willing to not only take on the challenge, but to conquer it. i believe we have the science. i believe we have the will of the american people. i think the law is on our side and we have a plan for a future that is needed and should be adopted. thank you for the honor to present to you today. >> thank you very much. >> good morning. my name is s-sierra shannon on the environmental affairs with wabash valley power. wabash valley powers to valley powers a generation interest valley powers a generation interest cooperative that serves 26 locally owned electric distribution cooperative in the northern half of indiana as well as portions of illinois and missouri. those distribution co-ops serve the role portions of 82 counties. on average, electric cooperative survey membership with a lower

media and how cold income level and high unemployment rates in investor-owned utility counterparts. the fact is absolutely true of our members. rural areas are much slower to realize an economic recovery and with that began, employment levels are also slower to recover. wabash valley power's mission is to deliver affordable life electricity, get epa's proposal to regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants as well as epa proposals are modified reconstructive power plants poses a significant threat to the pocketbooks of our members by allowing a longer ban peanut phase electric cooperatives can better prepare for fuel at the algae development necessary to meet standards. in addition to changes required by electric utilities at wabash power, a timeline will provide reader economic recovery for the communities we serve. this will help our members who

are also consumers that are prepared to manage the end of rideable increases in their electric costs. wabash valley providing comments on a more technical nature. however, i would like to take this time to highlight a few concerns. the unit of measurement for the proposed rule pounds of carbon dioxide per net megawatt hour is of particular difficulty for a and i believe other utilities. by imposing limits based on net megawatt hour is instead the more traditional growth megawatt hours, power plant must run the facility. also dubbed as parasitic load. this appears to be the first time emissions are measured not that of growth. this change makes it more difficult for electric utilities to collaborate with fellow state utilities to meet staples, which is another wrinkle in the epa proposed rule by using a net measurement, each must be able

to quantify the parasitic load now and predict for the future compliance purposes. however, this would be further complicated with the recently finalized a rule that regulates accrue enough water for cooling purposes which also affects natural gas plants. as you're familiar under 316 v., a power plant would impact after several years of study. the result could be to add a new cooling tower or the like which in turn would add more parasitic load. this results in higher carbon dioxide emissions from a plants not because the increased carbon dioxide emissions output -- not because of the increased carbon dioxide output, but because the net megawatt hour number is smaller on the denominator side of the equation. all the regulations proposed are finalized within the past five years create uncertainty for industry members.

a basic question of each regulation is proposed are finalized it should reinvest in our current fleet or much of we build something new or build market for our power. is difficult to answer. finalized in 2011, the carbon dioxide regulation and power plants were most recently proposed in 2013 and 2014 and a proposal to define is under a public. peer 316 v. with finalized a few months ago and we expect the regulations for residuals to be finalized at the end of the year. amendment to outflank guidelines for each collector at generating units to be finalized next year. it is nearly impossible for electric utilities to adequately prepare for each of these, let alone some proposals. for thank you for giving us 100 days to make comments, however it is still not adequate time

for all stake holders to fully grasp and develop necessary plans for complying with epa's proposal for existing our plans. for example, the building blocks reference in the proposal are based on errors outside of purview of the least indian and department of environmental management. for example, i am not sure i'll plants or fleets can hit the 6% on average rate efficiency which could possibly trigger the reconstruction modification rule. it does not have the authority is referenced in building block to, yet with regard to building block three with renewable portfolios to power consumption rather than power generation, this appears to be a disconnect. finally, does not have authority over energy efficiency in building block for. in indiana, energy efficiency programs under the governor's authority although his office had recently announced the

program would be opinionated and 2015. even as building blocks manage under the authority of the indian navy utility break the taurean mission, cooperatives such as wabash power in his 26 member cooperatives are not under purview. can you see the difficulty? i'm sure other states may be in the same boat. please do not be mistaken, we shared epa concerns for its future and the state without renewable energy mandate far ahead of the curve in diversifying its real source for significantly reduce alliance and coal and we've done so voluntarily and economically. we encourage epa to take these considerations in effect. we've taken a thoughtful both present and future. thank you. >> thank you very much. noting that it is a quarter to 12:00, i'm going to ask the next analyst john novak and amanda

joe devita and one more speaker, andre -- you'll be next and then sorry for anybody who's waiting. we will take a break after these three speakers. i've back your name on top of the card. go ahead. >> good morning. i am john novak, head of the environmental issues team on the national world electric cooperative association and the national association for not-for-profit rural utilities that provide for over 30 to nine people in 47 states and 12% of america's consumers. for than anyone the books, the proposed clean powerplant for existing services will allow the environmental protection agency

to fundamentally alter the way electricity is generated. we don't believe that it's epa's job. the ramifications from epa's proposal will be felt all the way from the generating plant to the toaster. the epa's energy plan goes too far to fast, jeopardizing the well-being of the lives of american families in the process. simply put, epa proposal will trigger higher prices for many consumers and local businesses. america's electric cooperatives serve more than 90% of persistent poverty counties across the nation, the same communities put it does risk by the epa. while epa acknowledged america's not-for-profit member of electric cooperatives are different than most utilities, epa proposal doesn't provide a workable solution to address cooperatives unique circumstances. co-ops are small, consumer

owned, heavily relied on cole and our not-for-profit status of the validity for consumer owners. should a state choose to reduce the burden on cooperatives, under epa's approach to see would increase the burden on other utility providers statesville must meet epa goal. we are not asking for the front the expense of others. the solution to rework assumptions and set reasonable and achievable state goals. cooperatives have a proven record of supporting the environment and following a true policy that has provided affordable and reliable electric city for a consumer members. since 2009, electric cooperatives have doubled renewable capacity and is made long-term investments in energy production here at unfortunately come epa's proposal slams the door and in all of the above strategy with driving whole generation of the mix.

