What were international borders between Warsaw Pact countries like?

The borders between Communist countries and the West during the Cold War were notoriously unpleasant. What were the borders like between, say East Germany and Czechoslovakia or Poland, or between the USSR and the Polish People’s Republic? Would those borders also have had the multi-layered fences and watchtowers and so forth, and would the border officials have been as meticulously thorough at searching everyone and everything as they were reputed to be with respect to people entering the Eastern Bloc from someplace like West Germany?

Well for one thing it was a lot easier for citizens of Eastern Bloc countries to travel to other Eastern Bloc countries for thinks like tourism or education than it was to go to the West. Hungary and Yugoslavia in particular were very popular tourist destination. Many East German tourists in Hungary where able to escape to West Germany (via Austria) when the Hungarian government opened it’s borders. I think Cuba was also popular with the Nomenklatura, but it wasn’t something most ordinary citizens could afford.

I took the train between Moscow and Brussels in March 1991, so I traversed the Soviet Union, Poland, newly reunified Germany and Belgium. The border crossing into Poland from the Soviet Union was the most thorough, with first Soviet border guards then Polish ones interviewing me and the the stranger I shared my compartment with separately. Traveling on a US passport, I needed a Soviet exit/entry visa (in addition to my long-term Soviet visa) and a Polish transit visa. There was lots of time for all the formalities, since the railcar we were in was lifted up and had new standard-gauge trucks put on it. There were a lot of fences about, but it didn’t seem to be a particularly militarized border, at least the part I was at.

Traveling east, as I recall, the formalities were much quicker.

The border between Hungary and Romania was notoriously difficult, worse than many Iron Curtain crossings, due to the historical conflict over Transylvania.

From here.

Yugoslavia was not part of the Warsaw Pact nor Eastern Bloc. Depending on year, I’d think that travel there is relatively easy (I think my grandparents did it?). Unless you’re coming from the USSR during the long periods of enmity.

As I learned at the Museum of the East in Berlin (I think it was called that), East Germans vacationed on the Black Sea Coast and it was fairly routine. The really interesting thing about that was that the DDR had a difficult time making enough bathing suits so they went to the beach nekkid. There are lots of pictures.

While there I also learned that as the DDR was about to collapse, the border between BRD and Czechoslovakia was opened and thousands of East Germans drove there, parked their cars at the Border and walked across into West Germany.

The museum was cool and I highly recommend it for anyone who happens to find themselves in Berlin.

Capt

http://www.ddr-museum.de/en/museum/

It was always easier to get into the Soviet Union than out of it. Standard of living and access to western goods and things like that were greater in the DDR or Poland than in the USSR. So it was easier for tourists from the DDR or Poland to go to a Soviet resort than for a Soviet to go to a Polish or East German resort.

OTH, the USSR had a much better resorts.

Travel within the blocs in the Cold War was much easier then travel outside the blocs.

The border fortifications (guard towers, fences, minefields, guards with orders to shoot to kill anyone trying to flee, etc) between the East and the West were there to keep people in the worker’s paradises from escaping to the West and freedom. There really wasn’t much motivation to for example flee from the glorious worker’s paradise of Poland to the glorious worker’s paradise of Czechoslovakia. Even if you were to do so, you could find yourself in it deep if asked for your papers. Once you made it from say East Germany to West Germany, nobody was going to deport you back to be shot.

I once passed the border between Poland and Czechoslovakia. A border guard from each country were sitting side by side inspecting all passports adding a couple of stamps each. My family were unfortunate to arrive just after a Spanish tourist coach and, believe me, it took time going through all passports.

A couple of weeks later that same border crossing was seen in every newscast when the invading Warsaw pact troops entered Czechoslovakia.

From my fairly limited experience of this phenomenon in those times, I get the impression that “it varied, according”.

In 1984, I made a train journey between two towns in the far south-east of Poland: the rail route between them (laid down long before 1945) ran for about 40km through the Soviet Union – to be more precise, the Ukraine part thereof. The very few passenger trains per day over the line, operated on a “corridor” arrangement – theoretically, running non-stop over the Soviet stretch of the journey.

I found the Polish / Soviet frontier here to be marked by the full fearsome panoply of impressive barbed-wire fences, watchtowers, searchlights, etc. The train stopped at the border, and took on a squad of Soviet border guards (mostly looking about twelve years old, and highly un-threatening) – including an Alsatian dog and its handler; said folks boarded the train and took up positions on it – including, I gather, some travelling on the locomotive – to make sure nobody got up to anything dodgy. There was a chap in a long leather coat, who travelled within the train’s coaches, and seemed obviously to be the KGB plain-clothes man. We duly ran through 40km of the Ukraine, till re-entering Poland, when the whole ritual happened in reverse.

It was a beautiful summer’s day, and everyone concerned seemed to be in a relaxed and benign mood – no noticeable tension, and the KGB guy chatted seemingly amiably, with the Polish passengers. All the same – it appeared like “overkill”, for two countries supposedly allied with each other. Admittedly, Poland was always a very fractious and troublesome satellite of the USSR; and in 1984, with the Solidarity movement in full swing, perhaps security measures had been intensified vis-a-vis a few years previously. Nonetheless, one had to feel, “what a strange way of doing things”.

