Conclusive remarks : tourism across a porous curtain

Abstract

This concluding chapter embeds tourism in the Cold War within the broader debates of Cold War history, contemporary European history, and the history of European integration. Within this scope, the chapter highlights how the volume cuts across the boundaries of these various scholarly fields to present a more complex and multi-layered picture of East–West interactions and the diverse rationales, be they political, economic, cultural, bureaucratic, that either promoted or hampered them. This chapter also connects the subject of tourism in the Cold War with the broader framework of inter-state relations and political agreements embodied in the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), its Final Act, and ensuing process of follow-up conferences. The main argument of the chapter is that, despite the very existence of the Iron Curtain and serious impediments to the circulations of ideas, people, and goods across it, historiographical research in various fields connected with the Cold War is revealing the existence of webs of contacts, exchanges, and influences, as well as a diverse range of agencies involved in making all of this possible.