The colloquial name for the former frontier between East European countries dependent on the former Soviet Union and Western non-communist countries. Its application to countries within the Soviet sphere of influence originated in a leading article by Goebbels in Das Reich, February 1945. This was reported in British newspapers, and the phrase was first used by Churchill: `I view with profound misgivings the descent of an iron curtain between us and everything to the eastward.’ It was generally agreed to have gone by 1990, with the disintegration of Soviet influence in eastern Europe and the collapse of the Union itself in 1991.