Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

by Anne Applebaum

46. Quoted in Anna Bikont and Joanna Szcz˛esna, Lawina i Kamienie: Pisarze wobec Komunizmu (Warsaw, 2006), pp. 69–79.

  47. Interview with Hans Modrow, Berlin, December 7, 2006.

  48. Miłosz, The Captive Mind, pp. 26–29.

  49. Martin Gilbert, “Churchill and Poland,” unpublished lecture delivered at the University of Warsaw, February 16, 2010. With thanks to Martin Gilbert.

  50. Peter Grose, Operation Rollback (New York, 2000), p. 2.

  51. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York, 1987), p. 85.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Gilbert, “Churchill and Poland.”

  54. A good analysis of this is in Antoni Z. Kamiński and Bartłomiej Kamiński, “Road to ‘People’s Poland’: Stalin’s Conquest Revisted,” in Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed., Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of the Communist Regimes in East Central Europe and the Dynamics of the Soviet Bloc (New York and Budapest, 2009), pp. 205–11; also Roberts, Masters and Commanders, pp. 548–58.

  55. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. VI: Triumph and Tragedy (London, 1985), p. 300.

  56. Robert Service, Comrades (London, 2007), p. 220.

  57. Ibid., p. 222.

  58. The original drafts and the final version of Operation Unthinkable can be seen at http://web.archive.org/web/20101116152301/http://www.history.neu.edu/PRO2.

  59. Stanisław Mikołajczyk, The Rape of Poland (New York, 1948), p. 60.

  60. László Borhi, Hungary in the Cold War, 1945–1956: Between the United States and the Soviet Union (New York and Budapest, 2004), p. 36.

  61. Mikołajczyk, Rape of Poland, p. 25.

  62. John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB (New Haven, 2009), pp. 20–26.

  63. Roberts, Masters and Commanders, p. 556.

  64. Hubertus Knabe, 17. Juni 1953—Ein deutscher Aufstand (Berlin, 2004), pp. 402–6.

  65. Csaba Békés, Malcolm Byrne, and János Rainer, eds., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents (Budapest and New York, 2002), p. 209.

  66. Borhi, Hungary in the Cold War, p. 21.

  2. VICTORS

  1. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Battleground Berlin: Diaries, 1945–1948 (New York, 1990), p. 36.

  2. George Kennan, Memoirs: 1925–1950 (New York, 1967), p. 74.

  3. John Lukacs, 1945: Year Zero (New York, 1978), p. 256.

  4. Interview with Lutz Rackow, Berlin, April 1, 2008.

  5. Christel Panzig, Wir schalten uns ein: Zwischen Luftschutzkeller und Stalinbild, Stadt und Region Wittenberg 1945 (Lutherstadt Wittenberg, 2005), pp. 40–42.

  6. Interview with Zsófia Tevan, Budapest, June 3, 2009.

  7. SNL, Historic Interview Collection: Jenő Széll, Történeti Interjúk Tára, and Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár, interview conducted by András Hegedüs, Gábor Hanák, Gyula Kozák, and Ilona Szabóné Dér, on August 3, 1985.

  8. Interview with Alexander Jackowski, Warsaw, May 15, 2007.

  9. Kennan, Memoirs, p. 74.

  10. Sándor Márai, Memoir of Hungary: 1944–1948, trans. Albert Tezla (Budapest and New York, 2000), pp. 44–46.

  11. Lukacs, 1945, p. 75.

  12. Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova, eds., A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941–1945 (London, 2005), pp. 341–42.

  13. TsAMO RF, 372/6570/78, pp. 30–32 (thanks to Antony Beevor).

  14. Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War (New York, 2006), p. 389.

  15. Alexander Nakhimovsky and Alice Nakhimovsky, Witness to History: The Photographs of Yevgeny Khaldei (New York, 1997).

