Institute of Contemporary History

This book consists of cutting-edge essays by distinguished experts who discuss the Cold War in Europe from beginning to end, with a particular focus on the countries that were behind the „Iron Curtain“. The authors take account of structural conditions that helped generate the Cold War schism in Europe, but they also ascribe agency to local actors as well as to superpowers. The chapters dealing with the end of the Cold War in Europe explain not only why it ended but also why the events leading to that outcome occurred almost entirely peacefully.

KRAMER, Mark – SMETANA, Vít (eds.). Imposing, maintaining, and tearing open the Iron Curtain: the Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945–1989. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. 563 pp. The Harvard Cold War studies book series. ISBN 9780739181850.