As a reporter, Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff hitchhiked overnight to Berlin to cover the story. He is now the senior director at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Credit: flickr user pdxjmorris

My first image of the “iron curtain” came from a Nancy Drew novel The Captive Witness, in which our heroine Nancy, touring a communist country as a student, gets involved in a plot to help children escape to freedom. What was this iron curtain that separated east from west, I wondered—and what was so perilous and forbidding about the land behind it that made young people like me risk their lives to flee?

As I looked at a map of Europe, I pictured a sheet of metal, upright and extending for miles along the ground and high into the sky, a metal barricade topped with barbed wire, guarded by attack dogs, and surrounded by towers with roving lights. On one side—the world that I knew. On the other—a cold, dark menacing place where the sun never shone.

Fast forward a few years. I am sitting in my high school social studies class when our teacher tells us with tears in his eyes that the Berlin Wall is falling down. I run home and sit transfixed in front of the television, watching the thousands of people clambering up and over the wall, taking away pieces of brick, drinking champagne, celebrating. Exiled cellist Mstislav Rostropovich serenades united easterners and westerners with Bach. I can’t quite fathom what it means—the structure that surrounded the city of Berlin is no more—but understand that with the fall of the wall, the iron curtain is melting away.

In 1993, I venture for the first time behind the line that divided east and west. I’m in Moscow to study Russian for a semester. In part, it was the desire to discover for myself this previously “forbidden” part of the globe that drew me there. I arrive on a grey evening in February. As we drive from the airport to the city outskirts, I peer through the steamy window at the foreign scene outside. The grey sky seems an extension of the snowy landscape. Mammoth apartment buildings extend endlessly, and tiny figures scurry about in fur hats and coats. We pass row upon row of bare birch trees.

Soviet poster: building socialism. Photo: flickr user x-ray delta one

It was four years since the wall came down, and two years since the Soviet Union officially dissolved. Part of me always wished I’d arrived three years earlier, to have experienced life in the USSR. But even though I was too late, I caught glimpses of what life behind the iron curtain must have been like: watching my good friend Anastasia try her very first banana, listening to recordings of singers whose music had been circulated through samizdat, sharing a meal on an overnight train ride with fellow passengers who had never spoken to an American before, handing a mother a letter from her son who had fled to the west, and feeling the oppressive uniformity and lack of diversity in a city where everyone looked and dressed alike.

In the ten plus years that I spent studying Russia and the former Soviet Union, I’ve never ceased to be amazed by the monumentality of the events that transpired during the fall and winter of 1989, and by just how much the world has changed since then. In a sense I’m glad to have known a world in which there was an iron curtain, in order to appreciate a world without it. And so, on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I propose a toast to the destruction of walls everywhere, walls that keep people apart and walls that keep people in.

- Christine Kiernan

Watch World Remembers Beginning of World War II, a report by English-language TV station Russia Today highlighting the difficult history between Russia and Poland.

Vladimir Lensky, the New York bureau chief for Russia’s Channel One, discusses Russia’s role and responsibility in World War Two.

In a Russian language blog on Moscow radio station Echomoscow’s website, writer Sergei Shagunov comments on Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent article in a Polish newspaper about the Soviet-Nazi pact to split up Poland in 1939.

Read the full post here in Russian. The following excerpts were translated from by Worldfocus producer Christine Kiernan.

It is frequently necessary to disagree with Vladimir Putin, but in his article published in the newspaper “Vyborcha” [the Polish newspaper], there are strivings for objectivity. Today this is rare thing. Of course [even-handedness] is possibly only when there is open discussion. …The 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War is reason for a sharp, honest, difficult conversation.

Poland was up until the end a [partner] of Hitler, participating in the invasion of Czechoslovakia… and its minister of foreign affairs Bek spoke about pretensions to Soviet Ukraine… It’s necessary to remember that England France from the beginning shut their eyes over Germany’s armament, then gave Czechoslovakia to her, and finally, drew out and [ruined] Moscow discussions about the creation, together with the USSR, of an anti-German coalition. So Hitler broke the East. ..

Yes, the Soviet Union was totalitarian. But even totalitarian states have their own interests…..For example, interests of safety.

A simple question: was it necessary to sign an amoral supplement to the Soviet-German pact?

Everyone was amoral, including Poland. Everyone is guilty in the war. To different degrees? Perhaps. But all the same – guilty.

Writing in the UK’s The Guardian, Anita Prazmowska says that despite Putin’s subsequent efforts to praise Polish bravery during the war, the timing of his comments will strike many Poles as misplaced. Read the full post here.

1 September is seen in Poland as a beginning of its enslavement, first under Nazi domination and then, after the war, to Soviet domination. 1 September is a time of grieving. One can’t really expect Poles to see this as a date for reflection on the shortcomings of their own governments’ policies in 1939 and subsequently. Thus Putin has on the one hand accepted that the Soviet Union was wrong, but he has also publicly reminded the Poles that they too have to address some unsavory moments in Poland’s history. The fact that he spoke of the Russian people being victims of both Stalinism and of Nazism has done little to soothe Polish anger.

“Freedom of the moment:” An Estonian boy cries out at the apex of a climbing tower in Tallinn. Photo: Ara Ayer

Symbols of ethnic pride abound in the Baltics. Whether it’s Riga’s Freedom Statue, Vilnius’ Gediminas Castle or a little boy exalting on a climbing tower in Tallinn, no definitive monument stands to represent the ongoing struggle for independence in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

The Baltic states may have traded membership in the former Soviet Union for entry into the European Union and NATO, but they struggle to maintain their separate identities. That they exist at all is a testament to the fortitude of their people. Before the Soviet onslaught, empires of Poland, Prussia, Russia and Scandinavia all tried to incorporate one or more of the Baltic states.

