“In the years following Stalin’s death—since 1989 in particular—the eight nations of Eastern Europe took very different paths, and it has become routine to observe that they never really had much in common in the first place. This is absolutely true: before 1945, they had never previously been unified in any way, and they have startingly little in common now, aside from a common historical memory of communism” (Applebaum, 2012, p. 54). It seems that as a matter of convenience and “simplicity, familiarity, and historical accuracy,” we like to group the countries of Eastern Europe together and generalize their histories and experiences (Applebaum, 2012, p.
“In the years following Stalin’s death—since 1989 in particular—the eight nations of Eastern Europe took very different paths, and it has become routine to observe that they never really had much in common in the first place. This is absolutely true: before 1945, they had never previously been unified in any way, and they have startingly little in common now, aside from a common historical memory of communism” (Applebaum, 2012, p. 54). It seems that as a matter of convenience and “simplicity, familiarity, and historical accuracy,” we like to group the countries of Eastern Europe together and generalize their histories and experiences (Applebaum, 2012, p.