  16. Krisztián Ungváry, The Siege of Budapest: 100 Days in World War II (London, 2002), p. 360.

  17. My husband played this game as a child in 1960s Poland.

  18. Cztery Pancerny i Pies, episode 13, 1969.

  19. Márai, Memoir, pp. 44–46.

  20. Beevor and Vinogradova, eds., Writer at War, p. 326.

  21. Piotr Bojarski, “Czołg strzela do katedry, Julian fotografuje,” Gazeta Wyborcza, January 21, 2011.

  22. Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse, Microcosm: A Portrait of a European City (New York, 2003), p. 408.

  23. BStU MfSZ, Sekr Neiber 407, p. 80.

  24. Beevor and Vinogradova, Writer at War, p. 330.

  25. Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 381.

  26. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Prussian Nights, trans. Robert Conquest (New York, 1977), pp. 38–39.

  27. Lev Kopelev, To Be Preserved Forever, trans. Anthony Austin (New York, 1977), p. 56.

  28. Ibid., pp. 50–51.

  29. Ibid., p. 41.

  30. Włodzimierz Borodziej and Hans Lemberg, eds., Niemcy w Polsce 1945–1950: Wybór Dokumentów, vol. III (Warsaw, 2001), pp. 57–61.

  31. James Mark, “Remembering Rape,” Past & Present 188 (2005), pp. 133–61.

  32. Stewart Thomson, in collaboration with Robert Bialek, The Bialek Affair (London, 1955), pp. 31–33.

  33. See, for example, Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945 (New York, 2002).

  34. Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York, 1990), p. 95.

  35. Beevor, Fall of Berlin, p. 169.

  36. Margit Földesi, A megszállók szabadsága (Budapest, 2002), p. 140.

  37. Interview with Hans-Jochen Tschiche, Satuelle, November 18, 2006.

  38. “Über die Russen und über uns,” Verlag Kultur und Fortschritt (Berlin, 1949). Originally published in Neues Deutschland and Tägliche Rundschau, November 19, 1948.

  39. Ibid.

  40. Varga/Vargas did return to Hungary in 1946, to help the government carry out monetary reform and reintroduce the forint, the Hungarian currency.

  41. Friederike Sattler, Wirtschaftsordnung im Übergang: Politik, Organisation und Funktion der KPD/SED im Land Brandenburg bei der Etablierung der Zentralen Planwirtschaft in der SBZ/DDR 1945–52 (Münster, 2002), pp. 88–92.

  42. Serhii Plokhii, Yalta: The Price of Peace (New York, 2010), pp. 108–13, 256–62.

  43. Sattler, Wirtschaftsordnung im Übergang, pp. 94–95.

  44. Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), pp. 168–69.

  45. Ibid., p. 169.

  46. SAPMO-BA, DN/1 38032.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Volker Koop, Besetzt: Sowjetische Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland (Berlin, 2008), pp. 71–77.

  49. DRA, 201-00-004/001, p. 62.

  50. Naimark, Russians in Germany, p. 171.

  51. SAPMO-BA, DY30/IV 2/6.02 49, fiche 3.

  52. M. C. Kaser and E. A. Radice, The Economic History of Eastern Europe, 1919–1945, vol. II: Interwar Policy, the War and Reconstruction (Oxford, 1986), pp. 530–35.

  53. Iván T. Berend and Tamás Csató, Evolution of the Hungarian Economy, 1848–1998, vol. I. (Boulder, 2001), pp. 257–58.

  54. Földesi, A megszállók szabadsága, pp. 81–97.

  55. PIL, 174. 12/217.

  56. CAW, VIII/800/24, teczka 9.

  57. Adam Dziurok and Bogdan Musiał, “ ‘Bratni rabunek.’ O demonta˙zach i wywózce sprz˛etu z terenu Górnego Śl˛aska w 1945 r.,” in W obj˛eciach Wielkiego Brata. Sowieci w Polsce 1944–1993 (Warsaw, 2009), pp. 321–44.

