The Haunted Land : Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism

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Summary: Portico Birmingham Magazine
Review: For those wanting something more studied and serious, as a winner of the National Book Award, readers could do much worse than, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts after Communism. Looking at 3 Central European countries-Czech, E. Germany, Poland-after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rosenberg looks at secret police, informers and ordinary citizens and asks after 40 years of Communism, who is guilty? And how do you punish when almost everyone has some blame to shoulder?

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Summary: Good overview of Eastern Europe in the 1990s...
Review: I was not surprised when this book won the Pulitzer. I read it a while back but I have returned to it from time to time for clarification about one point or another.

As I am about one-eighth Polish, I found the section on Poland interesting. My great grandparents fled from the Russians in the middle of the 19th Century, so I am aware of the bad behaviour of the Russians, the Germans, and then the Russians again. How the boundaries of this poor country have been altered over and over. What a dreary, sad, but hopeful people. The saying, "Poland isn't a country, it's an underground conspiracy" is so true. I am happy to read in the papers that things are finally improving slowly.

Ms. Rosenberg contrasts Czechoslovakia on the verge of becoming Slovakia and the Czech Republic, with East Germany now reunited with the West. Her descriptions of the events that led to the very different decisions of these people was lucid and well written and will be a good resource in years to come.

Because she is a journalist, the book is written to reflect the situation extant in the early 1990's. Since she wrote the book, some of the political leaders have changed and various scandals she describes such as the spy incident in Poland have been more or less resolved or disappeared. The book will retain value for those who wish to go back and reflect on what happened.

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Summary: The painful process of conversion to democracy
Review: The Haunted Land tries to answer one simple question, how should the former Soviet countries of Eastern Europe deal with those citizens that actively supported the communist regimes? Are they guilty of anything? Can and should they be punished? Most importantly, is the act of seeking out and punishing people for their political actions simply another face of the totalitarianism that was just overthrown?

The questions raised by the book ARE very important. Unfortunately, although the writing is straightforward and the issues presented are raised clearly, the book is somewhat superficial. The author does not speak ANY Eastern European languages. . . and it shows. All of the "meat" of the book comes from structured interviews where the author, subject, and translator have a discussion. The author does not live in a country for five years, talking with fruit vendors, policemen, street cleaners, and other regular people. Instead, she sets up interviews with specific people that she thinks will be helpful and then grills them.

For a much better treatment of a similar subject, read Lenin's Tomb, by David Remnick. He speaks Russian, he lives in Russia for a while with his wife, and for goodness sakes -- he looks Russian! (there's a picture of him with Boris Yeltsin in the book). You can tell, within fifty pages of each book that Lenin's Tomb was written by someone who was there and lived it, while The Haunted Land reads like a college essay.

The Haunted Land was well written and it has a clear point. Unfortunately, there's not much meat here. If you're interested in the story of Communism and its fall, read Lenin's Tomb.

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Summary: A thoughtful and insightful look at Cold War remains
Review: Tina Rosenberg penetrates to the heart of the matter. She combines a telling of events with the thoughts of the people who were there to experience them. Her portrait of General Jaruzelski left the reader feeling like you could have a grasp on the man. The only face that I could remember of the general was the menacing one given to the public by our media. Ms. Rosenberg does show his motivations and why he reacted that way. She tells of the enormous pressure he was under and the role he is attempting to play today. She doesn't take him off the hook for his actions, though. I would recommend this book heartily to anyone who has said to themselves, I wonder what Eastern Europe is like with the Russians out? It was not as simple as we thought it was going to be. The section about the Czech Rebublic makes that perfectly clear. Lustrace has left many cleansed but others soiled. Tina Rosenberg provides reasons why this part of the world can not be cleansed with one swift stroke.

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Summary: Surveying the Psychological Wasteland of the Former East Blo
Review: We stand at a point six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and look across a war torn psychological landscape. A haunted land where emotional wreckage lies strewn across the plains like the rubble of bombed out cities after World War II. Tina Rosenberg attempts to take us into this horrifying scene and examine the damage up close. To look at the savaged emotional architecture of the cold war with a critical eye, and to try to formulate if the building is salvageable, if the old bricks can be used to restore the landscape, or if the entire thing needs to be torn down.
I must admit that I was extremely skeptical of this book by the time I had finished reading the introduction. "How," I asked myself, "does an author who, by her own admission, speaks `only rudimentary German and no eastern European language ' expect to get a truly accurate picture of the society? After all, she's at the mercy of the translators or the ability of others to speak English." As I completed my reading of this very well written and thought provoking book I could not, even with serious effort, shake this initial fear about the book's potential shortcomings. It reads less like a history presenting the facts, and more like a long human interest article in the Sunday newspaper, showing only a glimpse of things through interviews with people; some dissidents, some ordinary informers, others former high ranking officials. Few of the interviews struck me as spontaneous, and most of the participants seemed carefully on their guard to say precisely what they wanted to say, revealing nothing that would shake their own self-image.
But, despite the obvious flaws of the book as a historical thesis, it brings us a very interesting portrait of the real pain that some of the ordinary people whose complacency, or participation, allowed the regimes to exist. As a study of how ordinary people are pulled into participation in, or complacency towards, such totalitarian regimes this book is as valuable to us as Albert Speer's memoirs, Inside the Third Reich.

Rating:
Summary: Surveying the Psychological Wasteland of the Former East Blo
Review: We stand at a point six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and look across a war torn psychological landscape. A haunted land where emotional wreckage lies strewn across the plains like the rubble of bombed out cities after World War II. Tina Rosenberg attempts to take us into this horrifying scene and examine the damage up close. To look at the savaged emotional architecture of the cold war with a critical eye, and to try to formulate if the building is salvageable, if the old bricks can be used to restore the landscape, or if the entire thing needs to be torn down.
I must admit that I was extremely skeptical of this book by the time I had finished reading the introduction. "How," I asked myself, "does an author who, by her own admission, speaks 'only rudimentary German and no eastern European language ' expect to get a truly accurate picture of the society? After all, she's at the mercy of the translators or the ability of others to speak English." As I completed my reading of this very well written and thought provoking book I could not, even with serious effort, shake this initial fear about the book's potential shortcomings. It reads less like a history presenting the facts, and more like a long human interest article in the Sunday newspaper, showing only a glimpse of things through interviews with people; some dissidents, some ordinary informers, others former high ranking officials. Few of the interviews struck me as spontaneous, and most of the participants seemed carefully on their guard to say precisely what they wanted to say, revealing nothing that would shake their own self-image.
But, despite the obvious flaws of the book as a historical thesis, it brings us a very interesting portrait of the real pain that some of the ordinary people whose complacency, or participation, allowed the regimes to exist. As a study of how ordinary people are pulled into participation in, or complacency towards, such totalitarian regimes this book is as valuable to us as Albert Speer's memoirs, Inside the Third Reich.