Iron Curtain (84 page)

BECAUSE THIS BOOK took more than six years to research and write, because it required work in archives across Europe, and because it relies on sources written in a wide range of languages, it would not have been possible without the support, advice, and assistance of an extraordinarily generous group of people and institutions. I’d like to thank, first of all, Gary Smith at the American Academy in Berlin and Mária Schmidt of the Terror Háza Múzeum and the Institute of the Twentieth Century in Budapest. In Germany and Hungary they were not only my hosts but also my primary advisers on people, sources, and culture. I’d also like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Scaife Foundation; the Smith Richardson Foundation; Chris DeMuth, formerly of the American Enterprise Institute and now at the Hudson Institute; and Paul Gregory of the Hoover Institution Russia Summer Workshop, as well as Richard Sousa and Maciej Siekierski of the Hoover Institution Archives, the world’s best place to study the history of communism. All of them provided generous material support for my work at different times and in different ways.

As noted in the introduction, I was helped in translation, logistics, and research by two extraordinary people, Attila Mong in Budapest and Regine Wosnitza in Berlin. Both contributed immeasurably to my understanding of the history of their respective countries, as well as their respective transportation systems, weather patterns, and cuisine. In addition, I was aided in Warsaw at different times by Piotr Paszkowski, Lukasz Krzyzanowski, and Kasia Kazimierczuk. I am extremely grateful to all of my interviewees—“time witnesses,” as they are called in Germany—who are mentioned by name in the list that follows.

Among the many other historians, scholars, and friends who offered advice and suggestions, I’d like to thank, in Poland, Andrzej Bielawski,
Władysław Bułhak, Anna Dzienkiewicz, Anna Fr˛ackiewicz, Piotr Gontarczyk, Stanisław Juchnowicz, Krzysztof Kornacki, Wanda Kościa, Andrzej Krawczyk, Marcin Kula, Józef Mrożek, Andrzej Paczkowski, Ładysław Piasecki, Leszek Sibila, Teresa Starzec, Dariusz Stola, Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Żak, and Marcin Zaremba.

In Hungary, I’d like to thank Margit Balogh, Barbara Bank, Magdolna Baráth, Ferenc Erős, Tibor Fabinyi, Pál Germuska, György Gyarmati, Gábor Hanák, Sándor Horváth, Sándor M. Kiss, Szilvia Köbel, Erzsébet Kozma, Sándor Ladányi, Bea Lukács, Judit Mészáros, Adrienne Molnár, Zorán Muhar, Zoltán Ólmosi, Mária Palasik, István Papp, János Pelle, Iván Pető, Attila Pók, János Rainer, István Rév, Csaba Szabó, Éva Szabó Kovács, Ferenc Tomka, Krisztián Ungváry, Balázs Varga, and Márta Matussné Lendvai in Dunaújváros. Very special thanks to Tamás Stark and especially Csilla Paréj of the Terror Háza Múzeum.

In Germany, I am especially grateful to Jochen Arntz, Jörg Baberowski, Marianne Birthler, Zszusza Breier, Jochen Cerny, Thomas Dahnert, Reiner Eckert, Christoph Eichorn, Roger Engelmann, Eckhart Gillen, Gisela Gneist, Manfred Götemaker, Frank Herold, Günter Höhne, Gunter Holzweißig, Dirk Jungnickel, Anna Kaminsky, Romy Kleiber, Michael Krejsa, Vera Lemke, Andreas Ludwig, Ulrich Mählert, Marko Martin, Peter Pachnicke, Christel Panzig, Ingrid Pietrzynski, Ulrike Poppe, Martin Sabrow, Helke Sander, Johanna Sänger, Dagmar Semmelmann, André Steiner, and Petra Uhlmann.

Finally, I am hugely grateful for help and advice from László Borhi, Stefano Bottoni, Sir Martin Gilbert, Hope Harrison, Karel Kaplan, Mark Kramer, Anita Lackenberger, Norman Naimark, Lady Camilla Panufnik, Nikita Petrov, Tomek Prokop, Timothy Snyder, Yaroslava Romanova, and the late, and very much missed, Alexander Kokurin. For advice as well as superb hospitality, thank you, Antony Beevor, Artemis Cooper, and Andrew Solomon. And, of course, this book would not have been possible at all without my superb editors, Stuart Proffitt and Kris Puopolo, and my wonderfully patient agent, Georges Borchardt.

Karl-Heinz Arnold, Egon Bahr, Ernst Benda, Hans-Walter Bendzko, Klaus Blümner, Elfriede Brüning, Stefan Doernberg, Axel Drieschner, Klaus Eichner, Ulrich Fest, Gerhard Finn, Karl Gass, Gisela Gneist, Bernhard Heisig, Herta Kuhrig, Jürgen Laue, Wolfgang Lehmann, Irina Liebmann, Erich Loest, Andreas Ludwig, Manfred Meier, Hans Modrow, Peter Pachnicke, Alfons Pawlitzki, Gustav Pohl, Klaus Polkehn, Lutz Rackow, Günter Reisch, Werner Rösler, Günter Schabowski, Ulrich Schneider, Gotthold Schramm, Willi Sitte, André Steiner, Hans-Jochen Tschiche, Günter Tschirschwitz