the proposal will likely result of the premature closure of a number of plants owned by electric cooperatives, placing even greater financial burdens on cooperatives and consumers who own them. many plants were built when our national policy encourage the use of coal as a domestic resource and co-ops invested billions of dollars since then and environmental controls. these planes had the useful life that extends well beyond 2030. cooperatives that play by the rules of moving the goalposts again like this proposal would do well resulting strand of assets in premature shutdowns. this outcome is unreasonable, unjustifiable and arbitrary. do we see it, only efficiency improvements on the building blocks is lawful under the clean act standards. epa then exceeds the authority with three of the four building blocks. epa essentially adopts a standard that cannot be met

which forces states to adopt environment of dispatch, renewable portfolio standard end-use efficiency standards to meet their emissions targets. under epa's proposal at order to implement the building block, co-ops and consumer owners have to spend billions on energy efficiency. co-op support energy efficiency and of programs ranging from energy audits to appliance rebates to unbilled financing programs. the level of investment here may well go beyond the ability of consumer owners and co-ops to afford given our demographics. as we said before, many consumer owners fall below the income level and 93% in the u.s. are served by electric cooperatives. since the 1930s co-ops have provided safe affordable and reliable electricity to rural america and with economic

opportunities. epa's proposal directly threatens these games than is the wrong approach. already, tens of thousands of consumers from both sides of the aisle has made their voices heard against the proposal. i'm proud to add my voice on behalf of the 42 million americans served by electric cooperatives. please go back to the drawing board. thank you. >> thank you. >> hello. my name is amanda joe devita, resident of west virginia and mother to be very patient children waiting by the door of a dare. i'm from southern west virginia. often times known as the coalfield area of west virginia. my father is a minor. his father was a minor. going back at least seven generations on each side of our family that we are aware of. i am part of the first generation in my family to not work for a cocom today.

we have historically been a state of very little opportunity am very few options. where i come from, environmental pollution from coal plants is not something we hear people argue about on the news. it's not an idea or issue we think about and put away. it's an issue we deal with on a daily basis. we wear it on our clothes, drink it in our water, of lungs. the pollution of my status in large part due to the way we keep our lights on. if you are from southern west virginia, used to live near a mine, a coal-fired power plant for processing plant. are surrounded by coal. coal fired power plants make up 95% of the energy generation of west virginia. 50 years ago, that would not have been such an embarrassment. today we know that there are better options. clean energy west virginia would reduce our carbon footprint,

reduce the unemployment rate in the minors when we spend on health care. it would give us the options have been lacking in the past. clean energy would allow us to work jobs that didn't put her families in danger from environmental pollution scare jobs that were not a terrible impact on the beautiful landscape of our state. i promise you, you'll have a hard time finding anyone of west virginia that wouldn't trade the coal power plant in their backyard for a wind turbine or solar solution. i would much rather have a hydroelectric dam in my rather than a thousand tons of coal slurry. we now have technology in place to make life in our state better. we no longer have to rely on the coal companies to give us jobs or give us power. there are better options for eyes. what we asked for now assembled. we went to live healthier lives. we went to breathe cleaner air and we want jobs that help us sustain our communities. we want those jobs do not endanger the lives of those of us there.

we need a plan. the clean power plan is a very small step that is a step in the right direction. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> andre -- the and let's see if we can get two more folks in before the end of this particular session. bruce burton and nancy mary, are you still there as long as they didn't exclude anybody clicks will get you in, too. >> first, thank you for the environment for virginia with the virginia with a range virginia with the region is for epa in thank you. i am a colonel u.s. army retired, but i am now actively

engaged as a partner for the interstate traveler company llc based in detroit. this company can contribute directly to the goals of the clean power plant. there is no morally acceptable reason to deny the overwhelming danger to human health, the economy and even to life itself. let's talk a minute about the near-term to mid term damage of uncontrolled global warming and let's talk about business first savanna businessman. the former treasury secretary, robert e. rubin recently cited a study called risky business, a formal study on how climate change could, in his words, think the u.s. economy. by 2050, someplace between 48

and $68 billion worth of property in just two states. louisiana and florida would be at grave risk of flooding because they are going to be below sea level. bottom line for the whole thing. viewed from an economic perspective, the cost of inaction will greatly exceed the cost cost of moving away from fossil fuels. now, what is the long term trends than? is existential because writing the levels, flooding coastal cities in many countries have gone domestic unrest from even civil war and even wars between and among nationstates as they scramble and compete for scarce clean monitor and other resources. now there is a very interesting u.n. climate change report that came out in june.

they say to avoid these wars, reaction would have to limit the rise of temperature, global temperatures, to not more than two degrees celsius for 3.6 fahrenheit. we have to do that by the end of the century. for example, greenhouse gas emissions will have to drop from 40% to 70% by 2050 and then even more have a nearly zero the end of the century. and they grew more quickly in the decade between the year 202,010 the previous decades. it will be quite a challenge. and so the clean power plant that we are here to discuss i would like to say from the standpoint of my company is bold and yet inadequate. the president's decision to reduce carbon emissions by 30%

by 2030 is politically courageous, commendable and yet inadequate. not his fault, but simply a fact that that amount, even if done perfectly, will not meet the statistics they gave you before. and also another reason, the united states alone the matter what we do can't make the world requirements because we have to get other nations like china and india particularly to buy in. i would just like to mention that our company, i said we can how. we don't have to talk about our training there anything. that is kind of far out. in the immediate future almost today, with epa's health, we are in discussions already with the largest power plant -- one of the largest power plant in the united states. the company is assigned a high-level executive to discuss their concept for turning

turbines, coal plants closing now in indiana and other states. we want to turn this turbines with them is safe, renewable hydrogen. that is why we are discussing that with the power plant. i won't disclose who briefly need the epa to bounce ideas off, if i could just get this to be a worldwide to potentially replace the safe route available energy, but we can use coal even more safely with the hydrogen fuel. >> thank you very much. >> our final panel is bruce burton and need the coups. mary.

next, paula jackson. >> good afternoon. >> pull. >> pull them in a little closer. sorry for the big game. how is that? >> good morning. we are right on the cusp. i inverse burton. i am an international representative at the international brotherhood of electrical workers. on behalf of the approximately 750,000 active members and retirees of the ibew, thank you for the opportunity to testify appeared for the following reasons, the ibew opposes the clean power plant has proposed. epa reports the clean power plant only to the closure of 41 to 49 gigawatts coal-fired generating capacity by 2020,

just six years from now. according to the governments own figures, this'll result of the loss of 52,000 permanent direct yobs in the utilities, rail and coal mining sectors. in addition, closing this much will cost an additional 100,000 direct jobs. however, epa numbers must be viewed with some suspicion. during the mercury and air toxics rulemaking process, epa claimed mass would close only 4.7 gigawatts of coal generation. the ibew and others told epa their number was far too rosy in the close 56 gigawatts of coal. it turned out we were correct. experts confirmed 56 gigawatts of whole generation will be lost by 2016. taken together, the clean power plant will close 40% of the coal

fleet, those plants will be approximately 400,000 american jobs at a time when our nation can recover from the worst recession since the great depression. it stands a 61%. unfortunately. those numbers could be far worse. closing so much coal so fast with the nation's electric grid, creating the potential for widespread lack of them brownouts through periods of peak usage. during the recent polar vortex, 90% of american electric power coal plants were used to generate electricity. in addition, pjm from a regional transmission authority operating in the mid-atlantic and eastern midwest of being able to meet electricity demand.

