Iron Curtain

The Iron Curtain, in black

  Warsaw Pact countries
  NATO members
  Militarily neutral countries
  Yugoslavia, member country of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The black dot represents West Berlin. Communist Albania broke off contacts with the Soviet Union in the early
1960s, aligning itself with China after the Sino-Soviet split; it appears stripe-hatched with grey.

The Iron Curtain was initially a non-physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate

areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term
symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its satellite states from
open contact with the West and its allied states. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the
countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union, while on the west side
were the countries that were NATO members or nominally neutral. Separate international
economic and military alliances were developed on each side of the Iron Curtain. It later
became a term for the 7,000-kilometre-long (4,300 mi) physical barrier of fences, walls,
minefields, and watchtowers that divided the "east" and "west". The Berlin Wall was also
part of this physical barrier.
The nations to the east of the Iron Curtain were Poland, East
Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and the USSR;
however, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the USSR have since ceased to exist. Countries
that made up the
USSR were Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Ukraine, Estonia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georg
ia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Lithuania, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. The events
that demolished the Iron Curtain started with peaceful opposition in Poland,[1][2] and continued
into Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. Romania became the
only communist state in Europe to overthrow its government with violence.[3] [4]
The use of the term Iron Curtain as a metaphor for strict separation goes back at least as far
as the early 19th century. It originally referred to fireproof curtains in theaters.[5] Although its
popularity as a Cold War symbol is attributed to its use in a speech Winston Churchill gave
on the 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri,[5] Nazi German Minister of Propaganda Joseph
Goebbels had already used the term in reference to the Soviet Union.[6]
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the
Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern
Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these
famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and
all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in
some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.[34]
Much of the Western public still regarded the Soviet Union as a close ally in the context of
the recent defeat of Nazi Germany and of Imperial Japan. Although not well received at the
time, the phrase iron curtain gained popularity as a shorthand reference to the division of
Europe as the Cold War strengthened. The Iron Curtain served to keep people in and
information out, and people throughout the West eventually came to accept and use the
metaphor.
Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address was to strongly criticise the Soviet Union's exclusive
and secretive tension policies along with the Eastern Europe's state form, Police
State (Polizeistaat). He expressed the Allied Nations' distrust of the Soviet Union after the
World War II. In September that year, US-Soviet cooperation collapsed due to the US
disavowal of the Soviet Union's opinion on the German problem in the Stuttgart Council, and
then followed the announcement by US President Harry S. Truman of a hard line anti-Soviet,
anti-Communist policy. After that the phrase became more widely used as an anti-Soviet term
in the West.[35]
In addition, Churchill mentioned in his speech that regions under the Soviet Union's control
were expanding their leverage and power without any restriction. He asserted that in order to
put a brake on this ongoing phenomenon, the commanding force of and strong unity between
the UK and the US was necessary.[36]
Stalin took note of Churchill's speech and responded in Pravda soon afterward. He accused
Churchill of warmongering, and defended Soviet "friendship" with eastern European states as
a necessary safeguard against another invasion. He further accused Churchill of hoping to
install right-wing governments in Eastern Europe with the goal of agitating those states
against the Soviet Union.[37] Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's chief propagandist, used the term
against the West in an August 1946 speech: [38]
Hard as bourgeois politicians and writers may strive to conceal the truth of the achievements
of the Soviet order and Soviet culture, hard as they may strive to erect an iron curtain to keep
the truth about the Soviet Union from penetrating abroad, hard as they may strive to belittle
the genuine growth and scope of Soviet culture, all their efforts are foredoomed to failure.