  58. He lived in the Polish mountain village of Poronin, where one of only two Lenin statues erected in Poland once stood. It was taken down in 1990, but in 2011 the city council decided to put it up again to attract tourists.

  59. Richard Pipes, ed., The Unknown Lenin (New Haven, 1996), p. 90.

  60. Ibid., p. 62.

  61. For descriptions of the Marxist mentality, see Robert Conquest, Reflections on a Ravaged Century (New York, 1999), pp. 34–36; also François Furet, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century, trans. Deborah Furet (Chicago, 1999).

  62. What Is to Be Done is available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/.

  63. Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York, 1991), p. 608.

  64.
See Paul Lendvai, The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat (Princeton, 2004), pp. 369–72; Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919–1924 (New York, 1994), pp. 170–72; and István György Tóth, ed., A Concise History of Hungary (Budapest, 2005), pp. 487–94.

  65. Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, pp. 182–83.

  66. See Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Oxford, 1967), for an account of the Second Congress.

  67. Martin Gilbert, “Churchill and Poland,” unpublished lecture delivered at the University of Warsaw, February 16, 2010. With thanks to Martin Gilbert.

  68. Adam Zamoyski, Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe (London, 2008), pp. 1–13, 42.

  69. Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, p. 192.

  70. Tim Tzouliadis, The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia (New York, 2008), p. 55.

  3. COMMUNISTS

  1. Quoted in Carola Stern, Ulbricht: A Political Biography, trans. Abe Farbstein (New York, 1965), p. 203.

  2. See Marxists’ Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/bulganin/1949/12/21.htm.

  3. Stern, Ulbricht. Unless otherwise noted, the biographical information about Ulbricht comes from Stern’s superb biography.

  4. Ibid., p. 15.

  5. Ibid., p. 89.

  6. Elfriede Brüning, Und außerdem war es mein Leben (Berlin, 2004), p. 28.

  7. Walter Ulbricht, On Questions of Socialist Construction in the GDR (Dresden, 1968).

  8. Stern, Ulbricht, p. 124.

  9. Andrzej Garlicki, Bolesław Bierut (Warsaw, 1994), especially pp. 1–20. See also Andrzej Werblan, Stalinizm w Polsce (Warsaw, 2009), pp. 122–31; and Piotr Lipiński, Bolesław Niejasny (Warsaw, 2001).

  10. Polska-ZSRR: Struktury Podległości: Dokumenty KC WKP (B) 1944–1949, pp. 59–61.

  11. Interview with Jerzy Morawski, Warsaw, June 7, 2007.

  12. Lipiński, Bolesław Niejasny, p. 41.

  13. Both Alexander Orlov, the Soviet defector, and Józef Swiatło, the Polish defector, have described Bierut as an NKVD agent; see Garlicki, Bolesław Bierut, pp. 16–19, and Lipiński, Bolesław Niejasny, p. 40. Gomułka, Bierut’s main rival, told Khrushchev about the “Nazi agent” rumors as well, but Khrushchev waved him away.

  14. Mátyás Rákosi, Visszaemlékezések 1940–1956, vol. I (Budapest, 1997), pp. 5–26.

  15. Ibid., pp. 26–46.

  16. Rákosi is mentioned frequently in the diaries of Georgi Dimitrov. See Ivo Banac, ed., The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov 1933–1949 (New Haven, 2003).

  17. Ibid., pp. 46–83.

  18. Ibid., pp. 137–38.

  19. Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism (New Haven and London, 1998), pp. 110–42. The American communist party, for example, maintained its links to the Soviet Union through J. Peters, an activist who was born in Hungary, took part in the 1919 Hungarian communist revolution, played a role in Hungarian politics, and later emigrated to America, where he continued to conduct both open and clandestine work in cooperation with the Soviet secret police.

