Jim’s Reviews > Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 > Status Update

What binds Europeans together, even when they are critical of some aspect or other of its practical workings, is what is conventional to call -- in disjunctive but revealing contrast with 'the American way of life' -- the 'European model of society.'

The disappearance of the Soviet Union was a remarkable affair, unparalleled in modern history. There was no foreign war, no bloody revolution, no natural catastrophe. A large industrial state—a military superpower—simply collapsed: its authority drained away, its institutions evaporated.

No other territorial empire in recorded history ever abandoned its dominions so rapidly, with such good grace and so little bloodshed. Gorbachev cannot take direct credit for what happened in 1989—he did not plan it and only hazily grasped its long-term import. But he was the permissive and precipitating cause. It was Mr. Gorbachev's revolution.

In the life of the mind, the nineteen seventies were the most dispiriting decade of the twentieth century. In some measure this can be attributed to ... the sharp and sustained economic downturn, together with widespread political violence, encouraged the sentiment that Europe's 'good times' had gone, perhaps for many years to come.

Philip Larkin: Sexual intercourse began in 1963, / Between the end of the Chatterley / ban and the Beatles' first LP.

The Soviets too would pay a price for this [Hungarian attack]—in many ways, 1956 represented the defeat and collapse of the revolutionary myth so successfully cultivated by Lenin and his heirs. As Boris Yeltsin was to acknowledge many years later, in a speech to the Hungarian Parliament on November 11th 1992, 'The tragedy of 1956 ... will forever remain an indelible spot on the Soviet regime.'

[I]t was one of the oddities of post-war West Germany that their country's privileged position as a de facto American protectorate was for some of its citizens as much a source of resentment as of security. And such sentiments were only strengthened when it became clear ... that a war in Germany might see the use of battlefield nuclear weapons—under the exclusive control of others.

Cyril Connolly: Morally and economically Europe has lost the war. The great marquee of European civilization in whose yellow light we all grew up, and read, or wrote, or loved, or traveled has fallen down; the side ropes are frayed, the centre pole is broken, the chairs and tables are all in pieces, the tent is empty, the roses are withered on their stands ....

Footnote: The Bulgarians had actually oscillated quite markedly over the years from enthusiastic pro-Germanism to ultra-Slavophilism. Neither served them well. As a local commentator remarked at the time, Bulgaria always chooses the wrong card ... and SLAMS it on the table!

The inflation in neighboring Hungary, the worst in recorded history and far exceeding that of 1923 Germany, peaked at 5 quintillion [5 to the 30th power] paper pengos to the dollar—meaning that by the time the pengo was replaced by the forint in August 1946 the dollar value of all Hungarian banknotes in circulation was just one-thousandth of one cent.