52. Interview with Alexander Jackowski, Warsaw, May 15, 2007.
53. SAPMO-BA, ZPA, NY 421/ 5/53, pp. 263–74.
54. Klaus Polkehn, Das war die Wochenpost: Geschichte und Geschichten einer Zeitung (Berlin, 1997), p. 7.
55. Interview with Klaus Polkehn, Berlin, October 20, 2006.
17. Passive opponents
1. György Faludy, My Happy Days in Hell, trans. Kathleen Szasz (London, 2010), p. 207.
2. Celina Budzyńska, Krytyka i Samokrytyka (Warsaw, 1954), p. 44.
3. Daily Worker, November 20, 1950, p. 2; see also Phillip Deery, “The Dove Flies East: Whitehall, Warsaw and the 1950 World Peace Congress,” Australian Journal of Politics and History (December 2002).
4. Sheffield Telegraph, November 19, 1950; also Deery, “The Dove Flies East.”
5. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Archiv Unterdruckter Literatur, Edeltraude Eckert file.
6. Joanna Kochanowicz, ZMP w Terenie (Warsaw, 2000), pp. 85–102.
7. John Rodden, Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse: A History of Eastern German Education, 1945–1995 (New York, 2002).
8. Maciej Chłopek, Bikiniarze. Pierwsza polska subkultura (Warsaw, 2005), pp. 69–75; Sándor Horváth, “Hooligans, Spivs and Gangs: Youth Subcultures in the 1960s,” in János M. Rainer and György Péteri, eds., Muddling Through in the Long 1960s: Ideas and Everyday Life in High Politics and the Lower Classes of Communist Hungary, Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures and Societies 16 (May 2005), pp. 199–223.
9. Chłopek, Bikiniarze, p. 101; also Kathy Peiss, Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style (Philadelphia, 2011), p. 179.
10. Leopold Tyrmand, Dziennik 1954 (London 1980), pp. 138–40.
11. Horváth, “Hooligans, Spivs and Gangs.”
12. Chłopek, Bikiniarze, p. 30.
13. Ibid., pp. 142–43.
14. Jacek Kuroń, Wiara i wina. Do i od komunizmu (Wrocław, 1995), p. 54.
15. See Sándor Horváth, “Myths of the Great Tree Gang: Constructing Urban Spaces and Youth Culture in Socialist Budapest,” in Joanna Herbert and Richard Rodger, eds., Testimony of the City: Identity, Community and Change in a Contemporary Urban World (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 73–93; also Horváth, “Hooligans, Spivs and Gangs.”
16. Interview with Krzysztof Pomian, Warsaw, May 2, 2008.
17. Chłopek, Bikiniarze, pp. 130–35.
18. Kuroń, Wiara i wina, pp. 54–55.
19. Toby Thacker, “The Fifth Column: Dance Music in the Early German Republic,” in Patrick Major and Jonathan Osmond, eds., The Workers’ and Peasants’ State (Manchester, 2002), pp. 227–39.
20. Interview with Erich Loest, Leipzig, December 12, 2006.
21. AdK ABK, Arnold Zweig, V.
22. Thacker, “The Fifth Column,” pp. 227–39.
23. Interview with Marta Stebnicka, Kraków, February 25, 2009.
24. For a good, informal analysis of communist humor, see Ben Lewis, Hammer and Tickle (London, 2009). A short version is available in “Hammer and Tickle,” Prospect 122 (May 20, 2006).
25. Lewis, Hammer and Tickle, p. 11.
26. The jokes in this section come from various people and sources. I’d like to thank Piotr Paszkowski for compiling them.
27. PIL, 286.23, p. 122.
28. AAN, Ministerstwo Oswiaty 346, p. 16.
29. Milan Kundera, The Joke (London, 1992).
30. See Lewis, Hammer and Tickle, p. 132.
31. Jenő Randé and János Sebestyén, Azok a rádiós évtizedek (Budapest, 1995), pp. 146–48.
32. Ulenspiegel: Literatur, Kunst, Satire, vols. II (1947) and III (1948). A conversation with the art historian Peter Pachnicke underlies this discussion of Herbert Sandberg.
33. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/IV 2.9.06/23.
34. Lewis, Hammer and Tickle, p. 11.
35. Interview with Józef Puciłowski, Kraków, March 24, 2009.
36. Interview with Hans-Jochen Tschiche, Satuelle, November 18, 2006.
37. Karta, Memoir Archives, 7/IV.
38. Jan Ziółek and Agnieszka Przytuła, Represje wobec uczestników wydarzeń w Katedrze Lubelskiej w 1949 roku (Lublin, 1999); see also Agnieszka Przytuła, “Skazani za wiar˛e w cud,” unpublished manuscript, available at http://tnn.pl/pamie.php.
