Iron Curtain

Este artigo argumenta, assumindo uma perspectiva geopolítica, sobre o papel dos media cinematográficos como arma ideológica, política e cultural durante o período da Guerra Fria. Uma primeira abordagem, pretende esclarecer o conceito de geopolítica através de quatro dos seus aspectos. O artigo aborda, depois, os formatos e materializações da propaganda americana, nos primeiros anos, com a ascensão dos newsreels e o seu papel como garante psicológico da resistência ao comunismo.
De seguida, são analisados os anos da segunda metade da Guerra Fria, revelando a ascensão dos géneros cinematográficos da espionagem e vigilância e o seu papel na formação da identidade nacionalista, na geração do herói americano e na inscrição social da ideologia capitalista.
A relação estratégica entre a indústria do cinema de Hollywood e as várias administrações americanas do período da Guerra Fria fica, assim, demonstrada, caracterizando-se como uma verdadeira rede comercial multinacional e com influências em vários países, especialmente na Europa, traduzindo-se na hegemonia cultural americana dos nossos dias.

This article argues, in a geopolitical perspective, on the role of cinematographic media as an ideological, political and cultural weapon during the Cold War period. The first approach tries to clarify the concept of geopolitics through four of its aspects. The article addresses, then, the formats and representations of the American propaganda in the early years, with the rise of newsreels and their role as guarantor of psychological resistance to communism.
Next, we analyse the years of the second half of the Cold War, revealing the rise of the film genres of espionage and surveillance and their role in forging nationalist identity, the rise of the American hero and the social inscription of capitalist ideology.
The strategic relationship between Hollywood film industry and the various American administrations of the Cold War period is thus demonstrated, being characterised as a true multinational commercial network influencing several countries, mainly in Europe, into nowadays American cultural hegemony.

For nearly fifty years after the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in an ideological standoff that at times seemed to threaten the very future of the planet. This volume not only looks at the political and military strategies used by both sides during this lengthy confrontation but also at the after-effects that these strategies had on the culture of the world as a whole.

In the following pages I explore a chapter in Slovak visual art of the 1960s, post-informal figuration, focusing on the first and crucial stage in the work of the Bratislava sculptor Mira Haberernová. The time frame ranges from the period of her involvement in the Bratislava Confrontations (2,4,5) to her expulsion from the Union of Slovak Visual Artists in 1972, followed by an effective ban on activities abroad after 1975. I have highlighted a number of essential progressions in her art during those years. I also outline the context: the young art student, the female among male sculptors, the artist in a golden age of contemporary culture, the 1960s, with their unrepeatable range of possibilities. We may follow the evolution of her career from her unofficial atelier presentation, through involvement in Danubius ’68, exhibition at the Wiener Sezesion, and participation in the Paris Youth Biennale (1969), up to her solo exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1971, where Pierre Restany performed the introduction. My aim here is to provide a more general art-historical survey, preparatory to a monographic treatment of this artist’s work in written and pictorial form. In the present work I gradually narrow the focus: from a general review of the given period, through Haberernová‘s contextual links with a circle of like-minded artists, to initial interpretations of her work.

Eric J. Schmaltz.  "Soviet 'Paradise' Revisited:  Genocide, Dissent, Memory and Denial -- Part II."  Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Fall 2015):  pp. 22-31.  [Journal PDF uploaded.]  This is Part II of a short article series.  See also Part I in the listing above.

Many scholars are unaware of the resources available at the AHSGR.  See link to AHSGR Website for this and so many other fine research materials: 

https://ahsgr.site-ym.com/store/default.aspx?

From the end of World War II until the revolutions at the turn of the 1990s, an Iron Curtain divided the capitalist Western Europe from the Soviet-dominated, communist Eastern Bloc. Does a Silicon Curtain still keep the history of Eastern Bloc computer art away from researchers? Elaborating on computer art in each Eastern Bloc country and attempting to place the events in a political and social context, this master’s thesis aims to be a dent in the curtain and to throw light on computer art in the Eastern Bloc.

