Association Mitteleuropa - Imposing, maintaining, and tearing open the Iron Curtain: the Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945-1989

Imposing, maintaining, and tearing open the Iron Curtain : the Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945-1989 / edited by Mark Kramer and Vt Smetana.

pages cm. (The Harvard Cold War studies book series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7391-8185-0 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-7391-8186-7 (electronic)

1. Europe, EasternPolitics and government1945- 2. Cold War. 3. Europe, EasternRelationsSoviet Union. 4. Soviet UnionRelationsEurope, Eastern. I. Kramer, Mark. II. Smetana, Vt, 1973

DJK50.I46 2014

947.0009'045--dc23

2013027455

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

The conference at which earlier versions of most of the chapters were initially presented was possible only because of generous financial contributions from Marek Jelnek and from the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, and the Heinrich-Bll-Stiftung. In addition to the staff of the Institute for Contemporary History (particularly Vt Smetana and Oldich Tma), Lucie Wittlichov of the Office of the Czech Government played a key role in the organization of the conference, assisted by a few students of the Institute of International Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague), of whom Kathleen Geaney should be mentioned first, as well as Tom Kristlk and Petr Balla.

Mark Kramer and Vt Smetana

The Cold War standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union affected all parts of the globe, but nowhere was the impact more far-reaching than in Europe. The prolonged confrontation between the two superpowers began when their preferred outcomes for post-1945 Europe proved irreconcilable. The Iron Curtain that descended on the continent at that time kept Europe divided for more than forty years. When a series of remarkable events in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s did away with the division of the continent, the Cold War ended. The downfall of Communist regimes in the Warsaw Pact countries had a transformative effect not only in Europe but also in many parts of the Third Worldparticularly Mongolia, Latin America, and southern Africa. Only on the Korean peninsula did Cold War antagonisms persist.

Europe has long been at the heart of grand surveys of the Cold War, but in recent years many of the leading studies of international politics during the Cold War have concentrated wholly or largely on Asia or other parts of the developing world.

This volume consists of chapters by scholars in both Europe and North America who have been at the forefront of efforts to reassess the Cold War in Europe, drawing on recently declassified archival materials as well as older sources. Earlier versions of most of the chapters were originally presented at a special conference in Prague in November 2009, Dropping, Maintaining, and Breaking the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe Twenty Years Later, organized by the Institute of Contemporary History (an institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic), together with the Office of the Czech Government and with help from students of the Institute of International Studies, at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague. Some thirty prominent historians from eleven countries on both sides of the formerly divided Europe and from the United States took part in the conference to discuss how scholarly interpretations of the Cold War in Europe have been changed by the declassification of crucial documents in both East and West.

The book is divided into four parts, reflecting different phases of the Cold War and key issues pertaining to Europe. The first part covers the initial decade of the Cold War, particularly the eight years from the end of World War II through the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953. The second part focuses on the role of Germany in the Cold War and on the dynamics of Cold War alliances in Europe, pitting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) against the Warsaw Pact. Individual authors cover the leading NATO European allies (West Germany, the United Kingdom, and France), the role of a leading neutral country (Austria), and the mechanisms of foreign policy coordination within the Soviet bloc in the post-Stalin years. The third part deals with the momentous developments in Europe in the late 1980s that brought an end to the Cold War. The final part includes chapters by scholars who provide longer-term perspectives on the Cold War in Europe, helping to tie together major points and themes of the book.