39. Karta, Memoir Archives, 7/IV.
40. Rudolf Ilona Sántháné, unpublished manuscript.
41. Interview with Halina Bortnowska, Warsaw, February 5, 2006.
42. Dariusz Stola, Kraj bez Wyjścia? Migracje z Polski 1949–1989 (Warsaw, 2010), p. 27.
43. William E. Stacy, “US Army Border Operations in Germany 1945–1983” (HQ US Army, Europe and 7th Army, 2002), available at http://www.history.army.mil/documents/BorderOps/content.htm.
44. Edith Sheffer, “On Edge: Building the Border in East and West Germany,” Central European History 40 (2007), pp. 307–33.
45. Stacy, “US Army Border Operations in Germany.”
46. Corey Ross, “Before the Wall: East Germans, Communist Authority and the Mass Exodus to the West,” The Historical Journal 45, 2 (2002), p. 459; also Frederick Taylor, The Berlin Wall (New York, 2006), p. 77.
47. Interview with Herta Kuhrig, Berlin, November 21, 2006.
48. Ross, “Before the Wall,” pp. 465–77.
18. REVOLUTIONS
1. Bertolt Brecht, Poems 1913–1956, John Willett and Ralph Manheim, eds. (Methuen, 1976), p. 440.
2. In fact Stalin had died on March 5 having probably had a stroke early in the morning of March 1, but his death was not announced to the public until the following day.
3. Mark Allinson, Politics and Popular Opinion in East Germany 1945–68 (Manchester, 2000), pp. 52–54.
4. See the photographs in the collection of the Open Society Archives, at http://www.osaarchivum.org/galeria/05031953/sect06/index.html.
5. Life magazine published all of their photographs, March 23, 1953, pp. 33–35.
6. Amy Knight, Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant (Princeton, 1995), p. 182.
7. Mark Kramer, “The Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggle and Upheavals in East-Central Europe: Internal–External Linkages in Soviet Policy Making,” Journal of Cold War Studies 1, 1 (Winter 1999), pp. 18–21.
8. Ibid., p. 17; also Christian Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany 1953: The Cold War, the German Question, and the First Major Upheaval Behind the Iron Curtain (Budapest and New York, 2001), pp. 86–90 (many of these documents are also available at http://legacy.wilsoncenter.org).
9. Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany 1953, pp. 10–101.
10. Kramer, “Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggles,” p. 17.
11. Ibid., p. 23.
12. Csaba Békés, Malcolm Byrne, and János Rainer, eds., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents (Budapest and New York, 2002), pp. 15–20.
13. Charles Gati, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt (Stanford and Washington, 2006), pp. 32–40.
14. Imre Nagy, On Communism: In Defense of the New Course (New York, 1957), p. 176.
15. Kramer, “Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggles,” p. 31.
16. Interview with Lutz Rackow, Berlin, April 1, 2008.
17. Interviews with Erich Loest, Leipzig, December 12, 2006, and Elfriede Brüning, Berlin, November 28 and December 5, 2006.
18. Interview with Egon Bahr, Berlin, October 26, 2006.
19. Rudolf Herrnstadt, Das Herrnstadt-Dokument: das Politbüro der SED und die Geschichte des 17. Juni 1953 (Hamburg, 1990), p. 85; also Hubertus Knabe, 17 Juni 1953—Ein deutscher Aufstand (Berlin, 2004), p. 302.
20. Interview with Loest.
21. Ibid. Also Erich Loest, Durch die Erde ein Riss: Ein Lebenslauf (Hamburg, 1981), pp. 196–207; on why the Volkspolizei were absent, see Hubertus Knabe, 17 Juni 1953—Ein deustscher Aufstand (Berlin, 2004), p. 318.
22. Interview with Karl-Heinz Arnold, Berlin, November 3, 2006.
23. Interview with Hans-Walter Bendzko, Berlin, April 2, 2008.
24. Volker Koop explains the different sources and numbers in Der 17. Juni 1953—Legende und Wirklichkeit (Berlin, 2003).
25. Ibid., p. 343.
26. Knabe, 17 Juni 1953, p. 83. This is more people than in the protests in East Germany in October 1989.
27. Interview with Bahr.
28. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/IV 2/1/121, pp. 35–39.
29. Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany 1953, p. 186.
30. Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949–89 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 155–61.
31. Interview with Günter Schabowski, Berlin, December 7, 2006.
32. Ronald Hayman, Brecht: A Biography (New York, 1983), p. 367.
33. Interview with Klaus Polkehn, Berlin, October 20, 2006.
34. Interview with Rackow.
35. Kramer, “Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggles,” part 2, p. 5.
36. Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany 1953, pp. 186, 270; Koop, Der 17. Juni 1953, pp. 333–34. There is no Western evidence for this thesis either: the CIA was just as surprised by the riots as the Russians, and even thought the Russians might have provoked them (Ostermann, ed., Uprising in East Germany 1953, pp. 210–12).
