Iron Curtain
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The Iron Curtain referred to the bar to travel, commerce and communication with the free nations of the West erected by the Soviet Union after World War Two. The phrase was coined by Winston Churchill, in 1946, in a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The Berlin Wall was perhaps its most visible symbol, dividing the city into the free West Berlin and the East Berlin under Soviet dictatorship. The Iron Curtain's shredding began with Ronald Reagan's demand in 1987 that Premier Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union "tear down this wall".
The wall was torn down within a couple of years of Reagan's demand.