BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: Across the Borderlands of Europe [Hardcover]

Anne Applebaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 11, 1994

Examines the past and present of the Eastern European borderlands, now emerging from Soviet rule, describing the rich variety of cultures, religions, and national aspirations of the area's inhabitants as they attempt to construct a future based on ancient ancestral legacies.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Traveling the uncertain land between Eastern and Western Europe, Applebaum recounts her three-month journey and the people she meets, typified by a man who was born in Poland, raised in the Soviet Union and now living in Belarus-yet he has never left his village. The territorial borders of many towns in Eastern Europe have been redrawn so often over the centuries that such villages are called kresy, meaning they belong to no one in particular. The American-born Applebaum, who is the foreign editor of the London Spectator and has residences in Poland and England, shows herself as a journalist of sturdy competence, smart and shrewd. She speaks Polish and Russian and is well read in Eastern European history. Applebaum travels from kresy to kresy in dilapidated private autos she hires, although on occasion she must walk; the few hotels are seedy and homes where she is sometimes invited to sleep aren't markedly more comfortable. But she's not deterred; Applebaum's receptiveness encourages borderlanders to tell her the myriad of ways that political partitioning has subjugated their personal lives, cultural traditions and languages. She in turn explains to us the nationalism motivating these newly independent people as they try to redefine their true heritages.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The borderlands west of Russia, in east central Europe, have endured frequent changes of hegemony. Citizens of one village may think of themselves as Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, or Moldovan regardless of where the current borders are drawn, as Applebaum discovered during her travels and interviews. An American journalist now living in London, she spent the years 1988-1991 as a free-lancer in Poland and revisited the area from which her great-grandparents had emigrated. The narrative proceeds from Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea to Odessa on the Black Sea, stopping in large cities and small towns; it combines a bit of history from the Middle Ages with tales of contemporary life without the Soviet Union to portray an eclectic mixture of ethnic identity. The vivid descriptions of another way of life would enhance popular collections.
Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 314 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1st edition (October 11, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679421505
• ISBN-13: 978-0679421504
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,119,129 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must read about little known countries, July 20, 2010

By 

karen mitchell - See all my reviews

This review is from: BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: Across the Borderlands of Europe (Hardcover)

My daughter raved about Applebaum's Gulag so in preparation for an upcoming trip to the Baltics I checked this book out of the library. I can't believe there are only 2 reviews of this book - I could not put it down. Every detail was so intriguing that I am going to track down the other books listed in her "note about sources" to learn more about the fascinating countries she wrote about.

10 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent travelogue/history of a little-known area, October 5, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: Across the Borderlands of Europe (Hardcover)

If you have Eastern European roots, this is a fascinating book. Ms. Applebaum has done a brilliant job of describing life in a region where half a dozen cultures have lived side by side

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars APPLEBAUM TAKES YOU AWAY TO ADVENTURE TO NEW PLACES; ACADEMIC BUT NOT DRY; QUICK FASCINATING READ!!!, September 3, 2010

By 

Forhasta (Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: Across the Borderlands of Europe (Hardcover)

Anne Applebaum, who also wrote Gulag: A History, writes another great work. This one, we agreewas hard to put down. Bookclubs out there... get this book!

Other books on this topic and graet! are:Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939-1947, pricy, but worth it. Also, The Polish Way: A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and Their Culture + Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth + World War II: Behind Closed Doors, works on American systems too.

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