Product Description

For more than 40 years after the Second World War the Iron Curtain divided Europe physically, with 300 km of walls and barbed wire fences; ideologically, between communism and capitalism; psychologically, between people imprisoned under totalitarian dictatorships and their neighbours enjoying democratic freedoms; and militarily, by two mighty, distrustful power blocs, still fighting the cold war. East-West rivalry and a cruelly divided continent seemed to be unalterable facts of life. Few statesmen, diplomats, soldiers or thinkers imagined these certainties would change in their lifetimes. At the start of 1989, ten European nations were still Soviet vassal states. By the end of the year, one after another, they had thrown off communism, declared national independence, and embarked on the road to democracy. One of history's most brutal empires was on its knees. Poets who had been languishing in jails became vice presidents. When the Berlin Wall fell on a chilly November night it seemed as though the open wounds of the cruel twentieth century would at last begin to heal. The Year of Revolutions appeared as a beacon of hope for oppressed people elsewhere who dared to dream that they too could free themselves. In a dizzying few months of almost entirely peaceful revolutions the people's will triumphed over tyranny. An entire way of life was swept away along with a half dozen incompetent, corrupt and at times vicious dictatorships. It happened with little violence, apart from a few days in Romania. Now, twenty years on, Victor Sebestyen reassesses this decisive moment in modern history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2686 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 480 pages

Review
'Victor Sebestyen's vivid panoramic work is a fine account... the writing is taut, the scene-setting dramatic, giving the book an almost cinematic feel' (Adam LeBor SUNDAY TIMES )

'Sebestyen has made an excellent job of organising his disparate material, so that the reader can recapture, with the same sense of bafflement and elation, the events that made the Europe we live in - and after 20 years he can add understanding too.' (Michael Fry SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY )

'the tale fair rips along... a solid piece of storytelling of an exhillarating and enspiriting moment of history' (Misha Glenny EVENING STANDARD )

'Victor Sebestyen brilliantly pulls together the events that led to the fall of the Soviet empire... it still takes your breath away 20 years on.' (Richard Beeston THE SPECTATOR )

'digestible and entertaining' (THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

'pacy and vivid... a considerable achievement... [Sebestyen] is also a thoroughly professional writer with a gift not only for exposition but also evocation.' (Anthony Howard DAILY TELEGRAPH )

'a thrilling read... Sebestyen is good at sketching the leading players but he also succinctly conveys what life was like for the ordinary citizens' (Christopher Sylvester DAILY EXPRESS )

'Sebestyen has got the pace and the balance just right' (THE SCOTSMAN )

'rollicking mix of high drama and sordid reality... conventional history, spiced with telling quotations.' (THE INDEPENDENT )

'a compelling and illuminating account of a great drama in the history of our times which showed one again that ordinary men and women really can change the world.' (Jonathan Dimbleby THE MAIL ON SUNDAY )

'Sebestyen's strength is his sharp focus and racy prose... Here is history written like a Greek tragedy... In Revolution 1989 nothing is taken for granted until the last triumphant page.' (Michael Binyon THE TIMES )

'Sharp focus and racy prose capture the events and decisions that fed into the growing turmoil across Eastern Europe as the East German regime crumbled.' (THE TIMES 'We're Reading' )

'It's a complex story spanning many countries, but this exciting yet deeply researched work brings it impressively to life... compelling.' (Simon Sebag Montefiore THE OBSERVER )

'Revolution 1989 is a lucid primer on the background to, and events of that magical year. Sebestyen's narrative is clear, entertaining and sure-footed' (Angus Macqueen THE GUARDIAN )

'Victor Sebestyen's book is worth a dozen rehashes of World War II by Andrew Roberts and his clones... Sebestyen's record of the 1980s is a compelling, page-turning read. Finely edited by his publisher, his book is a precise step-by-step account of the high politics and the big-name political players in the years between the August 1980 strikes in Gdansk and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall nine years later' (Denis MacShane TRIBUNE )

'Vivid personal glimpses and striking details... Victor Sebestyen's book is full of sharp snapshots and crisp narrative' (Timothy Garton Ash New York Review of Books )

'Revolution 1989 is a superbly written and impressively documented chronicle of the year John Paul II described as an annus mirabilis... Sebestyen provides a vivid portrait of the Stalinist leaders and their endless cynicism' (Vladimir Tismaneanu TLS )

'a digestible and colourful history of that miraculous year' (THE ECONOMIST )

'Sebestyen's brilliantly written narrative unfolds in brief, gripping episodes' (NEWSWEEK )

'masterly handling of this complex and fast-moving story and its ever-changing cast' (DAILY MAIL )

About the Author
Victor Sebestyen was born in Budapest. He was an infant when his family left Hungary as refugees. As a journalist, he was worked on numerous British newspapers. He reported widely from Eastern Europe when Communism collapsed in 1989. He covered the war in former Yugoslavia. At the London Evening Standard he was foreign editor, media editor and chief leader writer. His highly acclaimed first book, TWELVE DAYS (W&N 2006), was an account of the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

Customer Reviews

An impelling and informative account of the decline and fall of the Soviet Empire
An impelling and informative account of the decline and fall of the Soviet Empire.

