A Historian of the Present
September 13, 2012 -
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New Eastern Europe newsletter
A Historian of the Present: A conversation with Timothy Garton Ash, British historian and expert on Central and Eastern Europe.
In the first of our texts taken from the July – September 2012 issue of New Eastern Europe, Annabelle Chapman talks to Timothy Garton Ash about revolutions in Central Europe in 1989, and the legacy of the USSR.
NEW EASTERN EUROPE: You not only reported, but participated in, the revolutions of 1989. How did you first travel to Central Europe?
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH: Thomas Mann is really to blame. Through reading his novels, I first became interested in German history. What came to fascinate me in German history was the question of what makes one person a dissident and another a collaborator. Then I realised that people were facing that question behind the Iron Curtain every day. I went to live in Berlin in 1978 and began travelling behind the Iron Curtain, getting to know the opposition movements.
To read the full article visit: https://www.neweasterneurope.eu/node/430
