time I remember most vividly - which is just a small snippet regardless - about the DDR is just after its collapse traveling with my mom to West Berlin by train in the winter of 1990. I was 7. The train was full of Russian families who were making their way via different routes back to Russia. My mom had to shoo some off our reserved seats. It was a 8 hour train ride from Munich to West Berlin and she had me along so she couldn't compromise on that. I just darkly remember feeling uncomfortable to making a bunch of people get up for my sake.
The biggest difference that stood out to her, as she told me much later, was that for that time for the first time no state security personnel came through the train to look for defectors. Before I was born she went also via train to West Berlin with my then teenage brother who had his pet hamster with him. The security guy heard the hamster rustling under the seat where they had put the cage and gave the entire compartment an extra thorough inspection just to find a happy well-fed rodent.
It was a crazy time in many ways and many people in Germany, especially along the old border to the east, could tell such stories. However, if you lived in the West you still have very little or no grasp of what it was actually like living in the Bloc. I loved the way this book approached the subject. It's a mix of anecdotal memories of both people of influence 'on the inside' as well as everyday people who by a bad strike of luck ended up on the respective ruling party's bad side which would change their lives forever. There are also memories and statements of those who still regard those times with a lot of nostalgia and regret the end of that failed experiment that was communism and socialism.
True, I also would have liked more Bloc countries to be touched upon. On the other side I think this way the information didn't become too confusing or overwhelming. I wish this book would turn out to be an ongoing series. Whatever the case, even for the three countries addressed in this book, you can tell how much research and work collecting all those interviews must have gone into writing it.
For me personally especially the parts about Romania were insanely interesting. By the time I developed a political consciousness, Romania in Germany was just known as a largely corrupt and impoverished nation that allover wasn't of much relevance politically. I had basically no notion about what its people went through during those days. No wonder it takes time to recover from their version of communist rule. I'm very grateful to finally have gotten a peek into their history.
All over I really liked the balance this book managed to strike, in showing the atrocities committed in those states against their own people clearly and without sugar-coating, but also giving some of the positive sides a voice. When we think of the old communist states we like to think of them in Hollywood-terms, black-and-white (or rather grey), with haggard tense people suffering continuously. The fact of the matter though is that for a big part people tried to lead their lives as well as they could and make the best of it. They lived, loved and had fun too. People in the West somehow often don't like to really acknowledge that.
There is a reason why communism/socialism collapsed in all of those states. However, 30 years later I've known so many people closely from the old DDR, from Russia, from the Ukraine etc and most of them share very lovable characteristics of being non-pretentious, down to earth, caring, humble yet ambitious, easy-going and having an incredibly great sense of humor. And I do believe strongly many of those characteristics are down to the way they grew up and the conditions they were presented with in their lives.
May 14, 2022
I hate communism with a burning, fiery passion. I hate what it has done to my country, to Eastern Europe, to my family and to hundreds of thousands of other families. I hate it when I hear old geezers saying life was better in communism, or how they miss the good ol' glory days. And this book only made me realize how much of it I was blind to, how much its poison damaged society.
But enough about politics. This is a site about books, not economic systems. I'll start with what I disliked. I get that the book stems from the TV series of the same name, yet I cannot help but be bothered by the obvious TV-documentary style it was written in. It's almost as if I can hear some smooth-voiced narrator saying things over the images of a person talking, with the sound suppressed. Hate it. Another thing was the fact that it didn't focus too much on the ordinary lives of people. The book presented notable cases of society which, of course, are interesting all on their own, but it goes out of its way to demonize the socialist system. It includes an overwhelming amount of testimonies that condemn communism, and a few that support it. But those few testimonies are so ridiculous you cannot help but think 'if these are the reasons why some people want communism back, those people must be insane.' The book goes out of its way to avoid the positive aspects of Bloc life, to borrow the title, such as the camaraderie and unity of regular folks that is again and again mentioned throughout the book. The section about the events of the Romanian Revolution was riddled with small mistakes and, as far as I can tell, uncorroborated information; in fact, the whole book suffers from a total lack of cited sources. I was also disappointed by the lack of content on sexual minorities in the chapter Socialist Sex, but then again I suppose it isn't very hard to imagine what they were treated like...
The positive aspects are positive in a very grim way. It shocked me to read about what happened in other communist nations. I knew about Romania, having lived there my entire life and having grown up with stories and books and tales of horror, but not about the DDR or Czechoslovakia. Particularly disturbing were the parts about the athletes, youth and secret police. The medical section, focusing mostly on Romania, also shook me to my core, to the point I was feeling sick reading about the horrible things women had to endure to get rid of unwanted babies. I knew of them, but reading descriptions of them was just harrowing. What's ironic is that the decreței were an overwhelming majority of those who took up arms against the Ceaușescu regime.
All in all, the book is not that great. It did provide me with a lot of information on individuals, but nothing on life in general behind the Iron Curtain, which was after all what I expected from it. Maybe the TV series is better than the book. At least there I'll expect that documentary narration and not be taken aback by it.
But enough about politics. This is a site about books, not economic systems. I'll start with what I disliked. I get that the book stems from the TV series of the same name, yet I cannot help but be bothered by the obvious TV-documentary style it was written in. It's almost as if I can hear some smooth-voiced narrator saying things over the images of a person talking, with the sound suppressed. Hate it. Another thing was the fact that it didn't focus too much on the ordinary lives of people. The book presented notable cases of society which, of course, are interesting all on their own, but it goes out of its way to demonize the socialist system. It includes an overwhelming amount of testimonies that condemn communism, and a few that support it. But those few testimonies are so ridiculous you cannot help but think 'if these are the reasons why some people want communism back, those people must be insane.' The book goes out of its way to avoid the positive aspects of Bloc life, to borrow the title, such as the camaraderie and unity of regular folks that is again and again mentioned throughout the book. The section about the events of the Romanian Revolution was riddled with small mistakes and, as far as I can tell, uncorroborated information; in fact, the whole book suffers from a total lack of cited sources. I was also disappointed by the lack of content on sexual minorities in the chapter Socialist Sex, but then again I suppose it isn't very hard to imagine what they were treated like...
The positive aspects are positive in a very grim way. It shocked me to read about what happened in other communist nations. I knew about Romania, having lived there my entire life and having grown up with stories and books and tales of horror, but not about the DDR or Czechoslovakia. Particularly disturbing were the parts about the athletes, youth and secret police. The medical section, focusing mostly on Romania, also shook me to my core, to the point I was feeling sick reading about the horrible things women had to endure to get rid of unwanted babies. I knew of them, but reading descriptions of them was just harrowing. What's ironic is that the decreței were an overwhelming majority of those who took up arms against the Ceaușescu regime.
All in all, the book is not that great. It did provide me with a lot of information on individuals, but nothing on life in general behind the Iron Curtain, which was after all what I expected from it. Maybe the TV series is better than the book. At least there I'll expect that documentary narration and not be taken aback by it.
August 18, 2019
I'm fascinated by Cold War history, and I've read quite a lot of historical books about Eastern European communism, but there isn't much that looks at everyday life, so I was delighted to receive this book as a gift.
It's full of stories of people's experiences of life in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania, and how they coped with the everyday situations they faced. The tales come from a wide range of people, including supporters and opponents of the regimes in their countries, and a diverse range of opinions and perspectives emerge. A lot of it makes society in those countries sound very human, with people facing the same issues as those of us in the West, but some of it was horrifying stuff, especially the effects of Ceausescu's efforts to boost the birth rate in Romania. Also, even the smallest acts of independence and defiance could be devastating for those that were caught.
