Şişli – The Italian Cultural Institute in Istanbul and the Italian High School IMI present the Laterza History Lecture series titled “The Borders of the World,” a project created by Laterza Publishers. The focus of the upcoming event will be the Cold War and the world divided into blocs, scheduled for November 6 at 7 p.m. at Şişli Belediyesi Nazım Hikmet Kültür ve Sanat Evi. Simona Colarizi, Professor Emerita of Contemporary History at the University of Rome La Sapienza, will delve into this topic in depth.

At first, the border was described as a “sanitary cordon”—a term coined by the victorious powers of World War I in 1919, who feared that the revolutionary fervor of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia might spread westward and become an uncontrollable pandemic. After World War II, this “sanitary cordon” turned into an “iron curtain,” dividing Europe for nearly half a century, as the world’s two superpowers, the United States and the USSR, faced off in a “balance of terror” known as the Cold War. (9colonne)