Foundational Framework: Ideology, Spatial Theory, and the Origins of Cold War Partition

The spatial partition that defined the Cold War was not an incidental byproduct of great power rivalry, but a deliberate, ideologically codified process of spatial production that transformed abstract East-West antagonism into tangible geographic structures, institutionalized border regimes, and enduring patterns of demographic displacement. Unlike ad hoc ceasefire lines or administrative boundaries, Cold War partitions were embedded in mutually reinforcing systems of cartographic representation, military infrastructure, economic governance, and identity construction that persisted for nearly half a century. This chapter establishes the theoretical, historical, and evidentiary foundation for the volume’s central argument: that the Iron Curtain was not merely a rhetorical metaphor, but a dynamic, multi-layered spatial architecture that shaped every dimension of Cold War conflict, cooperation, and social life. We begin by operationalizing core concepts from spatial political theory to distinguish Cold War partitions from earlier forms of geopolitical boundary-making, then contextualize the 1945 Yalta and Potsdam conferences as the generative moment of this partition, before introducing the three primary source datasets and spatial analytical methods that underpin all subsequent empirical analysis.

Spatial Political Theory: From Geopolitical Partition to Ideological Bloc Formation

The study of Cold War space has long been marginalized in traditional political science and diplomatic history, which have prioritized state-level decision-making and ideological narratives over the geographic materialization of those narratives. This volume builds on the “spatial turn” in Cold War studies, which draws on three overlapping theoretical traditions to frame partition as a core process of Cold War spatial production: political geography’s focus on boundary-making as a practice of sovereign power, Henri Lefebvre

vre’s theory of spatial production, which conceptualizes space not as a passive container for social action, but as a socially produced, politically contested, and materially embedded outcome of power relations. Lefebvre’s triad of spatial practice, representations of space, and representational spaces provides a precise framework for analyzing Cold War partition: spatial practices refer to the material construction of boundaries, fortifications, and checkpoints that physically divide space; representations of space denote the cartographic, ideological, and institutional codification of partition by state and non-state actors; and representational spaces capture the lived, embodied experience of partition by ordinary people navigating checkpoints, displacement, and segregated urban spaces. This triad moves analysis beyond abstract ideological narratives to the material and experiential dimensions of partition, a shift critical for understanding why Cold War boundaries were not merely lines on a map, but totalizing systems of control that shaped every dimension of life on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Complementing Lefebvre’s framework, political geography’s literature on boundary-making provides a second foundational pillar for this analysis. The work of scholars such as John Agnew on the “territorial trap” of modern statehood—where sovereign legitimacy is bound to fixed, bounded territory—helps explain why Cold War powers invested so heavily in spatial partition: for both the United States and the Soviet Union, control over contiguous territorial blocs was not merely a strategic objective, but a core component of ideological legitimacy. The U.S. “containment” doctrine, as articulated in George Kennan’s 1947 “Long Telegram,” framed the division of space into “free” and “totalitarian” blocs as an existential imperative: any ambiguity in boundary lines risked ideological “contamination” of the capitalist world. Similarly, the Soviet concept of the “socialist camp” framed partition as a defensive barrier against imperialist encirclement, with boundaries between the two camps conceived as absolute, non-negotiable lines separating two irreconcilable socio-economic systems. This framing marked a radical departure from pre-modern frontier zones, which were characterized by gradual cultural and economic transition, and from interwar boundaries, which were primarily administrative or punitive (e.g., the Polish Corridor, the demilitarized Rhineland) rather than totalizing ideological barriers.

A third theoretical pillar draws from critical geopolitics, which examines how state actors use cartographic and rhetorical practices to naturalize geopolitical boundaries as inevitable, apolitical facts. As Gearóid Ó Tuathail has argued, Cold War cartography was not a neutral representation of pre-existing political realities, but an active tool of spatial production: CIA maps of the 1950s and 1960s consistently depicted the Soviet bloc as a monolithic, contiguous “red threat” space, erasing internal diversity, nationalist dissent, and economic divergence within the Eastern Bloc, while Soviet maps depicted the Western Bloc as a fragmented, exploitative “imperialist” space riven by class conflict and colonial domination. These competing cartographic representations were not mere propaganda: they directly shaped policy decisions, from the U.S. decision to intervene in Korea in 1950 (based on CIA maps depicting a unified communist bloc spanning from Beijing to Pyongyang) to the Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan in 1979 (based on KGB maps depicting Afghanistan as a contiguous “socialist-oriented” space vulnerable to U.S. infiltration). To operationalize these theoretical frameworks for empirical analysis, this volume adopts a modified Lefebvrian triad, mapping spatial practices to physical boundary infrastructure data, representations of space to declassified cartographic products, and representational spaces to refugee displacement and oral history records.

The 1945 Yalta and Potsdam Conferences as the Generative Moment of Cold War Partition

While the ideological antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union predated 1945, the spatial architecture of Cold War partition was concretely forged in the cartographic negotiations of the Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July–August 1945) conferences, where the three great powers negotiated the occupation zones of defeated Nazi Germany and the broader post-war European order. Contrary to popular narratives framing these conferences as simple “spoil division” between imperial powers, archival evidence from declassified U.S., Soviet, and British records reveals that the boundary negotiations were deeply contested, iterative processes shaped by military realities, ideological priorities, and competing visions of post-war order.

The most well-documented of these negotiations concerned the Polish western border, which became the first permanent Cold War partition boundary in Europe. At Yalta, the three powers agreed in principle to shift Poland’s western border to the Oder-Neisse line, compensating the country for territories it would lose in the east to the Soviet Union (along the Curzon Line). However, the precise location of the border was left unresolved: U.S. negotiators initially pushed for a border along the eastern Oder River, while Soviet negotiators demanded a border along the western Neisse River, 100 kilometers further west. The final compromise, reached at Potsdam, placed the border along the western Oder and eastern Neisse rivers, a decision formalized in the Potsdam Protocol’s Article XIII, which stated that the border was “provisional” pending a final peace treaty— a treaty that was never signed, leaving the border in place as a de facto permanent partition line. Declassified CIA cartographic records from the Potsdam Conference show that U.S. Army cartographers produced 17 different versions of the Polish border map during the negotiations, each with different boundary alignments correspondin