Hugely thought-provoking and highly readable, a very good contribution to the body of work looking at how communism affected people, both positively and negatively. Very engrossing and recommended for travellers, historians and thinkers with an interest in the eastern bloc.
It's full of stories of people's experiences of life in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania, and how they coped with the everyday situations they faced. The tales come from a wide range of people, including supporters and opponents of the regimes in their countries, and a diverse range of opinions and perspectives emerge. A lot of it makes society in those countries sound very human, with people facing the same issues as those of us in the West, but some of it was horrifying stuff, especially the effects of Ceausescu's efforts to boost the birth rate in Romania. Also, even the smallest acts of independence and defiance could be devastating for those that were caught.
Hugely thought-provoking and highly readable, a very good contribution to the body of work looking at how communism affected people, both positively and negatively. Very engrossing and recommended for travellers, historians and thinkers with an interest in the eastern bloc.
February 18, 2023
One of the great disappointments of my life is not being able to cross the iron curtain and visit the Eastern Bloc and see with my own eyes what we read and heard about that part of the world, which for us Westerners was a great unknown, when I first moved to Europe in 1989. This book unfortunately did not help me to clear up many of those remaining unknowns. I thought that in this book I was going to find stories of ordinary people, people from the street, who had not had an active political life in their countries, telling us what life was like in the communist bloc, but that was not the case. They are mostly stories of dissidents and well, we all know what it meant to be a dissident in a socialist country. But what was life like when you were not a dissident? When you accepted the regime, if not enthusiastically, at least indifferently? Another thing to keep in mind is that this book only deals with three countries of the former socialist bloc: East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. I give it 3.5 stars.
January 9, 2020
I wish there had been snapshots from other communist nations, especially Poland and more obscure places like Albania, but for what it presents, it works very well. Anecdotal history that doesn't outstay its welcome, and with enough viewpoints to leave any kind of judgement up to the reader. An entertaining work of history, and a useful tool in teaching about life in the Cold War.
May 6, 2022
good rounded view of the soviet bloc, it was wild af
July 29, 2019
This is a book published in connection with a 2009 BBC documentary mini series of the same name - based on interviews with people who lived under communism in the former E. Germany, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Mostly, the interviews present horrific views of the police state including the repressions, and stultification of free expression but there are a few of people who either still believe in the former regime or benefited under communism. Some of the interviewees who were glad to see communism go, interviewed after ten years of capitalism, express some nostalgia for certain features of socialism, even Vaclav Havel who said he's a Social Democrat. But by and large, the dreariness of the accounts, gives a good explanation as to why the people rushed out of communism when they could. The reason wasn't just beguilement with Western consumer society, fashion, rock music, individuality, and so forth. There was no possibility of meaningful civic engagement in the former communist countries - much less democracy. Instead, there was monitoring and the expectation that everyone would stick to the same ideological stance. That they could not express dissent or opposition without fear of reprisal or push back against the central government by peacefully protesting, or having publications that were not parroting the official line - that and the atmosphere of paranoia, was what led to the collapse of all the Warsaw bloc country governments. The fate of top-down quasi or real dictatorships is always collapse, so it was a matter of time before these regimes disintegrated. The author supposes the governments gave up after a while; otherwise, the revolutions might have resulted in blood baths.
I didn't think the book was particularly well-written and there were a number of editorial errors - it seemed to be quickly pulled together to be issued in conjunction with the TV miniseries. However, even so, it does convey some incredible stories or courage, defiance, survival and sheer luck. It's quite gripping in its own way.
Here are the quotes:
From the Introduction:
"Following conferences at Yalta and Potsdam between the Soviet Union and the Western allies in 1945 Europe had been effectively divided into two spheres of influence."
"Support for communism and the Soviet Union varied greatly between nations. In Czechoslovakia communism was already a significant political force prior to the arrival of the Red Army. Historically, the Czechs and the Slovaks looked upon the Soviet Union as a friend."
"In 1938, the Soviet Union was the only power to declare itself ready to aid Czechoslovakia."
"The Czech writer Pavel Kohout ... an ardent young communist at the end of the Second World War, ....was disillusioned with capitalism, dismayed with Britain and France's abandonment of their country to Hitler's mercies in the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and supported the Soviets in 1945."
"[Kohout:] ...my first significant life experience was the world economic crisis, which in this country was perceived as a total failure of capitalism."
"[Kohout:] ...the Munich Treaty...was seen in Czechoslovakia as a total failure of the Western democracies."
"[Kohout:] ...when the country was liberated by the Red Army, the seeds were sown for the majority of inhabitants to change the system and their protector."
"...all the communist regimes of Eastern Europe were imposed from without and within....[so] ...they never enjoyed the support of the majority of their electorates... [which is why they] ....were also police states."
"...Romanians experienced...a type of dynastic communism fueled by narcissism, paranoia and a North Korean-style megalomania."
"...initial efforts at [East German] resurrection were hampered as the Soviets removed much of what remained of Germany's industry to the motherland by way of wartime reparations."
"...communism proved to be an intellectual and moral failure."
From Chapter 1 "Party People"
"[Wolfgang Leonhard:] In the early days all the occupying powers worked closely together."
"[Walter] Ulbricht was a loyal servant of Stalin."
"[Gunter Bazyli:] We were terrified that socialism would be taken away from us, and that fear was omnipresent; it ate into our daily lives."
"[Wolf Biermann:] My disillusionment with communism didn't happen at one particular moment... You can only be disappointed if you have been deceived."
"[Gunter Schabowski:] The media used to adhere to the Leninist maxim: that journalists are collective promoters, propagandists and agitators."
"[Gunter Schabowski:] The building of the "anti-fascist protective Wall" was totally justified in the eyes of communists like me to prevent people being seduced by Western propaganda."
From Chapter 2 - "Ghettos of the Gods"
"[Mike Pacepa:] Nicu was Ceausescu's favorite son..."
"[Mike Pacepa:] Nicu became a rotten, spoiled brat."
From Chapter 3 - "Trials & Punishment"
"Once communists were in control of ...Europe's Eastern bloc they began to systematically punish those they perceived as enemies. In the Soviet occupation zone of eastern Granny, a system of 11 internment camps was established modeled on the Gulag archipelago."
"The Soviets claimed that the camps would be used to intern terrorists, leaders of fascist youth organizations, members of the Gestapo and other agencies associated with the Third Reich."
"Several camps closed due to the high death rate and, by 1950, all the camps were shut down."
"[Jana Horakova:] We heard everything on the radio because it was a public trial [of Jana's mother Milada]. It was all calculated to create a sense of terror and fear. It was brutal."
From Chapter 4 - "Hero Workers"
"In statues, paintings and children's books the worker was displayed as hero."
"...to be working class under communism was to be on the winning side, defeating the enemies of the past and building the socialism of the future. Unsurprisingly, in these circumstances, everyone wanted to lay claim to working-class roots."
"[Artist Walter] Womacka appreciated that socialist East Germany was committed to public art that was accessible and understandable."
From Chapter 5 - "Socialist Youth"
"In 1954 the [East German] communists revived a secular ceremony, the Jugendweihe. This was a coming of age ceremony for 14-year-olds as the atheist regime sought to replace religious Confirmation ceremonies. Its reintroduction was controversial at the time but the practice had become widespread by 1989."
