The Patriots' Revolution: How Eastern Europe Toppled Communism and Won Its Freedom - Softcover

Frankland, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566630355 ISBN 13: 9781566630351

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, 1993

Synopsis

Beginning in apparently controlled fashion in Hungary in 1989, the retreat of communism picked up speed that summer when Poles won an overwhelming victory over their pro-Soviet rulers in free elections. East Germany and Czechoslovakia achieved freedom in the fall, with less violence than anyone believed possible. Only Romania, at the end of the year, witnessed a savage battle and the hurried execution of the worst of the eastern European dictators, Nicolae Ceausescu. In The Patriots' Revolution Mark Frankland, who reported on these dramatic events for the London Observer, describes how the once powerful communist system crumbled with little or no resistance in the face of demonstrators armed only with candles and slogans of protest. Drawing on more than thirty years' experience in Eastern Europe, Mr. Frankland re-creates what communism meant for Eastern Europeans and thus reveals the reasons for its breathtakingly rapid disappearance. Evoking the mood and preoccupations of these countries in the year of revolution, his colorful book allows the reader to relive one of the most extraordinary episodes in the history of the 20th century and provides the background for a better understanding of the new Eastern Europe.

About this title

About the Author:

Twice winner of the British Press Awards prize for foreign reporting, Mark Frankland has written for the London Observer since 1962. His other books include Khrushchev: A Political Biography and The Sixth Continent: Russia and Gorbachev.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A whirlwind tour of Communist Europe during the last year of Communism, narrated with insight and restraint by English journalist and novelist Frankland (Richard Robertovich, 1988; Khrushchev, 1967). ``The tragedy of East Europe,'' according to Frankland, ``was that there were decent men among those who imposed Communism, and that it took so long for them to understand that they had taken a wrong turning to the promised land.'' Such understanding was bought at a high price: According to the author, ruined economies, ravaged landscapes, widespread disease, and chronic despair seem to be the only legacies of the old regimes now that the statues have come down and the streets have been renamed. Frankland moves through the region country by country, but he is intelligent enough to make generalizations in each case and weave these narrative threads into a coherent history whose roots go back much farther than the 50 years it can officially claim. The fact that Communism in Eastern Europe was a foreign imposition is not really Frankland's point- -although that is made abundantly clear. He is more concerned simply to let the characters of this weird drama speak their own lines--such as Alexander Dubcek, who, despite his narrow brush with Brezhnev's gallows, could swear in 1989 that he would never hate the Soviets or forsake Marxism (``because I have experienced the joy aroused by the completion of a hydroelectric power station''); or the Romanian woman imprisoned for inducing an abortion, who could vow with equal passion never to give birth ``as long as he [Ceausescu] is still alive.'' The strength of Frankland's approach is that he forces nothing, idealizes no one, and intrudes hardly at all: instead, he offers a straightforward account of a monumental political upheaval, told from the point of view of everyone he met. A superlative exposition, thorough and honest. Frankland conveys the real tragedy enveloping Eastern Europe without closing his eyes or stumbling over the contradictions. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 1566630355
• ISBN 13: 9781566630351
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 383