so, for all of this pain, the clean power plant will certainly cause a large drop in co2 emissions, correct? the answer is no. that, there would be almost no impact on co2 emissions that contribute to global warming. as the graph included illustrates an hourly behind when i'm done. the problem is not with the united states. u.s. co2 emissions have been flat since 1990 and are forecast to remain so through the year 2030 with or without the clean power plant. the problem lies instead with our trading partners. the u.s. emissions have remained flat, co2 output in the rest of the world is risen approximately 44% said they do 90 from 16 billion metric tons annually to approximately 36 million mr. times today.

our nation cannot afford to go it alone and will have any meaningful impact in a world you see more and more coal and other fossil fuels. unless other nations act, our efforts in the united states will be for not. given a recent supreme court decision regarding the greenhouse gas permitting rule, there is reason to believe the court will take a skeptical view of an overly expansive interpretation of epa's authority to regulate greenhouse gases you that in mind, the ibew recommends of the power plant by providing their co2 emissions due to market-driven forces such as increased national's gaseous cover retirement of older coal plants and/or construction of new nuclear generation. the ibew also recommends a delay in the implementation of the clean power plant to give states

and utilities adequate time to lament strategies. finally, though outside the scope of the rulemaking, addressing global climate change in a meaningful way will require the full cooperation of nations like china and india. absent their commitment, the clean power plant will have no real benefit. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thank you for holding public hearings and for the opportunity to speak today. my name is paul roberts jackson and i'm president and ceo of the american association of blacks in energy. the national association of energy professionals founded in 1977 and dedicated to ensure african-americans and other minorities have a voice development of energy policy and related environmental issues. while he is an association are still the process of analyzing the role of a technical support

document, we have some concerns about epa proposed power plants. we recognize there is no simple solution for addressing climate change with regard to greenhouse gas emissions. however, we believe any approach must be balanced, fair and take into consideration the impact of the community economic development, how the price of electricity. this is likely to increase across the country. it will do so in part by changing the way they generation resources are utilized to meet demand. currently, based primarily on the most cost effective generations dispatch first. this appeals to largely eliminate the dispatch without regard to costs. because it eliminates the focus on cost of energy resources come epa's proposed carbon plan will not only increase electricity prices which leads to higher

electric bills, more expensive goods and services in fewer jobs and not have a disproportionate impact on those least able to manage and tax. that is our small business owners, families and individuals on fixed or low income. while it's not a silver bullet, broad deployment of energy efficiency measures will be important to reduce the impact. we strongly support energy efficiency and service the resources issue for energy consumers, especially underserved communities. but we can't do it alone. energy efficiency measures and education must be made available to small businesses and fixing some individuals because they are the ones that will benefit the most of energy savings. it's important remick progress on our climate change goals and commitments, but we must find solutions that minimize the risk of cost increases in or not keep the cross country cost of those

two the policy should not result in a negative impact on jobs for trade balances in the cost of goods and services are long-term in all sectors of the economy and services should be included in the initiative to reduce these emissions. we believe policies must ensure consumers do not shoulder disproportionate cost impact as a result of this after we recognize there's no simple solution for reducing emissions. the best strategy will strike the balance between cost emission reductions and economic growth and prosperity. for all americans. this proposal does not strike that balance. thank you or the opportunity to speak. >> thank you very much. ..

c-span: anne applebaum why do you open up the quote from winston churchill? >> guest: i open with the quote because churchill defined this era that i'm writing about probably without even meaning to. he coined the expression the iron curtain and it was such a motive and such an evocative

description of what had happened between 1944 and 46 that i thought it was was important but that was important to put that at beginning of the book. c-span: did you ever find out what he called with the iron curtain? >> guest: there is actually long and complicated story to it. it's actually a theatrical term. there were some iron curtain that peters used to use to prevent fires so it was a term that was around in victorian england. it was actually used by other people but it was churchill you used it first in a private communication with his american counterparts and later in that speech. c-span: do you know why he was speaking in fulton missouri? >> guest: he was doing a favor to harry truman. that's where truman was from. c-span: let's watch just a slice of that speech that we can get a feel for it.

>> from the baltics to triage and the asiatic all the capitals of ancient states of central and eastern europe. warsaw, berlin prague vienna budapest belgrade bucharest and slot via. all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what i must call the soviet -. c-span: why did you want to write about this? >> guest: i was in a way inspired by my first book. this wasn't my first book but my previous book which was the gulags system and although this is in no way a sequel it represents a continuation of the thoughts i had after writing that book. one of the things i got interested in writing about the gulags was the question of why

people in along with that and why do people go along with totalitarian regimes? what's the mentality and what are the institutional pressures? why did camp guards do what they were told to do and why does it happen? i decided to write about this period which was the period after world war ii because it's a time when the soviet union was then, if it reached the kind of height. there was apotheosis of stalinism that was created throughout the 1920s and 30s and then it was reinforced by the experience of the war and by 1945 it was a fully developed system with a political theory and economic theory and a clear ideology and it was exactly at this moment when the red army largely -- marched into central europe and began imposing that system of central european states so you can see what did the soviets think their system was? what did they think was important to person how did they carry it out? c-span: where did they get the

rights to march and eastern europe? >> guest: they were the victors in the war. hitler had invaded germany in 1941 and they fought back against the germans and then they kept going to berlin. c-span: defined stalinism. >> guest: define stalinism. stalinism was a developed system as they say in it was a system of complete control. the stall in the state believed he could control everything. it could control not only politics and not only economics but it could control social life. they could control civic life. it could control sports clubs and chess clubs. in the stalinist system there were no independent institutions of any kind and no independent voices of any kind were allowed to speak. i'll be the economy was under state control and all of society was. there was a cultural aspect to stalinism too. the arts were under stalinist

