Iron Curtain

New York--The most likely recurring publishing news of 1988 will be books behind the Iron Curtain--not just Soviet publishing but publishing in other Eastern Bloc countries as well. The stories may not always be happy ones, but in 1988, there will be many of them. In the fall, Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish a book whose German title, in English translation, is simply "Accident." By the East German writer Christa Wolf, it is an account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.

Kurt Sanderling, who led the Leningrad Philharmonic and the East Berlin Symphony Orchestra under Soviet rule and won admirers in the West later in his career as a guest conductor for orchestras in London, Los Angeles and elsewhere, has died. Sanderling, who would have turned 99 Monday, died Saturday in Berlin of causes related to old age, said his son, Stefan. Sanderling won critical respect for his intellectual grasp of music and his skill at conveying emotion, particularly as a conductor of the Romantic composers Johannes Brahms, Ludwig von Beethoven and Robert Schumann.

Hungary plans to begin dismantling its "Iron Curtain," the alarm system along the nation's border with Austria, on May 2. The electronic signaling system and double-wire fence is to be fully removed from the 80-mile border by January, 1991, MTI said. The system, installed in 1967, once was used to detect people trying to escape to the West, but Hungarians may now travel freely to the West.

The breaching of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago this month has become the symbol of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and, ultimately, the triumph of democracy. But sometimes I wonder if we actually know yet what we were witnessing. I didn't see the wall come down, but I was in Hungary eight months earlier for what was in retrospect the beginning of the end of the Soviet system. At the time, we didn't know what we were seeing, but on March 15, 1989, I was part of a team from the "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" on PBS, filming a crowd of demonstrators estimated at 100,000 who had flooded into the square that housed Magyar Televizio, Hungarian state television in Budapest.

Czechoslovakia will completely dismantle its Iron Curtain border with West Germany and Austria by June, the state news agency CTK reported Monday. Czechoslovakia had almost 420 miles of barbed wire and other technical equipment along its western and southern borders with West Germany and Austria before the peaceful revolution that overturned one-party Communist rule last November. Border guards began dismantling the border fortifications in December.

The 40-year-old Iron Curtain dividing Czechoslovakia and Austria symbolically disappeared Sunday as their foreign ministers cut the barbed wire on the Czechoslovak side of the border. Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier announced that Prague will suspend visa requirements for Austrians until the end of January while their permanent abolition is being discussed. "This is a good feeling.

In the spirit of glasnost , a new "National Geographic" special, "Inside the Soviet Circus" (airing at 8 tonight on Channels 28, 15 and 24, and at 10 p.m. on Channel 50), takes American viewers behind the Iron Curtain into a surprisingly fanciful world of lion tamers, acrobats and clowns. In this beautifully filmed documentary, we are shown extraordinary circus performers, members of one of the most beloved and highly esteemed art forms in the Soviet Union.

Perhaps, in earlier years, President Bush's tour of Poland and Hungary would have stolen a title fit for Hollywood--"Dancing With the Red Devil," for instance, or "Eighty Hours Behind the Iron Curtain." But these are strange days here, and what for 40 years has been referred to as the Iron Curtain has all but lost that label.

President Bush told cheering Germans today that the time is right to make Europe "whole and free" and he called on Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to tear down "the rusting Iron Curtain." The President did not directly endorse the reunification of Germany, but he renewed a demand that the Berlin Wall be dismantled. "The world has waited long enough," Bush declared. "We seek self determination for all of Germany and all of Eastern Europe. We will not relax. We must not waver."

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. --Winston Churchill, 1946 With a quiet pride, Mayor Zoltan Vincze unfolded a blueprint that sketched his vision: the planned leisure center, the shopping mall and the proposed highway interchange at the edge of his sleepy frontier village. "It will change life," conceded Vincze, a 39-year-old agricultural engineer. "But this is our future."

