The GDR was not the Stasiland of grey monotony we imagine
Katja Hoyer evokes the tears and anger – but also the laughter and pride, as citizens raised their children, went on holidays and joked about their politicians
Why is Ukraine honouring the monsters of the past?
Bernard Wasserstein describes the dreadful fate of Jews in Krakowiec in the 1940s – and is astonished that a statue has been erected there to one of their chief persecutors
‘The strangest of lives’: the plight of White Russians in Paris
Fleeing the revolution and forced to scrape a living as taxi drivers and seamstresses, the exiles were generally a melancholy crowd, united by mutual loathing
General Anders to the rescue
Until Poland joined the EU in the 1990s, the biggest single influx of Poles into this country was in the…
How anarchy was responsible for Auschwitz
In September 1939 Britain went to war against Germany, ostensibly in defence of Poland. One big secret that the British…
What went so wrong for Vaclav Havel?
The unforgettable moment a quarter of a century ago when the Berlin Wall came down was the most vivid drama…
It's not just Putin who misses the Soviet empire. President Bush did, too
In the latest – and best – of the books on the end of the USSR, Victor Sebestyen finds that the only good thing about the Soviet empire was the manner of its passing
A Pole’s view of the Czechs. Who cares? You will
When this extraordinary book was about to come out in French four years ago its author was told by his…
Gavrilo Princip – history's ultimate teenage tearaway
Amid the vast tonnage of recent books about the first world war this must be the most unusual — and…
