Details

The book covers topics ranging from Red Terror and anticommumist resistance in Eastern Europe to reasoning why

communism fails and freedom works, all delivered by a historian from the isolated side of the Iron Curtain. Additionally, Mart Laar’s role at the epicentre of economic reforms as Estonia’s Prime Minister provides a basis for particularly insightful analyses on post-communist reforms and European integration.

Wilfried Martens (President of European People’s Party)

“In The Power of Freedom, Mart Laar offers us an account of the history of Communism and of anticommunist resistance which is as gripping as it is insightful. His analysis is impressive in its breadth and scope. Because Mart Laar himself played an important role in the fall of Communism and in the changes which have taken place in Europe over the last 20 years, his first-hand account of the unfolding of events gives the book a rare significance.

Elmar Brok (Member of European Parliament)

“Mart Laar's book is a commemoration and a tribute to all the brave people in Eastern and Central Europe who broke through the Iron Curtain and enabled Europe to be united. 20 years later these people are finally put in the centre of the stage, while also demonstrating that democracy, in combination with the Social Market Economy, is the best possible option for a united Europe.”

Roland Freudenstein (Head of Research, Centre for European Studies, Brussels)

“From the Soviet occupation at the end of World War II, to the battle scenes in the streets of Budapest in 1956, from the civil rights movements of the 1970s to the fall of the Wall in November 1989, Mart Laar describes the history of communism and anti-communist resistance in Central and Eastern Europe. He records the rocky road to democracy and to market economy, and discusses alternative models of post-communist transition. “The Power of Freedom” has the suspense of a novel and the informative value of a political science study. It is one of the first books discussing the collapse of communism from an author who was on the isolated side of the Iron Curtain. In that sense, it is the tale of a homecoming, and a powerful blow to leftist myths about communism, détente, democracy and market economy.”