In the 1980s, art being made in Los Angeles and Germany simultaneously emerged into prominence. The event signaled a dramatic change -- the beginning of a new internationalism in a cultural conversation that, for a generation, had largely been restricted to New York. Then, when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, a cultural barrier definitively fell. So it's more than appropriate that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in cooperation with Berlin's Kulturprojekte, should organize the sprawling exhibition "Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures," a richly detailed survey of nearly 50 years of painting, sculpture, photography and other work made in the wake of the cataclysm of World War II. The show, which opened Sunday, features about 300 works by 120 artists.

Scars from decades of socialist oppression, and the escapism and magical realism they ruefully evoke, dominate the works of Eastern European filmmakers these days. Revolutions, war and genocide frame new films from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania that were shown recently at the Berlin film festival.

I wish to comment on "North Korea Does Not Merit Publicity," Letters to the Editor, Oct. 15]. I find the reader's view thoughtless when he states: "There are plenty of places to write about and visit that do not starve their own citizens." First, the Los Angeles Times, I hope, prints articles of heightened interest, of which North Korea certainly is. Second, the best way to get news from behind the Iron Curtain is probably from unbiased writers. HIRAM H. SWALLOW Newhall

He may be cruising in Guangdong province, shopping in Shanghai or banqueting in Beijing for nuclear talks. Or he may have never left Pyongyang. For the last several days, rumors have swirled of a mysterious visit by North Korea's Kim Jong Il. The secretive leader, reportedly fearing assassination, has a habit of announcing his trips to other nations after he's safely back home. And China, as a close communist ally that once shared the North's Cold War mind-set, is happy to oblige.

The Iron Curtain is no more, or so we thought until the news that Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-Western presidential candidate in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, was poisoned with dioxin, possibly by Ukraine's own security services. This brings to mind a flurry of associations, from campy James Bond movies to John le Carre thrillers, not to mention actual history. Stalinist regimes and poison have a long connection.

The new Europe lies tantalizingly close to Tamila Vasilchenko -- so close she can walk through a bleak border post to sell candy on a dusty roadside in neighboring Slovakia. Yet what soon will be the European Union's most far-flung corner might as well be an ocean away. Ukrainians such as Vasilchenko, 59, a retired teacher struggling on a meager pension, can cross over to Slovakia a few times a month, but they can't stay.

The breaching of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago this month has become the symbol of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and, ultimately, the triumph of democracy. But sometimes I wonder if we actually know yet what we were witnessing. I didn't see the wall come down, but I was in Hungary eight months earlier for what was in retrospect the beginning of the end of the Soviet system. At the time, we didn't know what we were seeing, but on March 15, 1989, I was part of a team from the "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" on PBS, filming a crowd of demonstrators estimated at 100,000 who had flooded into the square that housed Magyar Televizio, Hungarian state television in Budapest.

On a chill day 42 years ago, two larger-than-life figures, Sir Winston Churchill and President Harry S. Truman, came to this small college town to describe a world poised perilously between "triumph and tragedy." Today, George Bush is in the midst of a presidential campaign that he has built around an optimistic view of the nation's future. And he brought that tone here Tuesday--as he stood where Churchill had warned of an "Iron Curtain"--and talked of his own view of the world.

It's not often that an American judge will dress up a published opinion with an aphorism attributed to Joseph Stalin. But U.S. District Judge David G. Trager apparently could not resist the temptation upon ruling, in mid-2001, on a case that involved byzantine claims and counterclaims over the global distribution rights to a huge package of priceless Soviet-era animated films. As he quoted the old Kremlin leader: "Facts are obstinate things."

The front-page story "German Teen Kills 17, Self in Shooting Spree at School" (April 27) may induce travelers to avoid Erfurt, Germany. This would be sad, as the city occupies a special place in our hearts. My wife and I discovered it two years ago. The tragedy occurred in a 1,000-year-old town that has a magnificent cathedral, squares and half-timbered buildings. Because it was behind the postwar Iron Curtain, it was not accessible to Americans for decades. Miraculously, Erfurt was one of the few towns of its size in Germany that wasn't virtually leveled in the bombings.