Iron Curtain

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. In recent research (2024) by Rodolfo Campos, Benedikt Heid, and Jacopo Timini, the Iron Curtain at its economic peak in 1951 functioned as a tariff-equivalent barrier of approximately 48%, contributing to economic isolation and challenges for Soviet-aligned countries.^[3] 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.^[4]

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,^[5][6] and continued into Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. Romania became the only socialist state in Europe to overthrow its government with violence.^[7][8]

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.^[9] 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".^[10] 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.^[9]

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.

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