More than 20 years have passed since the Soviet empire collapsed. Telling its history to new generations here and in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe—generations who have at best dim personal memories of this tragic era in world history—has become an important task.
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1945–1956, Anne Applebaum’s most recent history of the Soviet era, was the topic of a book event this week at The Heritage Foundation. The event was hosted by Lee Edwards, Heritage senior fellow and distinguished president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
The questions posed by Applebaum boil down to this: “How did the Soviets do it?”
First of all, Applebaum noted, Joseph Stalin had a firm belief in the revolution he was fomenting. Hard as it is to comprehend today, the Soviets, who took over half of Europe after the Yalta agreement, believed they would be successful. Furthermore, the devastation of countries like Poland and Eastern Germany after World War II was so profound that many of their citizens had little else to believe in.
Applebaum identifies three elements of Soviet totalitarian tactics:
1) Secret police forces were being assembled even before the end of WWII and started identifying potential future enemies to be dispensed with. Anyone with the capacity to organize—from intellectuals to the former resistance—was seen as a threat. Even boy scouts were targets.
2) They grabbed the media (primarily radio) as a means of mass communication and had some success in propagandizing the devastated populations.
3) They undermined and attacked every institution of civil society. Even before the nationalization of industry was complete, the parameters of civil society had shrunk. From sports clubs to leisure time to children’s activities, everything became dominated by the state. Catholic youth leaders became an endangered species.
More with video @ The Foundry
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