Word: czechoslovakia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...CZECHOSLOVAKIA A Savage Challenge to Detente...
...swallowing more resources than he could afford. The European satellites were too, so Gorbachev told their chiefs that Soviet tanks would no longer keep them in power. That started a chain reaction that left both sides dumbfounded. By the end of 1989, the Soviet bloc had dissolved: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Romania all installed noncommunist regimes. Even then, nobody would have guessed that in another two years the Soviet Union itself would shatter into 15 pieces. But it was already obvious that the world was entering a strange new era: only one superpower; no cold...
...Soviet Union had not forced Czechoslovakia, which was the only democracy east of Switzerland before the Nazi invasion, into the Soviet orbit in 1948, the USSR would probably exist to this day. The Czechs, famous for their strong democratic traditions and cynical attitude towards authority, were the Trojan Horse of the Soviet empire...
...book draws on varied sources; Morris quotes everyone from Vaclav Havel, former president of Czechoslovakia, to ancient Irish folk songs. She does not focus only on large cities, or even large countries. She gives equal time to villages like Shnackenburg and countries like France and Germany. A few sections in the book are small lists of interesting tid-bits; for instance, in "An interlude on food" Morris explains that "The Italians eat most sensibly. The British eat most unhealthily. The Spaniards eat most abstermiously," and so on. And Morris has enough experience and writes genuinely enough that these pronouncements seem...
...gems, such as "What the Nose Knows," a Proustian reverie on the atavistic power of scent, and the powerful "Shedding Life," which might have been titled "Killing a Muskrat" in homage to Orwell. The final section, "No," manages to redeem the second by drawing on his experiences in Czechoslovakia to further his political and scientific crusade...