Iron Curtain
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The Iron Curtain referred to the bar to travel, commerce and communication with the nations of the West and the USSR erected by the Soviet Union after World War II. 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 took place after a series of events in the 1980s, perhaps best symbolized by Ronald Reagan's demand on June 12, 1987 that Premier Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union "tear down this wall". The wall fell on November 9, 1989. [1]