The history of the Cold War is not only the history of the rivalry of two ideologies, but also the history of the rivalry of two economic systems, which in essence were antipodes to each other. What is remarkable about this topic ?, it illuminates the beginning of what we will all witness in our lifetime. “Iron Curtain” - this expression was given life by a device used earlier in the theater - an iron curtain, which, in order to protect the auditorium from fire, was lowered onto the stage in the event of a fire on it. This was very advisable in an era when open fire was forced to be used on the stage to illuminate it - candles, oil lamps, etc. For the first time, such an iron curtain began to be used in France - in the city of Lyon in the late 80s - early 90s gg. 18th century."

Vadim Serov.

Let's remember how it was...
"AT. I. Lenin proclaims Soviet power. V.A. Serov, 1962

It is generally accepted that the well-known "Iron Curtain" descended on the country of the Soviets in the 1920s, roughly speaking, as soon as the USSR was created, they immediately covered it with a curtain so that dirt from the west would not fly. I'm afraid to disappoint some, but it's not.

The Land of the Soviets existed, developed, and there was no self-isolation, and there was no closeness, on the contrary, the Soviet government made every effort to eliminate this closeness. For this, famous writers, artists and other figures from all over the world were invited to the USSR. The purpose of all this was to break the veil of lies that enveloped us in the West, and to give an opportunity to assess what is happening in our country more or less truthfully.

In addition to writers and artists, ordinary people also came to the USSR: some of them were invited as specialists for a large salary, and some came on their own, for ideological reasons (people wanted to build the society of the future with their own hands). Naturally, after some time, returning to their homeland, they all brought with them a baggage of information about the country of the Soviets.

But the Western powers did not attach much importance to this, they no longer saw Russia as a serious adversary for the coming decades, although they did not stop their attempts to snatch an extra piece from us (a campaign of 14 states).

“Russia, which was a civilization of the Western type - the least organized and most shaky of the great powers - is now a modern civilization in extremis (lat. with its last gasp - ed. note). … History knows nothing like the collapse experienced by Russia. If this process continues for another year, the collapse will be final. Russia will turn into a country of peasants; cities will be deserted and turned into ruins, railroads will be overgrown with grass. With the disappearance of the railroads, the last remnants of the central government will disappear.”
HG Wells, 1920

A. Hitler. 1924

However, the explosive growth rates of the USSR greatly frightened the West, showing them that they had greatly miscalculated on our account, even taking into account the insertion of sticks into all our wheels and wheels.
Then, the trump ace of the West, Adolf Hitler, was pulled out of his sleeve (you can read more about this in the article “Shock USSR. Stakhanov’s Chronicles”) and a grandiose war was unleashed, hitherto unseen by mankind.

“In the event that the Germans gain the upper hand, then the Russians must be helped, and if things turn out differently, then the Germans must be helped. And let them kill each other as much as possible."

G. Truman, New York Times, 1941

As they say (they, in the West) - "nothing personal, just business."

Bear trap

"Who controls the country's money is the absolute master of all industry and commerce."

James Abram Garfield, 20th President of the United States, 1881

In July 1944, at the very height of the war, the international Bretton Woods conference was held in the United States (New Hampshire). The meaning of this conference boiled down to two main points: the dollar is the only currency that is now allowed to have a gold content, all other countries must refuse to back their currencies with gold, introducing dollar backing instead (buy the dollar to print their currency), and the second point - the dollar becomes the main settlement currency (all international trade must now be conducted only for dollars).

The USSR signs the enslaving Bretton Woods agreement, its ratification (approval) is scheduled for December 1945.

Here we will deviate a little from the main topic, since it is worth mentioning one more important fact.

April 12, 1945 Franklin Delano Roosevelt is assassinated. The reason for the murder was his friendly relations with the USSR and Stalin personally. This event shows once again that US presidents are just pawns in a big game.
“We were closest to equal cooperation when Roosevelt was in America, and Stalin was with us.”

S.E. Kurginyan, political scientist.

Stalin and Roosevelt in Tehran

Here are the words of Roosevelt:

“Under the leadership of Marshal Joseph Stalin, the Russian people showed such an example of love for the motherland, firmness of spirit and self-sacrifice, which the world has not yet known. After the war, our country will always be happy to maintain good neighborly relations and sincere friendship with Russia, whose people, saving themselves, help to save the whole world from the Nazi threat.

Personal message to Stalin following the results of the Tehran conference (held: November 28-December 1, 1943):

"I believe that the conference was very successful, and I am sure that it is a historic event, confirming our ability not only to wage war, but also to work for the cause of the world to come in full harmony."

“In simple terms, I got on very well with Marshal Stalin. This person combines a huge, unyielding will and a healthy sense of humor; I think the soul and heart of Russia have their true representative in him. I believe that we will continue to get along well with him and with the entire Russian people.”

“Since the last meeting in Tehran, we have been working in really good cooperation with the Russians, and I think the Russians are quite friendly. They are not trying to swallow all of Europe and the rest of the world.”

The quotes speak for themselves.

Exactly 2 hours and 24 minutes after the death of Roosevelt, his place is taken by US Vice President and ardent anti-communist Harry Truman. Literally into Russian, "Truman" is translated as "real man" (English "true man") =)) , but this is a joke.

The first thing Truman does is forbid the execution of any instructions from the previous Roosevelt administration.

On April 23, 1945, at a meeting of the White House, Truman would say: “Enough, we are no longer interested in an alliance with the Russians, and therefore we may not fulfill the agreements with them. We will solve the problem of Japan without the help of the Russians.”

From this moment on, any friendliness can be forgotten.

On the eve of the Potsdam Conference (held: July 17 - August 2, 1945), Truman receives a coded message: “The operation took place this morning. The diagnosis is not quite complete yet, but the results seem to be satisfactory and already exceeding expectations.” It was a message about the successful test of the atomic bomb. And on July 21, US Secretary of War Stimson, who accompanied Truman to the conference, receives photographs of the tests and shows them to the president.

And Truman goes on the offensive.

The Big Three in Potsdam

During the conference, he tries to hint to Stalin that the United States has nuclear weapons.

Churchill describes the scene this way: “We stood in twos and threes before dispersing. I was perhaps five yards away and followed this important conversation with keen interest. I knew what the president was going to say. It was extremely important to know what impression this would make on Stalin.

A little later, Churchill would approach Truman: "How did it go?" I asked. "He didn't ask a single question," the president replied.

And on August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States carries out two nuclear attacks on Japanese cities - on the city of Hiroshima (up to 166 thousand dead) and on the city of Nagasaki (up to 80 thousand dead).

“Military and civilians, men and women, old men and youth, were killed indiscriminately by atmospheric pressure and thermal radiation of the explosion ... The said bombs used by the Americans, in their cruelty and terrifying effects, are far superior to poison gases or any other weapon, the use of which forbidden.

Japan protests against the US violation of internationally recognized principles of warfare, violated both by the use of the atomic bomb and by earlier incendiary bombings that killed the elderly, women and children, destroyed and burned Shinto and Buddhist temples, schools, hospitals, residential areas, etc. d..

Now they have used this new bomb, which has a much more destructive effect than any other weapon used hitherto. This is a new crime against humanity and civilization.”

