Iron+Curtain

The political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War 2 to seal off itself and its dependent eastern European allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas.

The term Iron Curtain had been in occasional and varied use as a metaphor since the 19th century, but it came to prominence only after it was used by the former British primeminister Winston Churchill in a speech at fulton.

When he said of the communist states From settin in the baltic trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

The Iron Curtain largely ceased to exist in 1989–90 with the communists’ abandonment of one-party rule in eastern Europe.