The Berlin Wall, 1986
5 August 2024
Winston Churchill is credited with coining a lot of pithy phrases, and many of these claims are false. The coining of the phrase iron curtain falls into a gray area. It is thought by many that Churchill coined the phrase in a 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri, but the sense of the phrase meaning an impenetrable barrier had been in place long before. However, Churchill may have been the first to use it in the context of the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe following World War II.
The original sense of iron curtain was that of a fireproof screen in a theater that could be dropped between the stage and the audience in case the scenery caught fire. The first such iron curtain was installed in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London in 1794. Here is a description of the plan for the curtain in a 16 November 1793 newspaper:
NEW DRURY.—An extraordinary precaution is to be taken here against the communication of fire from one part of the Theatre to the other. An iron curtain, the roler [sic] of which will be sufficiently heavy to bring it down, is to be ready for use at the front of the stage, so that, if the scenery should, at any time, take fire, the stones will be prevented from reaching the audience part of the Theatre.
The innovation received considerable press upon its installation. But this first attempt at a theatrical iron curtain did not work well. By the time the Drury Lane Theatre was destroyed by fire in 1809, it had been removed. From the Manchester Mercury of 18 February 1809:
No performance having taken place last night, it being Oratorio night, there was but a watchman or two and porter in the house; and as the fire began at the most remote part from their usual stations, it had acquired an unconquerable height before they were aware of its having begun. The supply of water on the top of the Theatre was quite useless, the flames being up there as soon as any person could have reached the roof, and the iron curtain, which in case of fire it was intended to drop in the centre of the house, at the front of the stage, thus to have saved one half of it at least, had been found so rotten, the machinery so impracticable, that it had been removed.
But within a few decades iron curtain had generalized from a fire wall to that of any impenetrable barrier. The following appears in the 11 December 1817 journal entry of George Augustus Frederick FitzClarence, the eldest illegitimate son of King William IV, who was in the British army in India during a cholera epidemic:
On the 19th November we crossed the river Betwah, and as if an iron curtain had dropt between us and the avenging angel, the deaths diminished.
And we first see iron curtain used in relation to the Soviet Union beginning a hundred years later. Vasily Rozanov used it in November 1917 in one of the installments to The Apocalypse of Our Time, which ran from 1917 to 1918, but his use specifically evoked the metaphor of a theatrical safety curtain coming down at the end of the performance of an era of history:
C лязгом, скрипом, визгом опускается над Русскою Историею железный занавес.
—Представление окончилось.
Публика встала.
—Пора одевать шубы и возвращаться домой. Оглянулись.
Но ни шуб, ни домов не оказалось.(With a clang, a creaking, a squeal, the iron curtain falls over Russian history. The performance is over. The audience stood up. “It’s time to put on our fur coats and go home.” They looked around. But there were no fur coats or houses.)
The book was translated into English in 1920. And in 1920 the metaphor shifted, and iron curtain began to be used to refer to the trade and travel barrier erected by the Western powers to prevent the spread of communism. Ethel Snowden, a British viscountess and feminist and socialist activist, wrote in her 1920 book Through Bolshevik Russia:
At Petrograd itself a large company met us although it was three o'clock in the morning, and we were told that gigantic crowds had loitered about the station all the day in expectation of our coming and in the hope of getting a glimpse at the English strangers. We were at once motored to the quarters which had been prepared for us, the palace of a Russian princess, and there, at four o'clock in the morning, we sat down to a simple but sufficient meal and received our welcome from the Trade Union officials who were to be our hosts during our stay.
We were behind the "iron curtain" at last!
And this piece, with a dateline of 24 April 1920, appears in the Times of London:
From what was known of the situation in Russia it might be inferred that when the iron curtain shutting off the country was lifted the abomination of desolation would be revealed behind it.
But at the end of World War II, Churchill would reverse the iron curtain, using the phrase to refer to a barrier erected by the Soviets to keep out Western influences. He would first use the phrase in a speech in the House of Commons on 16 August 1945:
The same conditions may reproduce themselves in a more modified form in the expulsion of great numbers of Sudeten and other Germans from Czechoslovakia: Sparse and guarded accounts of what has happened and is happening have filtered through, but 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.
Then on 5 March 1946, Churchill would deliver the famous “Sinews of Peace” or “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri:
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.