37. Kramer, “Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggles.”
38. Gati, Failed Illusions, pp. 54–55.
39. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/IV 2/1/120, pp. 2–13.
40. Ibid., pp. 25–28.
41. Ibid.
42. Paweł Machewicz, “Polish Regime Countermeasures Against Radio Free Europe,” in A. Ross Johnson and R. Eugene Parta, eds., Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (New York, 2010), pp. 174–75.
43. Andrzej Friskze, Polska: Losy państwa i narodu, 1939–1989 (Warsaw, 2003). See also Andrzej Paczkowski, Trzy twarze Józefa Światły: przyczynek do historii komunizmu w Polsce (Warsaw, 2009).
44. Gati, Failed Illusions, pp. 55, 113–22.
45. Andrzej Krzywicki, Poststalinowski Karnawał Radości (Warsaw, 2009), pp. 185–90.
46. Rzeczpospolita, December 4, 2007.
47. Krzywicki, Poststalinowski Karnawał Radości, p. 231.
48. Jacek Kuroń, Wiara i wina. Do i od komunizmu (Wrocław, 1995), p. 56.
49. Interview with Jacek Fedorowicz, Warsaw, March 25, 2009.
50. Krzywicki, Poststalinowski Karnawał Radości, p. 231.
51. Interview with Krzystof Pomian, Warsaw, May 2, 2008.
52. Krzywicki, Poststalinowski Karnawał Radości, p. 281.
53. K. Kozniewski, “Sto Wierszy o Festiwalu,” Sztandar Młodych (August 9, 1955).
54. Interview with Fedorowicz.
55. William Griffiths, “The Petőfi Circle: Forum for Ferment in the Hungarian Thaw,” The Hungarian Quarterly 2, 1 (January 1962), pp. 15–31.
56. István Eörsi, “The Petőfi Circle,” in Intellectuele kringen in de twintigst eeuw (Utrecht, 1995), p. 110.
57. Tamás Aczél and Tibor Meráy, The Revolt of the Mind (London, 1960), pp. 274–82; also Békés, Byrne, and Ranier, eds., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, p. 10.
58. Ibid., pp. 345–46.
59. Aczél and Meráy, Revolt of the Mind, p. 45.
60. Ibid., pp. 96–113.
61. Iván Vitány, Önarckép—elvi keretben (Celldömölk, 2007), pp. 28–32.
62. András Hegedüs, “The Petőfi Circle: The Forum of Reform in 1956,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 113, 2, pp. 108–22.
63. Békés, Byrne, and Ranier, eds., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, p. 10.
64. Aczél and Meráy, Revolt of the Mind, pp. 267–68.
65. Eörsi, “The Petőfi Circle,” p. 108.
66. Interview with Karol Modzelewski, Warsaw, April 28, 2009.
67. Ibid.
68. Eörsi, “The Petöfi Circle,” p. 110.
69. Mark Pittaway, “The Reproduction of Hierarchy: Skill, Working-Class Culture, and the State in Early Socialist Hungary,” The Journal of Modern History 74, 4 (December 2002), p. 728.
70. Griffiths, “The Petőfi Circle,” p. 22.
71. The speech is available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/khrushchev/1956/02/24.htm.
72. William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York, 2003), p. 284.
73. Interview with Colonel Ludwik Rokicki, Warsaw, May 25, 2006.
74. Griffiths, “The Petőfi Circle,” p. 17.
75. Victor Sebestyen, Twelve Days: Revolution 1956 (London, 2006), pp. 86–87.
76. Much later, Rákosi’s ashes were brought back to Hungary and reburied in a Budapest cemetery. But after his tombstone became a favorite target for vandals, they were moved to a grave marked only with his initials. See http://www.mult-kor.hu/cikk.php?id=8036&pIdx=4.
77. Gati, Failed Illusions, pp. 137–38.
78. Recent accounts that make good use of archives include Gati, Failed Illusions, and Sebestyen, Twelve Days, as well as Mark Kramer’s groundbreaking essay “The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland: Reassessments and New Findings,” Journal of Contemporary History 33, 2 (April 1998), pp. 163–214. The Central European Press in collaboration with the 1956 Institute had published an excellent document collection, The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, edited by Csaba Békés, Malcolm Byrne, and János Rainer. Older eyewitness accounts published in English include George Urban, Nineteen Days: A Broadcaster’s Account of the Hungarian Revolution (London, 1957); Sándor Kopácsi, In the Name of the Working Class (New York, 1987); Endre Márton, The Forbidden Sky (New York, 1971); and Tibor Meráy, Thirteen Days That Shook the Kremlin (London, 1959).
