ABSTRACT
The Iron Curtain constituted an effective barrier between Western Europe and the ‘East’, limiting both political and economic interaction. But it was not a boundary defined by intra-European relations so much as by global super-power relations; a geopolitical consequence of a conflict of ideologies. Among the many ramifications of the imposition of this artificial, often impermeable, boundary was that for more than a generation the definition of the eastern edge of Europe was little more than an academic issue, so permanent did the Iron Curtain appear to be.
