Tear Down The Iron Curtains

Author : Mark Kramer,Vit Smetana
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 583 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2013-11-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9780739181867

Get Book

Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain by Mark Kramer,Vit Smetana Pdf

The Cold War began in Europe in the mid-1940s and ended there in 1989. Notions of a “global Cold War” are useful in describing the wide impact and scope of the East-West divide after World War II, but first and foremost the Cold War was about the standoff in Europe. The Soviet Union established a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe in the mid-1940s that later became institutionalized in the Warsaw Pact, an organization that was offset by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led by the United States. The fundamental division of Europe persisted for forty years, coming to an end only when Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe dissolved. Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945–1989, edited by Mark Kramer and Vít Smetana, consists of cutting-edge essays by distinguished experts who discuss the Cold War in Europe from beginning to end, with a particular focus on the countries that were behind the iron curtain. The contributors take account of structural conditions that helped generate the Cold War schism in Europe, but they also ascribe agency to local actors as well as to the superpowers. The chapters dealing with the end of the Cold War in Europe explain not only why it ended but also why the events leading to that outcome occurred almost entirely peacefully.

Author : Jaroslav Svelch
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2023-09-19
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9780262549288

Get Book

Gaming the Iron Curtain by Jaroslav Svelch Pdf

How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Aside from the exceptional history of Tetris, very little is known about gaming culture behind the Iron Curtain. But despite the scarcity of home computers and the absence of hardware and software markets, Czechoslovakia hosted a remarkably active DIY microcomputer scene in the 1980s, producing more than two hundred games that were by turns creative, inventive, and politically subversive. In Gaming the Iron Curtain, Jaroslav Švelch offers the first social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the first book-length treatment of computer gaming in any country of the Soviet bloc. Švelch describes how amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Sheltered in state-supported computer clubs, local programmers fashioned games into a medium of expression that, unlike television or the press, was neither regulated nor censored. In the final years of Communist rule, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to make activist games about current political events, anticipating trends observed decades later in independent or experimental titles. Drawing from extensive interviews as well as political, economic, and social history, Gaming the Iron Curtain tells a compelling tale of gaming the system, introducing us to individuals who used their ingenuity to be active, be creative, and be heard.

Author : Anne Applebaum
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 803 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2012-10-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780385536431

Get Book

Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum Pdf

In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Dorrance Publishing
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2024-06-11
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9781434975485

Get Book

Behind the Iron Curtain: Tears in the Perfect Hockey "GULAG" by Anonim Pdf

Author : Orsolya Cseh
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 62 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2023-08-30
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9783710895357

Get Book

Tales from Behind the Iron Curtain. Life is a Story - story.one by Orsolya Cseh Pdf

My family originates from Romania, where they spent the chaotic decades of the 20th century as members of the largest Hungarian minority. During the darkest years, the feared dictator, Nicolae Ceauescu governed socialist Romania, where people were merely striving to survive. But what was happening beyond the Iron Curtain? These twelve tales of mine, based on true stories, convey this message. "Then the Wall fell, holes were shot into the rotten heart of the dictatorships, but in my youth, the shadow of the Eastern Bloc still bared its iron fangs at me."

Author : Will Bunch
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2009-02-03
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1416597727

Get Book

Tear Down This Myth by Will Bunch Pdf

In this provocative new book, award-winning political journalist Will Bunch unravels the story of how a right-wing cabal hijacked the mixed legacy of Ronald Reagan, a personally popular but hugely divisive 1980s president, and turned him into a bronze icon to revive their fading ideology. They succeeded to the point where all the GOP candidates for president in 2008 scurried to claim his mantle, no matter how preposterous the fit. With clear eyes and an ever-present wit, Bunch reveals the truth about the Ronald Reagan legacy, including the following: Despite the idolatry of the last fifteen years, Reagan's average popularity as president was only, well, average, lower than that of a half-dozen modern presidents. More important, while he was in office, a majority of Americans opposed most of his policies and by 1988 felt strongly that the nation was on the wrong track. Reagan's 1981 tax cut, weighted heavily toward the rich, did not cause the economic recovery of the 1980s. It was fueled instead by dropping oil prices, the normal business cycle, and the tight fiscal policies of the chairman of the Federal Reserve appointed by Jimmy Carter. Reagan's tax cut did, however, help usher in the deregulated modern era of CEO and Wall Street greed. Most historians agree that Reagan's waste-ridden military buildup didn't actually "win the Cold War." And Reagan mythmakers ignore his real contributions -- his willingness to talk to his Soviet adversaries, his genuine desire to eliminate nuclear weapons, and the surprising role of a "liberal" Hollywood-produced TV movie. George H. W. Bush's and Bill Clinton's rolling back of Reaganomics during the 1990s spurred a decade of peace and prosperity as well as the reactionary campaign to pump up the myth of Ronald Reagan and restore right-wing hegemony over Washington. This effort has led to war, bankrupt energy policies, and coming generations of debt. With masterful insight, Bunch exposes this dangerous effort to reshape America's future by rewriting its past. As the Obama administration charts its course, he argues, it should do so unencumbered by the dead weight of misplaced and unearned reverence.

