Product Description

1989 was a year of revolution: it marked the collapse of communism in Eastern and Central Europe and an end to an entire way of life for millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. Beginning in Hungary, the retreat from communism picked up speed over the summer when the Poles won an overwhelming victory in free elections over their pro-Soviet rulers. In the fall, East Germany and Czechoslovakia achieved freedom with surprisingly little violence. Only Romania, at the end of the year, witnessed a savage battle in the capital and the summary execution of the most notorious of Eastern Europe's dictators, Nicolae Ceausescu.In "The Lost World of Communism", Peter Molloy, producer of the accompanying BBC series, collects first hand testimony of the people who lived in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania during the Cold War era, and reveals an astonishingly 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 international figures like Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, via the shadowy figures of Eastern Europe's intelligence and security services to its 'ordinary' citizens, the voices collected on Peter Molloy's book evoke the moods, preoccupations and experiences of a world of that vanished almost overnight.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24314 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Peter Molloy is a multi-award winning producer of history and current affairs series for the BBC. He is the producer of Lost World of Communism, and his other credits include CIA, a history of America's intelligence agency , Plague Wars, about chemical and biological warfare, Dirty Money, about international financial crime, Tobacco Wars, Suez, and Clear the Skies, about 9/11. This is his first book. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

A very rare treatment
There are countless 'academic' treatments of the former communist totalitarian regimes- but this book, as does the TV series, is in a very select club. It is among the very few books that presents those decades via the personal experiences, memories and denials... Not only it shows the many facets of (to many still) unimaginable everyday realities of those countries and those decades, but it highlights brilliantly the very difficult state of mind many still have, after having lived through them. It is a very rare and very specific schizoid state... as in the recollections in Orlando Figes's The Whisperers, or Anne Applebaum's Gulag or Lehel Vandor's Ears, here we have a perfectly captured dilemma that leads to suppressed memories, selective amnesia... Many look back and find those years much more normal than the dizzying whirlwinds of incomprehensible changes that arrived after those regimes ended. The selective amnesia leads then to many voting back into power former 'known faces' simply because they remind the people of some superficial stability that was there before the inflation, the economic insecurity, the employment and housing problems. This selective amnesia makes many people suppress many memories of the total lack of freedom of speech & thought that they endured during those years... This phenomenon is rarely touched on, but this book manages to capture this, too - and there are many lessons to be learned by people in so-called 'free societies' about how socio-political perceptions of the masses can change and distort.

What it was really like behind the Wall.
In my early years, the countries behind the Iron Curtain always intrigued me; I could not understand how so many people in so many countries were able to survive under such a regimented communist structure. When I finally found myself in East Berlin long before the wall came down, I began to understand just a little that the citizens just took their lifestyle for granted. On the surface, that is. Underneath was a rising tide of resentment, leading to hate of their so-called government. Of course, my youthful and inexperienced eye can be compared to the stories to be found in this book by Peter Molloy.

That the book accompanies his series on BBC2 will no doubt bring to life just what it really was like, for these are accounts of individuals in all walks of life. It is `warts and all' in its setting - and unsettling misery, though, surprisingly, the matter of nostalgia raises its head many times during these anecdotes.

There are far too many stories to recount in this review. They range through a period of time from just after WWII so, not unsurprisingly, I was moved by the horror stories, the imprisonment, the cruelty, the banning of contraception and abortion just to increase the country's population but yet, uplifted again by stories of the way people manage to overcome many of their restrictions and repressions.

I've since visited the former East Germany and Romania many times, indeed my father-in-law is Polish, so Krakow is a second home. The first, of course has managed to hide its past (sort of) in the wealth and democracy of West Germany; the machinations of the Stasi forgiven possibly but certainly not forgotten. In the last, corruption and a hankering for the old regime seem so near the surface of some of the political leaders' daily life, it's hard to know quite where the improvement is.

I'd recommend this book for its wide ranging, backward-looking guide to the region. The individuals bring back a time many of us will not have known - and thank goodness for that but it's a necessary eye-opener and thank goodness, too, that many of the new EU countries have moved on to a better future.

A truer picture than many
Not being a television owner or watcher, It required me to be told about the series which I then watched on the web. I was impressed and bought the DVD.
This was an unusual television project as it was well researched and carefully and thoughtfully put together. I thought the only weak segment being the one on Romania.
Then I got the book. Nowhere near as carefully done; It shows the signs of being put together in a hurry, but I am not finding fault with that; the rough edges lending urgency to the material.
It is not a run-through of the film material as only in a few places do the book and film overlap. The many transcripts of conversations build up a cumulative image of life under communism.
The sections on Romania provide a fuller picture than did the television programme.
My only quibble is that the positive side of life, whilst there, is rather slipped in; I think the author or publisher is aware of that hence the quote on the back jacket.
I have shown both the DVD and the book to Czech friends who were surprised by the quality of the material. It is a pity that this is not available in Czech for the younger generation.