The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism [Paperback]

Tina Rosenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 19, 1996

The Pulitzer Prize-winning look at the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In three newly democratic countries in Eastern Europe (East Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland), communism's former victims and jailers are struggling to make sense of their history - and sometimes rewrite it. In this groundbreaking, stylishly reported book, a journalist travels across the battlefields of memory and asks: Who is guilty? How shall they be punished? And who is qualified to judge them in states where almost every citizen was an accomplice? Seeking the hard answers to these questions, Tina Rosenberg tells of conscience and complicity, courage and optimism. Winner of the National Book Award for Non-fiction.

From Publishers Weekly

MacArthur fellow Rosenberg's National Book Award-winning look at the uneasy transition from communism in eastern Europe.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (March 19, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679744991
• ISBN-13: 978-0679744993
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.8 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #187,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent book, not great, August 1, 2000

By 

"mnery" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism (Paperback)

The Haunted Land tries to answer one simple question, how should the former Soviet countries of Eastern Europe deal with those citizens that actively supported the communist regimes? Are they guilty of anything? Can and should they be punished? Most importantly, is the act of seeking out and punishing people for their political actions simply another face of the totalitarianism that was just overthrown?

The questions raised by the book ARE very important. Unfortunately, although the writing is straightforward and the issues presented are raised clearly, the book is somewhat superficial. The author does not speak ANY Eastern European languages. . . and it shows. All of the "meat" of the book comes from structured interviews where the author, subject, and translator have a discussion. The author does not live in a country for five years, talking with fruit vendors, policemen, street cleaners, and other regular people. Instead, she sets up interviews with specific people that she thinks will be helpful and then grills them.

For a much better treatment of a similar subject, read Lenin's Tomb, by David Remnick. He speaks Russian, he lives in Russia for a while with his wife, and for goodness sakes -- he looks Russian! (there's a picture of him with Boris Yeltsin in the book). You can tell, within fifty pages of each book that Lenin's Tomb was written by someone who was there and lived it, while The Haunted Land reads like a college essay.

The Haunted Land was well written and it has a clear point. Unfortunately, there's not much meat here. If you're interested in the story of Communism and its fall, read Lenin's Tomb.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surveying the Psychological Wasteland of the Former East Blo, July 14, 2003

By 

B. Johnson (Denver) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism (Hardcover)

We stand at a point six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and look across a war torn psychological landscape. A haunted land where emotional wreckage lies strewn across the plains like the rubble of bombed out cities after World War II. Tina Rosenberg attempts to take us into this horrifying scene and examine the damage up close. To look at the savaged emotional architecture of the cold war with a critical eye, and to try to formulate if the building is salvageable, if the old bricks can be used to restore the landscape, or if the entire thing needs to be torn down.
I must admit that I was extremely skeptical of this book by the time I had finished reading the introduction. "How," I asked myself, "does an author who, by her own admission, speaks `only rudimentary German and no eastern European language ' expect to get a truly accurate picture of the society? After all, she's at the mercy of the translators or the ability of others to speak English." As I completed my reading of this very well written and thought provoking book I could not, even with serious effort, shake this initial fear about the book's potential shortcomings. It reads less like a history presenting the facts, and more like a long human interest article in the Sunday newspaper, showing only a glimpse of things through interviews with people; some dissidents, some ordinary informers, others former high ranking officials. Few of the interviews struck me as spontaneous, and most of the participants seemed carefully on their guard to say precisely what they wanted to say, revealing nothing that would shake their own self-image.
But, despite the obvious flaws of the book as a historical thesis, it brings us a very interesting portrait of the real pain that some of the ordinary people whose complacency, or participation, allowed the regimes to exist. As a study of how ordinary people are pulled into participation in, or complacency towards, such totalitarian regimes this book is as valuable to us as Albert Speer's memoirs, Inside the Third Reich.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The painful process of conversion to democracy, November 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism (Paperback)

This was a great read, one of those nonfiction works that goes like a novel; I couldn't put it down. It's divided into three sections which focus on Germany, Poland and (then) Czechoslovakia, and focuses not only on the state systems and structures of regimes, spying agencies, etc., but on the individual perspectives and costs. There's a metric ton of reportage packed into the 400-page book, with a very compelling conclusion Rosenberg writes referencing her other work on Latin America. The transition to democracy has not been smooth in any of the countries Rosenberg reports on. Many critics use the word "moral" in praising the book. I think it is, but not in a didactic way. It won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.