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

by Anne Applebaum

  58. Dariusz Stola, Kraj Bez Wyjścia? Migracje z Polski 1949–1989 (Warsaw, 2010), pp. 49–53. See also Dariusz Stola, Natlia Aleksiun, and Barbara Polak, “Wszyscy krawcy wyjechali. O ˙Zydach w PRL,” Biuletyn Instytutu Pami˛eci Narodowej 11 (2005), pp. 4–25.

  59. András Kovács, ed., Jews and Jewry in Contemporary Hungary: Results of a Sociological Survey (Institute for Jewish Policy Research, 2004), pp. 49–53.

  60. Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), p. 70. Some 21,000 Jews remained in all of Germany, out of the 600,000 who had lived there before the war.

  61. Stola, Kraj Bez Wyjścia?, p. 50.

  62. Marek Chodakiewicz, After the Holocaust (New York, 2003), pp. 187–99.

  63. Jan Gross, in Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz (New York, 2006), writes that for racially motivated murders of Jews between 1944 and 1946, 1,500 is the “widely accepted” estimate; Marek Chodakiewicz, at the other end of the historiological spectrum, cites in After the Holocaust (pp. 207–16) a lower figure of 400 to 700. Other scholars go as high as 2,500.

  64. Chodakiewicz, After the Holocaust, p. 172; János Pelle, Az utolsó vérvádak (Budapest, 1995), pp. 125–49.

  65. This is a very simplified version of events. For more detail, see Gross, Fear, pp. 11–129; and Bo˙zena Szaynok, Pogrom ˙Zydów w Kielcach. 4. VII 1946 r. (Warsaw, 1992). The remaining disputes about what actually happened are well summarized in Bo˙zena Szaynok, “Spory o pogrom Kielecki,” in Łukasz Kaminski and Jan ˙Zaryn, eds., Wokol Pogromu Kieleckiego, (Warsaw, 2006).

  66. Shimon Redlich, Life in Transit: Jews in Postwar Lodz, 1945–1950 (Boston, 2010), p. 82.

  67. Robert Győri Szabó, A kommunizmus és a zsidóság az 1945 utáni Magyarországon (Budapest, 2009), p. 147.

  68. Martin Mevius, Agents of Moscow: The Hungarian Communist Party and the Origins of Socialist Patriotism 1941–1953 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 94–98.

  69. For two recent accounts, see Szabó, A kommunizmus és a zsidóság az 1945 utáni Magyarországon; and Pelle, Az utolsó vérvádak. In English, Peter Kenez summarizes the events briefly in Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets: The Establishment of the Communist Regime in Hungary, 1944–1948 (New York, 2006), pp. 160–62.

  70. As Chodakiewicz writes in After the Holocaust, “currently available materials have neither confirmed nor denied the possibility that the pogroms were instigated by the secret police” (pp. 171–72).

  71. Anita J. Pra˙zmowska, “The Kielce Pogrom, 1946, and the Emergence of Communist Power in Poland,” Cold War History 2, 2 (January 2002), pp. 101–24.

  72. Szabó, A kommunizmus és a zsidóság az 1945 utáni Magyarországon, p. 147.

  73. Gross, Fear, p. 39.

  74. Heda Kovály, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941–1968 (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), p. 47.

  75. Raphael Patai, The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology (Detroit, 1996), p. 627.

  76. Stola, Aleksiun, and Polak, “Wszyscy krawcy wyjechali,” pp. 11–12. Stola also credits Michael Steinlauf’s Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust (Syracuse, 1997) and R. J. Lifton’s The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life (New York, 1979) in his review of Gross’s Fear in The English Historical Review 122, 499 (2007), pp. 1,460–63.

  77. Described in Anna Cichopek-Gajraj, “Jews, Poles, and Slovaks: A Story of Encounters, 1944–48,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 2008, p. 230.