This is what I remember from the news - The hungarians and czecks opened their borders, and the East Germans were flooding into there and carrying on to West Germany. Unlike other countries, East Germans were automatically allowed to become residents (citizens?) of West Germany. The East had a choice to rewire the stalag border to separate old allies, or give up. Eventually, they gave up.

Of course, all was not sweetness and light. Most countries, IIRC, you needed a travel permit to go far from home, let alone visas to cross borders; this was especially true of the Soviet Union, an incredibly larger country with much more internal controls. When you travelled, you had to present travel documents and ID. Fortunately, it was a freer society than North America today, because along with that, pat-downs and detailed luggage searches and x-rays were much less common.

A fellow I worked with was from Romania, and recounted walking across the border to Italy through the hills/mountains while on a soccer team trip to Yugoslavia (mid-70’s?). Because Yugoslavia was nominally communist, it was easy to get visas to go there and travel was less restricted. However, if they caught you in hijinks like making a run for the west, they’d send you home. But because they were not as restrictive of citizens’ movements, there was no stalag fences along their western border.

Not to be confused with Albania, where once a patron at a Club Med on Corfu swam too close to the Albanian mainland and was shot.

I saw a news photo of the time, where a protestor in Berlin was holding up a neatly printed sign:

“Poland, 10 years
Hungary, 10 months
Czeckoslovakia, 10 weeks
East Germany, 10 days”

Hastily scrawled across the bottom was
“Romania, 10 hours”

Yes they did. I remember one border, Hungary to Romania, in which there were two large humps in the road, so if a vehicle went over them at more than about 20 mph, the first one would catapult the car to crash nose-down into the second hump and stop it abruptly

Border officials were embarrassingly rude and unpleasand to their own citizens returning from abroad, although sugary sweeto to westerners coming in… I wanted to kill them.

Citizens of eastern bloc countries could travel fairly easily from one country to another, provided they were on an organized tour. Traveling alone on the train, it was much more diligent, and they required entry and exit visas for all countries involved. A train at a border would typically take less than a half hour for border officials to process all the ID documents of passengers. When I entered Poland from USSR, I was in a compartment with a girls’ track team going to an international meet and they didn’t have any difficulty, and didn’t seem at all nervous about the formalities.

It was fairly common to see cars with number plates from some other eastern bloc countries, but not all of them.

There were only a few border points open for third-country travelers, but a lot of local border crossings for people from those two countries. I saw one on the border between then-Yugoslavia and Austria, with a busy flow of local people, who had only national ID cards, but I wouldn’t have been allowed to cross there.

The above would apply to 1968-72

West Germany didn’t recognize East German citizenship therefore East Germans weren’t legally considered foreigners; they were West German citizens & thus had full civil & political rights as soon as they crossed the border. IIRC the reverse was true only until the 1960s when East German changed it’s laws.

Sorry, i’m probably being dumb here, but i don’t understand this?

Probably how long it took (roughly) the communist regimes in the respective countries to fall from when the first “cracks” appeared: years in Poland from the rise of the Solidarity movement, hours in Romania for Ceausescu to fall.

In 1972 I Traveled to Eastern Europe and found internal borders then as open as Western European ones. I did share a dormitory with a Yugoslav making use of his dual east/west status- he went from Yugoslavia to Denmark, filled his suitcase with porn, went back home then went to East Germany where he sold it for hard currency, returned to Yugoslavia, and when he next visited Denmark he banked the profits; he was able to cross borders east and west with his Yugoslav passport with minimal trouble.

Solidarity fought the Polish communist government for much of the 1980’s (10 years) before the government eventually gave up under a wave of pressure and a lack of support from Gorbachev and slowly allowed Solidarity a greater place in the elected bodies and eventually the government. Since Poland had no borders with the west, this had no effect on citizen moves.

The Hungarians and Czechs elected governments under glasnost where the more liberal elements started winning. The Czechs especially still equated the communists with the Russian re-invasion (as did the Hungarians) so in any contest which was allowed to be free, they lost big-time. Since the only real route to political power was the Communist party, younger more liberal but influential people had joined that party, but once allowed to speak freely, lobbied for less repression. Under glasnost, the Russians were not going to come in and reverse any of this - so when the liberal element took over the Hungarian party and government, they declared more and more freedoms, including open borders. (10 months)

The Czechs tried repression to stem the demands for the same. Like recent event in Arab countries, once the population realized the army was not going to come out and shoot them, massive demonstrations eventually forced the government to give in. (10 weeks).

With an open border from East to West Germany via Czechoslovakia, East Germans started leaving in droves. It took 10 days to go from calm to chaos and mass demonstrations to the government realizing they had lost control. Internal factions argued over whether to call the army, whether the army draftees would obey, and whether this was sustainable past a month or so. Eventually there was a palace coup and the gates to the west were opened.