control and there was also a cult of stalin so stolen's portrait hung everywhere. of society was organized around his name and his image. c-span: i grew up in a small town in indiana and one of the main streets in my town was caused straight. i know that's not the way you pronounce it that you talk about radio cusses and we didn't know what is it was. c-span: >> guest: he was in on gary and hero of an earlier period and much earlier on, this is the later part of my story in 1956 was a free hungarian radio and they adopted the name of her previous sangari and hero and they applied it to that radio. that was in 1956. it was the anti-stalinist regime. c-span: in 1956 what was the circumstance? >> guest: 56 is the end of the

stalinist period. by 1956 stalin is dead. he dies and 53 and after 53 people want to reform the system and in 56 you had the revival of what i just described so stalinism when stalinist was brought into europe it was an attempt to put everything under state control. 56 was really the revenge of civil society when people began reorganizing themselves and we are organizing social life independently and spontaneously. among other things creating independent radio stations. c-span: you say in your book that took you six years to do this. >> guest: at least, yes. it depends on how you count. c-span: back up and tell us what you went through, where you went and what you are trying to find out and how you did this. >> guest: as i say my inspiration was the idea that i wanted to explain how totalitarianism happens.

we do know the story of the cold war. we know the documents and we have seen the archives that describes the relationships between roosevelt and stalin and churchill and truman. we know the events from our point of view. what i wanted to do was show from a different angle from the ground up what did it feel like to be one of the people who were subjected to the system and how did people make choices in that system and how did they react and how did they behave? so i started very systematically. i went through archives in warsaw, in berlin and budapest. i looked at government archives. i looked at party archives. i looked at the police archives all of which are now open. some are easier to use than others in some countries give you better or worse access. some archives close at irritating times and so on but basically in this part of the world archives are open and you can read them.

i looked at specific institution so i looked out the hungarian film industry. how did the hungarian film industry which was one of the biggest and most powerful film industries in europe before the war of the 1930s as we know because so many ended up in this country during the war. how did become a social film industry. it had a completely different background. i looked at german painters. germany had a very vibrant expression, abstract art movement in the 1920s and 30s which was destroyed by hitler. many painters have left the country. they went abroad and came back to berlin thinking they would finally be able to paint as they wanted. many people were communists on the left and they discovered their horror that they wouldn't be allowed to. so how did they react? what did they do? some of them taught themselves to paint and painted in a realist install in this way. i looked at economic questions.

in particular i was interested in small shops and retail. this is in some ways the hardest part of economy to control. so i looked at the files of the administrative economics in germany and poland. i looked at the secret police documents because i was looking for the origins of the secret place. how was it created? who were the people who were the original police and where did they come from and how are they trained? i went through all this. in addition i used soviet documents, some which have been published or have been made available in the 90s and aren't available anymore. there is a wonderful collection in warsaw in about 1991 or 92, the polish military archive sent a researcher a couple of xerox machines to moscow and a xerox all of the archives that had anything to do with the red army's liberation of poland in 1944 and 45 and in particular

his first encounters with the polish resistance movement. so it's all xerox. you can read it in warsaw and i don't even know if the documents are accessible anymore. so there is a tremendous amount of material and my problem was what not to use. in addition to the archives i spoke to people as well. c-span: where do you live now? >> guest: i now live in warsaw although i spend a lot of time in london. c-span: how old are your kids? >> guest: my kids are 15 and 12. c-span: where do they live? >> guest: they live also some of the time in warsaw in summertime in london. c-span: what is your husband to? >> guest: my husband is the polish foreign minister. c-span: how did that happen? >> guest: happen? >> guest: u.s. and the foreign minister when i met him. he was a journalist which was what i was in 1989. he came to report on the collapse of communism in eastern europe. i met him then and we drove to berlin on the november night

when the wall fell and spent the evening sitting on the wall chipping at it with a chisel. we got married about a year later. c-span: what did that mean at that time? what it did feel like when the two of you were sitting there is the wall came down? was at november of 1989? >> guest: 1989. first of all people have forgotten how much fun it was. it was very exhilarating time in history but they have also forgotten how nervous people were. i remember sitting on the wall and we were there at 4:00 in the morning and everybody was awake in berlin. there were hundreds of people sitting on top of the berlin wall. the east german guards were still there because there was a wall and then there was no-man's land. there was actually a separate wall and they were standing in between the two walls. and very nervous wearing riot gear. at 4:00 in the morning everyone has champagne and they have

already sundby national anthem. what do you do next? they tease the guards of people started to jump off the wall from the west to the east and the guards would rush over and throw people back over the wall. and it wasn't entirely satisfying moment. i decide to -- discovered many years later as we were sitting at the east german politburo was trying to decide what to do with these people who were sitting on the wall. it could have all ended differently. c-span: i'm going to run some video of your husband who appeared on our call-in show when he was at the american enterprise institute. his name is? >> guest: ruddock sikorsky. >> ruddock sikorsky has been defense minister for how long? >> guest: i was a scholar at the american enterprise institute. >> host: for several years. >> guest: i was a deputy in the 90s.

>> host: here in washington you are known as ms. anne applebaum the op-ed writer. c-span: that was seven years ago. >> guest: he looks so young. he looks wonderful of course. what does it mean that he is now the foreign minister poland? how? how does that figure into all your interest? >> it doesn't figure in directly. i have a background of knowledge and sympathy for that reason of course that i wouldn't have otherwise. i don't think, you doesn't influence me in a direct way. he's not sitting with me in the archives while i'm looking at what happened to the hungarian film directors in 1947 and he would be too busy to help me write my books. knowing that region having lived in it and having this 20 year long connection with it gives me

some empathy or some interest in what happened there. c-span: what are the residuals from world war ii and the iron curtain period today in europe and eastern europe? any linked? >> guest: it's interesting one of the things that has happened since 1989 as the region ways to collect eastern europe has become very differentiated. it's no longer, these countries no longer have much in common with each other except the common memory of communist occupation. poland is this different from bulgaria and albania as greece is from finland. europe is now divided in different ways. it has changed quite a lot. i would say there are few elements though of communist capacity can see in most communist countries. sometimes there's a paranoid element of politics that comes from just the legacy of people being spied on and people having lived in an oppressive system. they are mayor -- more paranoid about secret deals being done

