Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0100Sat, 25 Jul 2026 12:57:17 +0200https://english.radio.cz/inching-eastwards-re-alignment-central-and-eastern-europe-after-fall-iron-8684830© 2026 Radio Prague International The fall of the Iron Curtain is often described as a sudden, unexpected event. The following years during the 1990s saw both a major expansion of NATO eastwards and the geographical retreat of Russia from areas previously seen as within its sphere of influence. This included Czechoslovakia, which switched from being a member of the Eastern Bloc’s Warsaw Pact to full NATO member (as the Czech Republic and Slovakia) in a space of ten years. To find out more about how this exactly came about and what could have been, I spoke to Cold War historian Sergei Radchenko, professor of International Relations at Cardiff University. I began by asking him about the US and Soviet expectations of where the former Soviet satellites in Central Europe would align immediately after the fall of Communist regimes in 1989. encr@radio.cz (Cesky Rozhlas)webmaster@radio.cz (CRo Webmaster) https://english.radio.cz/sites/default/files/images/zelezna_opona_1.jpg?timestamp=1699529922 https://english.radio.cz/inching-eastwards-re-alignment-central-and-eastern-europe-after-fall-iron-8684830 Radio Prague International Radio Prague International radio.prague.int@gmail.com clean 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9