According to an American report from 1946, there was no military necessity for the use of atomic bombs:

“Based on a detailed examination of all the facts and after interviews with surviving Japanese officials, in the opinion of this Study, definitely before December 31, 1945, and most likely before November 1, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped. and the USSR would not have entered the war, and even if the invasion of the Japanese islands had not been planned and prepared.

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Americans planned subsequent atomic bombings of Japan, but later decided that it was more expedient not to waste bombs as they were created, but to start accumulating them.

The bombings were an act of intimidation. The message to Stalin here is unambiguous: ratify the Bretton Woods agreement or the bombs may fly into you, by accident.

On September 4, 1945, the US Joint Military Planning Committee prepared memorandum No. 329: "to select approximately 20 of the most important targets suitable for strategic atomic bombing of the USSR and in territory controlled by it." As the arsenal increased, the number of cities was planned to increase. By that time, the USSR did not have not only such weapons, but even a strategic bomber capable of long-range flights.

December 1945 came. The USSR flatly refused to ratify the Bretton Woods agreement.

But there were no atomic strikes on the USSR. Stalin too well weighed all the pros and cons.
One of the important reasons for the failed attack was the Americans themselves, namely their supply to us under Lend-Lease.

From 1941 to 1943, more than 4,500 Bell P-39 Airacobra fighters were delivered to the USSR by the Allies.

And since the middle of 1944, approximately 2,400 R-63 Kincobra attack fighters, the best American fighters at the end of the war, were delivered to the USSR, which were a modification of the aforementioned R-39s. The Kinkobrams failed to take part in the war with Germany, and practically the same in the war with Japan.

Thus, it turned out that by the end of the war we were armed with a full set of the latest American fighters (I think good relations with Roosevelt played a role here), and all atomic bombs, at that time, were delivered using long-range aviation, vulnerable to fighters.

So it turns out that the Americans protected us from themselves.

R-63 "Kinkobra"

America did not have the opportunity to fight us in a fair fight, even joining forces with Europe. The Soviet Union by this time was no longer too tough for them. So the West is beginning to build up its joint military power with all its might in order to bring it down on the USSR as soon as possible. The USSR, however, had only to strengthen its air defense and speed up work on its nuclear program.

The curtain falls

"The most important thing is to choose the right enemy."

Joseph Goebbels.

W. Churchill, 1940

On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill, speaking at Westminster College in Fulton (USA), divided the world into two poles: those who are with us and those who are with them, the so-called bipolar world. President Truman also attended the speech.

This speech was the official start of the Cold War.

Speech at Fulton

“Neither the effective prevention of war nor the permanent expansion of the influence of the World Organization can be achieved without the fraternal union of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and the British Empire and the United States.
[...]

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain descended on the continent. On the other side of the curtain are all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe - Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia. All these famous cities and the populations in their districts fell within what I call the Soviet sphere, all of them, in one form or another, not only under Soviet influence, but also under the considerable and increasing control of Moscow.

Almost all of these countries are run by police governments and have no true democracy.”

But Churchill was not the one who first introduced the concept of the "Iron Curtain" in relation to the Soviet Union. He borrowed this expression from an article by the Reich Minister of Public Education and Propaganda of Germany, Joseph Goebbels:

Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)

“If the Germans lay down their arms, the Soviets will occupy, according to the Yalta Conference, all of eastern and southeastern Europe, together with most of the Reich. An iron curtain will descend on the entire gigantic territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which the peoples will be exterminated.
[...]

All that will be left will be human raw materials, a dumb roaming mass of millions of desperate, proletarian working animals who will know only what the Kremlin will want about the rest of the world.

This article was written by Goebbels on February 25, 1945, immediately after the Yalta Conference, at which the fate of the world was decided.

With his article, Goebbels tried to bring seeds of discord into the ranks of the allies (anti-Hitler, of course) and desperately beg the West for the last chance for salvation, in the face of imminent death: “Now Bolshevism stands on the Oder. It all depends on the resilience of the German soldiers. Will Bolshevism be pushed to the east or will its fury cover all of Europe. Everything will be decided by us or will not be decided at all. That's all the alternatives."

Goebbels' article had its effect, but only after the fall of Germany and the death of its leadership. It was then that Churchill took the words of Goebbels for his speech in Fulton.

"If Churchill had dug deeper, he would have known that the term 'iron curtain' first came into use in Scandinavia, where workers in the early 1920s protested against their rulers' desire to fence them off from the 'heretical ideas' coming from the East."

Valentin Falin, Dr. Sciences.

We didn’t fight Hitler to transfer power to the Churchills

Caricature of Churchill in Fulton

Stalin immediately reacted to Fulton's speech:
“It should be noted that Mr. Churchill and his friends are strikingly reminiscent in this respect of Hitler and his friends. Hitler started the business of starting the war by proclaiming the racial theory, declaring that only people who speak German constitute a full-fledged nation. are full-fledged nations, called to decide the fate of the whole world.

German racial theory led Hitler and his friends to the conclusion that the Germans, as the only complete nation, should dominate other nations. The English racial theory leads Mr. Churchill and his friends to the conclusion that the nations that speak the English language, as the only full-fledged ones, should dominate the rest of the nations of the world.

In fact, Mr. Churchill and his friends in England and the United States are presenting to the non-English speaking nations something like an ultimatum: accept our domination voluntarily, and then everything will be in order - otherwise war is inevitable.

Parable of the Good Samaritan

Good Samaritan. Artist: S.V. Bakalovich

The Cold War has been declared. The two next steps for the West were the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine (March 12, 1947) and the US Secretary of State George Marshall's Plan (1947-1948).

The meaning of the Marshall Plan was to provide financial assistance to countries affected during the Second World War.

Goodwill gesture, you say. Alas, no, in America "only business." Each of the countries that received aid had to sacrifice part of their sovereignty.

The Truman Doctrine, on the other hand, contained specific measures against the expansion of the Soviet sphere of influence and the spread of communist ideology (the "doctrine of containment" of socialism), as well as aimed at returning the USSR to its former borders ("the doctrine of rejection" of socialism).

The father of the founder of the "doctrine of containment" is the American ambassador to Moscow (of that time) George Kennan. It was he who formulated and outlined in his telegram of February 22, 1946, even before Churchill's speech at Fulton, all the main trends of the future Cold War. The telegram was called "long" because it contained about 8,000 words.

Here are excerpts from the telegram:

“Many foreign countries, especially the countries of Europe, are exhausted and intimidated by the experience of the past and are less interested in general freedom than in their own security. They seek advice, not responsibility. We must be able to offer them such assistance in a better way than the Russians. And if we don't do it, the Russians will.[...]

The Soviet regime is essentially a police regime, originating from the time of tsarist political intrigues and accustomed to thinking primarily in terms of police categories. This must not be overlooked when assessing the motives of the USSR. (Here we see an example of a myth so actively imposed by the West that it has already become a dogma that does not require proof - "Russia is a prison of peoples" - ed.)

It was George Kennan who formulated the idea that the Soviet Union should be defeated without entering into a direct military conflict with it. The bet here was on the depletion of the Soviet economy, because the economy of the West was much more powerful (why was it more powerful? Yes, because it developed while we were at war, and ate our gold).

Thus, by the middle of 1947, two types of foreign policy orientation were finally formed on the world map: pro-Soviet and pro-American.