behind the backs because secret deals were done behind their backs so in a way that's understandable. there's an anxiety about being left behind are being left out inside the western camp. the memory of the past continues to play out but in truth these countries are more different from one another than they are similar. c-span: you chose three of how many, a country's? >> guest: it depends how you count. c-span: what were the three? >> guest: i chose poland hungary and east germany. i chosen because they were different because they have different historical background. they belong to different empires in the 19th century. they had different political patricians and mostly because they had different experiences in the war. germany was of course nazi germany. poland had resisted strongly. the nazi had won the largest resistance movements in europe and the hungarians were somewhere in between. they were reluctant

collaborators with the nazis at some point but they also have elements of resistance so i was interested in having have a very different experience of the previous five years, how did they now react to the soviet invasion and the subsequent process of so be it is asian? c-span: how would you define the situation in each of those countries today, the lifestyle, the economy, the openness, the democracy and all that? >> guest: all three of them were democracies. east germany is not east germany anymore. it's part of germany and so it's indistinguishable now in its legal system and its economic system. east germany is much poorer than west germany and in some ways for them poland which as a country has covered more vigorously the eastern part of germany. poland is a very vibrant democracy, maybe two vibrant and it has, and now plays a very

important and central role in europe. it's a member the e.u. and its member of nato. it's the largest of the former countries and perhaps has a larger role in the region than anybody else. hungary is also a democracy and also a liberal capitalist state. it's a less happy place. it's been badly governed in the last 20 years extraordinarily badly governed and at many areas there are institutions haven't been reformed very much since 1989. it now has, there is an unattractive far right in hungary and there's an unattractive left as well. as a less happy and less stable state. it's still a democracy and is still a very open society. c-span: at what point -- at what point in your research to say i didn't know that? >> guest: oh constantly. i was constantly running into --

not one of the things that happens when you read archives in greek communist party archives he discovered that behind closed doors the communist officials are much more open than they are in public so they are always saying surprising things to one another. they actually understand their societies fairly well. they are driven by ideology and they believe in their ideology which is an important point. we often now tend to dismiss that. they were just mouthing the slogans. no they weren't mouthing them. they believe the revolution is coming up we do the right thing and press the right buttons will be able to create it. they are constantly surprised by what goes wrong. it's supposed to be happening this way. the peasants and workers are supposed to be supporting us and they should vote for us in these elections but they don't. why? what's wrong? they argue we need more ideology and more of those were more of that what they discover the factories are producing as much as they are supposed to be.

why not? well maybe we need a different system. they are always looking for ways that they have the statistics and they have the evidence and they know what has gone wrong and they can't figure out how to fifix it.this happens over and n and that is an away the most surprising. c-span: how did the leaders live in those three countries compared to the proletarian? >> guest: the leaders lived in very isolated communities. they were in villas and cut off from the rest of society. this period in particular they had access to privileges that may not seem so extraordinary now to us but at that time they had indoor plumbing and they had access to all kinds of food at a time when there were great shortages. the leaders were very isolated, very protected often surrounded by servants, maids and chauffeurs who were employees of the state who were employees of the interior ministry. they were protected on all sides and they were often very nervous. they were nervous about making

public appearances. they have a lot of bodyguards and they were anxious. c-span: how did that track with their idea that every should -- everybody should be equal? >> guest: it's an interesting question. all the pigs are equal and some are more equal than others. this is the one of the things that developed in the course of the revolution. they thought we are working hard and if they were to justify it they would say we are working hard on behalf of the state. we are the avant-garde of the proletariat. we will lead the proletariat into a full state of communism. we aren't there yet and until we have reached the full state of common is we have to have these temporary inequalities. that would have been the justification and that is what they would have said. what actually went to their the heads one of the window. c-span: how did you do a translation? how much did you do yourself? >> guest: i speak and read polish fluently and speak and read prussian or at least i have

those two languages. with german i have some extremely weak german but german anton gary and i had translators in both cases people who were more than translators. both were journalists. they were people who had worked, both at work and archives before and had done a lot of different kinds of translation. i physically went around with them so i would go to my german federal archive, said in the back open up documents and she would start whispering in my ear. everybody would turn and say be quiet. we would have to be quiet but i simply talk my way through some of these. we read books together. we spent a lot of time together with the two translators. they of course translated interviews for me and so on and that's how i dealt with that problem. i felt it was important to do these countries even though i didn't have all the languages because one of the reasons there are so few books like mine is

because historians feel awkward about using translators. you don't ever get regional portraits and there are many wonderful books about poland in this period hungary and east germany in this period both of these languages and in english but there are very few that try to do a wider range. i felt what i wanted to do was establish patterns, what was happening in different countries at different times. i felt that i could only do that by doing several countries. c-span: you mentioned earlier about the russian archives being open only for a short time. why did they open the archives and who shut them? desk of the archives open in the 90s in a period when the russians were in the wake of glasnost in the wake of the end of the soviet union. there was a movement in russia really to end secrecy and to discuss the past openly. this is actually an authentic movement that came from the ground up and people at the top supported and sympathize with

that. the archives began to open in the 90s and ran some eyes extraordinarily accessible. archivists began working with western scholars and there are many. i did begin to have the impression that one of the other reasons why they were open was because the russians were so preoccupied with things at the time that they didn't really care. people often said how as a young american woman how could you be wandering around the archives. i think the attitude was she wants to go and look at some old documents. so what? we are busy reforming our economy and coping with change. what happened in 2000, putin became president of russia and he had a much more instrumental idea of what history was and what it was for. he re-politicized history and became much more conscious of what history told in how was

being told. this always trickles down. he became more wary of what archives are open and who had access to what information. i should add they are totally closed the dig is a work in them. some of them particularly difficult. c-span: what's the difference, when george w. bush came into the presidency he made it more difficult to get at the archives and pushed up time and he could get access to his father's and bill clinton's archives about that. what's the difference between bad attitude and what you have in these countries? is it a matter of degree where do we really have a different attitude about these things? >> guest: we believe in principle it should all be open and then we argue around the edges but -- about what still classified and how long should it be classified and when will historians have access to it. the soviet union until 1991 assumed all of it was close to

