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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.

The Iron Curtain was the political 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 1991. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were countries connected to the Soviet Union, and on the west side those that were NATO members. Economic and military alliances developed on each side of the Iron Curtain, and it became a term for the physical barriers of razor wire, fences, walls, minefields, and watchtowers built along it.[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 of 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. Events that demolished the Iron Curtain started with the Fall of communism in Poland,[4][5] Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania.[6][7]

The term is attributed to a speech Winston Churchill gave on 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri.[8]

Due to the decreased human activity around the physical border during the Cold War, natural biotopes were formed, now the European Green Belt.


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 17 January 2025.
  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. ^ Cite error: The named reference Feuerlicht was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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