Winter Reading: Cafe Europa Resisted March 2, 2021 Kristen Ghodsee “…in all former communist countries in eastern Europe, it is difficult to mention the merits of communism, a system that, in a short time, brought modernization and changed an agrarian society into an urbanized, industrial one. It meant general education as well as the emancipation of women; this has to be recognized, even though such changes were accomplished by a totalitarian regime.” — Slavenka Drakulic, 2021