79. Aczél and Meráy, Revolt of the Mind, pp. 437–38.
80. Sebestyen, Twelve Days, p. 97.
81. Meráy, Thirteen Days That Shook the Kremlin, p. 439.
82. Kramer, “The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises,” pp. 163–214.
83. Békés, Byrne, and Ranier, eds., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, p. 223; Kramer, “The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises,” pp. 169–71.
84. Kramer, “The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises,” p. 172.
85. Urban, Nineteen Days, pp. 12–13.
86. Békés, Byrne, and Ranier, eds., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, pp. 188–89.
87. Sebestyen, Twelve Days, pp. 110–19.
88. Ibid., p. 192.
89. Gati, Failed Illusions, pp. 165–67.
90. Sebestyen, Twelve Days, p. 208.
91. See Bill Lomax, ed., Hungarian Workers’ Councils in 1956 (New York, 1990).
92. Békés, Byrne, and Ranier, eds., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, p. 375.
93. Sebestyen, Twelve Days, p. 281.
94. Ibid., pp. 299–300.
95. Békés, Byrne, and Ranier, eds., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, p. 70.
EPILOGUE
1. Henryk Domański, “The Middle Class in Transition from Communist to Capitalist Society,” in Edmund Mokrzycki and Sven Eliæson, eds., Building Democracy and Civil Society East of the Elbe (New York, 2006), p. 95.
2. Conversation with Roger Scruton, June 6, 2012; also see Barbara Day, The Velvet Philosophers (London, 1999).
3. Vaclav Havel et al., The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe (London, 1985), p. 39.
4. This saying has long been in use in France, where it is sometimes attributed incorrectly to Robespierre or Napoleon. The Russian equivalent, which Stalin did apparently use, is “When wood is chopped, woodchips will fly” (Les rubyat—schepki letyat). Richard Pipes has observed that this phrase, often used by apologists for communism, is nonsensical: “Apart from the fact that human beings are not eggs, the trouble is that no omelette has emerged from the slaughter.”
5. See Kanan Makiya, Republic of Fear (Berkeley, 1998); John K. Cooley, “The Libyan Menace,” Foreign Policy 42 (Spring 1981); and Gareth Winrow, The Foreign Policy of the GDR in Africa (Cambridge, 1990), p. 140. East Germany also helped create the secret police forces of a number of African communist regimes, including those of Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique.
6. Available at http://www.lkplodz.pl/.
7. See, for example, this analysis of the alterations back and forth to Russian nongovernmental organization law, available at http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/russia.html.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
A partial list of memoirs, fiction, monographs, and other secondary literature used in the writing of Iron Curtain follows. Articles, papers, and other materials are listed in the reference notes along with specific archival references.
Abrams, Bradley, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation: Czech Culture and the Rise of Communism (New York, 2004).
Acheson, Dean, Present at the Creation (New York, 1987).
Aczel, Tamás, and Tibor Meráy, The Revolt of the Mind: A Case History of Intellectual Resistance behind the Iron Curtain (London, 1960).
Agee, Joel, Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany (Chicago, 2000).
Allinson, Mark, Politics and Popular Opinion in East Germany, 1945–68 (Manchester, 2000).
Åman, Anders, Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe during the Stalin Era, trans. Roger and Kerstin Tanner (Cambridge, Mass., 1992).
Andreas-Friedrich, Ruth, Battleground Berlin: Diaries 1945–48, trans. Anna Boerresen (New York, 1990).
Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin, trans. Philip Boehm (London, 2006).
Ansorg, Leonore, Kinder im Klassenkampf: Die Geschichte der Pionierorganisation von 1948 bis Ende der fünfziger Jahre (Berlin, 1997).
Apor, Balázs, et al., eds., The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships (New York, 2004).
Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland and New York, 1958).
Arp, Agnes, VEB Vaters ehemaliger Betrieb Privatunternehmer in der DDR (Leipzig, 2005).
Åslund, Anders, Private Enterprise in Eastern Europe (Macmillan, 1985).
Baczoni, Gábor, Pár(t)viadal—A Magyar Államrendőrség Vidéki Főkapitányságának Politikai Rendészeti osztálya, 1945–1946 (Budapest, 2002).
Baer, Helmut David, The Struggle of Hungarian Lutherans under Communism (College Station, Texas, 2006).
Bajer, Magdalena, Blizny po Ukąszeniu (Warsaw, 2005).
Balogh, Gyöngyi, Vera Gyürey, and Pál Honffy, A magyar játékfilm története a kezdetektől 1990 -ig (Budapest, 2004).
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