Lighting the Night: Revolution in Eastern Europe

Echikson has covered Eastern Europe for five years, first for the Christian Science Monitor and currently for the Wall Street Journal. Political and cultural reporting at its best, the book examines the people and social forces that have hastened communism's collapse in the former Soviet empire. Echikson talked with alienated workers, threatened apparatchiks, defiant students scornful of a hypocritical system; concern with how to dismantle the Party was widespread. He looks at the renewed pull of nationalism, fear of resurgent anti-Semitism, mounting anger over a polluted environment. Including interviews with Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa and Solidarity activist Bronislaw Geremek, this report highlights the particularities of each country as well as their common problems in breaking the communist monopoly of power. Photos. (Oct.)