‘The Picnic’ by Matthew Longo review
The Picnic: An Escape to Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain by Matthew Longo explains how Hungary came to play a key role in the collapse of communism.
Eastern Europe
The Birth of Ovid
Writing from exile, the Roman poet Ovid revealed his birth date as 24 March 43 BC. But on the cause of said exile, he was unusually reticent.
The Livonian Knights Battle on the Baltic
On 16 February 1270, the Livonian Knights were defeated at the Battle of Karuse.
Goodbye Eastern Europe by Jacob Mikanowski review
Is it time to say goodbye to Eastern Europe, a world remade so frequently by empires, war and political ideologies that it scarcely stays the same for two generations in a row?
Everyday Misery
Returning to the communist ‘cage’ of a childhood in Albania.
Belarus Remembers
Belarusian memory of the Second World War once helped legitimise the Lukashenka regime. Now it is undermining it.
The Velvet Revolution In The Regions
What took ten years in Poland took ten days in Czechoslovakia. But, as some Czechs would discover, not all revolutions are equal.
‘The Last Front’ of the Freikorps
Events in the Baltic States at the end of the First World War had serious long-term consequences.
Masaryk and Czechoslovakia
In November 1918, writes Elizabeth Wiskemann, the first Czechoslovak Republic was founded.
St. Wenceslas of Bohemia
Cecil Parrott describes how the elderly monarch from a Christmas carol was based on the character of a young and vigorous sovereign, assassinated on his birthday by his own brother.