Division of the world Cold war, map

And on April 4, 1949, countries that received economic assistance from the United States under the Marshall Plan sign the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO). Here's a two-move combo.

RDS-1 atomic bomb of the USSR

But already in August (29th) 1949, the USSR successfully tested its first atomic bomb - RDS-1. And two years before that, at the beginning of 1947, a long-range bomber capable of delivering nuclear charges was created in the USSR. It was the famous Tu-4.

A little about our bomber.

On August 3, 1947, an air parade in Tushino was opened by three Tu-4 aircraft, which was attended by foreign military representatives. At first, foreigners did not believe that Soviet planes were flying in the sky, because only the United States had such bombers, it was their latest development. But, as much as they would not like to admit it, the planes were Soviet. And the reason for the disbelief of foreigners was the similarity - the planes were exact copies of the American B-29 "Superfortress" (superfortress).

Tu-4 and B-29 bombers. Tu-4 (left) and B-29 (right)

In 1949, the Tu-4 was put into service and became the first Soviet aircraft to carry nuclear weapons.

Thus, the position of the two forces in the world was relatively equalized. Now, with bare hands, it was no longer possible to take us.

Dangerous Soviet Union

Bear hurts Uncle Sam

Truman started the Cold War. And he began it out of fear, out of weakness, not out of strength. And why? After the Second World War, capitalism as a system was badly battered. He was discredited in the eyes of millions of people. He created the Great Depression. He created a terrible war. It gave rise to fascism and gas chambers. The Soviet Union was in this sense a real alternative. And this happened against the background when Europe was in ruins.

The Greek communists are about to come to power.

The Italian communists in 1943 had 7,000 people. In 1945 they had 1.5 million people.

And so Truman and his entourage had a fear that Stalin would take advantage of the opportunities that were opening up before him. Moreover, there was a civil war in China, where the communists won. India continued to fight for independence. There were wars of liberation already in Indonesia and Vietnam, or they were ready for it.

That is, the Soviet Union, as the Americans believed, could take advantage of this situation in order to create a real threat to American capitalism, the American way of life. The Soviet Union had to be stopped. That was the reason why the Americans started the Cold War."

A.L. Adamashin, Russian diplomat.

The Soviet system was dangerous for the West not so much from an ideological point of view as from a methodological one. This mainly concerned the economic component.

“The principle of state policy (Soviet - ed.) was made a constant, albeit modest, improvement in the well-being of the population. This was expressed, for example, in large and regular price reductions (13 times in 6 years; from 1946 to 1950, bread fell three times, and meat 2.5 times). It was then that the specific stereotypes of mass consciousness, enshrined in the state ideology, arose: confidence in the future and the belief that life can only improve. The condition for this was the strengthening of the financial system of the state in close connection with planning. To preserve this system, the USSR took an important step: it refused to join the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and on March 1, 1950, it left the dollar zone altogether, transferring the definition of the ruble exchange rate to a gold basis. Large gold reserves were created in the USSR, the ruble was inconvertible, which made it possible to maintain very low domestic prices.”

S. Kara-Murza.

And now a little about the price reduction.

Modern youth probably thinks that this cannot be the case that prices are constantly falling, because everyone knows that prices should rise - because inflation and many other things, with complex names that cannot be pronounced by an ordinary person.

But I have a question - who said that prices should constantly rise?

Let me explain why prices are going up.

Explanation on the fingers

In each country, there is a certain amount of goods and services (commodity equivalent, TE), the number of these goods and services is constantly growing or decreasing (depending on the situation in the country, but definitely not standing still) and there is a money supply, the purpose of which is to serve universal exchange equivalent (DE - cash equivalent). The money supply is always attached to goods and should approximately correspond to their quantity (that is, TE = DE). If there is more money than goods, this is called inflation (TE DE = deflation).

But the Central Bank (in this particular case, I mean the Fed) constantly prints extra money, in other words, it creates inflation (TE DE), and in order to equalize the “goods-money” ratio, the prices of goods were reduced (i.e., the solvency of money grew ).

“The essential features and requirements of the basic economic law of socialism could be formulated approximately as follows: ensuring the maximum satisfaction of the constantly growing material and cultural needs of the whole society through the continuous growth and improvement of socialist production on the basis of higher technology. Consequently: instead of ensuring maximum profits, - ensuring maximum meeting the material and cultural needs of society; instead of the development of production with interruptions from rise to crisis and from crisis to rise, - continuous growth of production ... "

Here, even the donkey understands that the Soviet model, from the time of Stalin, is out of competition, and therefore the only way to fight the Soviet system is to silence it, that is, the same notorious iron curtain.

Nothing personal, just business

“If the American people ever allow banks to control the issuance of money, the banks and corporations that grow up around it will take all their property from people until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States.

But why did the US choose such an illogical and highly unsustainable financial system? The answer is not complicated - "just business." The Fed is a private company, and the inflationary financial system is just a way for this company to make a profit.

“The main features and requirements of the basic economic law of modern capitalism could be formulated approximately as follows: ensuring the maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the majority of the population of a given country ...”

And now I will explain what inflation is, as many do not understand the essence of this term.

For example: 10 people live in the country, each of them has 100 rubles (that is, the total turnover of the country is 1000 rubles), but then the Central Bank prints another 1000 rubles. And I have a question for you - how much money did these people have? Yes, they still have all the money, but their price (solvency) has been halved. In other words, the population of the country was simply robbed of 1,000 rubles. This is the system of inflation - by producing extra money, the Central Bank simply robs its population. But here again we recall that the FRS is a private office, and therefore it turns out that it is not robbing “its own population”, but simply “the population” (and it doesn’t matter which country). "Nothing personal, just business."

Ron Paul, dollar depreciation, trend

“Goods and services that in 1913 could be purchased for $1 are now worth $21. Let's look at this in terms of the purchasing power of the dollar itself. Now it is less than 0.05% of its value in 1913. We can say that the government with its banking cartel, as a result of the ongoing inflationary policy, stole from us 95 cents out of every dollar.

Ron Paul, American politician, 2009

With the death of Stalin, the practice of lowering prices in the USSR was discontinued. Khrushchev abolished the gold content of the ruble, transferring the Soviet currency, following the example of all countries, to dollar backing.

“Now that the documents of the first period of the Cold War have been published in the United States, it is obvious that this was a war aimed at destroying the USSR and the Soviet state. The doctrine of war prescribed the conduct of two parallel programs: an arms race to deplete the Soviet economy and the indoctrination of the top of the party-state nomenklatura.

S. Kara-Murza

As we can now see from history, the second program was a success.

Those who have eyes, let them see. conclusions

Wheel of Samsara

The topic of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War as a whole is relevant today more than ever. As you know, history always repeats itself, it spins in a circle, like the wheel of Samsara, which is why it is important to know history - knowing the past is able to foresee the future.

In conclusion, I would like to quote one more excerpt from D. Kennan's "long telegram" (February 22, 1946):

“The success of the Soviet system as a form of power within the country has not yet been definitively proven. It must be demonstrated that it can stand the decisive test of a successful transfer of power from one individual or group of individuals to another.