All this was not lost on the other countries. People began demonstrating in Romania. Nikolai Ceausescu had ruled with an iron fist and a cult of personality (Seriously, there was one mural in a government building showing him ascending into the heavens), meaning there were a lot of people, even in the top ranks, who seriously resented him. Once the cracks began to appear around them, it took one day of serious demonstrations (10 hours) to the point where he found it advisable to flee, and by 1AM a army coup caught up with him, within 24 hours he was tried, convicted of whatever, and shot.

(Mrs. Ceausescu’s last words: “Nikki! They’re going to shoot us!”)

Add to that the Beijing spring and nearly the same overthrow from Tien Amen Square earlier, and it was an incredible time in the history of the world. The Second World was absorbed into the First World practically overnight.

I have personally crossed that particular border several times during the 80’s. I was quite young, but some things impressed me enough to I still remember them today.

I’m not sure about how typical this border would have been compared to other Eastern Bloc borders, because historically there’s always been some degree of animosity between the two nations.

I saw the actual border in several places; it was indeed a multi-layered affair, usually a barbwire fence on either side with a sand strip in the middle and watchtowers on both sides (albeit these were often rather thinly spread and sometimes inexistent). The idea behind this layout was one of mutual distrust. I have also seen anti-tank trenches (on both sides), more or less carefully hidden, but beyond any doubt prepared against the neighbouring “ally and friend.”

Despite the severe enforcement a very small minority was still crossing the border clandestinely. But these were mostly locals who were just going to visit their friends/family on the other side, and knew the terrain well enough to fool the patrols. I know for a fact that it was happening. It’s anyone’s guess, however, how often it was done.

At any rate, travelling from one country to the other was a rather painful affair for everybody. A few people were probably actually trying to visit and were motivated by something les mundane than mere survival, but for the most part this “tourism” was all about semi-illicit trafficking of goods.

Both economies were dysfunctional, so trips abroad were in fact little else than scavenging tours. For instance, Romanians would search for food and items such as jeans or radios, while Hungarians would often fill their bags/trunks with linens and all kinds of hardware. But it was all relative; the situation would sometimes turn around and at one point Hungarians were buying food in Romania. People would joke that they were bringing back what the others had taken away.

Going through customs was an entire drama. Abuse was a way of life for agents on both sides. Maybe delinquency was a little less rife among Hungarian agents - but just maybe. On the other hand, they compensated by being extra obnoxious.
Extortion and confiscation were not only common, they were to be expected. The shrewder tourists were actually allocating percentages of the loot for confiscation.

I’m a little less convinced about the brutality stories. Some brutality has occurred, but it’s difficult to assert its extent and nature. The way the matters are presented in the quoted book need to be nuanced. We need to understand that both the confiscations and the brutality were thought to be justified – at least from the authorities’ perspective. Even in those times, police would not resort to beating unless they had grounds. Beatings would have occurred only in response to some kind of “crime.” If someone was found with forbidden literature some sort of punishment was to be expected.
I’m not discussing what’s right or wrong here – what I’m trying to say is that police were equal opportunity oppressors. Everybody found with subversive materials was liable to be beaten. You didn’t need to cross the border for that.

Leaving aside possible propaganda (by the way, all books were forbidden because they could conceal such materials) and other items banned for political reasons such as typewriters, customs controls were… well, customs controls. The rule of thumb was similar to what you would nowadays encounter in an airport after the duty-free shop. A bottle or two of booze would be OK, ten bottles, not so much. A pack of coffee/cigarettes would be legal, a full suitcase would not. And so on. But times were exceedingly hard and people were desperate, so they had to try to smuggle across the border as much as they could. And this is where abuse would begin. Try to multiply the following scenario a thousand times:

Basically after this it was mostly up to the agent’s goodwill. Sometimes they would be extremely strict (especially when they suspected a control or when motivated by hatred for the other nationality). Other times they would let slide entire suitcases/trunks of loot (of course, for a fee).

“Tourists” would resort to all kinds of tricks to avoid confiscation. I know personally of people who crossed the border in rags, threw them away after having bought new clothes, and then returned home with a completely new outfit. Even if the scheme was obvious, the customs agents could not leave you naked. Label-cutting was mandatory (clothes that still had the manufacturer’s label could be confiscated and resold as brand new). I’ve seen butter taken from its original packaging and put into jars so that it could be claimed it was for snacking (a couple of pounds’ worth of butter). Crossing the border with items stuffed in the underwear was quite common. I have had coffee (smuggled from Hungary into Romania) and liquor (smuggled from Romania into Hungary) that had been in places where nothing edible should ever be. Sometimes “tourists” would get away with it, sometimes they would be made to throw the stuff away (they had trash bins for things that could not be actually confiscated but agents were unwilling to let through customs). Often this was done not so much because of the legislation but rather out of spite. The legislation was very restrictive, so for nickel and dime things like the above it was really up to the agent’s goodwill. (Of course, serious trafficking such as guns would be promptly and severely punished, but that was seldom the case). But all in all, at any given moment, the customs agents had discretionary power over travellers.

Westerners were treated much more politely, but on the other hand they were scrutinized much more closely (openly or secretly).

Dreadful times.