"[Hagen Koch:] In Dresden they told us that it was the Americans who had unleashed those potato beetles. They told us that the very same airplanes that had bombed Dresden had also unleashed those potato beetles."
"[Hagen Koch:] We wanted the Americans to get out of West Germany."
"[Hagen Koch:] No one could ever apply for a job at the Stasi. Everyone who did that instantly became a suspect; they would wonder why someone would want to work for them. It was they who decided who to employ."
"Andrei Duban:] Even today we say about those communist time [in Romania], "They were pretending to be working and the employers were pretending to be paying them"."
From Chapter 6 - "Citizens at Play"
"...the East German Communist Party was... wary of the subversive potential of leisure time. Western society was considered a bad influence on socialist youth, and its iconic elements - rock 'n' roll, long hair, Levi's jeans - were viewed as products of the class enemy."
"The key to this unprecedented success lay in the performance of East Germany's female athletes - achieved through the deployment of a top-secret doping system that bypassed individual choice and would eventually permanently damage the health of competitors."
"Girls as young as 12 would unwittingly take the drugs and two million pills - mostly steroids and male-hormone boosters - were doled out to athletes each year. These were often described as 'vitamins'."
"Over a 20-year period up to the fall of the Wall in 1989 more than 10,000 East German athletes were doped."
"Although more than 300 former sporting officials have been convicted of doping offenses since the fall of the Berlin Wall, many athletes are still waiting for justice and compensation."
"....communism created is own brand of humor; coded references to political leaders, an absurdist perspective on the ever-widening gap between ideology and daily reality, and a heady sense of danger achieved through veiled critiques of communist rulers. It was an enclosed brand of humor that would eventually die alongside the political system it lampooned."
"[Toni Grecu:] All these things represented a fantastic source of humor for us [members of a Romanian comedy group called Divertis] because lying had become pervasive in our [Romanian] society. The entire press was hailing our standard of living as fantastic and praising our progress towards building communism in our beloved motherland when, in fact, the truth was tragic: we did not have food, we did not have hearing during the winter, we had electricity only a few hours a day."
"[Toni Grecu:] Neptune's travels [performance by Divertis at a seaside festival] were similar to the sort of international trips comrade Ceausescu took to places such as North Korea, Sudan and Uganda, and various other African countries that even now are still dictatorships. This created a big scandal..."
"[Toni Grecu:] Without humor Romanians would have had a much harder 45 years of communism."
From Chapter 7 - "The Men who Abolished God"
"Communists [in Czechoslovakia] passed a law seizing most church lands. They banned Catholic schools and the public wearing of crucifixes."
"[Rainer Eppelmann:] I was opposed to East Germany because it was a dictatorship. Reading the papers was like a red rag to a bull. Every day I read how wonderful life in the DDR was. I knew that the republic they were describing was a different republic from the one I was experiencing."
"[Rainer Eppelmann:] I remember that earlier everyone was scared of the Stasi, but towards the end we used to make fun of them."
"[Rainer Eppelmann:] Lenin once said that a revolution comes about when those from above can't cope anymore and those from below don't want to cope any more."
"[Rainer Eppelmann:] I always carry this quote with me: "Hope is not the conviction that things will end well, but the certainty that something makes sense independently from how things will end.""
From Chapter 9 - "National Health"
"[Daniela Draghici:] [In Romania] It was a kind of communism against women. Women had no right to their bodies or their minds. They were totally controlled. Women were not supposed to have access to contraception, or to sex education. Women would go to prison if staff in the hospital found out they had done something to stop a pregnancy. It was always women. They were the victims who were punished all through the system."
"[Paraschiva Neagu:] Ceausescu wanted people to have as many children as possible in order to torment them, because people had no means to raise them. There wasn't enough food, housing was scarce, and three or four people had to live in one room."
'[Anuta Timis:] ...then there weren't condoms [in Romania] as there are now because they were forbidden. If you talked about abortion in Ceausescu's time, they'd arrest you on the spot."
"[Dr. Adrain Sangeorzan:] Ceausescu wanted us to multiply like rabbits but he did nothing to increase our standard of living. Life here in Romania became tougher, starting mostly after 1979. It became unbearable after 1984."
From Chapter 10 - "Socialist Sex"
"[Kurt Starke:] Both partners [in East Germany] would have a job and wouldn't have to fear unemployment. ...This massively increased the self-confidence of both men and women. ...while standards of living were modest, nobody suffered from hunger. .....once you had a flat - even it might be in a deplorable condition - it was yours and nobody would take it away from you."
"[Kurt Starke:] Western feminism emerged from a completely different background, and had different goals, some of which had long been achieved in the DDR [East Germany]. East German women didn't know what to do with West German feminists. The's because the experiences and views of DDR women on emancipation are different. The merit of Western feminism is, for example, the acknowledgment of male dominance and behavior and how this influences culture. But its basic error is the excessive emphases on gender differences, and the idea that fighting against men is the means to solve all social problems. This idea of feminism is way too narrow for East German women because they had a Marxist education. They don't think of themselves primarily as women or men, but as personalities."
"[Kurt Starke:] ...young people often rebel emotionally against a certain society simply by falling in love."
From Chapter 11 - "Dissent"
"[Beate Fleck:] In our letters [to their deported mom Jutta in West Germany] we would draw things we knew about in West Germany. It was our way of showing opposition. For example, Mickey Mouse didn't exist in East Germany. We weren't allowed to draw Mickey Mouse because it was Western propaganda; it was forbidden to draw such things."
"[Vaclav Havel:] Czechoslovakia was a morally devastated country under communism in the 1970s and 1980s. The constant presence of the totalitarian system, which watches and sees everything and destroys any inclination to think differently --all this, of course, destroyed characters."
From Chapter 12 - "Downfall"
"Mistakenly, [Ceausescu] ... believed foreign elements were behind the disturbances [in December 1989 in Timisoara]."
"[Dan Voinea:] For a dictator, no matter what kind, left or right, there cannot be a punishment other than the death sentence."
"[Milos Jakes:] Gorbachev was too enthusiastic about his acceptance in the West, especially in Britain. He was making false assumptions based on that -- that they really were his friends, and friends of the Soviet regime. He became slightly light-headed and he was in that respect similar to Dubcek. He loved fame, which allowed him to become an instrument of the West and to make concessions over fundamental issues."
"[Milos Jakes:] The events that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1968 also happened in the Soviet Union, though the events were unrelated and their timing was different. And what was the result of the politics of perestroika? The result was the most significant geopolitical change in the map of Europe that has taken place in recent centuries - when you look at the Soviet Union it used to have a population of 280 million; Russia now has 147 million. The destruction of socialism, of the whole socialist camp, that is the result of a political development similar to that which took place in Czechoslovakia. Therefore, this gives me an answer to the question of what would have happened in Czechoslovakia if the political development in 1968 had not been stopped, and had prevailed."
"Jakes decision to use force against a student demonstration in Prague on 17 November 1989 was a colossal error. Instead of intimidating the opposition, it galvanized and united them. Strikes and ever larger demonstrations followed."
I didn't think the book was particularly well-written and there were a number of editorial errors - it seemed to be quickly pulled together to be issued in conjunction with the TV miniseries. However, even so, it does convey some incredible stories or courage, defiance, survival and sheer luck. It's quite gripping in its own way.