Author : Dele Ajaja
Publisher : iUniverse
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2007-12
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9780595470822

Get Book

Tear Down the Iron Curtains by Dele Ajaja Pdf

It is not a tension-producing missive every time a Blackman writes Ku Klux Klan.Tear Down the Iron Curtains is a unique and necessary attempt by an individual to reconcile races, cultures, faiths, and groups. Mankind began the 21st century with elevated cultural, religious, and gang tensions. Suspicion among peoples with diverse ways of life has risen to an all-time high since the past decade. Terrorism is now a borderless phenomenon that haunts every human being. The menace of gangs is not shipping out of our cities, and erstwhile nonviolent neighborhoods are becoming restive. Should the peace-loving majority of the people around the world submit to these undesirable trends? More than ever, the conscientious ones among us, regardless of their races, colors, religions, and groups need to speak up against intolerance. The world would lose its body, spirit, and soul to the wicked if fine men, women and children keep mute when it matters. The momentous letter to KKK is a deliberate effort to reach out to diverse races, cultures, religions, and groups. Dele Ajaja engages his personal experiences to advocate tolerance. Mankind has no healthier option than fashioning a mutual civilization that curtails the intolerance of man by man.

Author : Patrick Wright
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 507 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199239689

Get Book

Iron Curtain by Patrick Wright Pdf

'From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. . .' With these words Winston Churchill famously warned the world in a now legendary speech given in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946. Launched as an evocative metaphor, the 'Iron Curtain' quickly became a brutal reality in the Cold War between Capitalist West and Communist East. Not surprisingly, for many years, people on both sides of the division have assumed that the story of the Iron Curtain began with Churchill's 1946 speech.In this fascinating investigation, Patrick Wright shows that this was decidedly not the case. Starting with its original use to describe an anti-fire device fitted into theatres, Iron Curtain tells the story of how the term evolved into such a powerful metaphor and the myriad ways in which it shapedthe world for decades before the onset of the Cold War. Along the way, it offers fascinating perspectives on a rich array of historical characters and developments, from the lofty aspirations and disappointed fate of early twentieth century internationalists, through the topsy-turvy experiences of the first travellers to Soviet Russia, to thetheatricalization of modern politics and international relations. And, as Wright poignantly suggests, the term captures a particular way of thinking about the world that long pre-dates the Cold War - and did not disappear with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Author : Peter I. Barta
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 159 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2013-04-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781135920487

Get Book

The Fall of the Iron Curtain and the Culture of Europe by Peter I. Barta Pdf

The end of communism in Europe has tended to be discussed mainly in the context of political science and history. This book, in contrast, assesses the cultural consequences for Europe of the disappearance of the Soviet bloc. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, the book examines the new narratives about national, individual and European identities that have emerged in literature, theatre and other cultural media, investigates the impact of the re-unification of the continent on the mental landscape of Western Europe as well as Eastern Europe and Russia, and explores the new borders in the form of divisive nationalism that have reappeared since the disappearance of the Iron Curtain.

Author : Norman M. Naimark
Publisher : Belknap Press
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674238770

Get Book

Stalin and the Fate of Europe by Norman M. Naimark Pdf

It can seem as though the Cold War division of Europe was inevitable. But Stalin was more open to a settlement on the continent than is assumed. In this powerful reassessment of the postwar order, Norman Naimark returns to the four years after WWII to illuminate European leaders' efforts to secure national sovereignty amid dominating powers.