L'Albergo Americano a Barcola consente di mettere a fuoco un episodio rilevante sotto il profilo urbanistico e architettonico relativo al periodo del Governo Militare Alleato a Trieste (1945-1954). Progettato nel 1949 da Guido Fulignot per conto del GMA e affidato per la parte costruttiva al Genio Civile, il "Barcola Tourist Hotel" diventa subito occasione di scontro con il Comune di Trieste, dato che l'intervento entra in collisione con un settore di competenza dell'Amministrazione cittadina, come quello del piano regolatore che concedeva di costruire nella zona solo ville e villini. Con i suoi sei piani l'Albergo, destinato agli ufficiali americani, non è quindi tollerabile e il coro delle critiche mosse dalla Commissione edilizia comunale, dall'Ordine Ingegneri e Architetti e l'Ente Turismo, convince la committenza a effettuare delle significative modifiche, nonostante gli scavi per le fondazioni siano già iniziati. Il cambiamento è piuttosto costoso, poiché il progetto sostituirà la disposizione planimetrica a U con quella a L. Ma il cambiamento più significativo è quello relativo allo "stile", dato che il precedente progetto era stato giudicato poco confacente al pregio della posizione. D'accordo con la Soprintendenza il GMA chiama tre illustri architetti triestini - Ramiro Meng, Umberto Nordio e Mario Zocconi - che elaborano la nuova proposta, sviluppata nella parte esecutiva dal Genio Civile. La scelta del rivestimento di piastrelle in cotto (al posto dell'intonaco) si potrebbe attribuire al solo Nordio, che aveva utilizzato il materiale nella Casa Alta. Interessante la tipologia che è piuttosto inusuale in Italia, quella del residence-albergo (ma a Trieste esisteva l'illustre precedente del Balkan di Max Fabiani), ma anche gli arredi offrono alcuni elementi di novità. In questo caso le preoccupazioni economiche riguardo ai materiali e alle finiture non sembrano avere la stessa importanza di altri progetti, si tratta infatti di alloggi di lusso che devono soddisfare a criteri vigenti nelle Forze Armate, dove la qualità è commisurata al grado gerarchico. Paradossalmente l'Albergo Americano al termine della revisione progettuale non lascia trapelare alcun accenno a uno specifico linguaggio architettonico d'oltreoceano, ma nel disporsi dei volumi (a gradoni) e nella scelta del rivestimento, rimanda a edifici italiani (se non triestini) degli anni Trenta e Quaranta: quasi un omaggio a una tradizione e a una cultura nella quale ci si riconosce e si ammira.

The study is devoted to the Israeli plane that was fired by two Bulgarian jet fighters over the Bulgarian airspace on the 27th of July 1955. The main purpose of the author is to present the facts and circumstances associated with the tragic 4X-AKC flight and to examine the causes of the tragic event, the international response and the way it was used for propaganda purposes against both Bulgaria and the Eastern bloc and the USSR. The myths and assumptions concerning the plane crash that are a result of the obscure aspects about the reasons why the Israeli plane entered into the Bulgarian territory and the circumstances demanded for it to be brought down are analyzed. A special attention is paid to the impact of the incident on the relations between Bulgaria and Israel as the main parties in that special case and their diplomatic negotiations in order for the issue about the payment of certain compensation to the families of the victims to be resolved. The involvements of international institutions like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice in an attempt for the problem of the guilt and the compensation due thereunder to be solved are scrutinized.
Describing the international situation regarding the opposition and the military rivalry and competition between the representatives of the Eastern and Western blocs just at the time when the accident with the 4X-AKC flight used to happen Vanya Mihaylova reached to the conclusion that the main reason is the specific atmosphere of distrust and mutual suspicion. The death of 58 civilian passengers proved that the negotiations during the Geneva conference in 1955 were an example of a “cold détente” in the context of the hot confrontation and “the curtain was still made of iron”.

Në ngjarjet shoqërore nuk ka rastësira dhe nuk ka ndodhi-pasoja pa shkaqet e tyre. Shërbimet e fshehta të zgjuarsisë të një shteti kryejnë shërbime të fshehta zgjuarsie për ta mbrojtur sa më nga larg shtetin e tyre ose edhe për ta zgjeruar atë. Prandaj pëlhura e mbi 123 vjetëve të shkuara është qëndisur me gjilpërat kur-ku-kush-si-çfar-pse dhe shtrydhur njëkohësisht për t’u rrëgjuar në madhësinë e një libri dore. Çfar dihet, kuptohet, përfytyrohet për të shkuarën, të tashmen e të ardhmen peshohet kur lexohet ky libër.