János Boór, László Dalos, Ferenc Gergely, Ágnes Heller, György Hidas, Ferenc Hollai, Elek Horváth, Elekné Horváth (née Júlia Kollár), Tibor Iványi, Sándor Keresztes, Sándor M. Kiss, András Kovács, Sándor Ladányi, Tamás Lossonczy, Judit Mészáros, József Nevezi, Ferenc Pataki, Csaba Skultéty, Ferenc Szabó, Pál Szemere, Zsófia Tevan, Áron Tóbiás, Iván Vitányi

Barbara Barańska, Michał Bauer, Szymon Bojko, Halina Bortnowska, Stefan Bratkowski, Wiesław Chrzanowski, Krystyna Czart-Kosacz, Jacek
Fedorowicz, Andrzej Garlicki, Stefan Grzeszkiewicz, Józef Hen, Alexander Jackowski, Ksawery Jasieński, Stanisław Juchnowicz, Ludwik Jerzy Kern, Czesław Kiszczak, Tadeusz Konwicki, Janina Miziołek, Karol Modzelewski, Jerzy Morawski, Eugeniusz Mroczkowski, Piotr Paszkowski, Krzysztof Pomian, Józef Puciłowski, Antoni Rajkiewicz, Ludwik Rokicki, Marta Stebnicka, Janina Stobniak, Maria Straszewska, Janina Suska-Janakowska, Julia Tazbirowa, Józef Tejchma, Jerzy Turnau, Leopold Unger, Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Zalewski

1.
Interview with Janina Suska-Janakowska, Łódź, October 16, 2007.

2.
Both quotes from Barbara Nowak, “Serving Women and the State: The League of Women in Communist Poland,” dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004.

3.
The word was coined by Giovanni Amendola, an opponent of Mussolini, in 1923. But it was adopted enthusiastically by Mussolini himself in 1925, and used frequently by his main theoretician, Giovanni Gentile. For an overview, see Abbott Gleason,
Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War
(Oxford, 1995), pp. 13–18.

4.
Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile,
Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions
(Rome, 1935).  

5.
For a summary of this entire debate, see Gleason,
Totalitarianism
, as well as Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick’s introduction to
Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared
(Cambridge, 2009).

6.
Hannah Arendt,
The Origins of Totalitarianism
(Cleveland and New York, 1958).

7.
Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy
(Cambridge, 1956).

8.
Available at
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/​doctrine/large/index.php
.

9.
Gregory Bush,
Campaign Speeches of American Presidential Candidates,
1948
–
1984
(New York, 1985), p. 42.

10.
See Geyer and Fitzpatrick,
Beyond
Totalitarianism
.

11.
Quoted in Richard Pipes,
Communism: A History
(New York, 2001), pp. 105–7.

12.
See Michael Halberstam,
Totalitarianism and the Modern Conception of Politics
(New Haven, 2000).

13.
Slavoj Žižek,
Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion
(New York, 2001). Žižek argues that the description of Stalinism as “totalitarian” is nothing more than an attempt to ensure that the “liberal democratic hegemony” endures.

14.
Available at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-peron/rick-santorum-gay-rights_b_1195555.html
;
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1328239165001/the-uss-march-toward-totalitarianism
;
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/25/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20111225
.

15.
Available at
http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/toptt.html
.

16.
See William J. Dobson,
The Dictator’s Learning Curve
(New York, 2012), for a description of the evolution of contemporary dictatorships.

17.
This is Mark Kramer’s brilliant and precise definition: “The term ‘Eastern Europe’ … is partly geographic and partly political, encompassing eight European countries that were under Communist rule from the 1940s through the end of the 1980s … The term does not include the Soviet Union itself, even though the western Soviet republics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and Russia west of the Urals) constituted the easternmost part of Europe. The term does include some countries in what is more properly called ‘Central Europe,’ such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and what in 1949 became known as the German Democratic Republic (or East Germany). The other Communist states in Europe—Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia—are also encompassed by the term ‘Eastern Europe.’ Countries that were never under Communist rule, such as Greece and Finland, are not regarded as part of ‘Eastern Europe,’ even though they might be construed as such from a purely geographic standpoint.” Mark Kramer, “Stalin, Soviet Policy, and the Consolidation of a Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe, 1944–1953,” p. 1, paper delivered at the Freeman Spogli International Institute, April 30, 2010.

18.
This is also Joseph Rothschild’s point in
Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War
II
(New York and Oxford, 2000), especially pp. 75–78.

19.
Pravda
, December 21, 1949.

20.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) Is the Leading and Guiding Force of Soviet Society
(Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1951), p. 46.

21.
See Hugh Seton-Watson,
The New Imperialism: A Background Book
(London, 1961), p. 81.

22.
The classic version of this thesis was formulated by William Appleman Williams in
The Tragedy of American Diplomacy
(New York, 1959). A more recent, more sophisticated version is found, for example, in Wilfried Loth,
Stalin’s Unwanted Child: The Soviet Union, the German Question and the Founding of the
GDR
, trans. Robert F. Hogg (London, 1998).

23.
John Lewis Gaddis,
We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
(Oxford, 1997); Kramer, “Stalin, Soviet Policy, and the Consolidation of a Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe.”

24.
T. V. Volokitina et al., eds.,
Sovietskii Faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope, 1944–1953
, vol. 1, pp. 23–48;
also Norman Naimark, “The Sovietization of Eastern Europe, 1944–1953,” in
The Cambridge History of the Cold War
(Cambridge, 2010).