nobody would ever have access. what one worries about putin is where returning to that kind of attitude. not just let's wait a little bit longer until everybody is dead and then talk about it. nobody is ever going to have access to this. it's a secret. history is a secret in the truth doesn't get out. c-span: why do we keep at them? why do they even keep it if they are going to let about? >> guest: because they find it interesting. the kgb writes its own books. it writes its own histories. roads come it's not the kgb anymore. they cap them and publish them and kept them inside their building. c-span: how do we do in the world in openness? when it comes to archives? >> guest: the u.s. is actually good. the u.s. is better than many european countries and generally speaking the u.s. archives are easy to use. the cia archives are hard to use

and i would actually argue they can be harder particularly older ones. you don't want to show for the last 20 years but i know people who had trouble getting access to cia and stories from the 40s and 50's. the national archives, i haven't worked in it. i haven't worked in the archives but from friends who've worked there and know it's not hard to use. c-span: go back to where you started this book in 1944 and it goes to 1956. how did the soviets take over eastern europe? what did they use? you mentioned a lot of stuff earlier but give us some examples specifically. >> guest: they were really three or four depending on how you count it, institutions they considered important so if you look at the world in 1945 stalin did not have a plan. he did not have a ten-point plan we are going to do this, this

and this time there will be soviet satellites. he was an opportunist and a tactician and what he had was a conviction that sooner or later these would be communist countries because marxist-leninist ideology says so. it says there will be international revolutions in the soviet union will bring the international revolution to these countries. so he had a conviction that what happened but not a lot of certainty about one and he was so nervous about how the west might react. what he did to make sure he had enough influence is that he set up come i will choose their institutions in particular. one number one was the secret police. he created in all these countries the red army in conjunction with the npd which is what the kgb was called then, create a secret police forces speaking the local languages sometimes from people coming from the soviet union and sometimes natives and begin training them in nppd methods

and they began doing that right away. they began in 1939. they begin creating a police force them. they import those people back into the country in 1944 when they began fighting the germans and chasing the germans out of poland. that's number one. and that institution is then used in turn to target. the soviet union does not use mass violence during this period. you don't see mass murder actually. what they begin to do as they look for potential opponents and this can be church leaders. he can be resistance leaders. the first encounters between the red army and the polish resistance army which is called the -- home army are very violent. the home army is expected to collaborate with the red army in the fight against fascism and is that what happened was the red

army arrested them, disarmed them and sent them east to labor camps. this may sound paradoxical but it was because they planned from the beginning to eliminate or suppress the leadership of these countries, potential leaders, people who might be post-war leaders. the second institution -- they set up a repressive organization from the beginning. at the same time the other institution they were obsessed with was the radio. they were adjusted in radio as opposed to newspapers or other forms of media because they thought of the radio is the most effective means of reaching the masses, reaching the peasants in reaching the workers, reaching the politari it. c-span: no television at the time? >> guest: there wasn't much television anywhere in 1945. the television comes in later. in 1945 at the radio and

everywhere they go one of the first things they do is either take over or create new radio stations. in east berlin, not east berlin, in central berlin they occupied the nazi radio station immediately on the first day as soon as they get there. they protected from harm and some of the very first east german communists who spent the war in moscow and are flown into berlin are sent to work on a radio station. that's how important it is. in poland the creative radio from scratch. all radios were destroyed in poland during the war. they created it from scratch and the reason is they believed the other thing it shows is they believe in the efficacy of their own propaganda. once we begin to explain to people what we are doing and what they want they will go along with us. the radio is going to be the means by which to do that so they cared enormously about targeting the secret police on the radio and the third element which is maybe surprising is the

other thing they do very early before they eliminate political opposition and before they fully nationalize the economy, they began to target what we would call organizations of civil society so youth groups, youth groups in particular, other kinds of self-organize women's groups, women's charitable organizations, church organizations. these are the groups that they maybe want to put under state control. independent or associations. c-span: let me ask you about the ymca in poland. what happened with that? >> guest: they did have a building in warsaw. it was one of the few buildings to survive more or less the war ensued after the word people began moving into it. the ymca had resources. it's an international organization and it had resources from outside and was able to do things like bring in

clothing sent from the west and to feed people and set up soup kitchens. it also quickly became, because of jazz records that are arrived at the ymca became a center of social life in warsaw. it was a place you went to parties in 1947 and 1948. you can imagine a city in which everything is rubble and there's practically nothing standing in the ymca is a little island of jazz music. the ymca, this poses such a threat and such a problem at the very highest levels, the communist leaders write to one another angry letters. we must do something about the ymca. let's destroy the ymca and eventually they do. they close it up and it is tragic moment the communist smash the jazz records because it's seen as anything that's an island of self-organized or spontaneous organization is seen

as a potential threat to the regime. c-span: at one point you mentioned john paul sartre and pablo picasso. what world do they play and who were they by the way in case somebody doesn't know? >> guest: sark was probably the preeminent french philosopher in the post-war period. pablo picasso was one of the great modernist painters. both of them were at one time or another or for part of their lives were communists or communist advisers or communist party members. both of them were seeing as a kind of justification. if even people like picasso and start our communists then it's okay for intellectuals in poland or hungary to become communist too. they provided intellectual balance to the regime. picasso came to warsaw. he came to a cultural congress. he painted, he was taken to see

a new apartment block that was being built in the city that were homeless for the workers project which had shown a sign of communist progressive architecture. he painted a picture. he did a kind of sketch of a wall of one of these new apartments. which later became the many tourist attraction. there was a couple that was given at apartment 11 and they became annoyed by the number of people would knock on their door and say they would like to see that the cost of sketch of the wall so they painted over it. [laughter] c-span: if you are going to send people to a number places today over in eastern europe that would somehow reflect what happened in those years where would you send them? >> guest: i would certainly send them to warsaw. if you walk around warsaw you can walk around warsaw and do visual archaeology. he could see what was billed one and there are a number of very prominent stalinist buildings

including something called the palace of culture which is sort of a ziggurat skyscraper built in the high stalinist architectural style. you get a very good idea there for that period was like at least aesthetically what it was like. c-span: speaking earlier and we have talked about before the gulags and all that the jewish of europe. how many jewish had moved back into eastern germany or poland or hungary? >> guest: i can't remember off the top of my head for numbers. you probably have them somewhere in the book. c-span: actually don't do the reason i asked that is whether or not the jewish had moved back in. >> guest: many thousands moved in and many thousand survive. many people were in hiding. they were disguised and they survived the war. more survived in hungary particularly in the city of budapest. the attack on the hungary and