  20. Anne Applebaum, “Now We Know,” The New Republic (May 31, 2009).

  21. Thomas Sgovio, Dear America (New York, 1979), p. 99.

  22. Banac, ed., Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, p. 119.

  23. Alexander Dallin and F. I. Firsov, eds., Dimitrov and Stalin, 1934–1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives (New Haven and London, 2000), pp. 28–31.

  24. Markus Wolf and Anne McElvoy, Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism’s Greatest Spymaster (London, 1997), p. 32.

  25. Margarete Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators, trans. Edward Fitzgerald (London, 2008), p. 13.

  26. PIL, 867/1/H-168.

  27. Banac, ed., Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, p. 197.

  28. Marci Shore, Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918–1968 (New Haven, 2006), pp. 73–74.

  29. Ibid., pp. 123–27

  30. Ronald Aronson, Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel That Ended It (Chicago, 2004), p. 150.

  31. Banac, ed., Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, p. 118.

  32. R. C. Raack, “Stalin’s Plans for World War Two Told by a High Comintern Source,” The Historical Journal 38, 4 (December 1995), pp. 1031–36.

  33. Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators, p. 175.

  34. Piotr Gontarczyk, Polska Partia Robotnicza: Droga do Władzy, 1941–1944 (Warsaw, 2003), pp. 101–2.

  35. Ibid.; also HIA, Rakowski Collecton.

  36. Comintern Archive, British Library, f.31/o.1/d.1/l.3–31.

  37. Ibid., f.31/o.2/d.1/i.1–10.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, trans. C. M. Woodhouse (Chicago, 1958), pp. 191–296.

  40. Ibid., p. 224.

  41. Ibid., p. 226.

  42. HIA, Berman Collection, Box 1.

  43. Deklaracja Ideowa PZPR: Statut PZPR (Warsaw, 1950).

  44. Ibid.

  45. Sovietskii Faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope, 1944–1953, vol. I (Moscow, 1999),pp. 23–48 (AVP RF, f. 6, op.6, p.14, d.145, ll. 1–41).

  46. Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators, p. 13.

  47. Arthur Koestler, Arrow in the Blue (London, 2005), p. 311.

  48. Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, p. 231.

  49. Ibid., pp. 241–51.

  50. Jo Langer, Convictions: My Life with a Good Communist (London, 1979), p. 30.

  51. Catherine Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2003), pp. 8–9.

  4. POLICEMEN

  1. Jens Gieseke, The GDR State Security: Sword and Shield, trans. Mary Carlene Forszt (Berlin, 2004), p. 7.

  2. Andrzej Friszke, Polska: Losy państwa i narodu, 1939–1989 (Warsaw, 2003), p. 9.

  3. Manifest Lipcowy (Warsaw, 1974), p. 5.

  4. Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948 (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 77–160.

  5. Martin Mevius, Agents of Moscow: The Hungarian Communist Party and the Origins of Socialist Patriotism (Oxford, 2005), p. 53.

  6. Krisztián Ungváry, “Magyarország szovjetizálásának kérdései,” in Ignác Romsics, ed., Mítoszok, legendák, tévhitek a 20. századi magyar történelemről (Budapest, 2002), p. 294.

  7. László Borhi, Hungary in the Cold War, 1945–1956: Between the United States and the Soviet Union (New York and Budapest, 2004), p. 38.

  8. Also sometimes referred to by its Russian acronym SVAG (Sovetskaia Voennaia Administratsia v Germanii) or its German acronym SMAD (Sowjetische Militäradministration in Deutschland).

  9. Dirk Spilker, The East German Leadership and the Division of Germany: Patriotism and Propaganda 1945–1953 (Oxford, 2006), p. 46.

  10. The Polish secret police were later renamed the Stużba Bezpieczeństwa, or SB. Their Hungarian colleagues were later named the Államvédelmi Hatóság, or ÁVH. Frequent renamings and reorganizations of the secret police were common in most communist states, as no one was ever pleased with their work.

  11. T. V. Volokitina et al., eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiskikh arkhivov, 1944–1953 (Moscow and Novosibirsk, 1997), p. 203.

