Anne Applebaum Brings Back Totalitarianism

Twenty years have passed since the downfall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its satellites in Eastern and Central Europe.  Most of those countries are now members of the European Union and NATO, and the half century of “Really Existing Socialism” has already been relegated by the region’s young people to the realm of ancient history, the subject of memorials, museums, and school curricula, but of little apparent relevance to their own lives.  Anne Applebaum’s book is an important, if not crucial, reminder of just how devastating those years were.  The history she recounts, though filled with appalling stories of atrocities and mind-numbing cruelty, is also an incredible tale of the resilience of the human spirit.  The key to understanding both of these stories, in Applebaum’s account, is ideology or, to put it another way, the power of ideas.