Lenin's death was the first such transition, and its consequences had a devastating effect on the Soviet state for 15 years. After the death or resignation of Stalin, there will be a second transition. But even this will not be a decisive test. As a result of recent territorial expansion, Soviet power within the country will experience a number of additional difficulties that once already subjected the tsarist regime to severe tests. Here we are convinced that never since the end of the civil war has the Russian people been so far emotionally from the doctrines of the Communist Party as at the present time.

In Russia, the party has become a gigantic and now prosperous apparatus of dictatorial rule, but has ceased to be a source of emotional inspiration. Thus, the internal strength and stability of the communist movement cannot yet be considered guaranteed.

What was the genius of Stalin? He understood that the ideological component needed to be constantly changed to meet the changing needs of the country, that is, to be flexible, but his followers no longer understood this, which is what Kennan was talking about.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many thought that the US emerged victorious in the Cold War, but the collapse of the USSR was not the end of the war, it was only the end of the battle. Today we can observe the information war - a new round, a new battle in one big war - the battle of empires ...

Let me remind you a couple more historical moments: Remember these moments: and just recently The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy is made -

If you ask the younger generation what the Iron Curtain is, it can be difficult. Of course, when you have not witnessed certain events, it is difficult to imagine them. However, if you ask the same question to people born in the era of the late USSR, the answer will immediately follow. After all, they lived during this period, they know firsthand what the notorious Iron Curtain is. We will also try to reveal the veil of secrecy and tell in more detail why it arose when it ceased to exist, and we will also try to answer the rhetorical question - was it even needed?

Background of the Iron Curtain

In 1945 the Second World War ended. Germany was defeated - fascist troops were pursued from all sides - by the Americans and the British from the west, by Soviet soldiers from the east. The countries occupied by the Germans at the very beginning of hostilities were liberated, and not by anyone, but by the Red Army. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary - the peoples received their freedom and the right to life thanks to Russian soldiers. Undoubtedly, the Soviet leadership pursued its own goals in the liberation of these states - it was necessary to create puppet governments that were entirely subordinate to Moscow, but apparently pursued a policy pleasing to citizens.

For the whole world, these countries were democratic, but in reality they were not. In most cases, the right people came to power either through a coup or rigged elections. Soviet agents, "gray cardinals", who were appointed advisers, were in fact scammers, executors of all the "dirty" work to eradicate dissent in the country. All parties, with the exception of the communist party, were dissolved and their activities were strictly prohibited. Thus, by the end of the 1940s, the whole of Eastern Europe was separated from the rest of the European part by the so-called Iron Curtain.

So what is it?

Of course, this should not be taken literally - there was no metal barrier between the states. For the first time the term "Iron Curtain" was used by the British Prime Minister in his speech in Fulton in 1946. However, in fact, this phrase was used much earlier - after the revolution of 1917 and the subsequent Civil War in Russia. The philosopher Vasily Rozanov compared the revolution and the establishment of Soviet power with a theatrical action, after which an iron curtain falls with a creak and clang. There was some truth in his words.

Just the period of the Civil War marked the beginning of the isolation of the young Soviet state (it intensified by the end of the 1930s). In addition, it was believed that the USSR itself contributed to its isolation, because it wanted to develop internally and not depend on external factors. Western countries believed that the life of Soviet Russia was short-lived, so you should not waste your time and energy on it.

However, they miscalculated - the USSR not only did not collapse after the end of the Civil War, but also began to develop at a rapid pace, which could not but disturb the United States and Great Britain. And the Soviet leadership, trying to show that life in the country is good and comfortable, invited many intellectuals from abroad, offering them housing and benefits. So to speak, throw dust in the eyes. But the enemy was not a bastard - the United States did everything to suppress the opponent.

In 1944, the country declares its currency - the dollar - the only settlement, and after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, who was always loyal to the USSR and Joseph Stalin in particular, became president, who said that there could be no joint decisions with the USSR. Of course, such provocations could not go unnoticed by the Russian leadership. And in retaliation, an iron curtain descended on the USSR and its friendly countries (read - conquered again).

What did he represent

To a greater extent, these were restrictions on citizens in one case or another. In 1946, Eastern Europe is called the Eastern bloc (Soviet), which was subject to Moscow's policy (unofficially, of course). What was it? First of all, there were restrictions on leaving the communist country. It was incredibly difficult to go even on vacation to a capitalist country - in most cases, a refusal sounded for a person. The same was true of work in the Soviet bloc - foreign journalists were not allowed or were carefully checked, and the diplomatic corps was minimal.

Stalin went further and emphasized in one of his speeches that communism is superior to capitalism in many ways. In response, Churchill made his famous speech in Fulton, USA, where he noted that “the whole of Eastern Europe, from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, is hidden behind an iron curtain. All the ancient capitals with world history - Warsaw, Bucharest, Budapest, Sofia - were again conquered by Moscow. This is not the liberated Europe we fought for.”

Of course, the USSR benefited from the communization of the liberated countries - the countries supplied raw materials and industrial resources to Moscow. It was especially difficult for those who participated in the war on the side of Germany - Romania and Hungary. They were forced to sign a humiliating armistice agreement with the Soviet leadership. The already poor countries were plundered. Cars, tons of grain were exported to the USSR. Sometimes entire factories were dismantled and moved to the territory of Russia.

Moreover, the Iron Curtain is not only an entry and exit blockade, but also a cultural one. The Soviet Union carefully monitored what information came to citizens, from where, who was the source. Do not think that it was different in the West - countries also sought to protect residents from the pernicious influence of the communist infection. Any contacts with foreign citizens must be controlled by the authorities. If something did not go according to plan, the Soviet citizen was punished, and quite severely. Let us recall at least the example of the legendary Soviet actress Zoya Fedorova, who paid for love with her career and health.

In 1945, she met the American diplomat Jackson Tate. I got to know each other quite closely. So much so that in January of the following year she gave birth to a daughter from him. Of course, it would be a scandal, and the actress married another (a Soviet citizen, of course) so that the child would be recorded on him. However, everything secret becomes clear, and Fedorova was sentenced to 25 years in the camp for "espionage". The term was reduced, but health was already undermined. The career was never restored.

If someone was able to overcome the Iron Curtain and go abroad, then the Soviet leadership worked out its own answer - deprivation of citizenship and the inability to return to the USSR for the rest of their lives. Thus, many cultural figures - writers, poets, directors, actors - became "defectors". And, of course, the leadership carefully concealed the true state of affairs in the country, showing those foreigners who come to the country a beautiful picture of the good, well-fed life of the Soviet Union.

How long could the curtain exist? It is difficult to say, but it fell already in the late 1980s, when the policy of glasnost was announced in the Union. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and this event, one might say, was the turning point that finally destroyed the Iron Curtain. It became a thing of the past with the fall of the USSR, a country that claimed communism was invincible. However, it only lasted 70 years. But after so many decades of isolation, the new Russia was free. In all senses.

Was he needed? The question is rhetorical. On the one hand, the USSR developed successfully, relying only on its own strength, people lived in equal (if possible) conditions, not knowing what was happening "over the hill". But there were also many restrictions. How many broken destinies and broken families happened because of the Iron Curtain. Therefore, let everyone answer for himself - was he needed, or is this another whim of the Soviet leadership?

