Download or read book Gaming the Iron Curtain written by Jaroslav Svelch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Aside from the exceptional history of Tetris, very little is known about gaming culture behind the Iron Curtain. But despite the scarcity of home computers and the absence of hardware and software markets, Czechoslovakia hosted a remarkably active DIY microcomputer scene in the 1980s, producing more than two hundred games that were by turns creative, inventive, and politically subversive. In Gaming the Iron Curtain, Jaroslav Švelch offers the first social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the first book-length treatment of computer gaming in any country of the Soviet bloc. Švelch describes how amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Sheltered in state-supported computer clubs, local programmers fashioned games into a medium of expression that, unlike television or the press, was neither regulated nor censored. In the final years of Communist rule, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to make activist games about current political events, anticipating trends observed decades later in independent or experimental titles. Drawing from extensive interviews as well as political, economic, and social history, Gaming the Iron Curtain tells a compelling tale of gaming the system, introducing us to individuals who used their ingenuity to be active, be creative, and be heard.
Download or read book Iron Curtain written by Anne Applebaum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 803 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.
Download or read book Window Shopping Through the Iron Curtain written by David Hlynsky and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deadpan celebration of the unique commercial aesthetic that flourished under the crumbling totalitarian Communist regimes of twentieth-century Europe Window-Shopping through the Iron Curtain presents a selection of more than 100 images of shop windows shot by David Hlynsky during four trips taken between 1986 and 1990 to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, East Germany, and Moscow. Using a Hasselblad camera, Hlynsky captured the slow, routine moments of daily life on the streets and in the shop windows of crumbling Communist countries. The resulting images could be still-lifes representing the intersection of a Communist ideology and a consumerist, Capitalist tool—the shop window—with the consumer stuck in the middle. Devoid of overt branding or calculated seduction, the shop windows were typically adorned with traditional yet incongruous symbols of cheer: homey lace curtains, paper flowers, painted butterflies, and pictures of happy children. Some windows were humble in their simple offerings of loaves and tinned fishes; others were zanily artistic, as in the modular display of military shirts in a Moscow storefront; and some illustrated intense professional pride, such as a sign in a Prague beauty salon depicting a pedicurist smiling fiendishly over an imperfect sole. The photographs are accompanied by essays by art historian Martha Langford and cultural studies specialist Jody Berland, as well as Hlynsky’s own account of his time as a flâneur in the shopping plazas of the collapsing Soviet empire—“a vast ad-hoc museum of a failing utopia” that in 1989 began to close forever.
Download or read book Nature and the Iron Curtain written by Astrid Kirchhof and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2019-06-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Nature and the Iron Curtain, the authors contrast communist and capitalist countries with respect to their environmental politics in the context of the Cold War. Its chapters draw from archives across Europe and the U.S. to present new perspectives on the origins and evolution of modern environmentalism on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The book explores similarities and differences among several nations with different economies and political systems, and highlights connections between environmental movements in Eastern and Western Europe.
Download or read book Through the Iron Curtain written by Eva Wonka and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who wants to come on a trip behind the Iron Curtain...The Global Adventures Series bring exciting, dangerous, and true stories about men and women who served God faithfully and lived a life for His glory.Smuggling the Bible into former communist countries...Traveling to foreign places without knowing the language...Teaching the Bible secretly among Christians in Romania...Experiencing the dangers of the Secret Police...Learning to trust the Lord to do the impossible...In this edition, hear the riveting stories about Tom, David, Margareta and Jozef.Who wants to come with me on a trip behind the Iron Curtain?
Download or read book Polio Across the Iron Curtain written by Dóra Vargha and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-11 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the lens of polio, Dóra Vargha looks anew at international health, communism and Cold War politics. This title is also available as Open Access.
Download or read book Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain written by Jim Willis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling book describes how everyday people courageously survived under repressive Communist regimes until the voices and actions of rebellious individuals resulted in the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe. Part of Greenwood's Daily Life through History series, Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain enables today's generations to understand what it was like for those living in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, particularly the period from 1961 to 1989, the era during which these people-East Germans in particular-lived in the imposing shadow of the Berlin Wall. An introductory chapter discusses the Russian Revolution, the end of World War II, and the establishment of the Socialist state, clarifying the reasons for the construction of the Berlin Wall. Many historical anecdotes bring these past experiences to life, covering all aspects of life behind the Iron Curtain, including separation of families and the effects on family life, diet, rationing, media, clothing and trends, strict travel restrictions, defection attempts, and the evolving political climate. The final chapter describes Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall and the slow assimilation of East into West, and examines Europe after Communism.
Download or read book The Iron Curtain written by Bruce L. Brager and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visiting Central Europe, in 1962, a visitor would not see a real "Iron Curtain." There was no huge piece of grim drapery splitting Europe between Communist dictatorships and democracies. The Iron Curtain represented the Central European part of the Cold War, the generally peaceful, but highly dangerous, forty-year competition between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies. The Iron Curtain symbolically represented the attempt to permanently, artificially, and arbitrarily split one part of Central Europe from the other. Although there was no real iron curtain, there was lots of steel in the form of barbed wire, ground radar, watchtowers, and machine guns in the hands of troops willing to use them. The boundary between democracy and totalitarianism was clear. This book tells the story of the Iron Curtain, and the Cold War it so vividly represented, from the start of World War II to its end with the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Book jacket.
Download or read book West Germany and the Iron Curtain written by Astrid M. Eckert and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of the Federal Republic and the German re-unification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945. The book is the first environmental history of the Iron Curtain.
Download or read book Iron Curtain Rising written by Peter Laufer and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at how the revolutionary changes in Eastern Europe are affecting the everyday lives of its citizens, and describes how Eastern Europe still differs from the West.
