The 'Iron Curtain' was a red and white painted wooden fence.
Berlin, the epitome of absurdity 25
The expropriated gather to share their suffering 41
Nylon stockings are like jewels to Czech women. 63
In Prague, people react like people in all capitalist countries. 83
103 Looking at Poland with eyes wide open and seething
Soviet Union: 143 places in 22.4 million square kilometers without a single Coca-Cola billboard
Moscow: The World's Largest Town 163
In the mausoleum on Red Square, Stalin sleeps without a guilty conscience. 185
Soviet people are starting to tire of polarization 211
“I went to Hungary and saw it” 227

Let's pretend to be crazy and try to get over it,
The iron curtain

In early 1954, twenty-seven-year-old Gabriel García Márquez began his career as a novelist while working as an editor at the newspaper El Espectador in Bogotá.
In July 1955, when the 'Conference of the Four Western European Powers' was held in Geneva, the newspaper dispatched García Márquez to Europe.
After the military dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla closed down El Espectador, García Márquez ended up staying in Europe.
Marquez and his friends had progressive leanings and fantasies about socialism, and so they were eager to visit Eastern Europe.
Moreover, the upheaval of 1956, a year earlier, with Khrushchev denouncing Stalin and the Soviet invasion of Hungary, had made them more interested in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and they were determined to see and understand real socialism with their own eyes.

They started in Leipzig, stopping briefly in Heidelberg and Frankfurt.
And then we continued driving from Frankfurt to East Germany.
The record of the journey that began this way was left in the form of an article written by García Márquez.
These articles were published in the Colombian weekly Cromos and the Venezuelan weekly Moment as a special feature entitled "90 Days Behind the Iron Curtain."
The Venezuelan magazine mainly published articles about the Soviet Union and Hungary, while the Colombian magazine published articles about the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries, excluding Hungary.

These articles were compiled into a book and first published in Colombia in 1978.
The book was titled "Travels in Socialist Countries: 90 Days Behind the Iron Curtain," and was a compilation of articles written during visits to East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the former Soviet Union, and Hungary.
In fact, it should be kept in mind that 『Travels in Eastern Europe』 is not just a novelist's work, but is written from the perspective of a journalist.
At the time of writing this article, Masques had published Rotten Leaves (1955), but the novel had not generated much of a stir, and so he was not a celebrity during his travels.
In Eastern European countries, he was unknown, which was both an advantage and a disadvantage for him.
Although he was not an official guest and had limited freedom of movement, this allowed him to observe the natural world of the people in greater detail.
Simple yet complex people who walk around the train platform in nicer pajamas (probably paid for by the government) than their regular clothes to show off to guests from the Western world, and say that this is their custom.
Marquez not only describes their appearance and daily life, such as their clothes and food, but also asks them big questions about life, such as simple yet sharp questions like, "Are you happy?"



Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
Is it a people's paradise, or a surreal stage of totalitarianism?

The 'Iron Curtain' is neither a curtain nor made of iron.

It's a wooden fence painted red and white, just like a barbershop sign.

After staying in that curtain for three months, I hope that the iron curtain really is an iron curtain.
I realized that it was a result of a lack of common sense._From the text

This book, which begins with a sharp sentence like the one above, skillfully describes the characteristics of each Eastern European country in short sentences.
The material and spiritual confusion experienced by the people of East Berlin, where the political system changed just across the street; the high self-esteem of the Poles, who feel no confusion in their identity as devout Catholics and ardent socialists at the same time; Czechoslovakia, which holds fast to its practicality in a beautiful and bright environment no less than Western Europe; the Hungarians, who tremble in fear after being devastated by the Soviet attack, but still lively in the back alley bars; the people of the Soviet Union, who do not have a single Coca-Cola billboard in 2240 square kilometers and do not even understand the principles of advertising, the flower of capitalism.
The film depicts the bizarre reality they face, their silent compliance with the system, and the people's desperate yearning for truth and freedom, all in a poignant yet humorous way.


Even before he achieved fame as a writer, García Márquez observed Eastern Europeans, mingled with them, and demonstrated his journalistic qualities and keen insight by judging only what he saw and heard firsthand.
We can also examine his political stance and perspectives, which were at the beginning of his journey as a writer.
The young writer Marquez sharply testifies to the political reality of Europe divided into capitalist Western Europe and communist Eastern Europe, while conveying to readers through these strange, sad, and humorous writings the simple yet easy-to-forget fact that there were 'people' living there, whether in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, or Hungary.