happened late in the war when hungary's government, the nazis took over hungary and that is when the holocaust began. actually a large community of jews survived in budapest in a couple hundred thousand which is a significant figure at that time given the population of the city. in poland they survived and all kinds of ways. many people survived by going to the soviet union and many people come home and i come home to find what's left and what kind of life they have made. as one very sad moving archival documents said many came home just to see the cemeteries and leave because they don't want to be there anymore. but the jews to come back. some try to make new lives there. john -- some joined the communist party in the communist party has an attraction for not just jews but anybody who experienced the devastation of the war and the shattering of

all ethics and all morality that were brought. many people did see an communism may kind of alternative and maybe this new system will work. liberal democracy has failed. the west did not come to our a aid. capitalism is a disaster. maybe there is some alternate air and there was a brief period that were listening to the radio station and they were attracted to it and i was particularly attractive for jews who had nothing else and have been excluded from all kinds of politics not only during the war but in some cases before. so they come back. some make their way and some immediately, it's a strange -- strange and hard story to tell because some joined the communist party in some immediately come into conflict with the communist party because a lot of them are small traders are small merchants and they are subject to the nationalization and takeover during this period. they began to leave then they then begin to be large groups to

leave for israel in the late 1940s. it's a complicated story that some leave with the aid of those countries. there are actually a couple of moments when both the polls and the hungary and help train jews who are going to fight for independence in palestine to the rotation of the british. c-span: at one point the two words mickey and mouse come up in your book. what's that about because we have some entertainment here in a moment. >> guest: i was describing the origins of the famous song. there's a song called the song of the party and basically the lyrics go the party, the party, the party is always right more or less and i describe this. i went to look on the internet for somebody singing this song so i could hear it and i found a number of parodies including a mickey mickey mouse. e..

mickey mouse singing it. this became a song that in later years of the last 20 years people have made fun of. what interested me about it is okay to make fun of it now and you can do mickey mouse now but people were seeing at 30 years ago in berlin or 40 years ago in berlin. i began to ask the question why were they singing at? what did they think when they were singing at? this was the introduction to my chapter on what i described as reluctant collaboration, people who go along with things without necessarily believing in them. c-span: it's in german and hear some of language here. she gave us everything, sun and wind always generous. wherever she was there was life. we are what we are because of her. she never a band and thus even in a frozen world. we were born a party to the parties. she was always right. do they really believe that? >> guest: it's hard to know what people believe. somewhat like to believe it or would hope to believe it.

some people felt they had to believe it and some people thought it was okay to sing it even if he didn't believe it because it was a minor sacrifice to make in exchange for keeping your job, your house and keeping her children in school. c-span: we found this on youtube. it's not labeled very well so we don't know where it comes from but it makes the point in its it's sung by a man named ernst bush who was born in 1900 died in 1980 at the age of 802 was a german. c-span: and east german singer. c-span: let's watch. it's only a minute. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ c-span: who were some of the people we saw the sights castro and khrushchev and gorbachev? >> guest: it was going fast but i saw honecker who in the period iran about was a youth leader, the head of what was

called the free german youth the communist free movement. i saw walter albrecht who is the east german head of the party and in effect the little stalinist east germany's period and he was standing next to the present of east germany. i saw mao. i saw castro. stalin. c-span: what started the breakup of the control of the soviets in eastern europe? >> guest: in a way, it's very important to look at this period when you asked that question because in a way the soviet union and the soviet system in eastern europe contain the seeds of its own distraction. many of the problems we saw at the end began at the very beginning. i spoke already about the attempts to control all institutions and control all parts of the economy and political life and social life. what are the problems is when you do that, when you try to

control everything then you create opposition and potential dissidents everywhere. if you tell all artists they have to paint the same way and one artist is no i don't want to think that way, i want to paint another way you have just made them into a political dissident. he might have otherwise been apolitical. if you tell boy scout troops that they are not allowed to be boy scouts anymore and they have to now become young pioneers which happened in a number of countries and one group decides they don't like it so they form a secret underground boy scout troop which absolutely happened. underground scouts were very important to the communist period you have just created another group of political opponents from a political teenagers. the system created pockets of resistance and opposition all over. the other, just as important, the other element you can see from the beginning is the gap that begins to grow between the

ideology and the reality. the congress leaders continue to say this is what things are going to be like. this is what should be happening. we have read marxist doctrine. this is how things will develop. this is how the economy will grow. it doesn't happen that way. or it happened sort of but not really or there is some growth but the west is very -- growing much faster. the fact that the system is never able to fulfill its promises means that by the end, by 1989 come even the people leading it don't believe in it anymore. the loss of faith in the system which begins in the 40s and simply grows worse and worse over time means that there's nobody left to defend it. by 1989 not even soviet leadership at the highest levels was really able to defend the system. once gorbachev in the late 80s began the conversation about history, what's really wrong and

how really wrong in howitzer system setup, since people didn't have to collaborate anymore and they didn't feel obligated to go along with what the party wanted him to sing the song and keep chanting that the party is always right then they stopped. c-span: after the wall came down we did a 30 hour special and east germany. i just remember interviewing a man, i believe his last name as number -- zimmerman who was one of those that started a revolution, the silent revolution outside of the opera house. he turns out to have been a member of the stasi and i don't know what the word is, rabbit on his own family. i'm not sure if he is alive today. what kind of mentality is it? here is a guy that helped the revolution begin back to freedom but he was a member of the secret police and east germany. guess that this question of

collaboration is an incredibly complicated and it's more complicated than we in the west like to think. people very often weren't only a collaborative. they were collaborators and some real heroes of resistance. many people zigzag through their lives. they collaborated at times or they marched in the may day parade and then at other times they even used telling jokes behind the parties back or agreeing to help somebody who might hide somebody who might be imprisoned. people often try to find a path which they felt was moral and they felt was right. and i period when the state controls everything, i mean everything, this is very difficult. i find it often helps to think about if you have children. would you be willing to say i won't march in the parade and i won't do all these things if you

know that it means your child will be expelled from school and won't be able to study and won't have a future and will be educated? these were really dramatic and radical choices that people made. they had to give up things that would never occur to us that we would have to give up in order to make a political life. obviously it's more drastic to become police informant. even then there were degrees. there were people who thought i can reform a little bit and i won't say anything important and i will do it so that i can protect my wife who is ill and needs to get medicine from a hospital and if i do this than then i will get medicine for her and she won't die. even then sometimes the choices were much more gray and more complicated than we now imagine sitting here in a free society. c-span: even though you say we are free society what's the difference between all the favoritism to the people in the

