Book description
1989 was a year of revolution: it marked the collapse of communism in
Eastern and Central Europe and and an end to an entire way of life for
millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. Beginning in Hungary, the
retreat from communism picked up speed over the summer when the Poles
won an overwhelming victory in free elections over their pro-Soviet
rulers. In the fall, East Germany and Czechoslovakia achieved freedom
with surprisingly little violence. Only Romania, at the end of the
year, witnessed a savage battle in the capital and the summary
execution of the most notorious of Eastern Europe's dictators, Nicolae Ceausescu.
In The Lost World of Communism, Peter Molloy, producer of the
accompanying BBC series, collects first hand testimony of the people
who lived in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania during the Cold
War era, and reveals an astonishingly rich tapestry of experience that
goes beyond the headlines of spies and surveillance, secret police and
political corruption - in fact, many of the people remember their
lives under communism as 'perfectly ordinary' and even hanker for the
'security' that it offered.
From international figures like Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, via
the shadowy figures of Eastern Europe's intelligence and security
services to its 'ordinary' citizens, the voices collected on Peter
Molloy's book evoke the moods, preoccupations and experiences of a
world of that vanished almost overnight.
Peter Molloy is a multi-award winning producer of history and current
affairs series for the BBC. He is the producer of Lost World of
Communism, and his other credits include CIA, a history of America's
intelligence agency , Plague Wars, about chemical and biological
warfare, Dirty Money, about international financial crime, Tobacco Wars,
Suez, and Clear the Skies, about 9/11. This is his first book. He lives
in London.
