Russia's Europe

A startling record of a liberal Journalist's adventure and change of heart behind the Balkan Curtain—the first full inside story of the Soviet peace-time march of empire and its meaning to us.


"In early 1945, when the project was only a gleam in the eye of author and publisher, the working title was Reporter in Search of Peace. Peace did not mean simply armistice, a mere end to the shooting. Everybody somehow knew the war was nearly over, even though one's troopship was blacked out and its destroyer escort scared away a brace of U-boats just off the Virginia coast. My credentials still read "war correspondent," and a flattering uniform came with the title, but "peace correspondent" and an old suit would have fitted the program better, because I was going to watch how the peace was being made—not the paper treaties, but the real peace, the one that had to endure. The core of the book would be a parallel between the end of World War I and the end of World War II. The mistakes of 1919 and of the two decades between the wars were legible signposts indicating the wrong direction. I was to try and see which way the victors were heading this time…


The reader will find no sensational interviews with famous men, nor many conversations with the present rulers of Southeastern Europe. One of the characteristics of the New Order, in fact, is the distaste of its leaders for the press, and their fear of saying anything at all before clearing it through the highest authority. I have spent much more time with the little people, what they had to tell me, and how they felt—all of which took me much closer to the truth...All I can report is a political war, the creeping conquest of many peoples by an army carrying placards and posters instead of flags. All I can report is the silent battle of half a continent, in resistance to a future not of its own choosing."