  78. Gross, Fear, pp. 130–31.

  79. Stola, Kraj Bez Wyjścia?, pp. 50–52.

  80. Ibid., pp. 53–63.

  81. Patai, Jews of Hungary, p. 614.

  82. Bo˙zena Szaynok, Poland–Israel 1944–1968: In the Shadow of the Past and of the Soviet Union (Warsaw, 2012), pp. 110–13; also Szabó, A kommunizmus és a zsidóság az 1945 utáni Magyarországon, pp. 75–88.

  83. Stola, Kraj Bez Wyjścia?, pp. 53–63.

  84. Ibid., p. 481.

  85. Andrzej Paczkowski, “Zydzi w UB: Proba weryfikacji stereotyp,” in Tomasz Szarota, ed., Komunizm: Ideologia, System, Ludzi (Warsaw, 2001).

  86. Quoted in Gross, Fear, p. 224.

  87. HIA, Jakub Berman Collection, folder 1:4.

  88. Mevius, Agents of Moscow, pp. 94–98.

  89. Szabó, A kommunizmus és a zsidóság az 1945 utáni Magyarországon, p. 91.

  90. Herf, Divided Memory, p. 83.

  91. Mevius, Agents of Moscow, p. 184.

  92. Marcin Zaremba, Komunizm, Legitimizacja, Nacjonalizm (Warsaw, 2005), p. 140.

  93. T. V. Volokitina et al., eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiskikh arkhivov 1944–1953, vol. I (Moscow and Novosibirsk, 1997), pp. 937–43. In 1968, Gomułka did actually purge many of the remaining Jews from the Polish communist party and expelled many of them from the country.

  7. YOUTH

  1. Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, trans. C. M. Woodhouse (Chicago, 1958), p. 408.

  2. HIA, Stefan J˛edrychowski Collection, Box 4, folder 18.

  3. AAN, Ministerstwo Oswiaty/686, pp. 1–2.

  4. Robert Service, Spies and Commissars (London, 2011), p. 232.

  5. Leopold Tyrmand, Dziennik 1954 (London, 1980), pp. 47–49.

  6. Marek Gaszyński, Fruwa Twoja Marynara (Warsaw, 2009), pp. 12–14.

  7. Tyrmand, Dziennik 1954, pp. 47–49.

  8. There are some who dislike the notion. The eminent Russia scholar Stephen Kotkin says the expression “civil society” is “catnip to scholars, pundits and foreign aid donors … a vague, seemingly all-purpose collective social actor.” Though in writing about Central Europe he needs to describe the phenomenon anyway, and thus uses another term (“niches”) for the same thing. See Anne Applebaum, “1989 and All That,” Slate, November 9, 2009.

  9. V. I. Lenin, quoted in The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) Is the Leading and Guiding Force of Soviet Society (Moscow, 1951), p. 28.

  10. Dmitri Likachev, “Arrest,” in Anne Applebaum, ed., Gulag Voices (New Haven, 2010), pp. 1–12.

  11. Stuart Finkel, On the Ideological Front: The Russian Intelligentsia and the Making of the Soviet Public Sphere (New Haven, 2007), pp. 1–13.

  12. Ellen Ueberschär, Junge Gemeinde im Konflikt: Evangelische Jugendarbeit in SBZ und DDR 1945–1961 (Stuttgart, 2003), p. 62.

  13. Alan Nothnagle, Building the East Germany Myth (Ann Arbor, 1999), pp. 103–4.

  14. An excellent account of the Lysenko versus Darwin debate in the USSR can be found in Peter Pringle, The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov (New York, 2008).

  15. Ulrich Mählert, Die Freie Deutsche Jugend 1945–1949 (Paderborn, 1995), pp. 22–45.

  16. Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, pp. 299–300.

  17. Mählert, Freie Deutsche Jugend, pp. 44–45.

  18. Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, pp. 318–26.

