What is the Iron Curtain and what happened to it?

The Iron Curtain was the Cold War divide between the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc and the capitalist West. It was both a political boundary and a network of fortified borders that restricted movement, separated communities and symbolised the conflict between competing ideologies.

The phrase began as a theatre fire barrier and became a metaphor for Russia after the 1917 revolution; Winston Churchill’s 1946 speech helped make it widely known. From the late 1940s, Eastern Bloc countries built fences, minefields and watchtowers, including more than 850 miles of border fortifications inside Germany. The article describes its weakening under Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms and the start of border openings in 1989, including Hungary’s dismantling of its fence with Austria.