Iron Curtain

For other uses, see Iron Curtain (disambiguation).

The Iron Curtain, in black
  Warsaw Pact countries
  NATO members[a]
  Militarily neutral countries (Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Ireland)
  Yugoslavia, member of the Non-Aligned Movement
The black dot represents the Berlin Wall around West Berlin. Albania withheld its support to the Warsaw Pact in 1961 due to the Soviet–Albanian split and formally withdrew in 1968.
Yugoslavia was considered part of the Eastern Bloc for two years until the Tito–Stalin split in 1948, but remained independent for the remainder of its existence.[1] It gradually opened the borders to the west and put guard on the borders to the east.[2] During the Allied-occupation of Austria in 1945–1955, the northeastern part of Austria was occupied by the Soviet Union. Austria was never part of the Warsaw Pact.

During the Cold War, the Iron Curtain was a political metaphor used to describe the political and later 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, its allies and neutral 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 connected to or influenced by the United States; 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 physical barriers of fences, walls, minefields, and watchtowers that were built up along some of its sections, with the Berlin Wall being the most significant of these.[3]

The nations to the east of the Iron Curtain were Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania,[b] and the USSR; however, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the USSR have since ceased to exist. Countries that made up the USSR were the Russian SFSR, Byelorussian SSR, Latvian SSR, Ukrainian SSR, Estonian SSR, Moldavian SSR, Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Georgian SSR, Uzbek SSR, Kirghiz SSR, Tajik SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Turkmen SSR, and Kazakh SSR. The events that demolished the Iron Curtain started with peaceful opposition in Poland,[4][5] and continued into Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. Romania became the only socialist state in Europe to overthrow its government with violence.[6][7]

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.[8] The author Alexander Campbell used the term metaphorically in his 1945 book It's Your Empire, describing "an iron curtain of silence and censorship [which] has descended since the Japanese conquests of 1942".[9] Its popularity as a Cold War symbol is attributed to its use in a speech Winston Churchill gave on 5 March 1946, in Fulton, Missouri, soon after the end of World War II.[8]

On the one hand, the Iron Curtain was a separating barrier between the power blocs and, on the other hand, natural biotopes were formed here, as the European Green Belt shows today.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ "False: Croatian President claims she was born behind the Iron Curtain". eufactcheck.eu. University of Zagreb. 25 November 2019. Retrieved 15 December 2022.
  2. ^ "Jugoslavija le pogojno del železne zavese" [Yugoslavia Only Conditionally Part of the Iron Curtain]. MMC RTV Slovenija (in Slovenian). 1 February 2008.
  3. ^ "Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, 1989". Office of the Historian. 23 April 2014. Archived from the original on 8 October 2024.
  4. ^ Sorin Antohi and Vladimir Tismăneanu, "Independence Reborn and the Demons of the Velvet Revolution" in Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath, Central European University Press. ISBN 963-9116-71-8. p.85.
  5. ^ Boyes, Roger (4 June 2009). "World Agenda: 20 years later, Poland can lead eastern Europe once again". The Times. Retrieved 4 June 2009.[dead link]
  6. ^ Lucian-Dumitru Dîrdală, The End of the Ceauşescu Regime – A Theoretical Convergence (PDF)
  7. ^ Piotr Sztompka, preface to Society in Action: the Theory of Social Becoming, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-78815-6. p. x.
  8. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Feuerlicht was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Campbell, Alexander (1945). It's Your Empire. London: V. Gollancz. p. 8.