The "Ice Curtain" Border
During the Cold War, the Bering Strait marked the border between the Soviet Union and the United States. The island of Big Diomede in Russia is only 2.4 mi (3.9 km) from the island of Little Diomede in the USA. Traditionally, the indigenous peoples in the area had frequently crossed the border back and forth for "routine visits, seasonal festivals and subsistence trade", but were prevented from doing so during the Cold War. The border became known as the "Ice Curtain". It was completely closed, and there was no regular passenger air or boat traffic. In 1987, American swimmer Lynne Cox symbolically helped ease tensions between the two countries by swimming across the border and was congratulated jointly by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Since 1990, tourist air and boat traffic exists, but is hampered by the need for visas and special military visit permits in this part of Russia.
Read more about this topic: Bering Strait
Famous quotes containing the words ice, curtain and/or border:
“People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn’t buy vanilla ice cream. Except on July Fourth. Other days he had to be satisfied with chocolate.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)