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The Iron Curtain was the 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 symbolized efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the west and non-Soviet-controlled areas. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union. On either side of the Iron Curtain, states developed their own international economic and military alliances: * Member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact, with the Soviet Union as the leading state * Member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and with the United States as the leading country Physically, the Iron Curtain took the form of border defenses between the countries of Europe in the middle of the continent. The most notable border was marked by the Berlin Wall and its Checkpoint Charlie which served as a symbol of the Curtain as a whole. The events that demolished the Iron Curtain started in discontent in Poland,〔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 ).〕 and continued in Hungary, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. Romania was the only communist state in Europe to violently overthrow its totalitarian government.〔http://www.umk.ro/images/documente/publicatii/Buletin20/the_end.pdf〕〔Piotr Sztompka, preface to ''Society in Action: the Theory of Social Becoming'', University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-78815-6. (p. x ).〕 The term's use as a metaphor for strict separation can be traced to the early 19th century. It was originally a reference to fireproof curtains in theaters.〔 Its popularity as a Cold War symbol is attributed to its use in a speech Winston Churchill gave in March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri.〔 ==Pre–Cold War usage== Various usages of the term "iron curtain" (; ; (チェコ語:Železná opona); (スロバキア語:Železná opona); (ハンガリー語:Vasfüggöny); (ルーマニア語、モルドバ語():Cortina de fier), (イタリア語:Cortina di ferro), (セルビア語:Гвоздена завеса ''Gvozdena zavesa''), (エストニア語:Raudne eesriie), (ブルガリア語:Желязна завеса ''Zhelyazna zavesä'')) pre-date Churchill's use of the phrase. The concept goes back to the Babylonian Talmud of the 3rd to 5th centuries CE, where Tractate Sota 38b refers to a "mechitza shel barzel", an iron barrier or divider: "אפילו מחיצה של ברזל אינה מפסקת בין ישראל לאביהם שבשמים" (Even an iron barrier cannot separate (people of ) Israel from their heavenly father). Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians used the term "Iron Curtain" in the context of World War I to describe the political situation between Belgium and Germany in 1914.〔Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians to Pierre Loti in 1915 ().〕 However, the first usage of "iron curtain" perhaps should be attributed to British author Arthur Machen (1863–1947), who used the term in his 1895 novel ''The Three Impostors'': " . . . the door clanged behind me with the noise of thunder, and I felt that an iron curtain had fallen on the brief passage of my life". It is interesting to note the English translation of a Russian text shown immediately below repeats the use of "clang" with reference to an "iron curtain", suggesting that the Russian writer, publishing 23 years after Machen, may have been familiar with the popular British author. The first recorded application of the term to Communist Russia comes in Vasily Rozanov's 1918 polemic ''The Apocalypse of Our Times'', and it is possible that Churchill read it there following the publication of the book's English translation in 1920. The passage runs:
(Incidentally, this same passage provides a definition of nihilism adopted by Raoul Vaneigem, Guy Debord and other Situationists as the intention of situationist intervention.) The first English-language use of the term ''iron curtain'' applied to the border of communist Russia in the sense of "an impenetrable barrier" derived from the iron curtain (safety curtain) deployed in theatres (The first one was installed by the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1794) and used in 1920 by Ethel Snowden, in her book ''Through Bolshevik Russia''. G.K. Chesterton used the phrase in a 1924 essay in ''The Illustrated London News''. Chesterton, while defending Distributism, refers to "that iron curtain of industrialism that has cut us off not only from our neighbours' condition, but even from our own past". The term also appears in the 1933 satirical novel ''England, Their England''; used there to describe the way an artillery barrage protected the infantry from an enemy assault: "...the western sky was a blaze of yellow flame. The iron curtain was down". Sebastian Haffner used the metaphor in his book ''Germany: Jekyll & Hyde'', published in London in 1940, in introducing his discussion of the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933: "Back then to March 1933. How, a moment before the iron curtain was wrung down on it, did the German political stage appear?" All German theatres had to install an iron curtain (''eiserner Vorhang'') as an obligatory precaution to prevent the possibility of fire spreading from the stage to the rest of the theatre. Such fires were rather common because the decor often was very flammable. In case of fire, a metal wall would separate the stage from the theatre, secluding the flames to be extinguished by firefighters. Douglas Reed used this metaphor in his book ''Disgrace Abounding'': "The bitter strife (Yugoslavia between Serb unionists and Croat federalists ) had only been hidden by the iron safety-curtain of the King's dictatorship". A May 1943 article in ''Signal'', a Nazi illustrated propaganda periodical published in many languages, bore the title "Behind the Iron Curtain". It discussed "the iron curtain that more than ever before separates the world from the Soviet Union". The German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote in his weekly newspaper ''Das Reich'' that if the Nazis should lose the war a Soviet-formed "iron curtain" would arise because of agreements made by Stalin, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Yalta Conference: "An iron curtain would fall over this enormous territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which nations would be slaughtered". The first recorded oral intentional mention of an Iron Curtain in the Soviet context occurred in a broadcast by Lutz von Krosigk to the German people on 2 May 1945: "In the East the iron curtain behind which, unseen by the eyes of the world, the work of destruction goes on, is moving steadily forward". Churchill's first recorded use the term "iron curtain" came in a 12 May 1945 telegram he sent to U.S. President Harry S. Truman regarding his concern about Soviet actions, stating "()n iron curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind".〔 He was further concerned about "another immense flight of the German population westward as this enormous Muscovite advance towards the centre of Europe".〔 Churchill concluded "then the curtain will descend again to a very large extent, if not entirely. Thus a broad land of many hundreds of miles of Russian-occupied territory will isolate us from Poland". Churchill repeated the words in a further telegram to President Truman on 4 June 1945, in which he protested against such a U.S. retreat to what was earlier designated as, and ultimately became, the U.S. occupation zone, saying the military withdrawal would bring "Soviet power into the heart of Western Europe and the descent of an iron curtain between us and everything to the eastward". At the Potsdam Conference, Churchill complained to Stalin about an "iron fence" coming down upon the British Mission in Bucharest. The first American print reference to the "Iron Curtain" occurred when C.L. Sulzberger of ''The New York Times'' first used it in a dispatch published on 23 July 1945. He had heard the term used by Vladko Maček, a Croatian politician, a Yugoslav opposition leader who had fled his homeland for Paris in May 1945. Maček told Sulzberger, "During the four years while I was interned by the Germans in Croatia I saw how the Partisans were lowering an iron curtain over Jugoslavia () so that nobody could know what went on behind it". The term was first used in the British House of Commons by Churchill on 16 August 1945 when he stated "it is not impossible that tragedy on a prodigious scale is unfolding itself behind the iron curtain which at the moment divides Europe in twain". Allen Dulles used the term in a speech on 3 December 1945, referring to only Germany, following his conclusion that "in general the Russians are acting little better than thugs", had "wiped out all the liquid assets", and refused to issue food cards to emigrating Germans, leaving them "often more dead than alive". Dulles concluded that "()n iron curtain has descended over the fate of these people and very likely conditions are truly terrible. The promises at Yalta to the contrary, probably 8 to 10 million people are being enslaved". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Iron Curtain」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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