  19. DRA, F201-00-00/0004 (Büro des Intendanten Geschäftsunterlagen, 1945–1950), pp. 284–87.

  20. Mählert, Freie Deutsche Jugend, pp. 72–73.

  21. Stewart Thomson, in collaboration with Robert Bialek, The Bialek Affair (London, 1955), pp. 68–69.

  22. Intervew with Ernst Benda, Berlin, May 20, 2008.

  23. Manfred Klein, Jugend zwischen den Diktaturen: 1945–1956 (Mainz, 1968), pp. 20–35.

  24. Thomson with Bialek, Bialek Affair, pp. 76–78.

  25. Klein, Jugend zwischen den Diktaturen, p. 34.

  26. SAPMO-BA, DY24/2000, p. 13.

  27. Ibid., p. 164.

  28. Mählert, Freie Deutsche Jugend, pp. 114–17; SAPMO-BA, DY24/2000, pp. 36–41.

  29. Klein, Jugend zwischen den Diktaturen, p. 67.

  30. Ueberschär, Junge Gemeinde im Konflikt, p. 65.

  31. Klein, Jugend zwischen den Diktaturen, pp. 73–74.

  32. V. V. Zakharov, SVAG I Religioznie Konfesii Sovetskoi Zoni Okkupatsii Germanii, 1945–1949: Sbornik Dokumentov, pp. 244–47.

  33. Ibid., pp. 248–49.

  34. DRA, F201-00-00/0004 (Bü
ro des Intendanten Geschäftsunterlagen, 1945–1950), pp. 284–87.

  35. Szabad Nép, June 19, 1946.

  36. Ibid., June 20, 1946.

  37. Ibid., June 22, 1946.

  38. Ibid., June 23, 1946.

  39. Ferenc Nagy, Küzdelem a vassfüggöny mögött (Budapest, 1990), pp. 314–16.

  40. Imre Kovács, Magyarország megszállása (Budapest, 1990), p. 294; József Mindszenty, Emlékirataim (Budapest, 1989), p. 134; Margit Balogh, A Kalot és a katolikus társadalompolitika 1935–1946 (Budapest, 1998), pp. 198–201.

  41. Peter Kenez describes it as “nationalist” and “anti-Semitic” in Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets: The Establishment of the Communist Regime in Hungary, 1944–1948 (New York, 2006), p. 165.

  42. Balogh, A Kalot és a katolikus társadalompolitika, p. 166.

  43. PIL, 286/31, pp. 7–11.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Ibid., pp. 13–15.

  47. Ibid., p. 172.

  48. Balogh, A Kalot és a katolikus társadalompolitika, p. 167.

  49. Ibid., pp. 174–75.

  50. Ibid., pp. 180–83.

  51. Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets, p. 279.

  52. Szabad Nép: July 16, 1946, p. 3; July 18, 1946, p. 1; July 19, 1946, p. 1; July 20, 1946, p. 3; July 24, 1946, p. 3. See also László Borhi, Hungary in the Cold War, 1945–1956: Between the United States and the Soviet Union (New York and Budapest, 2004), pp. 94–95; Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets, pp. 279–80.

  53. Balogh, A Kalot és a katolikus társadalompolitika, pp. 206–9.

  54. Henryk Saint Glass, Harcerstwo jako czynnik odrodzenia Narodowego (Warsaw and Plock, 1924), pp. 15–18.

  55. Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw (New York, 2004), pp. 177–78 and 496; also Julian Kwiek, Zwi˛azek Harcerstwa Polskiego w Latach 1944–1950. Powstanie, rozwój, likwidacja (Toruń, 1995), pp. 5–6.

  56. Karta, Memoir Archives, Bronisław Mazurek, I/531.

  57. M. Kowalik, Harcerstwo w Stalowej Woli 1938–1981. Zapiski kronikarskie (Warsaw, 1981).

  58. Karta, Memoir Archives, Janusz Zawisza-Hrybacz, II/1730.

  59. Interview with Maria Straszewska, Warsaw, May 26, 2008.

  60. Kwiek, Zwi˛azek Harcerstwa Polskiego w Latach, pp. 8–12.

  61. Ludwik Stanisław Szuba, Harcerstwo na Pomorzu i Kujawach w Latach 1945–1950 (Bydgoszcz, 2006), p. 35.

  62. Kwiek, Zwi˛azek Harcerstwa Polskiego w Latach, p. 47.

  63. Ibid., pp. 66–67.

  64. Interview with Julia Tazbirowa, Warsaw, May 20, 2009.

  65. K. Persak, Odrodzenia harcerstwo w 1956 roku (Warsaw, 1996), pp. 60–62; Kwiek, Zwi˛azek Harcerstwa Polskiego w Latach, p. 123.