  12. Maciej Korkuć, “Kujbyszewiacy—Awangarda UB,” Arkana 46–47 (April–May 2002), pp. 75–95.

  13. IPN, BU 0447/120, pp. 5–12.

  14. Ibid., pp. 13–15.

  15. For the Jewish story, see Allan Levine, Fugitives of the Forest: The Heroic Story of Jewish Resistance and Survival During the Second World War (New York, 2008).

  16. Korkuć, “Kujbyszewiacy—Awangarda UB,” pp. 75–95.

  17. IPN, BU 0447/120, pp. 5–12.

  18. Krzystof Persak and Łukasz Kaminski, eds., A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe, 1944–1989 (Warsaw, 2005).

  19. Konrad Rokicki, “Aparatu obraz Własny,” in “Zwyczajny” Resort (Warsaw, 2005), p. 26.

  20. Sławomir Poleszak et al., eds., Rok P
ierwszy: Powstanie i Działalność aparatu bezpieczeństwa publicznego na Lubelszczyźnie (Lipiec 1944–Czerwiec 1945) (Warsaw, 2004), pp. 50–55.

  21. Rokicki, “Aparatu obraz Własny,” pp. 13–32.

  22. Interview with Czesław Kiszczak, Warsaw, May 25, 2007. See also Witold Bereś and Jerzy Skoczylas, Generał Kiszczak Mowi … Prawie Wszytko (Warsaw, 1991).

  23. IPN, 352/7. With thanks to Andrzej Paczkowski and Dariusz Stola.

  24. Zsolt Krahulcsán, Rolf Müller, and Mária Palasik, A politikai rendőrség háború utáni megszervezése (1944–1946), unpublished manuscript, pp. 3–4.

  25. Gábor Baczoni, Pár(t)viadal—A Magyar Államrendőrség Vidéki Főkapitányságának Politikai Rendészeti osztálya, 1945–1946 (Budapest, 2002), p. 81.

  26. Zsolt Krahulcsán and Rolf Müller, eds., Dokumentumok a magyar politikai rendőrség történetéből 1. A politikai rendészeti osztályok 1945–1946 (Budapest, 2010), pp. 9–63.

  27. PIL, 274/11/10, pp. 6–7.

  28. Ibid., pp. 1–12.

  29. In 2002, the building became the Terror Háza, a museum dedicated to the crimes of both the Nazi and Soviet regimes.

  30. Krahulcsán, Müller, and Palasik, A politikai rendőrség háború utáni megszervezése, pp. 5–6.

  31. Sándor M. Kiss, from the introduction to Géza Böszörményi, Recsk 1950–1953 (Budapest, 2005), p. 10.

  32. Vladimir Farkas, Nincs mentség (Budapest, 1990), p. 106.

  33. Krahulćsan and Müller, eds., Dokumentumok a magyar politikal, pp. 159–60 and pp. 237–38.

  34. Mária Palasik, “A politikai rendőrség háború utáni megszervezése,” in György Gyarmati, ed., Államvédelem a Rákosi-korszakban (Budapest, 2000), p. 39; also György Gyarmati, “János Kádár és a Belügyminisztérium Államvédelmi Hatósága,” in A Történeti Hivatal Évkönyve (Budapest, 1999), pp. 118–20; and Baráth Magdolna, “Gerő Ernő a Belügyminisztérium élén,” in A Történeti Hivatal Évkönyve (Budapest, 1999), p. 159.

  35. MOL, XIX-B-1-r-787/1945.

  36. Kajári Erzsébet, A magyar Belügyminisztérium szovjet tanácsadói (Múltunk, 1999/3), pp. 220–27.

  37. Farkas, Nincs mentség, p. 128.

  38. Magyar Internacionalisták (Budapest, 1980); Magyar tudóslexikon A-tól Zs-ig (Budapest, 1998), p. 192.