(LIBRI NDODHET EDHE TEK LIBRARIA ADRION NË AEROPORTIN E RINASIT, TIRANË.)

www.adrionltd.com/sq/

www.amazon.com/Nation-Free-Recipe-Triple-Entente-Comintern/dp/1649797346/ref=sr_1_1?
www.goodreads.com/book/show/208583778-the-nation-free-recipe

The book that sums up the first stage of the Lifting the Curtain. Central European Architectural Networks project published by Editions Fourre-Tout, Ccea Moba and TRACE Central european architectural research think-tank.
The book has documented selected aspects of both material and immaterial production of architecture of the last 100 years in Central Europe and its impact on the global revision of architecture historiography derived from the Cold War information circuit and the past, outdated methodology taken from art history discipline. It is also a record of contemporary network activity - entities and researchers focused on the architectural culture of Central Europe.

Green movements emerged in the prosperous countries of the West during the sixties and spread across the whole world. These movements drew attention to ecological devastation, criticized the modern industrial society and sought to promote ecological and social harmony. Green parties were born as a result of the transformation process of these movements and took place on the political scene. The so-called “Greens” deeply influenced the society and the established political parties as a new and different actor from the eighties onwards.
    In the first section of this study, to understand the green movement, definitions of various terms related to ecology were provided and the historical background of ecological devastation was revealed. It was arranged calendrically, including the works of scientists, philosophers and artists on the topic of “environment”. This section highlighted that, contrary to popular belief, environmental degradation is not a new phenomenon and should not be considered as an issue of modern society; the origins lie far back in time.
    Second section of this study analyzed how a term (ecology) used in science was converted into a political ideology. The attention was focused on the ideology which is formed by the conjunction of new social movements and ecology. By using the guidance of social movement theories and postmaterialism thesis as a key factor, the emergence of green movements and green parties in each European Union (EU) member state were examined. It showed that the postmaterialism thesis and social movement theories developed in the West were not quite satisfactory to explain the green movements and parties in Eastern Europe. The factors that played a role in the emergence of Greens and outcomes thereof, differed for former Eastern Bloc countries. Particular interest was given to the part they had in the fall of regimes (1989) across Eastern Europe and the positions they held in the subsequent process.
    Born out of social movements and subsequently developing into political parties, Greens gained parliamentary representation and participated in governments throughout Europe. In the third section of this study they were reviewed as political actors in the European Parliament; and the transnational European Green Party they formed was analyzed through its historical development, structure, political preferences and relations with and within EU. The change in position towards EU integration was underlined.

Andreas Michler – Kateřina Pražáková (edd.), Historie jako prostor k setkávání v česko-bavorském příhraničí. Výukové materiály, České Budějovice 2019.

A collective work on some important periods and events from the history of contacts between Bohemian lands and Germany (Hussites, Goldener Steig, Nazi-period, ...). There are also worksheets for students enclosed.

Published by Böhlau Verlag as vol. 9 in the series ʻDas östliche Europa: Kunst- und Kulturgeschichteʼ in 2019. Eds. Krista Kodres, Kristina Jõekalda, Michaela Marek. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag. 280 pp. ///

How did the Eastern European and Soviet states write their respective histories of art and architecture during 1940s–1960s? The fourteen articles in this book address both the Stalinist period and the Khrushchev Thaw, when the Marxist-Leninist discourse on art history was ʻinventedʼ and refined. Although this discourse was inevitably ʻSovietizedʼ in a process dictated from Moscow, a variety of distinct interpretations emerged from across the Soviet bloc in the light of local traditions, cultural politics and decisions of individual authors. Even if the new ʻofficialʼ discourse often left space open for national concerns, it also gave rise to a countermovement in response to the aggressive ideologization of art and the preeminence assigned to (Socialist) Realist aesthetics.

