The Iron Curtain

This history examines how Communist parties, backed by the Soviet army, took and held power in Eastern Europe between the last years of the Second World War and 1956. Applebaum follows Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and neighboring states through land reform, rigged elections, secret police, show trials, propaganda, and the closing of borders, using archives and the testimony of both officials and ordinary people. She treats the Church, the countryside, and youth movements as fields of control. The book is a political and social history of Stalinization, not a biography of Stalin and not a military history of 1945.

Bound in cream textured paper printed and blocked in blue red and black with a design by Jamie Keenan. Die-cut slipcase printed with a geometric pattern in varying shades of grey.