Here are the quotes:
From the Introduction:
"Following conferences at Yalta and Potsdam between the Soviet Union and the Western allies in 1945 Europe had been effectively divided into two spheres of influence."
"Support for communism and the Soviet Union varied greatly between nations. In Czechoslovakia communism was already a significant political force prior to the arrival of the Red Army. Historically, the Czechs and the Slovaks looked upon the Soviet Union as a friend."
"In 1938, the Soviet Union was the only power to declare itself ready to aid Czechoslovakia."
"The Czech writer Pavel Kohout ... an ardent young communist at the end of the Second World War, ....was disillusioned with capitalism, dismayed with Britain and France's abandonment of their country to Hitler's mercies in the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and supported the Soviets in 1945."
"[Kohout:] ...my first significant life experience was the world economic crisis, which in this country was perceived as a total failure of capitalism."
"[Kohout:] ...the Munich Treaty...was seen in Czechoslovakia as a total failure of the Western democracies."
"[Kohout:] ...when the country was liberated by the Red Army, the seeds were sown for the majority of inhabitants to change the system and their protector."
"...all the communist regimes of Eastern Europe were imposed from without and within....[so] ...they never enjoyed the support of the majority of their electorates... [which is why they] ....were also police states."
"...Romanians experienced...a type of dynastic communism fueled by narcissism, paranoia and a North Korean-style megalomania."
"...initial efforts at [East German] resurrection were hampered as the Soviets removed much of what remained of Germany's industry to the motherland by way of wartime reparations."
"...communism proved to be an intellectual and moral failure."
From Chapter 1 "Party People"
"[Wolfgang Leonhard:] In the early days all the occupying powers worked closely together."
"[Walter] Ulbricht was a loyal servant of Stalin."
"[Gunter Bazyli:] We were terrified that socialism would be taken away from us, and that fear was omnipresent; it ate into our daily lives."
"[Wolf Biermann:] My disillusionment with communism didn't happen at one particular moment... You can only be disappointed if you have been deceived."
"[Gunter Schabowski:] The media used to adhere to the Leninist maxim: that journalists are collective promoters, propagandists and agitators."
"[Gunter Schabowski:] The building of the "anti-fascist protective Wall" was totally justified in the eyes of communists like me to prevent people being seduced by Western propaganda."
From Chapter 2 - "Ghettos of the Gods"
"[Mike Pacepa:] Nicu was Ceausescu's favorite son..."
"[Mike Pacepa:] Nicu became a rotten, spoiled brat."
From Chapter 3 - "Trials & Punishment"
"Once communists were in control of ...Europe's Eastern bloc they began to systematically punish those they perceived as enemies. In the Soviet occupation zone of eastern Granny, a system of 11 internment camps was established modeled on the Gulag archipelago."
"The Soviets claimed that the camps would be used to intern terrorists, leaders of fascist youth organizations, members of the Gestapo and other agencies associated with the Third Reich."
"Several camps closed due to the high death rate and, by 1950, all the camps were shut down."
"[Jana Horakova:] We heard everything on the radio because it was a public trial [of Jana's mother Milada]. It was all calculated to create a sense of terror and fear. It was brutal."
From Chapter 4 - "Hero Workers"
"In statues, paintings and children's books the worker was displayed as hero."
"...to be working class under communism was to be on the winning side, defeating the enemies of the past and building the socialism of the future. Unsurprisingly, in these circumstances, everyone wanted to lay claim to working-class roots."
"[Artist Walter] Womacka appreciated that socialist East Germany was committed to public art that was accessible and understandable."
From Chapter 5 - "Socialist Youth"
"In 1954 the [East German] communists revived a secular ceremony, the Jugendweihe. This was a coming of age ceremony for 14-year-olds as the atheist regime sought to replace religious Confirmation ceremonies. Its reintroduction was controversial at the time but the practice had become widespread by 1989."
"[Hagen Koch:] In Dresden they told us that it was the Americans who had unleashed those potato beetles. They told us that the very same airplanes that had bombed Dresden had also unleashed those potato beetles."
"[Hagen Koch:] We wanted the Americans to get out of West Germany."
"[Hagen Koch:] No one could ever apply for a job at the Stasi. Everyone who did that instantly became a suspect; they would wonder why someone would want to work for them. It was they who decided who to employ."
"Andrei Duban:] Even today we say about those communist time [in Romania], "They were pretending to be working and the employers were pretending to be paying them"."
From Chapter 6 - "Citizens at Play"
"...the East German Communist Party was... wary of the subversive potential of leisure time. Western society was considered a bad influence on socialist youth, and its iconic elements - rock 'n' roll, long hair, Levi's jeans - were viewed as products of the class enemy."
"The key to this unprecedented success lay in the performance of East Germany's female athletes - achieved through the deployment of a top-secret doping system that bypassed individual choice and would eventually permanently damage the health of competitors."
"Girls as young as 12 would unwittingly take the drugs and two million pills - mostly steroids and male-hormone boosters - were doled out to athletes each year. These were often described as 'vitamins'."
"Over a 20-year period up to the fall of the Wall in 1989 more than 10,000 East German athletes were doped."
"Although more than 300 former sporting officials have been convicted of doping offenses since the fall of the Berlin Wall, many athletes are still waiting for justice and compensation."
"....communism created is own brand of humor; coded references to political leaders, an absurdist perspective on the ever-widening gap between ideology and daily reality, and a heady sense of danger achieved through veiled critiques of communist rulers. It was an enclosed brand of humor that would eventually die alongside the political system it lampooned."
"[Toni Grecu:] All these things represented a fantastic source of humor for us [members of a Romanian comedy group called Divertis] because lying had become pervasive in our [Romanian] society. The entire press was hailing our standard of living as fantastic and praising our progress towards building communism in our beloved motherland when, in fact, the truth was tragic: we did not have food, we did not have hearing during the winter, we had electricity only a few hours a day."
"[Toni Grecu:] Neptune's travels [performance by Divertis at a seaside festival] were similar to the sort of international trips comrade Ceausescu took to places such as North Korea, Sudan and Uganda, and various other African countries that even now are still dictatorships. This created a big scandal..."
"[Toni Grecu:] Without humor Romanians would have had a much harder 45 years of communism."
From Chapter 7 - "The Men who Abolished God"
"Communists [in Czechoslovakia] passed a law seizing most church lands. They banned Catholic schools and the public wearing of crucifixes."
"[Rainer Eppelmann:] I was opposed to East Germany because it was a dictatorship. Reading the papers was like a red rag to a bull. Every day I read how wonderful life in the DDR was. I knew that the republic they were describing was a different republic from the one I was experiencing."
"[Rainer Eppelmann:] I remember that earlier everyone was scared of the Stasi, but towards the end we used to make fun of them."
"[Rainer Eppelmann:] Lenin once said that a revolution comes about when those from above can't cope anymore and those from below don't want to cope any more."
"[Rainer Eppelmann:] I always carry this quote with me: "Hope is not the conviction that things will end well, but the certainty that something makes sense independently from how things will end.""
From Chapter 9 - "National Health"
"[Daniela Draghici:] [In Romania] It was a kind of communism against women. Women had no right to their bodies or their minds. They were totally controlled. Women were not supposed to have access to contraception, or to sex education. Women would go to prison if staff in the hospital found out they had done something to stop a pregnancy. It was always women. They were the victims who were punished all through the system."
