West Germany

In 1989, Leslie and Cornelia were two young Berlin students living on opposites sides of the wall. But when the border opened, a shared love of radio brought them together in a friendship that is still alive today.

East Germany never had a lot of cash on hand. What it did have was political prisoners, and plenty of them. So during the Cold War, the communist regime ransomed hundreds of thousands of people to the West in exchange for much-needed hard currency.

At the height of the Cold War, a German teen decided he’d fly his single-ending plane deep into the Soviet Union to build a metaphorical bridge between the Germans and the Soviets. He landed in Red Square — and was arrested and sentenced 25 years ago last week.

During the Cold War, all things Western were either forbidden or held in deep suspicion among officials east of the iron curtain. Yet, somehow, the culture of skateboarding that cropped up in California made it into East Berlin, where it thrived. A new documentary looks at that evolution.

After World War II, millions of Ukrainians became refugees when the Soviet Union began ethnic cleansing. George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm” became popular among Ukrainian refugees, as it reminded them of the hardships they endured under Stalinist rule.