But none of it worked. Applebaum nails this in her conclusion: "By trying to control every aspect of society, the regimes had turned every aspect of society into a potential form of protest." That opened the way for dissidents to undermine the regime, even where they could not confront it. Poles organised underground scout troops. Czechoslovaks brought philosophy dons from Oxford (including this reviewer's father, J.R. Lucas, and Standpoint contributors such as Roger Scruton) to give seminars in boiler rooms. East German Protestant churches nibbled at their country's militarism. 

Iron Curtain is not a comprehensive history of the Soviet empire's eastern realms. It focuses almost exclusively on only three countries: Poland (Applebaum, a fluent Polish speaker, is married to the present foreign minister, Radek Sikorski); the former East Germany, and Hungary. This is both a strength and a weakness. The three countries differed greatly, as did the Communist tactics used in them. Her archival research and interviews, often with people in the very last years of their lives, paint powerful, exemplary pictures. 

Many readers may yearn for a broader perspective, though. What was happening inside the Soviet Union, where the Communist rulers of Western Ukraine and the Baltic states imposed the full Soviet template with far greater brutality and speed? What about Yugoslavia, where the wartime partisan leader Jozef Broz (Tito) was instituting his own version of Communism, and soon to break with the Soviet camp? What about Romania and Bulgaria? 

But the central point is made magnificently. To rebuild something you have to understand how it was destroyed in the first place, "how its institutions were undermined, how its language was twisted, how its people were manipulated". In the countries portrayed in the book, it is the best explanation — in any language — of what happened to them. For the rest of us, it is a window into a world of lies and evil that we can hardly imagine.