"[Paraschiva Neagu:] Ceausescu wanted people to have as many children as possible in order to torment them, because people had no means to raise them. There wasn't enough food, housing was scarce, and three or four people had to live in one room."
'[Anuta Timis:] ...then there weren't condoms [in Romania] as there are now because they were forbidden. If you talked about abortion in Ceausescu's time, they'd arrest you on the spot."
"[Dr. Adrain Sangeorzan:] Ceausescu wanted us to multiply like rabbits but he did nothing to increase our standard of living. Life here in Romania became tougher, starting mostly after 1979. It became unbearable after 1984."
From Chapter 10 - "Socialist Sex"
"[Kurt Starke:] Both partners [in East Germany] would have a job and wouldn't have to fear unemployment. ...This massively increased the self-confidence of both men and women. ...while standards of living were modest, nobody suffered from hunger. .....once you had a flat - even it might be in a deplorable condition - it was yours and nobody would take it away from you."
"[Kurt Starke:] Western feminism emerged from a completely different background, and had different goals, some of which had long been achieved in the DDR [East Germany]. East German women didn't know what to do with West German feminists. The's because the experiences and views of DDR women on emancipation are different. The merit of Western feminism is, for example, the acknowledgment of male dominance and behavior and how this influences culture. But its basic error is the excessive emphases on gender differences, and the idea that fighting against men is the means to solve all social problems. This idea of feminism is way too narrow for East German women because they had a Marxist education. They don't think of themselves primarily as women or men, but as personalities."
"[Kurt Starke:] ...young people often rebel emotionally against a certain society simply by falling in love."
From Chapter 11 - "Dissent"
"[Beate Fleck:] In our letters [to their deported mom Jutta in West Germany] we would draw things we knew about in West Germany. It was our way of showing opposition. For example, Mickey Mouse didn't exist in East Germany. We weren't allowed to draw Mickey Mouse because it was Western propaganda; it was forbidden to draw such things."
"[Vaclav Havel:] Czechoslovakia was a morally devastated country under communism in the 1970s and 1980s. The constant presence of the totalitarian system, which watches and sees everything and destroys any inclination to think differently --all this, of course, destroyed characters."
From Chapter 12 - "Downfall"
"Mistakenly, [Ceausescu] ... believed foreign elements were behind the disturbances [in December 1989 in Timisoara]."
"[Dan Voinea:] For a dictator, no matter what kind, left or right, there cannot be a punishment other than the death sentence."
"[Milos Jakes:] Gorbachev was too enthusiastic about his acceptance in the West, especially in Britain. He was making false assumptions based on that -- that they really were his friends, and friends of the Soviet regime. He became slightly light-headed and he was in that respect similar to Dubcek. He loved fame, which allowed him to become an instrument of the West and to make concessions over fundamental issues."
"[Milos Jakes:] The events that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1968 also happened in the Soviet Union, though the events were unrelated and their timing was different. And what was the result of the politics of perestroika? The result was the most significant geopolitical change in the map of Europe that has taken place in recent centuries - when you look at the Soviet Union it used to have a population of 280 million; Russia now has 147 million. The destruction of socialism, of the whole socialist camp, that is the result of a political development similar to that which took place in Czechoslovakia. Therefore, this gives me an answer to the question of what would have happened in Czechoslovakia if the political development in 1968 had not been stopped, and had prevailed."
"Jakes decision to use force against a student demonstration in Prague on 17 November 1989 was a colossal error. Instead of intimidating the opposition, it galvanized and united them. Strikes and ever larger demonstrations followed."
February 13, 2025
Hmm, mixed feelings about this one (2.5)
Firstly, the good:
It's a collection of people's testimonies about their life in Romania/Czechoslovakia/DDR, and I find that valuable in its own right. A lot of such interviews could easily be lost to time otherwise.
It does a good job of highlighting the negative aspects of life in the above three countries, primarily the oppressive secret police presence and the lack of freedom of speech.
What some people went through in the DDR prisons is quite horrifying. I also liked the glimpses we catch of the intimidation tactics used by the secret police because oftentimes we forget that oppression need not go to extreme lengths to achieve its goals.
There were a few aspects which I didn't know at all - the pressured and non-consensual doping of athletes in the DDR, the sterilisation of the Roma in Czechoslovakia, the super forceful pro-life policies in Romania which the book discusses, the first Czechoslovakian cosmonaut. The section of sexual liberation in the DDR was interesting, though I remained somewhat confused about what the official stance of the regime was on erotica/nudity. The rest of the chapters were, however, very clear.
It's also very easy to read and follow which is always appreciated.
Now, the bad:
I think it focuses too much on notable cases, and so aspects of society beyond the propaganda and secret police remain very nebulous to me. Even negative aspects like the sometimes mentioned food insecurity and power cuts in Romania are just that - mentioned off hand but never really developed.
The differences between the three countries are not really described. Despite the claim in the introduction that they had 3 very different types of rule, the image throughout the book remains one of a bland oppression in all three.
Positive qualities are few and far between - very few testimonials have anything positive to say about their experiences. And when they mention they miss the camraderie/solidarity or anything else, there is no further interrogation by the interviewer. No curiosity as to what they mean by this. No questions like - how did you feel solidarity when you could be arbitrarily put in prison for making a joke about the regime? What makes having solidarity today difficult? The author is seemingly uninterested in actually understanding these people or the societes they lived in.
Or when some of the people who worked closely with Ceausescu expressed regret that he died; no question about why - the book shows him (from these same people's testimonies) to be a narcissistic tyrant - why would anyone regret his passing? Surely that's an interesting question to ask.
I find this irritating, particularly because the book portrays itself in the introduction and the afterword that it's presenting a balanced take on this subject, before coming to the conclusion that communism failed. Also there are small positive testimonials in the afterword - why weren't these included in the main body of the text in an expanded form?
I also found it weaselly to have a chapter titled 'National Healthcare' and it's 80% about the lack of women's reproductive freedom in Romania, 10% about the denial of AIDS existence in Romania, and 10% about the sterilisation of the Roma people in Czechoslovakia. These aspects are of course, atrocious and should be covered- but that is not the sum total of healthcare surely. Did people, in these 3 separate countries, have coverage for healthcare? If so, was this coverage only on paper? Could they reasonably access a doctor's services? Not a word on aspects like this. The DDR, which features near constantly in the rest of the book, is not mentioned at all in the National Healthcare chapter. In the next chapter we learn in a throwaway line that the DDR legalised abortion without much controversy. I question the need to frame things in this way, especially when the flaws of these societies are atrocious and large. This practice (which of course is found in many other pieces of media about many different subjects) is not conducive to actually understanding the country/society depicted, and personally speaking ironically makes me more negatively disposed to the real critiques.
The author's bias becomes clear with elements like the above, along with some other stylistic choices; which leaves me unconvinced that this is a well-rounded view. I would have preferred if the introduction had the author stating that communism is a destructive system and did not pretend that this goes beyond depictions of the Warsaw Pact as corruption-ridden police states.
Finally:
If you want to read a collection of people's testimonials about communist DDR, Romania and Czechoslovakia (in descending order of how much book focuses on each), then this book certainly does that.
If you're looking for something that goes beyond Stasiland depictions, I'd look elsewhere - the non-negative elements present here are few and not developed on.
Firstly, the good:
It's a collection of people's testimonies about their life in Romania/Czechoslovakia/DDR, and I find that valuable in its own right. A lot of such interviews could easily be lost to time otherwise.