This book is a highly readable and impelling account of the decline and fall of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe. It is written in short and succinct chapters, most of which are of less than ten pages in length. The author's account dispenses with non-essential data and concentrates attention on the cardinal aspects of the subject, namely, the progressive disintegration of Soviet power and influence in the satellite countries of Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany (German Democratic Republic), Hungary, Poland and Romania. The origin of the debacle can be traced to a minor incident that occurred in the Lenin Shipyard, Gdansk, in August 1980. Anna Walentynowycz, a diminuative crane driver, was arrested for 'stealing' candle ends, to be melted down to make new candles, which were then to be used again to illuminate a shrine dedicated to forty-four 'martyrs' who had been killed during a crackdown in 1970. It was that incident, in particular, that led to the creation of the Solidarity movement, and that event subsequently resulted in the progressive formation of `democratic' governments in those countries in Eastern Europe to which reference has been made above.

The transformation that initially occurred in Eastern Europe, in general, can be likened to a cascade - an inexorable succession of events - which also had profound transformative effects within the Soviet Union itself. Those chapters that discuss the policies adopted by Mikhail Gorbachev - glasnost and perestroika - after he was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party, in March 1985, are of particular interest. Those policy initiatives encouraged Gorbachev to instruct the Eastern European dictators to take complete responsibility for their own domains, and not involve the Soviet Union in their internal, domestic affairs - either political or economic. Any further military action in Eastern Europe by the Soviet army would not to be contemplated. In the future each satellite would be obliged to resolve its own internal problems without recourse to the Soviet Union. Gorbachev quickly realised that the Soviet economy was no longer capable of underwriting the huge debts progressively accumulated by the bankrupt economies of Eastern Europe, particularly in view of the adverse economic effects of the Afghan venture. The sharp decrease in oil prices, during the middle 1980s, also had a serious, detrimental effect on the USSR's export earnings. Gorbachev was undoubtedly the most intelligent and the most effective President of the Soviet Union, and it was most unfortunate that he was superseded, in December 1991, by Boris Yeltsin.

This work comprises an excellent study of the economic, political and social consequences of dictatorship - 'the dictatorship of the proleteriat' - in accordance with the doctrine of Marxism- Leninism That doctrine, whatever merits it had, certainly served to create large-scale social debility within Eastern Europe for over half a century, and within the Soviet Union for more that seventy years. It is the `finest' system that man has created for the systemic creation of large-scale economic deprivation and poverty. Planned economies always produce long-term, chronic shortage of food and consumer goods, for reasons that have been extensively analysed by F A Hayek. The Soviet system certainly created an economy of chronic shortage.

Those who have a keen interest in the current NATO strategy in Afghanistan are recommended to study those chapters, in particular, which eloquently describe the consequences of the invasion of that domain by a large Soviet army in 1979. In this context the report written by The Russian General Staff, titled The Soviet Afghan War, How a Superpower Fought and Lost, Kansas 2002, and Butcher & Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan, David Loyn, London 2008 are required reading. Although the Soviet and NATO objectives differ to a marked extent, what is actually happening in the present appears to be replicating what happened to the Soviet army in the past. I read this book with ever-increasing interest and enthusiasm and can recommend it to other readers with an equal degree of enthusiasm. Stuart Hopkins

A concise history lesson
I bought this book as I had lived through these times and all the preceding events leading up to the final collapse of the East European systems. Up until then, people in the west were not well informed as to what was going on and, in consequence, developed a curiosity which, in my case, has been fulfilled by this excellent book. It is written in such a way that each chapter is a short history in its own right. Highly recommended

Alistair Macpherson

Must read for anyone under 30
This a must read for anyone under 30 who will not remember the extraordinary events of 1989 when the whole world order changed with almost no bloodshed. This book reads like a thriller screen script and keeps you wanting to turn over page after page even though you know from the start that the tale has a happy ending. If you are feeling frustrated and depressed about world events this book shows how really important and major change occurred for the better for millions of people without recourse to war. Gorbachev set off the chain of events that led to the collapse of Communism - not be design but by accident - events veered out of his control and were taken up by a number of unlikely heroes - a Polish female crane driver and a carousing Czech playright are amongst a cast of amazing and colourful characters - stranger and much better than fiction