Define the term "Iron Curtain."
History · High School · Tue Nov 03 2020
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The term "Iron Curtain" refers to the symbolic, ideological, and physical boundary that separated the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe from the Western European countries during the Cold War. This curtain was not an actual barrier but rather a metaphor for the division between the communist and non-communist countries of Europe.
Winston Churchill popularized the phrase in his famous "Sinews of Peace" speech on March 5, 1946, when he said, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent." The "Iron Curtain" symbolized the way in which the Soviet Union had closed off its own people and its satellite states from the free exchange of ideas, goods, and information with the non-communist world.