Staunton, Aug. 18 – Despite Slavomir Rawicz’s 1956 memoir, The Long Walk, and the 2010 Hollywood movie, The Way Back, made on the basis of it, most people in the West thought of the borders of the Soviet Union as being like the one between East and West Berlin, heavily guarded and almost impassable.
And despite all that has changed since the collapse of the USSR, many still think of the borders in much the same way, as places of barbed wire, guards, and dogs, which no one in his right mind would try to cross and at which anyone who did so would at best be detained and at worst killed.
But the reality was always different and remains so. Large swaths of the Soviet border, especially in mountainous regions in the south remained largely unguarded – when Stalin’s secretary Boris Bazhanov fled, he made use of that fact – and today, some portions of the Russian borders are more open than one might expect.
That has been highlighted recently in the case of the 198-kilometer border between Norway and Russia. It is demarcated, features barbed wire most of its length and has a large contingent of guards to ensure that no one enters or leaves without official permission. But despite that, it isn’t impassable (thebarentsobserver.com/ru/granicy/2022/08/tri-bezhenca-popali-v-norvegiyu-cherez-rossiyskiy-les).
Twice this summer, people from Russia have passed into Norway without going through an official crossing point. The one person who came in June has applied for asylum; the three who arrived last week are likely to do the same. Such crossings are rare, Norwegian officials say; but on the evidence, they continue to happen.
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