  66. Interview with Straszewska.

  67. An “underground” Scouting movement was founded in the late 1950s. It remained in place until 1989.

  68. AAN, Ministerstwo Oswiaty, 592.

  69. Jan ˙Zaryn, Dzieje Kosciola Katolickiego w Polsce, 1944–1989 (Warsaw, 2003), pp. 119–20.

  70. Ferenc Pataki, A Nékosz-legenda (Budapest, 2005), pp. 179–97.

  71. PIL, 302 1/15, p. 11.

  72. Also titled, in English, The Confrontation (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062995/).

  73. Interview with Iván Vitanyi, Budapest, January 28, 2006.

  74. PIL. 320/1/16, pp. 162–77.

  75. Tibor Huszar, “From Elites to Nomenklatura: The Evolution and Some Characteristics of Institutionalised Cadre Policy in Hungary (1945–1989),” Review of Sociology 11, 2 (2005), pp. 5–73.

  76. Pataki, A Nékosz-legenda, pp. 173–75; and Istvan Papp, “A Nékosz legendája és valósága,” in Mítoszok, legendák, tévhitek a 20. századi magyar történelemről (Budapest, 2005), pp. 309–38.

  77. Dini Metro-Roland, “The Recollections of a Movement: Memory and History of the National Organization of People’s Colleges,” Hungarian Studies 15, 1 (2001), p. 84.

  78. Pataki, A Nékosz-legenda, p. 259.

  79. PIL, 302 1/15; also 867/1/H-168.

  80. Pataki, A Nékosz-legenda, pp. 378–79.

  81. Papp, “A Nékosz legendája és valósága,” p. 335.

  8. RADIO

  1. Interview with Andrzej Zalewski, Warsaw, September 15, 2009.

  2. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, In a Cold Crater: Cultural and Intellectual Life in Berlin, 1945–1948 (Berkeley, 1998), pp. 108–9.

  3. DRA, B202-00-00-06/0617.

  4. Ibid., F201-00-00/0004, pp. 646–50.

  5. Ibid., pp. 427–35.

  6. Peter Strunk, Zensur und Zensoren (Berlin, 1996), pp. 10–18.

  7. Markus Wolf and Anne McElvoy, Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Spymaster (London, 1999), p. 36.

  8. Strunk, Zensur und Zensoren, pp. 10–18.

  9. Schivelbusch, In a Cold Crater, pp. 109–10.

  10. DRA, F201-00-00/0004, p. 554.

  11. Strunk, Zensur und Zensoren, p. 111.

  12. Conversation with Gunter Holzweissig, Berlin, October 1, 2006; conversation with Ingrid Pietrzysnski, Potsdam, October 16, 2006.

  13. Michael Geyer, ed., The Power of Intellectuals in Contemporary Germany (Chicago, 2001), p. 252.

  14. DRA, 201-00-004/001, pp. 1–32.

  15. Ibid., pp. 108-9.

  16. Ibid., B202-00-071/0027.

  17. Ibid., B202-00-03/0002.

  18. Ibid., B202-00-06/40.

  19. Ibid., F201-00-00/0004, pp. 532, 540, 600–15.

  20. Ibid., p. 583.

  21. Ibid., pp. 71–73.

  22. N. Timofeeva et al., eds., Politika SVAG v Oblasti Kulturi, nauki I Obrazovaniya: Tseli, Metody, Rezultaty, 1945–1949 gg, Sbornik Dokumentov, pp. 124–25.

  23. TVP, 85/14 and Stefania Grodzieńska, Już nic nie musz˛e (Lublin, 2000), pp. 34–38.

  24. The archives of the underground newspaper Tygodnik Mazowsze were stored at the Billigs’ apartment after martial law was declared in 1981. Gazeta Wyborcza, December 6, 2006, available at http://wyborcza.pl/1,77023,3777590.html.

