I was compelled to read this book because my wife was also born and raised behind the Iron Curtain. Not in the GDR, but in Soviet occupied Hungary. And conditions were much the same. This book was very well researched and it really opens the readers eyes to what life was really like behind the wall. Some of the accounts in this book mirror what my wife told me about her life experiences behind the Iron Curtain.
As a westerner I was exposed to all of the negative propaganda that was so common about life in the Soviet block and under communism during the cold war era. Therefore, I was very surprised to hear from my wife, that she had a very happy and contented childhood. Not necessarily because of communism, but because she felt safe and had a very close family and community bond. She was a cheerleader, she played basketball, she went ice skating in the winter next to Vajdahunyad-Castle at the city park in Budapest, and she spent her summers at Lake Balaton with her family. She said that she also had a lot of opportunities to travel to other eastern block countries. Overall, she had a very quality life! Life only became difficult and unhappy for her after she defected from Hungary (which was not her idea) and immigrated to the US. This was a startling revelation to me! I had always thought that living in the US was what everyone wanted? But, we should not be so narrow minded and arrogant in the west. There were also many positives things about life behind the wall as the author states from her interviews. Yes, it did keep people sealed in and limited their freedom, but another way to look at it is that it also kept a lot of the bad things out, like drugs and crime.
There were also many negatives; one of which was the scarcity of meat. My wife told me that her family received half a pig every year, and this had to be stretched throughout the year. Therefore, she only ate meat once a week, while most of her meals consisted of potato's. Another thing that she did not like was standing in line to get bread everyday. To this day she hates standing in line and she always seems to find a way around doing so if possible! The Stasi was in the GDP, but Hungary also had its brand of the Secret Police called the AVH. However, she only became aware of their existence 23 years after the collapse of communism when her and I visited a museum in Budapest called "The House of Terror" at: Andrassy Ut 60 in Budapest.
My Hungarian wife was more or less oblivious to any state corruption. She did mention a lot of negative propaganda about the west in her school. But she did not pay to much attention to it. Learning Russian was also compulsory in school, but no one in her class was interested and they retained very little of it I am told. As a child she was just happy and content to have safety, a loving family, good friends and a strong community bond. Another thing that she mentioned was that drugs and violent crimes were almost non-existent. Most of the crime (if you want to call it that) was petty theft. And that was usually against the authorities; like taking some extra toilet paper or maybe some soap if you worked in a job where there was access to it. But, there were no crimes to speak of against others in the community, because, they were all in it together. It was always them against the authorities. When the wall fell, and capitalism moved in, it changed many lives for the worse in Hungary as it did in the GDR. A shelter people were now exposed to drugs, crime, materialism, superficial westerners and exploitation. I agree with many of the sentiments of those who Hester Vaizey interviewed in her book; the west should not have discounted everything to do with the east, since both east and west have good and bad. And a blending of the two cultures could have created a near perfect system!
One thing that I know for sure, is that whatever type of life that it was. And, whatever experiences that my wife had from Budapest to Seattle; those experiences made my wife! And, my wife is the most loving, sweetest, highest quality, most honest and hardworking person that I have ever met! I am so impressed with her that I have dedicated my newest book to her, titled "Mutual Love and Respect- Necessities for a Happy Marriage', which in chapter 7 chronicles her experiences growing up under communism.
http://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Love-Respect-Necessities-Marriage/dp/1502515334/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1432885069&sr=1-1&keywords=mutual+love
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Top reviews from other countries
Amazon Customer
Interesting, but lacks freshness
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 24, 2021J A Bridge
A fascinating insight in life in and after the DDR
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2021