The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and 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 1989. On either side of the Iron Curtain, states developed their own international
economic and military alliances:

 The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the military Warsaw Pact on the east side,
with the Soviet Union as most important member of each
 The European Community and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on the west and south.

Physically, the Iron Curtain took the shape of border defences between the countries of Western
and Eastern Europe, most notably the Berlin Wall, which served as a longtime symbol of the
Curtain as a whole.[1]

The events that demolished the Iron Curtain started in Poland,[2][3] and continued in Hungary,
East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Romania was the only Eastern bloc
country to violently overthrow its communist regime.[

An iron curtain, or eiserner Vorhang, was an obligatory precaution in all German theatres to
prevent the possibility of fire spreading from the stage to the rest of the theatre. Such fires were
rather common because the decor often was very flammable. In case of fire, a metal wall would
separate the stage from the theatre, secluding the flames to be extinguished by firefighters.

During the Cold War

Further information: Origins of the Cold War and Cold War (1947–1953)

The antagonism between the Soviet Union and the West that came to be described as the "iron
curtain" had various origins.

The Allied Powers and the Central Powers had backed the White movement against the
Bolsheviks during the 1918–1920 Russian Civil War, and the Soviets had not forgotten the fact.

During the summer of 1939, after conducting negotiations both with a British-French group and
with Germany regarding potential military and political agreements,[17] the Soviet Union and
Germany signed the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement (which provided for the trade of
certain German military and civilian equipment in exchange for Soviet raw materials[18][19]) and
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (signed in late August 1939), named after the foreign secretaries of
the two countries (Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop), which included a secret
agreement to split Poland and Eastern Europe between the two states.[20][21]

The Soviets thereafter occupied Eastern Poland (September 1939), Latvia (June 1940), Lithuania
(1940), northern Romania (Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, late June, 1940), Estonia (1940)
and eastern Finland (March 1940). From August 1939, relations between the West and the
Soviets deteriorated further when the Soviet Union and Germany engaged in an extensive
economic relationship by which the Soviet Union sent Germany vital oil, rubber, manganese and
other materials in exchange for German weapons, manufacturing machinery and
technology.[22][23] Nazi-Soviet trade ended in June 1941 when Germany broke the Pact and
invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.

In the course of World War II, Stalin determined[citation needed] to acquire a buffer area against
Germany, with pro-Soviet states on its border in an Eastern bloc. Stalin's aims led to strained
relations at the Yalta Conference (February 1945) and the subsequent Potsdam Conference
(August 1945).[24] People in the West expressed opposition to Soviet domination over the buffer
states, and the fear grew that the Soviets were building an empire that might be a threat to them
and their interests.

Nonetheless, at the Potsdam Conference, the Allies assigned parts of Poland, Finland, Romania,
Germany, and the Balkans to Soviet control or influence. In return, Stalin promised the Western
Allies that he would allow those territories the right to national self-determination. Despite
Soviet cooperation during the war, these concessions left many in the West uneasy. In particular,
Churchill feared that the United States might return to its pre-war isolationism, leaving the
exhausted European states unable to resist Soviet demands. (President Franklin D. Roosevelt had
announced at Yalta that after the defeat of Germany, U.S. forces would withdraw from Europe
within two years.[25])

“ Stalin is not that kind of man. . . He doesn't want anything but security for his country,
and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can, and ask nothing from him in

”
return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a
world of democracy and peace.
—Franklin Roosevelt

“ This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes his own social

”
system on it. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot
be otherwise.
—Joseph Stalin

[edit] Iron Curtain speech

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Winston Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address[26] of 5 March 1946, at Westminster Coll

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.

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 Japan, resulting in many seeing Churchill's speech as
warmongering and unnecessary.[citation needed] In light of the subsequent opening of Soviet
archives, some historians have revised their opinions.[27]

Although not well received at the time, the phrase "iron curtain" gained popularity as a short-
hand 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.[28]

West of the Iron Curtain

To the west of the Iron Curtain, the countries of Western Europe, Northern Europe and Southern
Europe—along with Austria, West Germany, Liechtenstein and Switzerland—operated market
economies. With the exception of a period of fascism in Spain (until the 1970s) and Portugal
(until 1974) and military dictatorship in Greece (1967–1974), democratic governments ruled
these countries.