Most of the people, one way or another, heard about the concept of "iron curtain". For some, "Iron Curtain" is an expression that does not evoke much emotion or thought. But there are numerous negative events associated with this concept. In this article, we will consider its significance from a historical as well as a political point of view.

Winston Churchill: about the "Iron Curtain"

It is believed that for the first time the concept of the "Iron Curtain" was mentioned in the early 1900s, but it was fixed a little later. On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill delivered a speech that could be regarded as an outright provocation. To be more precise, a clear connection was created: Churchill - the "Iron Curtain" - a call for a Cold War.

I must say that this speech was really very bold, with advice on the work of the UN, with the proclamation of the United States of America as the greatest state in the world. Naturally, the "Iron Curtain" described hard times for many countries, numerous people and the situation in the world as a whole. And yet, should Churchill have been so open about the superiority of the United States, pushing the country to make mistakes that could aggravate its situation? So what is meant by the "Iron Curtain"? Why did this expression cause mass panic and why is it so dangerous, this curtain?

Relationship deterioration

"Iron Curtain" is a term that denoted certain restrictions in the economic and political sense of different states. After World War II, all countries seemed to be divided into two halves. The "Iron Curtain" in itself meant a ban on leaving the country, a struggle between countries for a position of supremacy, a struggle for armaments. In those days, the position of the USSR was very clearly indicated, which dictated its conditions to different states, and, of course, no one could like this. Someone peacefully bowed his head, and someone only inflamed the Protestant policy, which only aggravated the situation of his state. Everything that came from the West was considered bad and was immediately rejected or forbidden. A so-called list of "friendly countries" was created, which could freely come to the territory of the USSR.

The first mention of the concept of "Iron Curtain"

The year that was credited with the creation of this value is 1920. Many believe that as soon as the Soviet Union was created, it was immediately protected from the rest of the world. The original desire of the USSR was the development of both internal and external friendship. The West, on the other hand, believed that the USSR would soon collapse and therefore did not carry any power among other states, did not pose any competition or danger.

However, the USSR was picking up ever-greater growth rates, “standing on its feet” better and stronger, and this could not but excite the West, which not only was not happy with such a Union, but also tried in every possible way to harm it. The consequences of this unrest on the part of the West were very great, and therefore a wide variety of measures began to be taken to destroy the USSR. What exactly began to happen and what results followed?

Origins of the Iron Curtain

The "Iron Curtain" in the USSR as such did not exist. On the contrary, the Soviet Union wanted to destroy the prevailing stereotypes. For this, various figures of art, science, and medicine were called and invited. These citizens were ready to offer high wages, good living conditions on the territory of the USSR.

None of the other states saw any real threat from the Soviet Union. However, the West was very frightened when it saw how strong and powerful this Union is growing, despite all the problems that tried to destroy it. That is why the prerequisites for the largest and most brutal war, which is known to history to this day, began. In the struggle for world supremacy and the consolidation of the position of the “head”, Adolf Hitler spoke out, underestimating the capabilities of the Union of Republics. It was the most brutal and bloody war in the history of mankind, which people have never seen before.

US provocations

Many will think that the "Iron Curtain" in the USSR did not depend on the Second World War at all, but this statement is erroneous. Even though a fierce battle was fought, the intrigues that the states wove had no end.

So, in 1944, the United States makes a provocative statement that the dollar is the only accounting currency, and in April 1945 they kill Franklin Roosevelt, the President of the United States, just because he was friendly to the USSR and Joseph Stalin himself. After just a couple of hours, the place of US President is taken by Harry Truman, who harshly declares his unwillingness to resolve conflicts together with Russia. He says that in the current problem with Japan he sees no point in helping the Soviet Union. There were many such provocations during the war years, but the final result turned out to be exactly what it is.

Stalin's Iron Curtain

What is the policy of the "Iron Curtain" in the USSR? After the end of World War II, Stalin wanted all decisions about Germany to be made under his leadership, but the European communists could not accept this. Often they tried to show independence in making politically important decisions. But Joseph Vissarionovich stopped such attempts and did not let this happen.

The leaders of Yugoslavia tried to create a Balkan Federation, but here too Stalin intervened, deciding to take the initiative into his own hands. Instead of submitting to the will of Joseph Vissarionovich, the Yugoslavs showed disobedience, and in 1949 the friendly relations between the USSR and Yugoslavia were terminated. By order of Stalin, all roads were cut off, West Berlin was cut off from electrical supply, and food supplies to the rebels were cut off.

Side conflicts

The essence of Stalin's "Iron Curtain" was, for the most part, to subjugate the conquered territories to his influence. Meanwhile, the situation in the world only worsened. The occupation territories of France, England and the United States unified, and a month later an Eastern Republic was formed, the leadership of which was assumed by Walter Ulbricht, appointed by Stalin.

Relations on the Eastern side of the world also worsened. China and Korea started a civil war. Joseph Stalin feared such a situation, since China had every chance of becoming an independent communist center. Only in 1949 diplomatic relations were formalized between the Soviet Union and communist China. For opponents of communist China, the Iron Curtain is no reason to leave the UN. All negotiations on the part of the USSR did not bring success, and as a sign of discontent, the Soviet Union leaves all the organs of the protesting side of China.

Warring Korea

It would seem that at this stage everything was over. But this was only the beginning of a brutal war between North and South Korea. When the diplomats of the Soviet Union dealt with the problems of internal conflicts in China, and the "Iron Curtain" controlled this from the Soviet territories, America sent its troops to the lands of the warring sides of Korea. In turn, the Soviet leadership supported South Korea.

A fierce and bloody war broke out, Seoul, the capital of South Korea, was captured. The internal war between the warring parties led to the fact that Korea was divided into two separate states. The exact fact was that one side adhered to the European path of development, while the other enlisted the support of the Soviet forces. However, the series of protests, conflicts and blockades did not stop there, but continued to spread around the world.

The "Iron Curtain" in Europe caused discontent on all sides. Only if the Soviet Union tried in every possible way to lower it, then the West only aggravated the situation, creating more and more sophisticated conflicts. It is generally accepted that it was the USSR that created the borders and did not let in representatives of third-party states. However, in reality it was far from the case.

The "Iron Curtain" means the isolation of the country in every sense, not only a political blockade, but also a cultural and information one. The western part wanted to protect its territories and citizens from the influence of socialist development. In turn, the Soviet Union also could not ignore such behavior and applied its own methods to solve this situation. After all, such political disputes have brought many problems to ordinary people. There were restrictions in products, goods for other use, as well as in travel outside the country.

"Russian Diary"

In the post-war period, an attempt was made to show the real life of the country ("Iron Curtain", beyond which ordinary people live). In 1947, a book was published with detailed descriptions, sketches and photographs of people living in the USSR. The book is called "Russian Diary", it was created under the authorship of the writer John Steinbeck and with photographs by Robert Capa. These two people came to the Soviet Union and tried to study the life of ordinary people: what they eat, what clothes they wear, how they greet their guests or how they lead their own life.

From the official leading persons, attention was diverted to the side, the authors wanted to reveal the life of ordinary citizens. The Russian Diary showed the true side of the Soviet people, who hated war, dreamed of peace, wished a good future for their children and were not supporters of world conflicts. The Iron Curtain hid this from Western countries, and sometimes gave a false impression of the Soviet Union and its inhabitants.