Dolgozatomban az environment műfaját a művészet szabad áramlásának összefüggésében, kulturális és társadalmi támogatottságának kontextusában tekintem át. Ezen belül az (állam)hatalom és az individuum viszonyrendszerére fókuszálva vizsgálom a ’70-es évek első magyar példáit az environment művészet mezsgyéjén. Felvetésem szerint a szobrászat kiterjedt mezőjén (Krauss) elhelyezkedő environment, műfaji sajátosságából fakadóan – miszerint a művészek által épített mesterséges terek az individuumot szenzuális tapasztalásán keresztül segítik újrapozícionálni saját téridő-beli helyzetét az életét átszövő hatalmi struktúrákban – a Vasfüggönyön innen és túl is értelmezhetőek az individuális szabadságért és a társadalom liberalizációjáért folyó szellemi küzdelem képzőművészeti materializálásának. 

Négy művész, Jovánovics György, Galántai György, Pauer Gyula és Schaár Erzsébet egy-egy fő művén keresztül mutatom be az első magyar environmentek paradigmaváltó erejét, kulturális környezetükkel való viszonyukat és kölcsönhatásukat a ’70-es évek Magyar Népköztársaságának szellemi terében. Ezek:
Jovánovics György: Fényes Adolf terem objekt (1970)
Galántai György: Balatonboglári Kápolnaműterem projekt (1968-73)
Pauer Gyula: Pszeudo tér (1970)
Schaár Erzsébet: Utca (1974).

Köszönettel tartozom Sass Valéria, szobrászművésznek, témavezetőmnek a kutatás letisztázásában nyújtott rendkívül alapos segítségéért és Mélyi József művészettörténésznek a precíz és építő kritikákért.

A kutatás az ÚNKP Doktorvárományosi Ösztöndíja, az Innovációs és Technológiai Minisztérium, valamint a Nemzeti Kutatási, Fejlesztési és Innovációs Alap támogatásával valósult meg.

After Prague’s Spring, French May and the student’s rebels in Berlin, Rome and Belgrade, in the rise of the invasion of the united forces of the Warsaw Pact in Czechoslovakia, in Sofia has been realized a very important international event – the IX World Festival of the youth and the students. His motto was the solidarity, peace and friendship between the peoples. The international situation was very tense. From the two sides of the Iron Curtain erupted two volcanos – in Prague and Paris. They were unified on the common idea – freedom and human rights. All the countries supported the just cause of Vietnam. The Bulgarian powers have faced a test: in front of 15 000 students and young people from 142 counties from whole over the world, they had to prove the successes and the achievements of socialism.
Keywords: Events in 1968; IX World Festival in Sofia; invasion in Czechoslovakia.

Cold War cultural diplomacy projects represented a dynamic mixture of the geopolitical and transnational processes that shaped postwar history. The worldwide dissemination of the Hungarian music education system known as the “Kodály method” provides an instructive example of how these different agendas interacted within the larger framework of twentieth-century global integration. The chapter examines the transnational collaborations of Hungarian and American music educators that led to the construction of the “Kodály method” as an internationally marketable and adaptable model for teaching music in the 1960s and 1970s. It traces how pedagogues from the two countries, like Erzsébet Szőnyi and Denise Bacon, forged professional ties through participation at conferences and summer courses – and explores the process through which the Hungarian model was adopted in the U.S. in the form of institutional arrangements like the Kodály Musical Training Institute, established in 1969 in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Furthermore, the chapter analyses how the Hungarian communist authorities gradually incorporated the “Kodály method” into their domestic and foreign policy framework. Although it initially emerged as a product of transnational exchanges which cut across the Iron Curtain, by the mid-1970s the method eventually became an official Hungarian cultural diplomacy project, representative of a small state’s effort to gain international recognition and legitimacy. However, this process of appropriation compelled the Hungarian authorities to accept and accommodate a truly global phenomenon – and to recognize the ideas and practices of a transnational network of pedagogues and researchers as culturally valuable and politically salient.