It does a good job of highlighting the negative aspects of life in the above three countries, primarily the oppressive secret police presence and the lack of freedom of speech.
What some people went through in the DDR prisons is quite horrifying. I also liked the glimpses we catch of the intimidation tactics used by the secret police because oftentimes we forget that oppression need not go to extreme lengths to achieve its goals.
There were a few aspects which I didn't know at all - the pressured and non-consensual doping of athletes in the DDR, the sterilisation of the Roma in Czechoslovakia, the super forceful pro-life policies in Romania which the book discusses, the first Czechoslovakian cosmonaut. The section of sexual liberation in the DDR was interesting, though I remained somewhat confused about what the official stance of the regime was on erotica/nudity. The rest of the chapters were, however, very clear.
It's also very easy to read and follow which is always appreciated.
Now, the bad:
I think it focuses too much on notable cases, and so aspects of society beyond the propaganda and secret police remain very nebulous to me. Even negative aspects like the sometimes mentioned food insecurity and power cuts in Romania are just that - mentioned off hand but never really developed.
The differences between the three countries are not really described. Despite the claim in the introduction that they had 3 very different types of rule, the image throughout the book remains one of a bland oppression in all three.
Positive qualities are few and far between - very few testimonials have anything positive to say about their experiences. And when they mention they miss the camraderie/solidarity or anything else, there is no further interrogation by the interviewer. No curiosity as to what they mean by this. No questions like - how did you feel solidarity when you could be arbitrarily put in prison for making a joke about the regime? What makes having solidarity today difficult? The author is seemingly uninterested in actually understanding these people or the societes they lived in.
Or when some of the people who worked closely with Ceausescu expressed regret that he died; no question about why - the book shows him (from these same people's testimonies) to be a narcissistic tyrant - why would anyone regret his passing? Surely that's an interesting question to ask.
I find this irritating, particularly because the book portrays itself in the introduction and the afterword that it's presenting a balanced take on this subject, before coming to the conclusion that communism failed. Also there are small positive testimonials in the afterword - why weren't these included in the main body of the text in an expanded form?
I also found it weaselly to have a chapter titled 'National Healthcare' and it's 80% about the lack of women's reproductive freedom in Romania, 10% about the denial of AIDS existence in Romania, and 10% about the sterilisation of the Roma people in Czechoslovakia. These aspects are of course, atrocious and should be covered- but that is not the sum total of healthcare surely. Did people, in these 3 separate countries, have coverage for healthcare? If so, was this coverage only on paper? Could they reasonably access a doctor's services? Not a word on aspects like this. The DDR, which features near constantly in the rest of the book, is not mentioned at all in the National Healthcare chapter. In the next chapter we learn in a throwaway line that the DDR legalised abortion without much controversy. I question the need to frame things in this way, especially when the flaws of these societies are atrocious and large. This practice (which of course is found in many other pieces of media about many different subjects) is not conducive to actually understanding the country/society depicted, and personally speaking ironically makes me more negatively disposed to the real critiques.
The author's bias becomes clear with elements like the above, along with some other stylistic choices; which leaves me unconvinced that this is a well-rounded view. I would have preferred if the introduction had the author stating that communism is a destructive system and did not pretend that this goes beyond depictions of the Warsaw Pact as corruption-ridden police states.
Finally:
If you want to read a collection of people's testimonials about communist DDR, Romania and Czechoslovakia (in descending order of how much book focuses on each), then this book certainly does that.
If you're looking for something that goes beyond Stasiland depictions, I'd look elsewhere - the non-negative elements present here are few and not developed on.
April 2, 2025
This is a wonderful book that weaves historical narrative with the personal experiences of those who lived through it. History, when viewed in an atomized manner—one period following another in sequence—often feels detached from individual experiences. This book bridges that gap by presenting the voices of ordinary people, offering a deeply human perspective on life in the Eastern Bloc.
Through over 50 interviews, the book brings together a diverse range of voices: government officials, party members, artists, dissidents, peasants, and everyday citizens. Some were loyal to their governments, others opposed them, and some remained neutral,neither passive nor active participants in the political landscape.
Structured around thematic chapters, the book primarily focuses on Romania, Czechoslovakia (as it was known at the time), and East Germany. While several chapters emphasize East Germany due to its relevance, each theme is explored through firsthand accounts from all three countries. This approach provides a rich, multi-faceted look at socialist life behind the Iron Curtain.
Overall, Bloc Life is an engaging and insightful read. There is nothing quite like hearing history directly from those who lived it, and this book excels at delivering that personal touch. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.
Through over 50 interviews, the book brings together a diverse range of voices: government officials, party members, artists, dissidents, peasants, and everyday citizens. Some were loyal to their governments, others opposed them, and some remained neutral,neither passive nor active participants in the political landscape.
Structured around thematic chapters, the book primarily focuses on Romania, Czechoslovakia (as it was known at the time), and East Germany. While several chapters emphasize East Germany due to its relevance, each theme is explored through firsthand accounts from all three countries. This approach provides a rich, multi-faceted look at socialist life behind the Iron Curtain.
Overall, Bloc Life is an engaging and insightful read. There is nothing quite like hearing history directly from those who lived it, and this book excels at delivering that personal touch. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.
July 16, 2021
This was a fantastic book! As it is divided into various chapters of Socialist's life, it perfectly captures everything. My only gripe is that I would prefer more detailed descriptions and explanations. I understand that it is primarily comprised of first-hand accounts from people living in post-socialist countries, but I personally would love to hear more.
May 30, 2012
A book that lets those who were there talk about their experiences and feelings about the days of state socialism, the good, the bad and the ugly. A quote from EAst German actress Corinna Harfouch on the cover sums it up nicely "I cannot recognise my country from the way it is depicted in the press and media. We didn't just have autumn and winter. We had spring and summer too. Life wasn't just about the Stasi". This book sets about challenging the (especially) Western reader to rethink their attitudes towards the east and maybe look also more critically at their own societies (especially perhaps they way that since the Soviet deterent disappeared some of what made the West perhaps attractive has been under constant attack - now there is no longer a powerful ideological counter force). The book also reveals the security that even a perhaps repressive and afraid state could offer its people in terms of employment, housing and social security, a security now lost by many without any of the promised benefits. It is interesting that Romania, arguably the most unpleasant and repressive of the Soviet satellite states, was held in highest esteem by the West where Ceausescu was groomed as someone who operated with a degree of independence and disregard towards Moscow. Ceausescu was even Knighted by the British monarch at Buckingham palace in 1978 and Ceausecus anti-abortionist extremism would make him the love child of any evangelical fundamentalis Christian nutter in the USA. Perhaps of special interest are the cultural aspects of life in the East, artists who worked within and without the system describe what it was like for them either to be enabled by the state of to fight tirelessly for the right to express themselves through their art sometimes with dire consequences. Rainer Eppelmann who was active in the protestant church in the DDR and the reform movement ends by saying "Hope is not the convition that things will end well, but the certainty that something makes sense independently from how things end". An interesting and thought provoking book.
