Retracing the Iron Curtain: A 3,000-mile Journey Through the End and Afterlife of the Cold War

In this soulful report on the legacy of the Cold War, BBC News contributor Phillips (The Secret Twenties) recounts his 2019 trip along the length of the former Iron Curtain, from the “scrubland and dunes” of Norway to the “landlocked enclave” of Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan. Along the way, Phillips reflects on numerous ideological and militaristic clashes that occurred in these borderlands, such as the June 1968 arrival of nearly 300 Soviet tanks at the border with Norway, a move meant to protest the country’s “active participation in NATO.” (Norway’s leaders were caught by surprise, Phillips writes, and “did nothing to publicize what was happening.”) He also interviews pensioners longing for Soviet times (“We were more humane. We drank together. Chatted. Danced. Sang songs. We lived better,” remembers one Latvian woman about her childhood in a Siberian city) and young people trying to forge a future. A keen observer, Phillips finds that “the legacy of communism lingers” in places like Vyborg, Russia, where a statue of Lenin still stands in the main square “silently hectoring passersby”; amid scenes of “conspicuous consumption” in Bratislava, Slovakia, he notices graffiti honoring a journalist whose 2018 killing helped spark a reform movement. Knowledgeable and engrossing, this is an illuminating portrait of post-communist life. Photos. (Mar.)