The collaborative effort of scholars from Russia and the United States, this book reevaluates the history of postwar Eastern Europe from 1944 to 1949, incorporating information gleaned from newly opened archives in Eastern Europe.

For nearly five decades, the countries of Yugoslavia, Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet zone of Germany were forced to live behind the "iron curtain." Though their experiences under communism differed in sometimes fundamental ways and lasted no longer than a single generation, these nations were characterized by systematic assaults on individual rights and social institutions that profoundly shaped the character of Eastern Europe today.

The emergence of the former People's Democracies from behind the iron curtain has been a wrenching process, but, as this book demonstrates, the beginning of the communist era was just as traumatic as its end.