Download or read book Iron Curtain written by Patrick Wright and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. . .' With these words Winston Churchill famously warned the world in a now legendary speech given in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946. Launched as an evocative metaphor, the 'Iron Curtain' quickly became a brutal reality in the Cold War between Capitalist West and Communist East. Not surprisingly, for many years, people on both sides of the division have assumed that the story of the Iron Curtain began with Churchill's 1946 speech.In this fascinating investigation, Patrick Wright shows that this was decidedly not the case. Starting with its original use to describe an anti-fire device fitted into theatres, Iron Curtain tells the story of how the term evolved into such a powerful metaphor and the myriad ways in which it shapedthe world for decades before the onset of the Cold War. Along the way, it offers fascinating perspectives on a rich array of historical characters and developments, from the lofty aspirations and disappointed fate of early twentieth century internationalists, through the topsy-turvy experiences of the first travellers to Soviet Russia, to thetheatricalization of modern politics and international relations. And, as Wright poignantly suggests, the term captures a particular way of thinking about the world that long pre-dates the Cold War - and did not disappear with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Download or read book The Biggest Hole in the Iron Curtain written by Levente Batizy and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Batizy family was Eastern European nobility during the thirteenth to twentieth centuries and continued to lead comfortable lives even as the importance of aristocracy faded. Then, the unimaginable happened. These centuries of happy, committed citizenship would all seemingly fade away in an instant as communism took over. Driven from their home after the 1956 Hungarian revolution against communist rule failed, the Batizys found themselves starting over, seeking and creating a new dream: the American dream. "The Biggest Hole in the Iron Curtain: The Batizy Story" is Levente Batizy's sweeping yet intimate immigration story. Starting with the story of the Batizy patriarch, the architect of the family's great escape, and following the sacrifices that the Batizy's mother and stepmother made during the resettlement. "The Biggest Hole in the Iron Curtain" also includes recollections from Batizy and his thirteen siblings following the fiftieth anniversary of the revolt.
Download or read book Gaps in the Iron Curtain written by Gertrude Enderle-Burcel and published by Wydawnictwo UJ. This book was released on 2009 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores relations between socialist planned economies of Central and East European countries and capitalist market economies of neutral states in Europe dyring the Cold War. It focuses on the significant role of neutral countries as path-breakers in building East-West contacts.
Download or read book Iron Curtain A Love Story written by Vesna Goldsworthy and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: East and West collide in a “timely” and “bittersweet tale of loyalty, love, and the siren call of freedom” (Rebecca Abrams, Financial Times). Milena Urbanska is a red princess living in a Soviet satellite state in the 1980s. She enjoys limitless luxury and limited freedom; the end of the Cold War seems unimaginable. When she meets Jason, a confident but politically naive British poet, they fall into bed together. Before long, Milena is planning her escape. She follows Jason to London, where she’s shocked to find herself living in bohemian poverty. The rented apartment is dingy, the food disgusting, and Jason’s family withholding, but at least there are no hidden cameras recording her every move. As she adjusts to her new life, however, Milena discovers the dark side of Jason’s idea of freedom. With cool wit and tender precision, Vesna Goldsworthy delivers a razor-sharp vision of two worlds on the brink of change, amidst the failures of family and state. Iron Curtain is a sly, elegant comedy of manners that challenges the myths we tell ourselves.
Download or read book Our Supreme Task written by Philip White and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides the dramatic history of Winston Churchill's 1946 trip to Fulton, Missouri, where he delivered his Iron Curtain Speech--a speech which served to fundamentally define the dangers of Soviet totalitarian Communism.
Download or read book The Icon Curtain written by Yuliya Komska and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-02-02 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iron Curtain did not exist—at least not as we usually imagine it. Rather than a stark, unbroken line dividing East and West in Cold War Europe, the Iron Curtain was instead made up of distinct landscapes, many in the grip of divergent historical and cultural forces for decades, if not centuries. This book traces a genealogy of one such landscape—the woods between Czechoslovakia and West Germany—to debunk our misconceptions about the iconic partition. Yuliya Komska transports readers to the western edge of the Bohemian Forest, one of Europe’s oldest borderlands, where in the 1950s civilians set out to shape the so-called prayer wall. A chain of new and repurposed pilgrimage sites, lookout towers, and monuments, the prayer wall placed two long-standing German obsessions, forest and border, at the heart of the century’s most protracted conflict. Komska illustrates how civilians used the prayer wall to engage with and contribute to the new political and religious landscape. In the process, she relates West Germany’s quiet sylvan periphery to the tragic pitch prevalent along the Iron Curtain’s better-known segments. Steeped in archival research and rooted in nuanced interpretations of wide-ranging cultural artifacts, from vandalized religious images and tourist snapshots to poems and travelogues, The Icon Curtain pushes disciplinary boundaries and opens new perspectives on the study of borders and the Cold War alike.
Download or read book Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain written by Jim Willis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling book describes how everyday people courageously survived under repressive Communist regimes until the voices and actions of rebellious individuals resulted in the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe. Part of Greenwood's Daily Life through History series, Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain enables today's generations to understand what it was like for those living in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, particularly the period from 1961 to 1989, the era during which these people-East Germans in particular-lived in the imposing shadow of the Berlin Wall. An introductory chapter discusses the Russian Revolution, the end of World War II, and the establishment of the Socialist state, clarifying the reasons for the construction of the Berlin Wall. Many historical anecdotes bring these past experiences to life, covering all aspects of life behind the Iron Curtain, including separation of families and the effects on family life, diet, rationing, media, clothing and trends, strict travel restrictions, defection attempts, and the evolving political climate. The final chapter describes Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall and the slow assimilation of East into West, and examines Europe after Communism.