This book offers new insights into the mechanisms of state control, systematic repression and mass violence focused on ethnic, political, class and religious minorities in the recent past. The geographical and temporal scope of the volume breaks new ground as international scholars foreground how contemporary archaeology can be used to enhance the documentation and interpretation of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, to advance theoretical approaches to atrocities, and to broaden public understandings of how such regimes use violence and repression to hold on to power.
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030466824

West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of Cold War Germany and the German reunification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945. These border regions constituted the Federal Republic’s most sensitive geographical space, in which it had to confront partition and engage its socialist neighbor, East Germany, in concrete ways. Each issue that arose in these borderlands—from economic deficiencies to border tourism, environmental pollution, landscape change, and the siting decision for a major nuclear facility—was magnified and mediated by the presence of what became the most militarized border of its day, the Iron Curtain. In topical chapters, the book traces each of these issues across the caesura of 1989–1990, thereby integrating the “long” postwar era with the postunification decades. At the heart of this deeply-researched study stands an environmental history of the Iron Curtain that explores transboundary pollution, landscape change, and a planned nuclear industrial site at Gorleben that was meant to bring jobs into the depressed border regions. As Eckert demonstrates, the borderlands that emerged with partition and disappeared with reunification did not merely mirror larger developments in the Federal Republic’s history but actually helped shape them.

Данная статья представляет собой публикацию с комментарием письма советских верующих о гонениях на монахов Почаевской лавры. Публикуемый документ хранится в архиве Кестонского центра по изучению религиозной политики и общества (Университет Бэйлор, Техас, США), ранее в архиве Кестонского института (Оксфорд, Великобритания). Попав на запад в 1964 г., он сыграл немаловажную роль в распространении информации о религиозных преследованиях в СССР в годы хрущевской антирелигиозной кампании и конкретно в учреждении Кестонского института в 1969 г. Публикация письма сопровождается вступительной статьей, которая вводит письмо в контекст холодной войны на «религиозном фронте», и комментариями справочного характера.

This is the publication of a letter from Soviet believers about persecutions of the monks of Pochaev Lavra, Ukraine. This letter is preserved
in the Keston Center for Religion Politics and Society at Baylor University, Texas, USA, earlier in the Keston Institute (Oxford, UK). This
document reached the West in 1964 and played an important role in
spreading the information about antireligious assaults in the USSR
in the years of the Khrushchev rule and particularly in the establishment of the Keston Institute in 1969. The publication is accompanied
with an introductory note that places the document within the Cold
War “religious front” context, and reference commentaries.

Divided, but not disconnected. Transboundary River Pollution between East and West Germany
The article analyzes transboundary pollution of rivers flowing between the two German states. For the Federal Republic, this was a pressing concern because the majority of these rivers ran from east to west, carrying waste and toxic agents into western Germany. The article illuminates the dynamic that evolved between both German states during the 1970s and 80s as they tried to negotiate transboundary environmental problems. It explains the specific political circumstances, clashing interpretations and interests that prevented any agreement which might have benefited the environment. One outstanding factor influencing East German negotiation strategies was the country’s need for western currency. During the 1980s, the chronic shortage of “valuta” facilitated a development in which the environment became a commodity. The river Werra, heavily polluted by potash salts, serves as an example for this development. Although a few environmental agreements were signed, the situation of the transboundary rivers did not change until the GDR’s collapse in 1989/90.

Der Artikel untersucht am Beispiel von Grenzgewässern die Dynamik zwischen der Bundesrepublik und der DDR im Hinblick auf grenzüberschreitende Umweltprobleme. Für die Bundesrepublik war die Verschmutzung von grenzkreuzenden Flüssen ein dringendes Problem, denn die Mehrzahl der Flüsse entwässerten von Osten nach Westen. Der Aufsatz geht der Frage nach, welche spezifischen politischen Umstände und Interpretationen der Sachlage während der siebziger und achtziger Jahre eine Anrainerkooperation zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland jeweils verhinderten und arbeitet dabei die Rolle der DDR-Devisenknappheit in den achtziger Jahren heraus. Die vorliegende Untersuchung beschränkt sich allerdings nicht allein auf Umweltpolitik, sondern räumt der Ökologie der Flüsse eine eigenständige Rolle ein. Als Fallbeispiel dient die Werra, die durch die Kaliindustrie der DDR mit Salzabwässern über Jahrzehnte aufs stärkste belastet wurde.

