The Soviet Union emerged from the Second World War as the most dominant force in Eastern Europe, with Communist satellite states in East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Romania, it was as if, in Winston Churchill’s famous phrase, an “iron curtain” had been drawn across that part of the continent. In the four-and-a-half decades between the end of World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were a number of revolts against authoritarian rule: the Tito-Stalin split in Yugoslavia in ’48, East Germany in ‘53, the Hungarian Revolution in ’56, Prague Spring in ’68. The Solidarity movement in Poland in 1989 comprised the first real crack in the Iron Curtain. The Berlin Wall fell later that year, and then, one by one, the nations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia began to break free. On Christmas Day, 1991, the Soviet Union itself officially collapsed, ending the Cold War.
This box contains eight coins from the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries that circulated during the Cold War, Russian coins from the Romanov and post-Soviet eras, and 12 commemorative Soviet stamps from the 1980s:
1/ Romanov kopek
2/ Bulgaria 20 stotinki
3/ Czechoslovakia 2 koruny
4/ East Germany 50 pfennig
5/ Hungary 10 filler
6/ Poland 20 zlotych
7/ Romania 5 lei
8/ Yugoslavia 20 para
9/ Soviet 50 kopek, featuring Lenin saluting
10/ Russian Federation 5 roubles