Destruction of the Iron Curtain

How long could this process of isolation last? How long could the Iron Curtain exist? Sooner or later it had to stop. The "Iron Curtain" in the USSR, whose years were marked by a difficult time for all people, began to weaken in the second half of the 1950s. At that time, marriages with foreigners began to be allowed.

Everyone was already pretty tired of the Cold War, and so the next step in weakening the "Iron Curtain" was the signing of a treaty that required the destruction of some missiles in both states. The USSR withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, and in the late 1980s, the fall of the Berlin Wall took place. In 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union takes place, and the "Iron Curtain" finally falls, revealing the country's borders. Of course, there were still many fears on both sides that there would be an influx of migrants on both sides of the open borders.

Opening the borders

After the fall of the "Iron Curtain", not only positive changes began to occur, but also not very favorable ones. Of course, as long as the Soviet territories were closed from the rest of the world, it was impossible to travel abroad. And it was forbidden not only to those who wanted to vacation abroad, but also to those who considered studying or working in the West. And even more so, it was forbidden to leave the state for the purpose of living in foreign territories.

Naturally, there were a number of small exceptions, but only for those persons who enjoyed the confidence of the special services. The "Iron Curtain" is a process that lasted for a rather long period of time, and therefore the Soviet borders were opened not immediately, but gradually. What was the negative harm of such openness to the world? Everything is quite simple, the departure of Russian citizens and the arrival of foreigners provoked, first of all, the outflow and inflow of funds from the country. This, in turn, shook the economic situation.

Commodity pluses

The positive consequences of openness to the world cannot be denied. The fall of the Iron Curtain opened up new opportunities for Russian citizens. Many foreign firms began to come and create new jobs with decent wages and new experience. Various goods and services that were previously in short supply began to appear on the Russian market. And now they were available even to people with low incomes.

Also, scientific and medical specialists came to the country, who contributed to the development of relevant industries, shared their skills and unique experience, which was very necessary for the post-Soviet state. High-income people, who then made up about 10-20% of the entire population of the country, received huge benefits from open borders. Now they could buy foreign goods and services that were of the highest quality, and the "Iron Curtain" did not allow even them to do this.

Nowadays

Those times have already passed, but they are very firmly entrenched in Russian history. Nevertheless, these events still haunt modern society. There is an opinion that historical events tend to repeat themselves. The policy of the "Iron Curtain" is being monitored in our time, only now it is clearly visible that an information war is going on. The events that are taking place in Russia and abroad arouse concern both among the heads of state and among ordinary citizens, who feel the conflict of states most of all.

They are closed for Russians, in the West, as it turned out, they are enemies, the security forces are ordered not to travel abroad, politicians are not allowed to go there. Moreover, they tightened currency exchange and control over foreign accounts. All this makes us think about the prospects for real freedom of movement of our fellow citizens across the border. We decided to remember how the Soviet "Iron Curtain" fell over Russia. And you can make comparisons yourself.

Once upon a time, the "Iron Curtain" could even be felt with your hands. A long time ago, such a metal structure was used in theaters: in the event of a fire on the stage, a special metal curtain fell, which blocked the audience in the hall from the raging flame. However, initially a purely technical term over the past 90 years has been used in a completely different interpretation. In reference books, this phrase is called a political metaphor, implying the political, economic and cultural isolation of the country (in this case, the USSR) from other states.

The right to be called the inventor of the winged expression could be challenged by several people. One of them is the Russian philosopher Vasily Rozanov, who in 1917 in his book “The Apocalypse of Our Time” expressed the opinion that after the October Revolution, an iron curtain descended over Russian history, like in a theater, “with a clang, a creak”.

Soon the same metaphor for the isolation of communist Russia was used in a speech at the Paris Peace Conference by then Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau.

This phrase was most loudly heard in the famous Fulton speech of the British Prime Minister Churchill, which he delivered in 1946, and which marked the beginning of the decades of the Cold War.

In reality, the "Iron Curtain" descended around the world's first state of workers and peasants in the mid-1920s. Since then, for the vast majority of people living in the "Red", all other states have become an inaccessible mirage.

It was impossible to get to it: the border was locked. The only exceptions were rare lucky ones - diplomats, scientists, musicians, high-class engineers ... And also the "Stalin's falcons" - Soviet pilots who became famous for their unique extra-long flights. (In 1937, the ANT-25 aircraft, controlled by a crew under the command of Valery Chkalov, managed to fly from the USSR through the North Pole to America. Three pilots - Chkalov, Baidukov and Belyakov - for this feat, in addition to state awards, also received a thousand US dollars, for which they purchased in the same place, in the United States, miracles of technology unprecedented for the USSR - household refrigerators and "fancy" American radios.)

Valery Chkalov

The case of citizen Lebedev

Former gentlemen - "exploiters", "bourgeois scientists", "adherents of hostile ideologies", who even before the advent of the "Iron Curtain" managed to go into exile (and some of them were almost kicked there by the new government from the Land of Soviets), could now savor your luck.

Well, those who hesitated to leave the cordon, henceforth had to put up with the situation of eternally persecuted second-class people for the rest of their lives. Or try to find some "exclusive" ways to leave the "Bolshevik paradise".

Some have tried to do it semi-legally. For example, the heiress of the famous merchant dynasty, Vera Ivanovna Firsanova (who owned the Petrovsky Passage and the Sandunovsky baths in Moscow before the revolution) managed to get from Belokamennaya to Moscow in 1928 with a theater troupe that went abroad on tour. In order for such a journey to become possible, Firsanova had to join the staff of the theater's technical staff - either in the wardrobe department, or in the prop shop ... Naturally, such a metamorphosis of the eminent merchant's wife could not have happened if it were not for the generous remuneration received from her by someone then from the theater administration.

Vera Firsanova

Once in France, Vera Ivanovna stayed there. And a few years later she tried to rescue her husband Viktor Lebedev from Russia. An official appeal to the Soviet embassy unexpectedly gave a favorable result. In 1932, all the necessary documents for leaving the USSR were issued for Viktor Nikolayevich, he even bought tickets for an express train from to Western Europe ... Was such a “happy ending” really possible in the “country of the Chekists”? The subsequent course of events showed that this was only an illusion.

In the morning on the eve of departure, citizen V.N. Lebedev was found strangled in his apartment. The money and jewelry that he had with him, prepared for transportation abroad, disappeared. They didn’t even try to look for the villains who committed this crime, and “heart attack” was indicated as the cause of death in the medical report. (I wonder if any of the valiant OGPU officers were awarded for a successful operation to prevent the export of Lebedev's capital from the country?).

In those years, of course, there were also attempts to illegally cross the border. The classics of this genre were immortalized in the finale of their famous novel The Golden Calf by Ilf and Petrov. They described Ostap Bender's attempt to cross the cordon right across the virgin snow, with cash capital, prudently "converted" into liquidity - a luxurious fur coat, golden cigarette cases and "trinkets" ...

The end of this operation for the Grand Combiner turned out, as we remember, very sad. Although, in reality, some of his followers still succeeded... However, in fairness, it must be said that many of the illegal immigrants simply died when they tried to cross the border - they drowned in rivers, froze, ran into bullets from border guards...

