Lin and East Europe

I want to clarify, before I start, that in no way did I dislike Tina Rosenberg’s The Haunted Land. The book, rather than collecting events that lead to the fall of the wall, attempt to gather a history to be collected on how citizens survived through Communism, and how they plan to tackle the future.

Rosenberg argues, as most of us have heard before, that history is written by the victors. Yet the complicated part with Eastern European Communism is deciding who the victors were in a region seemingly filled with docile citizens changing their stories with political popularity. She attempts to interview prominent figures in three different regions (Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Germany) to discern how each one might change their views of the revolution as time passes.

My criticism is this: not enough time has passed. I initially found it rich that Rosenberg attempted to garner how history would be written only a couple of years after the fall of the wall. The book is published in 1995, meaning much of the chaos and uncertainty she alludes to could be resolved. Of course a country would spend half of a decade pointing fingers and scrambling to piece back together a union. I can only imagine how transitioning from communism to democracy could be difficult, both for citizens and for governments. Yet Rosenberg takes a critical approach to these people, often insisting they contradict themselves and change their stories. Her conclusion being, of course, that history is unreliable and biased.

Yet I began to realize Rosenberg writing this so soon after the revolution of 1989 was actually what makes it so useful. If I attempted to write this book now, 25 years later, not only would I lose direct access to as many primary sources, I would find a rehearsed narrative. Rosenberg’s book is less about writing the history of the fall of Eastern Europe, where I think several other books have already achieved. Rather, her book is an examination on how history is made. Whether her assertions about Eastern Europe politics and opinions on the Stasi files hold up today are irrelevant. It is more incredible to see history unfolding, year by year, to form into what anyone can read today.

Rosenberg’s book had to be written so soon after the revolution, because it is the closest thing to accurate many could find.