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I loved this book.

This is a book light on the references - mostly because all the sources seem to be the author's interviews with various people involved in communism in Eastern Europe. The theme is how to deal with communism - and the various forms that have been taken.

I loved the author's insights. In Czechslovakia, the problem is dealt with by lustrace - preventing those who co-operated with communism from being part of the government. In Poland, something similar takes place. In Germany, the problem appears to be the complicity of everyone in the system.

It's easy to read the book and think of parallels to the modern world. For example, in the East German experience, the author observes that the problem was too much data, which prevented the spying apparatus from catching everything. With big data and technological advances, would that still be an issue today?

The only (minor) quibble I had was that I wondered how much the author's personal experiences or POV might have shaped the interviews and how much she pushed back on her interviewees. I wish that was clearer.