The certificate, prepared in 1930, mentions that in the first six months alone, on the northwestern section of the border, the Chekists suppressed more than 20 attempts to illegally leave the USSR, in which 7 violators of the border regime were killed.

Record holder Kanafiev

Cases of flight and attempted flight of Soviet citizens behind the "Iron Curtain" were regularly noted in the post-war years.

The most resonant became, of course, the stories associated with the hijacking. The first such "air breakthrough" was a terrorist act carried out in 1970. Two Lithuanians, the father and son of Brazinskasa, hijacked an An-24 aircraft with 46 passengers on board, performing a regular Batumi-Sukhumi flight. During the hijacking of the plane by the Brazinskas, 19-year-old flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko was killed, two crew members and one passenger were injured. The airliner hijacked by criminals landed in Trabzon, Turkey. After serving two years in prison for their "feat", the Brazinskas subsequently managed to move to America.

Pranas Brazinskas

For the followers of these two Lithuanians, attempts to “fly away” from the USSR on a plane with captured hostages ended in most cases unsuccessfully: they were either “taken” on the ground by the fighters of our special detachments, or returned from other countries to their homeland as a result of diplomatic negotiations.

There were other, more original cases of attempts by Soviet citizens to overcome the Iron Curtain.

Surprising perseverance in his desire to escape "from the Scoop" was shown by a resident of Simferopol Alexander Kanafiev. In the late 1970s - mid-1980s, he tried several times to "go to the West." The idea of ​​trying to get to the Turkish coast along the Black Sea in an inflatable boat almost ended in his death, but the 25-year-old graduate of the Faculty of Physical Education did not leave his dream.

Some time later, he managed to "leak" through the Soviet-Romanian border and even get to the capital - but there he was detained by the Romanian special services and handed over to the Russian side.

Alexander still managed to escape ... And almost immediately he again attempted to cross the border - this time from the Azerbaijan SSR to, but then the border guards quickly "tied up" the malicious violator.

Such a stubborn unwillingness of a young man to build a “bright communist future” together with all Soviet citizens was regarded as a clear sign of mental illness, and Alexander spent the next few years in compulsory treatment in one of the psychiatric special institutions. Coming out of it, in the summer of 1986 he once again risked crossing the Soviet-Romanian border. On the territory of the "fraternal socialist country" he was again detained and returned to the Soviet side. Alexander's "reward" for another test of the "Iron Curtain" for strength was a prison term, which was shortened only by the perestroika that gained momentum in the country.

A lot of commotion was caused in the summer of 1959 by the flight "to the capitalists" of the Soviet Baltic officer Nikolai Artamonov. When the latest destroyer destroyer “Crushing” was stationed in the Polish port of Gdynia, its commander Captain III rank Artamonov, taking advantage of the opportunity, fled with his Polish mistress to Sweden - right on the command boat.

At the same time, in order for the sailor-minder to fulfill his order, the captain took a pistol from his holster and threatened the sailor that he would shoot him. (A noteworthy touch to this story: when the boat reached one of the Swedish ports, Artamonov got out with his companion on the shore, and ordered the sailor to return back to the destroyer, since he supposedly "has nothing to do in the West.")

The defector immediately found himself under the tutelage of the CIA. Soon he received an American passport in the name of Nicholas George Shadrin and worked for 7 years in the analytical unit of American intelligence. The KGB officers, having come on the trail of a traitor, managed to convert him, but later the ex-captain was suspected of a double game and decided to take him to Soviet territory. In the winter of 1975, the Chekists conducted a special operation: under a plausible pretext, they lured Artamonov to, and there, after injecting him with a certain drug, and bringing him into an unconscious state, they took him to Russia, hiding him in a car. However, the former captain of the III rank did not live to see the investigators at the Lubyanka: he died of an overdose of "disabling" agents shortly after crossing the Austrian-Czechoslovak border.

relatives for sale

From the 1970s, let's fast forward again 40-50 years ago.

Keeping citizens out of the country is, of course, a good way to protect the self-sufficiency of the young Soviet state, but troublesome and unprofitable. It is necessary to monitor, stop, carry out “actions of coercive influence”, search for and confiscate valuables prepared for export beyond the cordon ... It is quite another matter for former Russians who have emigrated and are eager to get their less fortunate relatives out of the “Sovdepiya”. - These are ready to pay money for the salvation of loved ones. And all that remains for Soviet officials is to draw up papers, enter the appropriate ransom amounts in them, and receive currency for the Land of Soviets.

So some residents of the USSR turned into completely free "export goods". Such a profitable business, however, was very reminiscent of the slave trade and the “remnants of serfdom”, which were unanimously condemned by all revolutionaries. However, the Bolshevik rulers were not particularly scrupulous when it came to serious material benefits. They simply covered up such transactions.

Very little is known about this article of Soviet "deliveries" abroad. However, thanks to the help of the Moscow history researcher Valery Lyubartovich, the author of these lines has the opportunity to acquaint the readers of "MK" with documents relating to the history of the ransom of the family of the Russified German Roman Prove from communist captivity.

Roman Ivanovich Prove before the revolution was known as one of the reputable Moscow entrepreneurs, was on the boards of several large banks. Even after the December uprising of 1905, he - away from sin - transferred the bulk of the capital abroad, and in 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power, he hurried to leave for.

But in Soviet Russia, the daughter of Roman Ivanovich (who became Rudolf in the "nemetchina"), Evgenia, who was married to the nobleman Nikolai Redlich, remained. In the very first years of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Redlich family was evicted from their mansion in the center of Moscow, and a few years later, Evgenia Romanovna's husband was completely arrested as a "socially alien element." Perhaps for the elder Redlichs and their seven children, the matter would have ended very sadly if in 1933 Herr Prove had not applied through the USSR Embassy to the Soviet authorities with an official request to allow his daughter and her relatives to leave for permanent residence in Germany.

Such a statement did not in the least embarrass the responsible comrades in charge of foreign and domestic affairs in the Soviet people's commissariats. So what if Nikolai Redlich was arrested and convicted?! So what if this family goes to a country where fascism came to power?! - The main thing is that they pay good money for them!

The archives of the great-granddaughter of Rudolf Prove preserved papers drawn up more than 80 years ago when organizing the Redlichs' departure from Russia. This whole commercial operation was organized (apparently, for greater secrecy!) through the Berlin office of Intourist.

In a paper dated June 7, 1933, all the "overhead costs" associated with sending Evgenia Romanovna's family from the "bright kingdom of socialism" "under the heel of the brown plague" are scrupulously described.

Here, for example, for each of the older children, 1479 Reichsmarks had to be paid, of which 151 marks went to pay for travel in the third-class carriage of the Moscow-Berlin train, another 134 marks "with kopecks" were intended as compensation to the intermediary - "Intourist", well, the main part - 1194 Reichsmarks 26 pfennigs - was actually a ransom. (However, formally, this very impressive amount at that time was supposed to be transferred to the Soviet side, allegedly for issuing a passport.)

It should be noted that the “humanists” from the USSR in this case approached the assessment of citizens sold to the West in a differentiated way. Compared to adult family members, for minors Andreas and Natalia, they asked for half the price! (Truly, the market approach: these, large, - five, but these - small, but three!)

