A riveting oral history of daily life behind the Iron Curtain – to tie in with a 3 x 60 documentary series on BBC2.

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 Europes 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 Europes intelligence and security services to its ordinary citizens, the voices collected on Peter Molloys book evoke the moods, preoccupations and experiences of a world of that vanished almost overnight.

The end of communism in Europe has tended to be discussed mainly in the context of political science and history. This book, in contrast, assesses the cultural consequences for Europe of the disappearance of the Soviet bloc. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, the book examines the new narratives about national, individual and European identities that have emerged in literature, theatre and other cultural media, investigates the impact on the mental landscape of Western Europe as well as Eastern Europe and Russia, and explores the new borders in the form of divisive nationalism that have reappeared since the disappearance of the Iron Curtain.

A riveting oral history of daily life behind the Iron Curtain – to tie in with a 3 x 60 documentary series on BBC2.

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 Europes 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 Europes intelligence and security services to its ordinary citizens, the voices collected on Peter Molloys book evoke the moods, preoccupations and experiences of a world of that vanished almost overnight.