The article investigates the role of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty as a crucial junction of cross-Iron Curtain communication throughout the Cold War. It explores how the radio stations turned into both real as well as imaginary targets of letters, underground literature, and private phone calls from the ‘Other Europe’. After outlining the radios' mission in the early 1950s, the article concentrates on the practical as well as the symbolic employability of exiles. This will help further the understanding of the central role of exiles in closing gaps between the radio stations' mission and their actual transmission. By reestablishing means of real cross-border communication, exiles turned into the key players of this ‘Cold War of the ether’.

The Czech–German borderlands are an archetypal European border region. They evoke not only Cold War histories, but also shelter layers of European memories of the ethnic reshaping of early post-war Europe. By means of life story interviews with German speakers of the border region, this article analyzes the symbolic meaning of and the individual dealing with the local Iron Curtain. It will shed light on the biographical and narrative interconnectedness of experiences of ethnic cleansing in the early postwar period and retrospective perceptions of the Iron Curtain in these borderlands. In particular, it inquires whether and to what extent the local Iron Curtain intensified fractures caused by the region’s post-and pre-war attempts to halt the multiethnic composition of the border communities. The article suggests that the local Czech–German Iron Curtain would have never endured as strongly if the border communities’ common identity had not already been severely damaged in the course
of the region’s traumatic history and forced population transfers.

Elena FELL, Macro-reasoning and cognitive gaps: understanding post-Soviet Russians’ communication styles. ESSACHESS - Journal for Communication Studies. Vol 10, No 1(19) (2017). P. 91-110.

Russians and Westerners access, process and communicate information in different ways. Whilst Westerners favour detailed analysis of subject matter, Russians tend to focus on certain components that are, in their view, significant. This disparity makes it difficult to achieve constructive dialogues between Western and Russian stakeholders contributing to cross-cultural communication problems. The author claims that the difference in the ways Russians and Westerners negotiate information is a significant cultural difference between Russia and West rather than an irritating (and in principle amenable) lack of analytical skills on the Russian partners' part. Understanding the reasons behind the Russian-specific approaches to dealing with information would be a positive step towards a more effective cross-cultural communication, important in business situations and essential in diplomacy.

У статті проаналізовано наукову політику Омеляна Пріцака на тлі еміграційних проектів «реалітетників» у напрямку налагодження офіційних контактів з УРСР. Досліджено мотивацію контактів, її головних акторів, обставини і роль для твореною гарвардської україністики. Окремо вивчено проект «Української Наукової Офензиви», який О. Пріцак прагнув реалізувати у співпраці з американським урядом. На основі особистого архіву О. Пріцака, колекцій Гарвардського університету і архівних матеріалів ЦРУ проаналізовано причини невдачі проекту і місце вченого в «Інтелектуальній Холодній війні».

http://www.bpb.de/geschichte/zeitgeschichte/deutschlandarchiv/158899/der-andere-mauerfall

Nach Günther Schabowskis berühmter Pressekonferenz am 9. November 1989 drängten DDR-Bürger nicht nur in Berlin gegen die Mauer. Astrid M. Eckert erinnert in diesem Artikel an den “anderen Mauerfall” – die Öffnung der innerdeutschen Grenze, das Ende des Grenzregimes und die vielfältigen Begegnungen im Grenzland.

This book traces the fascinating history of the first Polish gay and lesbian magazines to explore the globalization of LGBT identities and politics in Central and Eastern Europe during the twilight years of the Cold War. It details the emergence of homosexual movement and charts cross-border flows of cultural products, identity paradigms and activism models in communist Poland. The work demonstrates that Polish homosexual activists were not locked behind the Iron Curtain, but actively participated in the transnational construction of homosexuality. Their magazines were largely influenced by Western magazines: used similar words, discussed similar topics or simply translated Western texts and reproduced Western images. However, the imported ideas were not just copied but selectively adopted as well as strategically and creatively adapted in the Polish magazines so their authors could construct their own unique identities and build their own original politics.