As a result, taking care of saving the daughter's family cost Rudolf Prove almost 12 thousand Reichsmarks. (In terms of the current price level, this amounts to an impressive amount - about 250 thousand dollars.) However, it should be recognized that the Bolsheviks honestly worked out the currency they received. - Already four months after the deal was closed, Herr Prove met his beloved Zhenya with her husband and children at the Berlin railway station.

As Valery Lyubartovich said, a similar story happened in the Osorgins family. Her husband, Georgy Osorgin, died in the Solovki camp in the autumn of 1929. And his wife Alexandra Mikhailovna, nee Princess Golitsyna, was redeemed a year later, along with two small children, by her relatives who settled in Paris. By the way, one of these children exchanged for currency, Mikhail Osorgin, later became a priest and for more than two decades was the rector of the Russian Orthodox Church in Rome. But what did they spend the money received by the Soviet side for the future shepherd of human souls?.. - Well, this currency, perhaps, also went to a good cause. Useful, for example, for the purchase of machine tools or medical equipment.

This terrible Rush

On the other side of the "Iron Curtain" were also going on - through his "fault" - curious things. In many leading capitalist countries, the local residents were diligently protected from the “communist infection” that could seep from the Soviet side.

In Canada, England, the Scandinavian countries very selectively allowed the penetration of objective information about life in the USSR - our films, books, magazines, pictures telling about Rush were offered to people in the West in very small quantities. (On the other hand, the production of American action films was launched on a large scale, where the main negative characters were the Bolshevik monsters-killers, ruthless Russian military leaders, insidiously trying to destroy the countries of "true democracy" ...) Tours in the USSR were not encouraged: potential travelers were told all sorts of horrors about that what dangers and hardships await civilized Europeans in "Red Russia". As a result, those who nevertheless went on an “extreme voyage” to the Soviet Union, having returned safely from there, acquired the halo of real heroes in the eyes of their compatriots.

Another very indicative, but little-known fact, which happened to be heard from Alexander Plevako, the former editor-in-chief of the Foreign Broadcasting of the USSR (more often called Moscow Radio by listeners).

- We are talking about broadcasting from the Soviet Union to an audience in the United States, - said Alexander Sergeevich. “The Americans like to say that, unlike the Soviets who jammed the Voice of America, they never interfered with our radio transmissions from Moscow. However, it is not. They just found another, not as obvious as the work of "jammers", a way to isolate most of their citizens from Soviet propaganda. Moscow Radio has always broadcast its programs on short waves, and for many years in America they deliberately slowed down the production of short-wave radios. They were produced in small quantities and were very expensive ...

The "Iron Curtain" began to gradually "dilapidate" along with a decrease in the passions of the "cold war". At the end of the 1980s, when Gorbachev's Perestroika was in full swing in the USSR, it collapsed and crumbled.

The policy of isolation was mutual. In the Encyclopedia Britannica and Western journalism, the prevailing opinion is that the "curtain" was erected by the USSR in the course of its self-isolation policy pursued by its leadership. In Soviet journalism, attention was drawn to the West's policy of isolating the USSR.

The term "Iron Curtain" was used in a propaganda sense before Churchill by Georges Clemenceau (1919) and Joseph Goebbels (1945). As for the isolation of the Soviet state, it began back in 1917-1920. In 1917, the expression was first used by the Russian philosopher Vasily Rozanov, who compared the events of the October Revolution with a theatrical performance, after which a bulky iron curtain fell over Russian history “with a clang, a creak”. The beginning of strengthening the self-isolation of the Soviet power dates back to 1934-1939.

The Iron Curtain began to crumble towards the end of the 1980s as a result of the policy of glasnost and openness pursued in the USSR and Eastern European countries (see European picnic). The destruction of the Berlin Wall became a symbol of the fall of the Iron Curtain. The official date for the end of this period was January 1, 1993, when, already in the post-Soviet era, the law “On the procedure for leaving the USSR” came into force, which actually canceled the permissive visa of those leaving the OVIR and allowed free travel abroad.

Story

One of the earliest popularizers of the Iron Curtain theory was the German politician Joseph Goebbels. In his article "2000" ("Das Jahr 2000") in the newspaper "Das Reich (English) Russian"On February 23, 1945, he expressed confidence that after the conquest of Germany, the USSR would fence off Eastern and South-Eastern Europe from the rest of it with an" iron curtain ". It is also known that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Third Reich, Schwerin von Krosig, on May 2, 1945, said the following on the radio: “Through the streets of the still unoccupied part of Germany, the stream of desperate and hungry people, pursued by fighter-bombers, is heading west. They flee from indescribable horror. An iron curtain is approaching from the east, behind which destruction invisible to the world is going on. The expression "Iron Curtain" got its modern meaning thanks to Winston Churchill, who used it in his Fulton speech. At the same time, it is known that he used this expression as early as June 4, 1945 in a telegram to Harry Truman.

However, it has existed before. As early as 1904, in The Food of the Gods, HG Wells used the expression "iron curtain" to describe "enforced privacy".

In relation to Russian history, in the book "The Apocalypse of Our Time" (1917), the philosopher Vasily Rozanov (1856-1919) wrote as follows:

With a clang, a creak, a screech, an iron curtain descends over Russian History.
- The show is over.
The audience stood up.
It's time to put on your coats and go home.
We looked back.
But there were no fur coats, no houses.

After World War II

The powerful forces behind Harry Truman proclaimed a policy of unbridled anti-communism and war hysteria. This affected everything, and in particular the question of the repatriation of Soviet citizens. With a roar, the descending American iron curtain cut off from the Motherland our compatriots, brought by an evil fate to West Germany.

In practice, the population of the country was deprived of the opportunity to travel abroad without the permission of the authorities, and receive information from the outside world that is not authorized by the authorities (see Jamming). Any contact with foreigners had to be authorized by the authorities, even if the Soviet citizen simply wanted to practice his knowledge of a foreign language. Marriage to a citizen of another country faced many obstacles and was often practically impossible.

Individual attempts to overcome the "Iron Curtain" amounted to "non-return" from an authorized trip abroad. Attempts to emigrate with the whole family were possible only to go to Israel, and then on a limited quota and after overcoming numerous obstacles (see Refusenik) or if one of the spouses was a foreigner. Other reasons for emigration were not considered. In extreme cases, attempts to break out of the borders of the USSR led to crimes (see Ovechkin family, Capture of a bus with children in Ordzhonikidze on December 1, 1988, etc.)

Memory

see also

Notes

1. The philosophy of the Cold War matured during the Second World War, or what is behind Churchill's Fulton speech // RIA Novosti Doctor of Historical Sciences Valentin Falin:

   It is somewhat strange that Churchill did not bother to clarify the origin of the cliché "Iron Curtain". Directly in front of the former prime minister, such a "curtain" was cut by Goebbels, who called on the Germans to resist the Russian invasion to the grave. Under the cover of the same “curtain”, the Nazis tried in 1945 to put together a “saving front of civilizers” against the Russian hordes. And if Churchill digs even deeper, he would know that the term "Iron Curtain" first came into use in Scandinavia, where workers in the early 1920s protested against the desire of their rulers to fence them off from the "heretical ideas" coming from the East.

2. Iron Curtain // Britannica
3. On the origin of the term "Iron Curtain" // Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions / Avt. V. Serov. - M.: Lokid-press, 2005.