  25. Grodzieńska, Już nic nie musz˛e, pp. 34–35.

  26. TVP, 85/2/2.

  27. Order reprinted in Rzeczpospolita, August 15, 1944.

  28. Dziennik Ustaw Rzeczypospolitej Polskie 10 (November 3, 1944); Agnieszka Sowa, “Gadaj˛ace skrzynki,” Polityka 37, 2521 (September 17, 2005), pp. 74–76; interview with Piotr Paszkowski, Warsaw, May 21, 2007.

  29. Tomasz Goban-Klas, The Orchestration of the Media: The Politics of Mass Communications in Communist Poland and the Aftermath (Boulder, 1994), pp. 53–54.

  30. Andrzej Krawczyk, Pierwsza Próba Indoktrynacji: Działalność Ministerstwa Informacji I Propagandy w latach 1944–1947, Dokumenty do dziejow PRL, vol. 7 (Warsaw, 1994), p. 36.

  31. NAC, recording catalogues, available at www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl; also NAC, Dokumentacja programowa Polskiego Radia, 21.02.1945, 9/8, s. 19.

  32. TVP, 85/2/2.

  33. Ibid., 85/2/1.

  34. Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist (London, 1999), pp. 7–9.

  35. TVP, 85/2/2.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Ibid., 85/6/1.

  38. István Vida, “A demokratikus Magyar Rádió megteremtése és a Magyar Központi Híradó Rt. Megalakulása,” in Tanulmányok a Magyar Rádió történetéből 1925–1945 (Budapest, 1975), pp. 239–86; and Béla Lévai, A rádió és a televízió krónikája 1945–1978 (Budapest, 1980), p. 11.

  39. Peter Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets: The Establishment of the Communist Regime in Hungary, 1944–1948 (New York, 2006), p. 89.

  40. Lévai, A rádió és a televízió krónikája, p. 15.

  41. Ibid., p. 12; Vida, “A demokratikus Magyar Rádió,” p. 246.

  42. Jenő Randé and János Sebestyén, Azok a rádiós évtizedek (Budapest, 1995), p. 112.

  43. Interview with Áron Tóbiás, Budapest, May 21, 2009.

  44. Gyula Schöpflin, Szélkiáltó (Budapest, 1985), p. 60.

  45. Vida, “A demokratikus Magyar
Rádió,” pp. 249–51.

  46. Ibid., p. 251.

  47. Lévai, A rádió és a televízió krónikája, pp. 16–26.

  48. László András Palkó, “A Magyar Rádió és az Államvédelmi Hatóság kapcsolata a Rákosi-korszakban,” Valóság (January 2008), pp. 69–77.

  49. Schöpflin, Szélkiáltó, pp. 63–64.

  50. Randé and Sebestyén, Azok a rádiós évtizedek, pp. 110–12.

  9. POLITICS

  1. NA, RG218, Stack 190 2/15/3 CCS/JCS UD47, Box 15, file 94 (courtesy of Antony Beevor).

  2. John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York, 2005), pp. 5–6.

  3. One of these killed the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. See Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Battleground Berlin: Diaries, 1945–1948 (New York, 1990), pp. 86–92.

  4. Quoted in Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948 (Berkeley, 1991), p. 75.

  5. Ivan T. Berend, Central and Eastern Europe 1944–1993 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 30.

  6. Teresa Torańska, Oni: Stalin’s Polish Puppets, trans. Agnieszka Kołakowska (Warsaw, 2004), p. 484.

  7. Hermann Weber, ed., DDR: Dokumente zur Geschichte der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik 1945–1985 (Munich, 1986), pp. 65–66.

  8. Stanisław Mikołajczyk, The Rape of Poland (New York, 1948), p. 100.

  9. Sovietskii Faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope, vol. I (Moscow, 1999), pp. 67–76.

  10. Gaddis, Cold War, p. 100.

  11. T. V. Volokitina et al., eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiskikh arkhivov 1944–1953, vol. I (Moscow and Novosibirsk, 1997), pp. 330–31.

  12. R. J. Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 182–83.