Iron Curtain Collection, Six Communist Banknotes

This set contains six Soviet-era banknotes from “Iron Curtain” countries, a phrase coined by Winston Churchill to describe the separation of Europe between countries aligned with the West and those aligned with the Soviet Union.

The notes included are:

• German Democratic Republic (East Germany), 20 Deutchemarks, 1948
• Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 5000 dinara, 1985
• Polish People's Republic (Poland), 100 zlotych, 1975 - 1988
• Hungarian People's Republic (Hungary), 10 florint, 1957 - 1975
• People's Socialist Republic of Albania, 100 leke, 1949 - 1957
• People's Republic of Bulgaria, 100 leva, 1951

Following the Second World War, the Soviet Union became the dominant power in Eastern Europe, overseeing communist regimes in countries like East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and others. It felt as though, in the words of Winston Churchill, an "iron curtain" had descended upon the region.

Over the subsequent 45 years leading to the Soviet Union's dissolution, various uprisings against authoritarian control occurred. These included the Tito-Stalin split in Yugoslavia (1948), uprisings in East Germany (1953), the Hungarian Revolution (1956), and the Prague Spring (1968). The emergence of the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1989 marked the beginning of the Iron Curtain's weakening. Later that year, the Berlin Wall fell, setting in motion the liberation of nations across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The curtain finally closed on the Soviet era when the Union dissolved on Christmas Day, 1991, bringing an end to the Cold War.