(Fulton, Missouri might seem to be an odd place for a major foreign policy address by a non-American, but President Harry Truman was from Missouri, so Truman bringing Churchill to the state was as much due to American domestic politics as it was due to foreign policy concerns.)
So Churchill can fairly be given credit for using an existing phrase in a somewhat novel metaphorical fashion. And undoubtedly the popularity of the phrase during the Cold War stems from Churchill’s use of it.
Iron curtain also spawned an Asian variant, the bamboo curtain. And the history of this phrase parallels that of its European cousin, in that it was first used to describe efforts to limit the spread of communism, before being reversed and referring to Chinese attempts to keep out Western influences. The phrase appears in the Times of India on 12 February 1947 in reference to French censorship of news coming out of Indochina:
In phrases like “behind the bamboo curtain” and “censorship commonsense in the country at war,” the Paris press today commented on Service censorship imposed by French authorities in Indo-China disclosed by Reuter’s special correspondent there.
And it was used to describe the barrier erected around the Japanese emperor in the 7 June 1948 issue of Newsweek:
BAMBOO CURTAIN: Can a god quit? The answer is yes—in Japan. A year ago, NEWSWEEK carried the news that Emperor Hirohito had considered abdicating because the new constitution was about to come into effect. Now, a year later, the emperor may resign over the verdict of the war-crimes trials. But even in abdication he may remain the power “behind the bamboo curtain.”
On 25 August 1948, the Associated Press used bamboo curtain to describe British censorship of news in Malaya:
Bamboo Curtain
Singapore (AP)—An authoritative source said today senior British officials are reconsidering a lower-level decision which has permitted a bamboo curtain of censorship to be dropped around police activities against Communist insurgents in Malaya. The informant said a more liberal press policy will be ordered soon.
Finally, by February 1949 the phrase was used to describe communist efforts to limit Kuomintang and Western influences in the regions of China they controlled. From an Associated Press report of 7 February 1949:
Postmen Pierce “Bamboo Curtain”
Nanking, China—(AP)—China’s postmen find it much easier than do peace negotiators to penetrate the “bamboo curtain” between Nationalist and Communist China. Mail service between the Communist area and Nanking moves smoothly. Postmen refuse to say how it is accomplished. They fear that disclosure of details might jeopardize the service.
And a few days later, on 11 February, the Associated Press had this:
Reports seeping through the “Bamboo Curtain” of Red China say the crackdown on foreigners has begun, even to the point of requiring church missions to give daily lessons in communism.
Sources:
Associated Press. “News Briefs—From Everywhere. Arkansas Democrat (Little Rock), 25 August 1948, 10/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
———. “Postmen Pierce ‘Bamboo Curtain.’” Milwaukee Journal (Wisconsin), 7 February 1949, 4/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Censorship in Indo-China” (11 February 1947). Times of India (Mumbai), 12 February 1947, 5/1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Churchill, Winston. House of Commons debate, 16 August 1945. Hansard.
———. “The Sinews of Peace” (Iron Curtain speech), Fulton, Missouri, 5 March 1946. International Churchill Society.
“Drury Lane Theatre Destroyed by Fire.” Manchester Mercury and Harrop’s General Advertiser (Manchester, England), 18 February 1809, 1/6. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.
FitzClarence, George Augustus Frederick. Entry for 11 December 1817. Journal of a Route Across India, Through Egypt, to England. London: John Murray, 1819, 58. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“For Your Information.” Newsweek, 7 June 1948, 9/2. ProQuest: Magazine.
Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (London), 16 November 1793, 3/3. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.
Milks, Harold K., Associated Press. “Reds Throttle China Missions” (11 February 1949). Charlotte Observer (North Carolina), 12 February 1949, . Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2013, s.v. iron curtain, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. bamboo curtain, n.
Rozanov, Vasily. Апокалипсис нашего времени (The Apocalypse of Our Time) (1919). Moscow: 1990, 46. Archive.org.
Snowden, Ethel (Mrs. Philip). Through Bolshevik Russia. London: Cassell, 1920, 31–32. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Sweden’s Condition to Russia. Indemnity Before Trading” (24 April 1920). Times (London), 26 April 1920, 14/5.
Photo credit: Thierry Noir, 1986. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.