Iron Curtain Reviews

‘The outstanding book of the year... a masterpiece.’

1. The Times, Books of the Year

After the Second World War, millions of Eastern Europeans found themselves under Soviet rule. Their story is told in Iron Curtain, Pulitzer prize-winning author Anne Applebaum’s landmark study of the imposition of Soviet totalitarianism. Weaving together archival evidence and first-hand testimony, she shows how the communists extinguished democracy in Poland, Hungary and East Germany – crushing dissent, liquidating opponents and assuming an iron grip of the media, schools, police, justice system and every other part of civil society. Applebaum’s story is rooted in everyday life: how people learned to cope with the capricious cruelty of the authorities, and ways in which they collaborated, complied or resisted. Iron Curtain was shortlisted for the US National Book Award and was TIME magazine’s number-one non-fiction book of 2012. In a compelling new introduction, Applebaum draws a direct line between the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ‘terrible, bygone era’ of repression in the Eastern Bloc. Almost 60 integrated images, including some from the 20th century’s most eminent photojournalists, make for a definitive edition of an important and gripping book.