Review by Choice Review
Frankland (London Observer) treats the downfall of communism in East Europe, supplementing a journalistic account of the main events of the "patriots' revolution" with penetrating analysis of underlying trends. Sparkling anecodotes serve to reinforce his generalizations. Chapters about general developments are followed by chapters on individual countries. Frankland emphasizes cultural differences that make each country in some sense unique. Common to all was communist suppression or manipulation of nationalism and inhibitions on true modernization. The author concludes that Soviet-style systems were incompatible with reform. Once reform gained momentum in part of the region, a domino effect was produced which, in the absence of Soviet intervention, led to the collapse of communism throughout East Europe. But Frankland is not sanguine about prospects. Probing the dark underside of nationalism and national cultures and the economic wreckage left by Soviet-style rule, he projects early realization of stability and economic progress only in the former East Germany. An important book, providing a superb tour d' horizon of East European politics. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and general readers.-R. J. Mitchell, University of New Orleans
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
In the best book written on the subject to date, Frankland, an award-winning foreign correspondent for the London Observer, explains the sudden collapse of Eastern European communism by showing what the communist system meant to the people who were forced to live under it. These people, Frankland tells us, were victims of the "most terrible revolution man has yet known," and their victimization was rendered all the more terrible by the fact of their complicity with the evils communism engendered. That there were decent men who were also Communists--and that such men were so slow to understand that they had "taken a wrong turning to the promised land"--is, Frankland observes, the real tragedy of Eastern Europe. Yet communism, however ruthlessly applied, was finally done in by its own disastrous nature, which proved no match for "recalcitrant human beings strengthened in their stubbornness by national memories and traditions." ~--Steve Weingartner
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Frankland goes well beyond the tumultuous events of 1989 that saw Eastern Europe emerge from its separation from the West, which ``challenged geography, history, and economics.'' Writing lucidly and intelligently, he elegantly weaves historical perspective into his narrative. In contrast to Peter Laufer's Iron Curtain Rising ( LJ 9/15/91), which covers the events of 1989 and after, Frankland steeps his book in the history of the region. The result is a lively, literate, sensitive, and at times moving account of Eastern European culture and politics with keen historical insights. Frankland has an eye for detail and symbolism, as his comments on an ostensibly unremarkable military cap demonstrate. These hats, worn by the Polish army following the imposition of martial law in 1981, recalled a similar design worn prior to the imposition of communist rule. Points like this make the book all the more enjoyable. For all international affairs collections.-- Joseph P. Parsons, Columbia Coll., Chicago (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A whirlwind tour of Communist Europe during the last year of Communism, narrated with insight and restraint by English journalist and novelist Frankland (Richard Robertovich, 1988; Khrushchev, 1967). ``The tragedy of East Europe,'' according to Frankland, ``was that there were decent men among those who imposed Communism, and that it took so long for them to understand that they had taken a wrong turning to the promised land.'' Such understanding was bought at a high price: According to the author, ruined economies, ravaged landscapes, widespread disease, and chronic despair seem to be the only legacies of the old regimes now that the statues have come down and the streets have been renamed. Frankland moves through the region country by country, but he is intelligent enough to make generalizations in each case and weave these narrative threads into a coherent history whose roots go back much farther than the 50 years it can officially claim. The fact that Communism in Eastern Europe was a foreign imposition is not really Frankland's point- -although that is made abundantly clear. He is more concerned simply to let the characters of this weird drama speak their own lines--such as Alexander Dubcek, who, despite his narrow brush with Brezhnev's gallows, could swear in 1989 that he would never hate the Soviets or forsake Marxism (``because I have experienced the joy aroused by the completion of a hydroelectric power station''); or the Romanian woman imprisoned for inducing an abortion, who could vow with equal passion never to give birth ``as long as he [Ceausescu] is still alive.'' The strength of Frankland's approach is that he forces nothing, idealizes no one, and intrudes hardly at all: instead, he offers a straightforward account of a monumental political upheaval, told from the point of view of everyone he met. A superlative exposition, thorough and honest. Frankland conveys the real tragedy enveloping Eastern Europe without closing his eyes or stumbling over the contradictions.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