Author : Kate A. Baldwin
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2002-10-17
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780822383833

Get Book

Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain by Kate A. Baldwin Pdf

Examining the significant influence of the Soviet Union on the work of four major African American authors—and on twentieth-century American debates about race—Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain remaps black modernism, revealing the importance of the Soviet experience in the formation of a black transnationalism. Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Claude McKay, and Paul Robeson each lived or traveled extensively in the Soviet Union between the 1920s and the 1960s, and each reflected on Communism and Soviet life in works that have been largely unavailable, overlooked, or understudied. Kate A. Baldwin takes up these writings, as well as considerable material from Soviet sources—including articles in Pravda and Ogonek, political cartoons, Russian translations of unpublished manuscripts now lost, and mistranslations of major texts—to consider how these writers influenced and were influenced by both Soviet and American culture. Her work demonstrates how the construction of a new Soviet citizen attracted African Americans to the Soviet Union, where they could explore a national identity putatively free of class, gender, and racial biases. While Hughes and McKay later renounced their affiliations with the Soviet Union, Baldwin shows how, in different ways, both Hughes and McKay, as well as Du Bois and Robeson, used their encounters with the U. S. S. R. and Soviet models to rethink the exclusionary practices of citizenship and national belonging in the United States, and to move toward an internationalism that was a dynamic mix of antiracism, anticolonialism, social democracy, and international socialism. Recovering what Baldwin terms the "Soviet archive of Black America," this book forces a rereading of some of the most important African American writers and of the transnational circuits of black modernism.

Author : Silvia Scatena,Dietrich Sagert
Publisher : V&R Unipress
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2023-12-04
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783847016267

Get Book

Through the Iron Curtain by Silvia Scatena,Dietrich Sagert Pdf

The history of the intertwined relationships woven by the Taizé Community amongst Christians of Eastern European countries in the second half of the last century has not yet been written. Yet it is a fundamental chapter for understanding the unique international influence of the community. The encounter with the different faces of a Christian youth beyond the Iron Curtain, who in Taizé had their first experience of a unified European space, was to become one of the main directions of the community's effort from the early 1960s. The contributions of this volume intend to throw a first light on this story, relying on a completely unpublished documentation and on the testimony of many protagonists involved in the construction of this unique continental and ecumenical network.

Author : Judy Colyer Postley,Jean Bauer Fisler
Publisher : iUniverse
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2002-12
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780595257683

Get Book

Behind the Iron Curtain by Judy Colyer Postley,Jean Bauer Fisler Pdf

In 1947, two adventurous college friends were among the first tourists to travel to Eastern Europe after WWII. These are some of their stories, as they wrote them, when they returned.

Author : Jim Willis
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 380 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2013-01-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9798216070757

Get Book

Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain by Jim Willis Pdf

This compelling book describes how everyday people courageously survived under repressive Communist regimes until the voices and actions of rebellious individuals resulted in the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe. Part of Greenwood's Daily Life through History series, Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain enables today's generations to understand what it was like for those living in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, particularly the period from 1961 to 1989, the era during which these people-East Germans in particular-lived in the imposing shadow of the Berlin Wall. An introductory chapter discusses the Russian Revolution, the end of World War II, and the establishment of the Socialist state, clarifying the reasons for the construction of the Berlin Wall. Many historical anecdotes bring these past experiences to life, covering all aspects of life behind the Iron Curtain, including separation of families and the effects on family life, diet, rationing, media, clothing and trends, strict travel restrictions, defection attempts, and the evolving political climate. The final chapter describes Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall and the slow assimilation of East into West, and examines Europe after Communism.

Author : Bowen Greenwood
Publisher : Bowen Greenwood
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2024-06-11
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

Get Book

Iron Curtain by Bowen Greenwood Pdf

"Drop the charges against Ram Castro, or we will keep killing." The last honest judge in Hunter, Montana is gunned down in cold blood. The killer has journalists and cops next on his list. And the Hunter Post gets a manifesto in their email with that simple warning. Crime reporter Sherman Iron has covered the Sureste drug cartel for years. He’s lost countless people he cared about to the heartless meth trade that’s turning his community into a war zone. Finally putting the cartel’s kingpin Castro in jail cost him almost everything. He’s not going to let the man go without a fight. The question isn’t whether more lives will be lost, it’s whether Iron or anyone he loves will survive. Everything he holds dear will be at risk. Every value in which he believes will be tested. In an apocalyptic showdown between a murderous drug dealer and a simple man trying to tell the truth, the streets of Hunter will run red with blood. Sherman Iron and Ram Castro collide in a final battle for the soul of the town, and the cost of survival may be higher than Iron can bear.