This book tells the story of the so-called "prayer wall"--the German wall that didn't fall in 1989. The first cultural studies account of the Iron Curtain, it highlights pilgrimage, tourism studies, religious studies, iconography, and narratology to explain why this civilian answer to the Cold War military barrier emerged and how it was used.

The Romanian Communism (and this is also available for Communism in general) meant above all a continuous identity mutilation in its attempt to impose an illusory utopic society. Similarly to Orwell’s utopia, the Communist Romanian society imposed individual and collective frontiers, all of them traumatic through the permanent isolation from what lay beyond the Iron Curtain. Such a paradigm generated a series of complexes and frustrations, reactivated a series of myths of resistance, all exacerbated in Post-Communism after 1989. The Romanian culture often found itself in the position to evolve while totally disconnected from the European culture, and thus developed in conditions of identity autism. Consequently, what was happening beyond the borders produced an enormous quantity of illusions regarding normality, an imaginary normality, based on the certitude that outside one could find the reversed reality of what was inside Romania. For the past 20 years, the opening towards the cultural European space has been a continuous attempt to recuperate different viable means of communication. As Grete Tartler proves in a paper dedicated to European identity (European Identity), the Romanians have seen the cultural European space as a necessary return to a space of absolute normality. One of the most important illusions and traumas as well of the Romanian collective mentality aimed at exactly this never-ending attempt to cross the symbolic Iron Curtain which prevented the free circulation of ideas and values. Alain Brossart, in an essay dedicated to frontier (Zones d’attente, zones d’expérimentation de l’exception) believes that the frontier has a great political connotation. Starting from this observation, and applying Jean-Jaques Wunenburger’s theoretical instruments (Philosophie des images, La vie des images, Imaginaires du politique), I shall try to detect and follow the myth of the frontier as it appears in the Post-Communist literature. Consequently, the present paper aims at analysing the way in which the Romanian literary texts reflected the idea of frontier/border/limit, focusing on the cultural shock produced immediately after 1989. Salman Rushdie stated that “In our deepest natures, we are frontier-crossing beings”(Step Across This Line). Yet, what happens when an oppressive system makes the frontier become insurmountable? The result is an identity trauma transmitted probably best through different cultural products. Their analysis always helps in the exact understanding of the traumatised collective mentality.

The Railway Company of Győr–Sopron–Ebenfurt [GYSEV], which was established in 1876 – and also ran the Local Railway of Fertővidék – was the only private enterprise to survive both Trianon and the great wave of collectivisation that followed World War II. After the closing of the iron curtain, the company, which formally operated as a joint stock enterprise, continued to function despite the cutting of its lines. Jointly possessed by Austria and Hungary, it was a unique phenomenon, belonging to two opposing world orders and bridging them. It constituted a gap in an otherwise hermetically closed frontier, and became as such a hotbed of smuggling and defection. After the abolition of the Iron Curtain, the lines of GYSEV, originally established in accordance with the natural space structure of the Carpathian Basin, could resume functioning as originally planned – although the Local Railway of Fertővidék only between Fertőszentmiklós and Nezsider, for its operation on the Hungarian side had been suppressed in 1979.

