The Warsaw Pact formalized Moscow's dominance in Europe's east.

the fust of old books & older cheese / nobody loves gossip like these salaried dudes

… having given out information so that the midship frames could be worked, it had been found that the boardsmen were practically upon the backs of the loftsmen and it had been difficult to keep pace without outside work.

This is precisely the manner of Balkanization that Schlesinger cautioned us about in his prescient jeremiad on multiculturalism, The Disuniting of America.