November 11, 2018
This is a great read for folks interested in the Cold War, and life on the 'other side' of the Iron Curtain. Peter Molloy has interviewed people from several countries, from all walks of life, asking about how they experienced the day-to-day of life under Communist rule. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, often just bleak, I'm impressed by the breadth and depth of stories Molloy got. This isn't just a student who didn't like the way things were, or a shop owner who was persecuted. He talked to a supervisor of the guards on the Berlin Wall, to one of the guys who pulled the trigger in the execution of the Ceausescus. He talks to people who loved the system and people who hated it, and some people who could go either way. Some folks were there when the Russians rolled in to Berlin. Others were born in the twilight of Eastern European Communism. The book is a reminder of how quickly things can change, how easy it is to allow things to happen if you're not paying attention, or you let little evils slide. It's also a reminder, when looking at the tactics employed by monsters like Ceausescu, that the playbook remains the same for power-mad strongmen, no matter what the purported moral, economic, or governmental philosophies might be. This book was originally written in 2009, but I recognized a good deal of 2018 in the memories of these folks.
Definitely worth a read.
Definitely worth a read.
April 12, 2021
Very interesting book. However i expected it to focus more on the people’s everyday life in the eastern block. I was probably hoping for a Svetlana alexievich style book... nevertheless there were a lot of interesting historical events and facts described in the book. I just couldn’t warm too much to the style of writing.
September 11, 2022
This is a very interesting read for anyone with a passion for 20th century history. Ordinary people talking about ordinary, albeit hidden, lives while the wind of change is blowing.
February 28, 2023
The original was written back in 2008, but I only noticed the 2019 version, very aptly in an East Berlin bookstore. Then the covid pandemic kept me from it for another 3 years. So, by now, I should be able to determine whether the story has aged well. It has, the general tenets very much still in place; although sometimes, the original age comes through.
The chosen format and subjects make it very readable and given this topic, you should read it. Especially those falling for ‘ostalgia’. It is nice the author has chosen the perspective of three very different East Bloc countries. But it still misses the yet very different stories of say Poland or Bulgaria.
I do appreciate the search for some balance (because truly, not everything was worse). Interestingly, the final accounts of Jakes and Ceausescu also show how deluded the regimes were with regard to the true feelings of the people and the ‘good’ they had brought to their people.
But probably the best reason to read this: what did communinism do to the lives of everyday people? It ruined lives and tortured people all in the name of an utopia.
The chosen format and subjects make it very readable and given this topic, you should read it. Especially those falling for ‘ostalgia’. It is nice the author has chosen the perspective of three very different East Bloc countries. But it still misses the yet very different stories of say Poland or Bulgaria.
I do appreciate the search for some balance (because truly, not everything was worse). Interestingly, the final accounts of Jakes and Ceausescu also show how deluded the regimes were with regard to the true feelings of the people and the ‘good’ they had brought to their people.
But probably the best reason to read this: what did communinism do to the lives of everyday people? It ruined lives and tortured people all in the name of an utopia.
December 12, 2021
Interesting. I visited East Berlin within a year after it opened and much was still in place as it was. I was struck by the quietness, the lack of things like neon signs and McDonalds, the politeness, etc. The wall itself, and Checkpoint Charlie, was still in place and people were selling bits of it, communistic army uniforms and gear. East Germans were distinguishable from the West Germans by their cheap and less well - made clothing. Still, East Berlin seemed a much more peaceful and calmer place compared to the West - like an era from the past. That was just an impression and, of course, doesn't allow for the many undesirable things there and the many good things of the Western sector.
July 31, 2025
4.5 e merece arredondar para cima.
Super interessante e 0 entediante! Adorei a divisão por temas e a forma como o livro está escrito, com testemunhos, o que faz com que seja uma leitura muito fluída e acessível.
Fiquei especialmente agarrada a todos os temas relacionados com a Roménia e com o seu regime comunista/ ditadura familiar completamente insano, que não conhecia. Acho que a parte da Checoeslováquia foi um bocadinho menos explorada, e é a minha crítica ao livro.
Não é um livro imparcial. Pode haver alguns testemunhos mais nostálgicos daqueles tempos - nomeadamente em relação à camaradagem e ideia de comunidade - mas não são a maioria.
Super interessante e 0 entediante! Adorei a divisão por temas e a forma como o livro está escrito, com testemunhos, o que faz com que seja uma leitura muito fluída e acessível.
Fiquei especialmente agarrada a todos os temas relacionados com a Roménia e com o seu regime comunista/ ditadura familiar completamente insano, que não conhecia. Acho que a parte da Checoeslováquia foi um bocadinho menos explorada, e é a minha crítica ao livro.
Não é um livro imparcial. Pode haver alguns testemunhos mais nostálgicos daqueles tempos - nomeadamente em relação à camaradagem e ideia de comunidade - mas não são a maioria.
April 16, 2020
What a great anecdotal experience. Couldn’t put it down! Perfect book to read if you want to peer into life under communist rule and understand what different countries went through. I kind of wish Poland was featured but then again, it’s intriguing how each country dealt with it differently. I thought it was great to see what was going on behind the bigger events. The chapter about public health nearly broke my heart ( it talks about Romania and its anti abortion stance, what the women would do) It’s a great read! I recommend it to gain a better understanding of the time!
April 27, 2020
This was much less about ordinary life and more about major events than I was expecting. Having said which it tells those stories very well and despite being familiar with much of the history, I learned a lot. Especially memorable were the Roma woman sharing her experience of forced sterilisation and the last DDR leader's unrepentant bitterness.
Just one thing. As an English person, I don't need whatever the school leaving certificate was called in Romania, Czechoslovakia and the DDR translated as A-levels. It's not even the qualification in all of the UK!
Just one thing. As an English person, I don't need whatever the school leaving certificate was called in Romania, Czechoslovakia and the DDR translated as A-levels. It's not even the qualification in all of the UK!
April 6, 2023
“the foetus is the property of the entire society. anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity”; “a couple who remained childless beyond the age of 25 saw their tax bills increase and had their sex life scrutinized by government inspectors”; contraception banned; MATERNITY MEDAL.
tra see on nagu orwellian society, kus varrokale antakse valgetahe teenetemark. isa, big brother ja pyha varro.
väga hea ylevaade, a nyyd kyll idablokist monex ajaks kyllalt
tra see on nagu orwellian society, kus varrokale antakse valgetahe teenetemark. isa, big brother ja pyha varro.
väga hea ylevaade, a nyyd kyll idablokist monex ajaks kyllalt
August 17, 2019
A very well researched and written book with interesting interviews which confirm how difficult it was living in the German Democratic Republic, Rumania and Czechoslovakia between 1945 and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989/90.
Bloc Life is a kind of companion piece to Anne Applebaum's classic Iron Curtain which focuses on the GDR, Poland and Hungary.
Bloc Life is a kind of companion piece to Anne Applebaum's classic Iron Curtain which focuses on the GDR, Poland and Hungary.
March 9, 2021
A fascinating collection of short biographies of people from the Eastern Bloc. Jumping between East Germans, Czechoslovaks and Romanians the author paints a vivid picture of life behind the wall; each interviewee giving a first hand account of an aspect of life under communism.
April 18, 2021
Me ha gustado pero el hecho de contar historias cortas tiene el inconveniente de que no te involucras en ellas ni te van despertando la curiosidad de qué va a pasar y cómo se van a ir desarrollando dichas historias.
September 18, 2021
A tour through the increasingly distant and lost world of European communism, looking at the good, the bad, the ugly, and the downfall of the Eastern Bloc.