‘…of all the nations on the continent of Europe involved in the Second World War, only Finland escaped an enemy occupation. Her social fabric remained intact and the continuity of her political institutions unbroken. In this fact, which is the key to understanding her present position as an independent nations, lies an achievement that transcends the conventional meaning of such terms as defeat or victory. For in the end Finland did not fight for Karelia or Petsamo. She did not fight for any abstract principles or ideals. She fought for national survival. When the fight was over, Finland was a nation crippled and exhausted. But Finland survived. This may seem a pitifully unheroic end to a story of much effort and sacrifice, suffering and blood. But for a small nation, in the iron times of the Second World War, survival was a rare triumph.’ 1. Introduction These are the words - bearing a deep meaning though simple as the verses of an ancient drama - that the Finnish historian and diplomat Max Jakobson wrote about half a century ago in order to assess the consequences of the Finnish resistance during the Winter War and the subsequent Continuation War. Since the end of the Continuation War, historians and political scientists addressed themselves to the issue of the reasons why Finland was only half-included in the Soviet sphere of influence. Drawing comparisons with the cases of Czechoslovakia, Poland or Hungary was one of the tools used by specialists in social studies in order to come up with answers. There have not been so far any attempts to comparatively analyze the positions of Finland and Romania, the only states of in-between Europe that, between 1941 and 1944, effectively fought a war with the Soviet Union being able at the same time to preserve a certain degree of independence vis-à-vis the great competitors of the Second World War. Therefore, this approach envisages drawing a comparison between the Romanian and Finnish ‘cases’. This comparative study also aims at defining my view on the usage and meaning of the terms communization and finlandization. It must be pointed out, from the very beginning, that the fundamental and obvious difference between the situations of Romania and Finland by the end of Second World War seemed to have been the presence of the Red Army in Romania. By her staunch military resistance, Finland was able to lock its door against the penetration of the Soviet Army. The unity displayed by the Finnish nation, made possible by the preservation of the democratic institutions of the country, was remarkable. No major political splitting within the Finnish nation registered during the war.

The principle of ‘self-determination’ has infused modern western political thinking. But its intellectual underpinnings, and application, have been partisan and inconsistent. In this essay, Patrick Kirkwood illuminates the concept, its origins, and how it has been deployed in international politics across the twentieth century. Is it time that Western liberal democracies embraced the principle with more honesty?

This book focuses on the group of people who lost their lives on the journey across the Czechoslovak borders between 1948 and 1989. It will build upon earlier documentation work done by Czech and German historians and will come primarily from archival material. In addition to a primarily documentary approach, however, it will add a systematic analytic method, which relies on a systematic analysis of the authors’ own data set. It will use data about those who were arrested, for the first time helping to contextualize the course of those who were killed.

First, it will follow the changes in requirements at the Czechoslovak border after the Second World War. Traveling was gradually made more difficult. In order to suppress illegal movement across the border, border security was Sovietized, and potentially disloyal citizens were moved away from the border regions. Among the harshest security provisions at times were electric fences, mine fields, and guard dogs. The so-called military patrol used handguns for the whole period in question. The result of these measures was a system that caused the deaths of at least 276 civilians and an even greater number of border guards from 1948 to 1989. 

The analytical section explores various characteristics of the group of people killed, so as to create a complex image of the situation at the state border during that time. The analysis uses the authors’ own data set with 37 variables, covering personal data, the “incidents” themselves, and the means through which the “incidents” were later investigated. It works with a subgroup of 266 people killed, who either crossed the border willingly or whose intention for doing so remains unclear, and it carries out a census regarding this studied group. The periodization of the state border regime arises and is analytically verified; the high number of foreigners in certain periods is explained; and the successful strategy of “cleansing” the border regions from “politically unreliable” people is confirmed with a socio-geographic analysis, among other things. The method of combining the formation of a data set with an anchored approach to biographical study, period regulations, and further conditions is an experiment for Czech historiography. The data set is available in the Czech Social Science data archive, enabling a replication of the method and offering itself up for further research.

Co-author Krista Kodres. Published in A Socialist Realist History? Writing Art History in the Post-War Decades. Eds. Krista Kodres, Kristina Jõekalda, Michaela Marek. (Das östliche Europa: Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte 9.) Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2019, pp. 11-35. 

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How did the Eastern European and Soviet states write their respective histories of art and architecture during 1940s–1960s? The fourteen articles in this book address both the Stalinist period and the Khrushchev Thaw, when the Marxist-Leninist discourse on art history was ʻinventedʼ and refined. Although this discourse was inevitably ʻSovietizedʼ in a process dictated from Moscow, a variety of distinct interpretations emerged from across the Soviet bloc in the light of local traditions, cultural politics and decisions of individual authors. Even if the new ʻofficialʼ discourse often left space open for national concerns, it also gave rise to a countermovement in response to the aggressive ideologization of art and the preeminence assigned to (Socialist) Realist aesthetics.

A Contribution to Thinking about the Differing Significance of the Artwork, Depending on Its Place of Origin
(Work in progress; shortened version of original text in Slovak language presented during XLVI International AICA Congress in Košice 2013)