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5/7/2017 Iron Curtain - Wikipedia Iron Curtain From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Iron Curtain was the name for the 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. A term symbolizing the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non- Soviet-controlled areas. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union. Separate international economic and military alliances were developed on each side of the Iron Curtain: Member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact, with the Soviet Union as the leading state Member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and with the United States as the pre-eminent power Physically, the Iron Curtain took the form of border defenses between the The Iron Curtain depicted as a black countries of Europe in the middle of the continent. The most notable border line. Warsaw Pact countries on one was marked by the Berlin Wall and its Checkpoint Charlie, which served as side of the Iron Curtain appear shaded red; NATO members on the other a symbol of the Curtain as a whole.[1] shaded blue; militarily neutral The events that demolished the Iron Curtain started in discontent in countries shaded gray. The black dot represents Berlin. Yugoslavia, [2][3] Poland, and continued in Hungary, the German Democratic Republic although communist-ruled, remained (East Germany), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. Romania became largely independent of the two major the only communist state in Europe to overthrow its totalitarian government blocs and is shaded green. with violence.[4][5] Communist Albania broke off contacts with the Soviet Union in the The use of the term iron curtain as a metaphor for strict separation goes early 1960s, aligning itself with the back at least as far as the early 19th century. It originally referred to People's Republic of China after the fireproof curtains in theaters.[6] Although its popularity as a Cold War Sino-Soviet split; it appears stripe- symbol is attributed to its use in a speech Winston Churchill gave in March hatched with grey. 1946 in Fulton, Missouri,[6] Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels had already used the term in reference to the Soviet Union.[7] Contents 1 Pre–Cold War usage 2 During the Cold War 2.1 Building antagonism 2.2 Iron Curtain speech 2.3 Political, economic and military realities 2.3.1 Eastern Bloc 2.3.2 West of the Iron Curtain 2.3.3 Further division in the late 1940s 2.4 Emigration restrictions 2.5 As a physical entity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain#Iron_Curtain_speech 1/16 5/7/2017 Iron Curtain - Wikipedia 2.5.1 Helmstedt-Marienborn crossing 3 Fall of the Iron Curtain 4 Monuments 5 Analogous terms 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links Pre–Cold War usage Various usages of the term "iron curtain" (Russian: Железный занавес Zheleznyj zanaves; German: Eiserner Vorhang;Georgian: რკინის ფარდა Rkinis pharda Czech: Železná opona; Slovak: Železná opona; Hungarian: Vasfüggöny; Romanian: Cortina de fier, Italian: Cortina di ferro, Serbian: Гвоздена завеса Gvozdena zavesa, Estonian: Raudne eesriie, Bulgarian: Желязна завеса Zhelyazna zavesä) pre-date Churchill's use of the phrase. The concept goes back to the Babylonian Talmud of the 3rd to 5th centuries CE, where Tractate Sota 38b refers to a "mechitza shel barzel", an iron אפילו מחיצה של ברזל אינה מפסקת בין ישראל" :barrier or divider [Even an iron barrier cannot separate [the people of) "לאביהם שבשמים Israel from their heavenly father). The term "iron curtain" has since been used metaphorically in two rather different senses - firstly to denote the end of an era and secondly to denote a closed geopolitical border. The source of these metaphors can refer to either the safety curtain deployed in theatres (the first one was installed by the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1794[8]) or to roller shutters used to secure commercial premises.[9] The first metaphorical usage of "iron curtain", in the sense of an end of an Swedish book "Behind Russia's iron era, perhaps should be attributed to British author Arthur Machen (1863– curtain" from 1923 1947), who used the term in his 1895 novel The Three Impostors: " . the door clanged behind me with the noise of thunder, and I felt that an iron curtain had fallen on the brief passage of my life".[10] It is interesting to note the English translation of a Russian text shown immediately below repeats the use of "clang" with reference to an "iron curtain", suggesting that the Russian writer, publishing 23 years after Machen, may have been familiar with the popular British author. Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians used the term "Iron Curtain" in the context of World War I to describe the political situation between Belgium and Germany in 1914.[11] The first recorded application of the term to Communist Russia, again in the sense of the end of an era, comes in Vasily Rozanov's 1918 polemic The Apocalypse of Our Times, and it is possible that Churchill read it there following the publication of the book's English translation in 1920. The passage runs: With clanging, creaking, and squeaking, an iron curtain is lowering over Russian History. "The performance is over." The audience got up. "Time to put on your fur coats and go home." We looked around, but the fur coats and homes were missing.[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain#Iron_Curtain_speech 2/16 5/7/2017 Iron Curtain - Wikipedia (Incidentally, this same passage provides a definition of nihilism adopted by Raoul Vaneigem,[13] Guy Debord and other Situationists as the intention of situationist intervention.) The first English-language use of the term iron curtain applied to the border of communist Russia in the sense of "an impenetrable barrier" was used in 1920 by Ethel Snowden, in her book Through Bolshevik Russia.[14][15] G.K. Chesterton used the phrase in a 1924 essay in The Illustrated London News. Chesterton, while defending Distributism, refers to "that iron curtain of industrialism that has cut us off not only from our neighbours' condition, but even from our own past".[16] The term also appears in the 1933 satirical novel England, Their England; used there to describe the way an artillery barrage protected the infantry from an enemy assault: "...the western sky was a blaze of yellow flame. The iron curtain was down". Sebastian Haffner used the metaphor in his book Germany: Jekyll & Hyde, published in London in 1940, in introducing his discussion of the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933: "Back then to March 1933. How, a moment before the iron curtain was wrung down on it, did the German political stage appear?"[17] All German theatres had to install an iron curtain (eiserner Vorhang) as an obligatory precaution 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. Douglas Reed used this metaphor in his book Disgrace Abounding: "The bitter strife [in Yugoslavia between Serb unionists and Croat federalists] had only been hidden by the iron safety-curtain of the King's dictatorship".[18] A May 1943 article in Signal, a Nazi illustrated propaganda periodical published in many languages, bore the title "Behind the Iron Curtain". It discussed "the iron curtain that more than ever before separates the world from the Soviet Union".[7] The German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote in his weekly newspaper Das Reich that if the Nazis should lose the war a Soviet-formed "iron curtain" would arise because of agreements made by Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Yalta Conference: "An iron curtain would fall over this enormous territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which nations would be slaughtered".[6][19] The first recorded oral intentional mention of an Iron Curtain in the Soviet context occurred in a broadcast by Lutz von Krosigk to the German people on 2 May 1945: "In the East the iron curtain behind which, unseen by the eyes of the world, the work of destruction goes on, is moving steadily forward".[20] Churchill's first recorded use of the term "iron curtain" came in a 12 May 1945 telegram he sent to U.S. President Harry S. Truman regarding his concern about Soviet actions, stating "[a]n iron curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind".[21] He was further concerned about "another immense flight of the German population westward as this enormous Muscovite advance towards the centre of Europe".[21] Churchill concluded "then the curtain will descend again to a very large extent, if not entirely. Thus a broad land of many hundreds of miles of Russian-occupied territory will isolate us from Poland".[21][22] Churchill repeated the words in a further telegram to President Truman on 4 June 1945, in which he protested against such a U.S. retreat to what was earlier designated as, and ultimately became, the U.S. occupation zone, saying the military withdrawal would bring "Soviet power into the heart of Western Europe and the descent of an iron curtain between us and everything to the eastward".[23] At the Potsdam Conference, Churchill complained to Stalin about an "iron fence" coming down upon the British Mission in Bucharest.
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