read The Haunted Land Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism epub ç Paperback

kindle The Haunted Land Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism

read The Haunted Land Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism epub ç Paperback Ð [PDF / Epub] ☄ The Haunted Land Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism By Tina Rosenberg – Gym-apparel.co.uk Rosenberg's previous book Children of Cain dealt with the change from dictatorship to democracy in SouRosenberg's previous book Children of Cain dealt with the change from dictatorship to democracy in South America Here she approaches a similar theme in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism telling a series of riveting human stories to il When Communism came crashing down alongside the Iron Curtain at the turn of the 1990s it left a changed Eastern Europe to sift through the debris Former Soviet Bloc countries found themselves struggling to come to terms with the events of the last fifty years and to establish new systems in the shadow of the oldThis is the conflict Tina Rosenberg portrays in The Haunted Land A journalistic veteran of the South American dictatorships Rosenberg travels to Czechoslovakia Poland and the former East Germany and tries to uncover and analyze the uestions and problems they face after Communism Czechoslovakia is attempting to cleanse itself of those who “collaborated” with the Communists a task that proves difficult in a society in which complicity can mean being not evil but merely unwilling to risk one’s life speaking out In East Germany Rosenberg covers the trial of the last Berlin Wall guards to shoot someone attempting to cross the border between East and West Germany an act that was legal even demanded at the time And in Poland she follows the course of the man who instituted martial law in that country did he condemn Poland or save it?Rosenberg’s approach is to seek out issues at the personal level whether that person be a former high official an ex resistance fighter or an everyday citizen who may or may not have been co opted as a secret police informant She tells their stories and through them the stories of their countries Though Rosenberg no doubt spent countless hours interviewing her subjects the book rarely reads like an interview; Rosenberg’s storytelling has character plot suspense and sheer narrative panache than many novelsIf the focus on the personal provides a uniue perspective it may also give rise to one of the book’s shortcomings; viz the “big picture” is sometimes ignored in the heady rush of the particular Readers with no background in the convulsive politics of the Cold War era may occasionally find themselves wanting for context This deficiency never really impedes the force of the reporting but some information from another source might be ideal I read the book along with sections of Robert Paxton’s Europe in the Twentieth Century a textbook that neatly covers the broader political sweepMy other ualm with the book is that by now it begs a seuel Published in 1995 I wonder how these countries have changed thirteen years on; there might at least be another edition with an afterword to update usThat being said the broad uestions that Rosenberg raises are the important ones and they have not changed In the orbit of a totalitarian system both during and after it we find challenged our ideas of personal responsibility freedom and legality What is the difference Rosenberg asks between trying Nazi soldiers for crimes that didn’t exist at the time and trying East German border guards for crimes that didn’t exist at the time? What do we do when we are asking who we can blame and the answer may be “no one in particular” may even be “ourselves”?Rosenberg is singularly elouent in discussing such uestions She has her own opinions and is not afraid to voice them but at the same time she leaves plenty of room for the reader to make his own judgments The comments she does offer are articulate and insightful Her answers may or may not satisfy every reader but they will provoke thought and they should What Rosenberg has found in the problems of post Communist Europe is a microcosm of problems everywhere stunningly incisive particular examples of the most pressing universal dilemmas She describes the former East Bloc as a “haunted land” and we discover perhaps to our discomfort that the ghosts of this place are the ghosts of us all

mobi ß The Haunted Land Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism ☆ Tina Rosenberg

Ow level agents accused of crimes that were not crimes when committed; and to high officials who now run things just like before She convincingly suggests that the best antidote to Communism may be not revenge but tolerance and the rule of law Communism has left behind a poisonous residue The people had forty five years to accustom themselves to governments endowed with arbitrary and absolute power No institutions existed that could check power of the Party It has left citizens unaccustomed to searching for their own values and morals comfortable with simply accepting those supplied ready made by the state Unchecked power is the evil in communism what transforms it from Pegasus to Gorgon The opposite of communism is not anti communism which at times resembles it greatly The opposite is tolerance and the rule of law

Tina Rosenberg ☆ The Haunted Land Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism text

The Haunted Land Facing Europe's Ghosts After CommunismLuminate the paradox that rabid anti Communism at times resembles Communism In the Czech Republic Slovakia Poland and the former East Germany she talks to erstwhile dissidents now victimized because they are named in old police registers; to l An extensively researched concrete account of the difficulties in the transition from communism in Czechoslavakia Poland and the post Berlin Wall East and West Germany in terms of moral terms specifically how difficult it is to hold those accountable when the mark of a totalitarian regime relies on mass complicity and how this difficulty for justice and democracy and accountability can be counterproductive even to the point of allowing the original sins to return