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What did Churchill mean by an 'Iron Curtain'?

Summary:
Soviet control in Eastern Europe
  • Between 1945 and 1949, Stalin worked on putting Soviet-friendly governments into Eastern European countries, such as Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. Opponents to the Soviets were arrested and many elections were rigged.
  • Stalin argued that Russia had been attacked twice by Germany in the twentieth century, so a ‘buffer zone’ around Russia would help to protect them.
  • Winston Churchill gave a speech in 1946 saying “an Iron Curtain has descended across Europe.” This phrase became commonly used to explain the divide in Europe, between a communist eastern bloc and a capitalist West.

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