The 38th Parallel

Roosevelt Stalin and Churchill all met a Yalta in the aftermath of The Second World War. With Hitler vanquished, the conferees set out to divide German in 4 occupation zones, run by England, France, Russia and the United States. The rest is history or silence which ever way you will have it. By l948, the allies were negotiating the Berlin blockade. Yalta is the setting for a famous Chekhov short story, "The Lady With the Dog," about two lovers trapped in unhappy marriages. Yalta is part of the region annexed by Russia, but still considered part of the Ukraine. Now the day after the midterms, new alliances, which will inevitably engender discord, division and exclusion have already metabolized. In the Chekhov story, the lovers are never fully able to escape their predicament. They inhabit a literal "no man's" land. The DMZ between North and South Korea was established at the 38th Parallel in 1948.