Most states to the west of the Iron Curtain—with the exception of neutral Switzerland,
Liechtenstein, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Malta and Ireland—allied themselves with the United
States and Canada within NATO. Economically, the European Community and the European
Free Trade Association formed the Western counterparts to COMECON. Most of the nominally
neutral states were economically closer to the United States than they were to the Warsaw Pact.

Emigration restrictions

Main article: Eastern Bloc emigration and defection

Migration from east to west of the Iron Curtain, except under limited circumstances, was
effectively halted after 1950. Before 1950, over 15 million people emigrated from Soviet-
occupied eastern European countries to the west in the five years immediately following World
War II.[55] However, restrictions implemented during the Cold War stopped most East-West
migration, with only 13.3 million migrations westward between 1950 and 1990.[56] More than
75% of those emigrating from Eastern Bloc countries between 1950 and 1990 did so under
bilateral agreements for "ethnic migration."[56]

About 10% were refugees permitted to emigrate under the Geneva Convention of 1951.[56] Most
Soviets allowed to leave during this time period were ethnic Jews permitted to emigrate to Israel
after a series of embarrassing defections in 1970 caused the Soviets to open very limited ethnic
emigrations.[57] The fall of the Iron Curtain was accompanied by a massive rise in European
East-West migration.[56]
Fall of the Iron Curtain
Further information: Eastern Bloc, Revolutions of 1989, Dissolution of the Soviet
Union, and European integration

Following a period of economic and political stagnation, the Soviet Union decreased intervention
in Eastern Bloc politics. Mikhail Gorbachev decreased adherence to the Brezhnev Doctrine,[58]
which held that if socialism were threatened in any state then other socialist governments had an
obligation to intervene to preserve it, in favor of the "Sinatra Doctrine." He also initiated the
policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring). A wave of Revolutions
occurred throughout the Eastern Bloc.[59]

In April 1989, the Solidarity organization was legalized in the People's Republic of Poland and
captured 99% of available parliamentary seats.[60] These elections, in which anti-communist
candidates won a striking victory, inaugurated a series of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in
Central and Eastern Europe[61][62][63] that eventually culminated in the fall of communism.[64][65]
On August 19, 1989, more than 600 East Germans attending the "Pan-European Picnic" on the
Hungarian border broke through the Iron Curtain and fled into Austria. Hungarian border guards
had threatened to shoot anyone crossing the border, but when the time came, they did not
intervene and allowed the people to cross. In a historic session from October 16 to October 20,
the Hungarian parliament adopted legislation providing for multi-party parliamentary elections
and a direct presidential election. The legislation transformed Hungary from a People's Republic
into the Republic of Hungary, guaranteed human and civil rights, and created an institutional
structure that ensured separation of powers among the judicial, legislative, and executive
branches of government. In November 1989, following mass protests in East Germany and the
relaxing of border restrictions in Czechoslovakia, tens of thousands of East Berliners flooded
checkpoints along the Berlin Wall, crossing into West Berlin.[66]

In the People's Republic of Bulgaria, the day after the mass crossings across the Berlin Wall,
leader Todor Zhivkov was ousted.[67] In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, following protests
of an estimated half-million Czechs, the government permitted travel to the west and abolished
provisions guaranteeing the ruling Communist party its leading role, preceding the Velvet
Revolution.[68]

In the Socialist Republic of Romania, on December 22, 1989, the Romanian military sided with
protesters and turned on Communist ruler Nicolae Ceauşescu, who was executed after a brief
trial three days later.[69] In the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, a new package of
regulations went into effect on 3 July 1990 entitling all Albanians over the age of 16 to own a
passport for foreign travel. Meanwhile, hundreds of Albanian citizens gathered around foreign
embassies to seek political asylum and flee the country.

The Berlin Wall officially remained guarded after 9 November 1989, although the inter-German
border had become effectively meaningless. The official dismantling of the Wall by the East
German military did not begin until June 1990. In July 1990, the day East Germany adopted the
West German currency, all border controls ceased and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl
convinced Gorbachev to drop Soviet objections to a reunited Germany within NATO in return
for substantial German economic aid to the Soviet Union.