Possessing a prized coastline — an approximate collective land mass of two West Virginias, Vermont and New Hampshire, with a population less than New York City — the Baltic states remain vulnerable. Producing stories with Worldfocus colleague Sally Garner, I found each country has different approaches to self-preservation.

Up until the global economic downturn, Latvia had the fastest growing economy in Europe. It quickly shed its communist past and looked for security and success in the credit and economic structures of the West. Yet rather than providing safety and sustainable growth, Western banking policies and an awakened Latvian consumerism exposed the country to excessive risk.

Now, Latvia teeters toward bankruptcy. Street protests, government instability and rising unemployment are the hallmarks of a once-proud nation. In our reporting, we spoke with a Latvian on the brink of losing his job. He said Latvia is failing because it forgot itself, its strengths and limitations, in the headlong rush to become part of Europe. Disenchanted with a dream deferred, he says he’ll join thousands of his countrymen leaving Latvia for a better life. With over 40 percent of Latvians being of Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and Polish descent, the loss of every ethnic Latvian puts the country in a quandary.

Lithuania and Estonia are in better shape economically, but not by much. The Lithuanian government is investing in language, specifically Lithuanian, to help preserve its national identity. Lithuanian is the official and sole language in matters of law, commerce, government and public life. If you are Lithuanian and speak Russian, Polish or German, check your ancestry at the door.

The Lithuanian government has empowered a language police corps to yank down foreign language street signs, correct publications and catch the nation’s newscasters in Lithuanian pronunciation and grammar mistakes. One wonders if such forced obedience will play out in a multilingual world. But then again, they aren’t trying to save the world — just Lithuania.

Estonia by and large is the most technologically-evolved of the trio. The country has placed its future in the digital age by building a “state of the art” civic Internet service. Via computer and phone, one can view everything, from a child’s report card to a live press briefing from the Estonian prime minister. A specially-encrypted Estonian identification card with an embedded digital signature allows Estonians to securely authenticate legal documents, vote, even pay for parking — all online. Estonians believe such Internet access makes for transparent government, responsible citizenry and better business — touchstones of resiliency in uncertain times.

No one can fault these small countries in their ongoing attempts to ensure their existence. Possibly the most important thing each is doing to protect themselves is participate in NATO, United Nations and U.S. coalition military missions. All sent combat troops to Iraq and all are continuing to send troops to Afghanistan. Though their collective deployment has never exceeded 2,000 troops per mission, their commitment to building modern armies and strengthening their ties with NATO cannot be questioned.

The reemergence of Russia as a world power has the Baltics — people, politicians and military men — on edge. Speaking softly but carrying a NATO membership may be the best defense and innovation in preserving Baltic identity and integrity yet.

- Ara Ayer

During the 50 years of Soviet occupation, Lithuanians clung to their language as a not-so-quiet form of rebellion. Today, as Worldfocus correspondent Daljit Dhaliwal and producers Sally Garner and Ara Ayer report, they want to protect it — not from an occupying force, but from other languages.

Pakistan, North Korea and Russia may also prove to be concerns.

Joseph Cirincione, the president of Ploughshares Fund and an expert on nuclear weapons policy, speaks with Martin Savidge about the threat of nuclear weapons facing the Obama administration. They discuss Obama’s approach to Iran and other nuclear concerns.

In Ukraine, today’s political realities and yesterday’s revolutionary dreams may not be in line, and progress has come slowly.

In Poland, the anti-Soviet Polish Solidarity movement has reinvented itself in a democratic and economically strong Poland.

In the Czech Republic, the younger generation knows little about the Russian invasion and subsequent demonstrations that took place 40 years ago, and the country has problems discussing its past.

In Hungary, people still commemorate 1956 revolution — when approximately 200,000 Hungarians gathered in front of the country’s Parliament to demand an end to Soviet rule. Even as they move forward, Hungarians never quite leave the past behind.

Correspondent Dave Marash reports in a Worldfocus signature series: After the Fall.

Ukraine achieved independence in 1991 and again in 2004, when pro-Western forces peacefully took control of the country in what was dubbed the Orange Revolution.

Worldfocus special correspondent Dave Marash reports on today’s political realities and yesterday’s revolutionary dreams in Ukraine — where political progress has come slowly.

Correspondent Dave Marash travels to the shipyards of Gdansk, Poland, where the movement was born in 1980.

Worldfocus also explores the post-Soviet Czech Republic and Hungary in our signature series: After the Fall.

The revolt ended in defeat, with thousands of Hungarians killed and many others injured or imprisoned. Nonetheless, the revolt and its participants are still commemorated in Hungary each year.

Special correspondent Dave Marash reports from Hungary, which never quite leaves the past behind as it moves forward.

Below, bloggers discuss the lasting effects of the revolution and its commemoration today.

Blogger “Marilyn” describes and posts images from this year’s anniversary in Hungary, traveling to a cemetary in Budapest where many of the revolutionaries are buried.

The “Stucki Family” blog — written by Americans who have lived in Hungary for two years — writes about the resolve of the Hungarian people.

The “Hungarian Spectrum” blog writes that in Hungary today, political parties portray the revolution in very different lights.

The 1956 revolution in Hungary has also been compared to many modern conflicts.

American blogs of differing political persuasions have likened Hungary in 1956 to Georgia in 2008, including Michelle Malkin and The Huffington Post.

The “pentafluoropyridine” blog discusses U.S. inaction in Hungary in 1956 compared to action in Iraq today in response to a statement from President George Bush on the Oct. 23 anniversary.