party and what goes on in this town when you are in power and has earmarks? pick your moment. the people in power here dish out favors to people based on whether or not you follow the party. what's the difference? >> guest: well i mean the difference is there is no threat of violence behind it. that's one difference. if you don't vote for the republican party or the democratic party, you don't go to jail and you are not going to be arrested and your child will not be expelled from school. there is really a dramatic difference between the consequences, the kinds of consequences and the radical nature of choices that people had to make. the second difference is that our system is more or less open so we know this stuff goes on we can have an argument about it and discuss it and then of course the communist system is entirely close. there was a high level of

secrecy about all state affairs and all political affairs. he didn't necessarily know what was going on. a. c-span: are there any lessons in your book and this may sound like a stretch, for the people who live in china? a communist government. i don't know whether they call it a totalitarian system but certainly there's not the openness. what would you say to the leaders of china about their future? >> guest: i would start by saying that the chinese leaders have drawn lessons from the story. the chinese leaders know this piece of history and this is similar period in their own history, the maoist period in china and they also studied very carefully the 80s and the end of the soviet union. one of the decisions they have made based on studying this piece of history as they have made contemporary china less totalitarian in the sense that they don't make people march in parades and they have abandoned ideology in the sense of making

people repeat things they don't believe in. and the pressures they put on people are enough senseless. it's a much more subtle system where you are allowed to say some things in some contexts but not others and you can talk about corruption. you maybe can't criticize the party directly so there are these unwritten rules of speech that they have established. it's more sophisticated than what i described in this book. but i would say that what the chinese will have to be careful of is the moment when the basis of their legitimacy begins to deteriorate. right now the regime argues that it has the right to stay in power because it's bringing fast growth and because it's an americredit system where the people at the top are all specially trained. as growth falls and as it becomes clear that some of those people at the top are in fact the children of important people and maybe they are not such, they are not so, such wonderful

meritocratic guess the regime will have to find other ways to make itself legitimate if it's not going to intend to protest. c-span: your husband is the foreign minister in poland and a lip in warsaw part of the time and i guess london. what's the difference in life of people who are polish and live in poland and people in the united states when we are talking about freedom and openness and democracy? >> guest: nothing of significance. people in the united states are wealthier than the people in poland. as a general rule, but in terms of civic freedom and political freedom i don't think there's any significant difference. c-span: what about the social, it's not the word i'm looking for but the overall network, social network, how well they take care of people in poland versus how will we take your people in united states?

>> guest: you are not comparing apples-to-apples. in the united states it depends on where and which stated you you were talking about. poland is a much more smaller and homogenous society. i would think in this country civil society is far more developed than far richer and a range of charities and institutions that we have here that have developed over 200 years is greater. although poland for that region does have a very developed civil society. one of the most impressive things happened in 1989 was pretty much the next day people started organizing private kindergartens because everybod everybody -- there were people who were ready to do stuff right away and volunteer organizations were created right away. poland does have some of that but you don't have the depth of it that you have here. you do have state health care and it varies. c-span: does it work? >> guest: sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

it depends on how sick you are and what part of the country with them. c-span: what about the cost of living? >> guest: the cost of living is significantly lower but again salaries are lower too. c-span: in the back of your book under knowledge months yet with the people that supported you and you asked how does this happen? the national endowment for humanities, the smith richardson foundation, the american enterprise institute now they -- how do you get support for something like this? >> guest: i write letters and asked. there's no secretive. c-span: what if they want out of a? >> guest: the national endowment for the humanities has a formal application process. you fill it out and you apply any get references and you ask for a grant. c-span: how much times that take you? >> guest: it depends. it sometimes takes a lot of time.

i have described to my intense relationship with my two translators. i pay for them in their time for support from a range of institutions as he said. c-span: who would read this that would make you the happiest? >> guest: i mean i want people who are interested in the history of europe but don't know the history of the world but don't know anything about this region. i would be most happy if people who read if you don't know anything about poland or communism are about russia. people who are new to the subject. if teenagers read it and people in their 20s read it and i will be happy. c-span: what's the difference between being a marxist leninist and being a stalinist? >> guest: marxist leninism is described as a philosophy and it's a very complex and deep philosophy. being a stalinist implies something more political. it applies to this period really

a follower of stalin. marxist leninism is a broader term and stalinist is the narrower term. brezhnev was a marxist leninist and he was after stone. c-span: what is italian fascism versus german fascism and? >> guest: well they have similar roots actually. i mention italian fascism because the were totalitarian comes from italian and it was a word first use by mussolini and it was mussolini who coined some of the best definitions of the word. everything within the state, nothing outside the state. that comes from mussolini so that is why it appears in this book. i introduced the book by speaking about totalitarianism, what was it, how do we understand it, what is the idea come from and what are the intellectual organs of the word? c-span: so what's next? >> guest: many things. i would quite like to write a book about 1989 actually. c-span: what facet?

>> guest: why it all fell apart. i would also like to write about the ukrainian famine which is another piece of forgotten history in that region. c-span: how long do you -- >> guest: there is snow and a. it's indefinite. c-span: how often do you write for the "washington post"? >> guest: every other week. c-span: and what's the mission? what do they want you to do another column? >> guest: they seem to want me to do whatever i want to do. what i usually want to do is provide some perspective on international and even american affairs from a different view. i live outside the united states. i might see foreign policy. i might see american policy from a different angle and i think that's what i can do on that page that others may be cam. c-span: and your kids are going to do what? have they figured out? do either want to follow their mom? >> guest: is hard to go into journalism now. it's not a good moment.

i often have people asked me about it and it's difficult. i do nathe know they are both bilingual and they are both interested in history. one seems very interested in science and he imago differently. c-span: the name of the book is "iron curtain" the crushing of eastern europe, 1945-1956 and our guest has been anne applebaum and we thank you. >> guest: thank you so much.

>> i always knew the bohemian lifestyle i decided to take it because whether it's an illusion or not, i don't think it is, it helped my concentration greater to stop me from being bored. stop other people from being bored to some extent. it would keep me awake and it would prolong the conversation and to enhance the moment. if i was asked what i do it again, the answer is probably yes. i would have credit earlier possibly hoping to get away with the whole thing. ..