January 23, 2022
Read for the stories from insiders of crazy regimes and dictators
January 15, 2022
An interesting read, though not especially balanced. The introduction mentioned that many people commented that their lives were very ordinary but there was very little mention of this. The stories were almost all about the negative aspects of life in the 3 countries discussed. Also, did LGBT people not exist in the GDR? There was no mention of them in the chapter about sex and sexuality.
May 23, 2013
This was an incredible book, superbly written, and deeply informative book concerning itself with the oral history of Communism across the former Eastern Bloc. The book comprises of 50 interviews with interviewees ranging from Communist Party General Secretary's through to "the common" man and woman.
For a considerable period of time, those of us with a genuine desire to improve our understanding or life "behind the Iron Curtain" have had to contend with incessant Neo-Liberal bias, and skewed political memoirs which are invariably particularistic in their outlooks on the matter in hand. The net result of this has been a tendency to consider the erstwhile regimes as being inherently "evil", whereby the respective subjects were subjugated; cajoled, and doomed to lead lives which were the polar opposite to the Western concept of "Freedom". Indeed, as Green, (et al, 2009) advises, all that we seem to have acknowledged is 'a blanket condemnation of Totalitarianism' which sidesteps anything that may have been worthy of further analysis by virtue of the pejorative.
Whilst the book perhaps tends towards this World view; there are numerous examples where the participants express either contempt for the aforementioned viewpoint, and / or highlight the positives about their lives within their former nation states which has since been lost to the faltering march of capitalism and "The End of History". The opportunity to hear, first hand what life was actually like is refreshing and most welcome. Indeed, there is significant entertainment value to be derived from the interviews of former subjects and aides of Nicolae Ceacescu whose mania was arguably on a par with Tudor Monarch Henry VIII.
The book is organised into chapters which cover interviews ranging from dissent; religion, Secret Police, sexual relations, and the economy. Each chapter comprises of an overview to compound the existing narrative, and then unleashes the interviewees to either corroborate or refute our prejudices surrounding the Eastern Bloc. Some of the most illuminating interviews concern those whom were either officers within the security services, and those victimised by the services in question. Indeed, in one example includes a couple whom met, and subsequently fell in love, during the course of multiple interrogations! In general, the interviewees, be they pro; anti, or neutral provide a unique account of both normal their day-to-day lives were, and how, in certain sectors, they were unfettered by the morality and stratification typically associated with Liberalised economies. Such freedoms acted as a stimulus for greater gender-based equality, and the evolution of both official and unofficial cultures within the Arts.
This is not say that there was not repression! However, the widely peddled belief that the citizens of these states were forced to live an all pervasive grey monotony; in abject poverty, with minimal life chances is patently untrue. Indeed, the atomised nature of "modern" industrialised democracies is something which is condemned by the majority of the respondents, noting that the officially promoted culture of excessive individualism and classical economic liberty, with all of the externalities that this enshrines, is something which is an anathema to them, eroding and curtailing the attempts made at socio-economic amelioration by their respective regimes. The physical display of material wealth is largely abhorrent to all respondents. The book therefore, also serves as a compelling narrative of how the "Democratic Revolution" which swept across the Eastern bloc affected those whom participated in the collapse, or sought to uphold the exisiting order.
In conclusion, this was an enthralling and constructive insight into life behind the Iron Curtain. The book provided not only insights into the everyday characteristics of the regimes viewed through the eyes of the First Person, but also provided a alternative assessment of the World that has been lost,and the new World which has been foisted upon us.
For a considerable period of time, those of us with a genuine desire to improve our understanding or life "behind the Iron Curtain" have had to contend with incessant Neo-Liberal bias, and skewed political memoirs which are invariably particularistic in their outlooks on the matter in hand. The net result of this has been a tendency to consider the erstwhile regimes as being inherently "evil", whereby the respective subjects were subjugated; cajoled, and doomed to lead lives which were the polar opposite to the Western concept of "Freedom". Indeed, as Green, (et al, 2009) advises, all that we seem to have acknowledged is 'a blanket condemnation of Totalitarianism' which sidesteps anything that may have been worthy of further analysis by virtue of the pejorative.
Whilst the book perhaps tends towards this World view; there are numerous examples where the participants express either contempt for the aforementioned viewpoint, and / or highlight the positives about their lives within their former nation states which has since been lost to the faltering march of capitalism and "The End of History". The opportunity to hear, first hand what life was actually like is refreshing and most welcome. Indeed, there is significant entertainment value to be derived from the interviews of former subjects and aides of Nicolae Ceacescu whose mania was arguably on a par with Tudor Monarch Henry VIII.
The book is organised into chapters which cover interviews ranging from dissent; religion, Secret Police, sexual relations, and the economy. Each chapter comprises of an overview to compound the existing narrative, and then unleashes the interviewees to either corroborate or refute our prejudices surrounding the Eastern Bloc. Some of the most illuminating interviews concern those whom were either officers within the security services, and those victimised by the services in question. Indeed, in one example includes a couple whom met, and subsequently fell in love, during the course of multiple interrogations! In general, the interviewees, be they pro; anti, or neutral provide a unique account of both normal their day-to-day lives were, and how, in certain sectors, they were unfettered by the morality and stratification typically associated with Liberalised economies. Such freedoms acted as a stimulus for greater gender-based equality, and the evolution of both official and unofficial cultures within the Arts.
This is not say that there was not repression! However, the widely peddled belief that the citizens of these states were forced to live an all pervasive grey monotony; in abject poverty, with minimal life chances is patently untrue. Indeed, the atomised nature of "modern" industrialised democracies is something which is condemned by the majority of the respondents, noting that the officially promoted culture of excessive individualism and classical economic liberty, with all of the externalities that this enshrines, is something which is an anathema to them, eroding and curtailing the attempts made at socio-economic amelioration by their respective regimes. The physical display of material wealth is largely abhorrent to all respondents. The book therefore, also serves as a compelling narrative of how the "Democratic Revolution" which swept across the Eastern bloc affected those whom participated in the collapse, or sought to uphold the exisiting order.
In conclusion, this was an enthralling and constructive insight into life behind the Iron Curtain. The book provided not only insights into the everyday characteristics of the regimes viewed through the eyes of the First Person, but also provided a alternative assessment of the World that has been lost,and the new World which has been foisted upon us.
December 12, 2022
Fantastic book offering a glimpse of what life was like back then. The book consists of interviews and stories of different people - athletes, pop stars, dancers, miners, political leaders etc offering a view of what their lives were like. They tell things how they used to be back then - the true and ugly truth. Covering stories of both supporters and opponents of the regimes in their countries (East Germany, Romania & Czechoslovakia) - what they thought and believed in then - and how they feel now. Most of the stories are really shocking, but this is what I liked about the book - learning the facts I didn’t know about - the poor athletes, the medical section (Romania) have truly shocked me.
There's also a BBC Two documentary called - The Lost World of Communism (2009).
There's also a BBC Two documentary called - The Lost World of Communism (2009).
November 18, 2015
Perspectives into the real lives of East Block citizens that we really never got to see during the Cold War,
It was interesting to hear what they thought of their lives, their governments, and their world at the time.
I liked the stories of the people adapting to the transition from Communist to Democratic systems and I have a new respect for their difficulties.
A valuable addition to help balance the history of places like East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania etc
It was interesting to hear what they thought of their lives, their governments, and their world at the time.
I liked the stories of the people adapting to the transition from Communist to Democratic systems and I have a new respect for their difficulties.
A valuable addition to help balance the history of places like East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania etc
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