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Iron Curtain

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Iron Curtain was the political and physical boundary that divided Europe from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. East of the Iron Curtain were the smaller states controlled by the Soviet Union, in 1955 formally allied by the Warsaw Pact. Many nations to the west of this geopolitical divide were NATO members. Over time these economic and military alliances developed into broader, more entrenched, cultural barriers that deepened widespread distrust on both sides. Initially, the term "Iron Curtain" was a literal description of physical barriers such as razor wire, fences, walls, minefields, and watchtowers along the borders of the opposing powers. But the term eventually took on a broader, symbolic meaning perceived as a generalized "differentness" of ideology, economy, government, and way of life that emerged when the Cold War severed earlier cultural connections between European populations.

The term's origin is often attributed to the speech "Sinews of Peace" delivered by Winston Churchill on 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri where he said: "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe." In fact, the phrase was originally used by Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, when in 1914 when she described an "Iron Curtain" descending between her people and the nation of Germany.

The nations to the east of the Iron Curtain were Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and the USSR; however, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the USSR have since ceased to exist. Countries of the USSR were the Russian SFSR, Byelorussian SSR, Latvian SSR, Ukrainian SSR, Estonian SSR, Moldavian SSR, Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Georgian SSR, Uzbek SSR, Kirghiz SSR, Tajik SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Turkmen SSR, and Kazakh SSR. Events that demolished the Iron Curtain started with the Fall of communism in Poland,Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania.

Due to the decreased human activity around the physical border during the Cold War, natural biotopes were formed, now the European Green Belt. With the exception of the Kars-Gyumri railway crossing which operated during the Soviet Era, the Turkish–Armenian border has remained closed since the 1920s and is sometimes described as the Iron Curtain's last vestige.

Pre-Cold War usage

In the 1948, iron safety curtains were installed on theater stages to slow the spread of fire.

Perhaps the first recorded application of the term "iron curtain" to Soviet Russia was in Vasily Rozanov's 1918 polemic The Apocalypse of Our Time. It is possible that Churchill read it there following the publication of the book's English translation in 1920. The passage runs:

With clanging, creaking, and squeaking, an iron curtain is lowering over Russian History. "The performance is over." The audience got up. "Time to put on your fur coats and go home." We looked around, but the fur coats and homes were missing.

In 1920, Ethel Snowden, in her book Through Bolshevik Russia, used the term in reference to the Soviet border.

A May 1943 article in Signal, a German propaganda periodical, discussed "the iron curtain that more than ever before separates the world from the Soviet Union". Joseph Goebbels commented in Das Reich, on 25 February 1945, that if Germany should lose the war, "An iron curtain would fall over this enormous territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which nations would be slaughtered". English-language Nazi propagandist William Joyce used the term in his last propaganda broadcast on 30 April 1945, declaring that "the Iron Curtain of Bolshevism has come down across Europe." German leading minister Lutz von Krosigk broadcast 2 May 1945: "In the East the iron curtain behind which, unseen by the eyes of the world, the work of destruction goes on, is moving steadily forward".

Churchill's first recorded use of the term "iron curtain" came in a 12 May 1945 telegram he sent to U.S. President Harry S. Truman regarding his concern about Soviet actions, stating "[a]n iron curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind".

He repeated it in another telegram to Truman on June 4, mentioning "...the descent of an iron curtain between us and everything to the eastward", and in a House of Commons speech on 16 August 1945, stating "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".

During the Cold War

Building antagonism

The antagonism between the Soviet Union and the West that came to be described as the "iron curtain" had various origins.

During the summer of 1939, after conducting negotiations both with a British-French group and with Nazi Germany regarding potential military and political agreements, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement (which provided for the trade of certain German military and civilian equipment in exchange for Soviet raw materials) and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (signed in late August 1939), named after the foreign secretaries of the two countries (Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop), which included a secret agreement to split Poland and Eastern Europe between the two states.

The Soviets thereafter occupied Eastern Poland (September 1939), Latvia (June 1940), Lithuania (1940), northern Romania (Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, late June 1940), Estonia (1940) and eastern Finland (March 1940). From August 1939, relations between the West and the Soviets deteriorated further when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany engaged in an extensive economic relationship by which the Soviet Union sent Germany vital oil, rubber, manganese and other materials in exchange for German weapons, manufacturing machinery and technology. Nazi–Soviet trade ended in June 1941 when Germany broke the Pact and invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.

In the course of World War II, Stalin determined to acquire a buffer area against Germany, with pro-Soviet states on its border in an Eastern bloc. Stalin's aims led to strained relations at the Yalta Conference (February 1945) and the subsequent Potsdam Conference (July–August 1945). People in the West expressed opposition to Soviet domination over the buffer states, and the fear grew that the Soviets were building an empire that might be a threat to them and their interests.

Nonetheless, at the Potsdam Conference, the Allies assigned parts of Poland, Finland, Romania, Germany, and the Balkans to Soviet control or influence. In return, Stalin promised the Western Allies that he would allow those territories the right to National Self-Determination. Despite Soviet cooperation during the war, these concessions left many in the West uneasy. In particular, Churchill feared that the United States might return to its pre-war Isolationism, leaving the exhausted European states unable to resist Soviet demands. (President Franklin D. Roosevelt had announced at Yalta that after the defeat of Germany, U.S. forces would withdraw from Europe within two years.)

Churchill speech

Winston Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address of 5 March 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, attended by President Harry Truman, publicly used the term "iron curtain" in the context of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe:

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 some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.

Much of the Western public still regarded the Soviet Union as a close ally in the context of the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany and of Imperial Japan. Although not well received at the time, the phrase iron curtain gained popularity as a shorthand reference to the division of Europe as the Cold War progressed. The Iron Curtain served to keep people in, and information out. People throughout the West eventually came to accept and use the metaphor.

Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address strongly criticized the Soviet Union's exclusive and secretive tension policies along with the Eastern Europe's state form, the Police Government (German: Polizeistaat). He expressed the western Allied nations' distrust of the Soviet Union after the World War II. In September 1946, US-Soviet cooperation would collapse due to the US disavowal of the Soviet Union's opinion on the German problem in the Stuttgart Council, and then followed the announcement by US President Harry S. Truman of a hard line anti-Soviet, anticommunist policy. After that the phrase iron curtain became more widely used as an anti-Soviet term in the West.

Additionally, Churchill mentioned in his speech that regions under the Soviet Union's control were expanding their leverage and power without any restriction. He asserted that in order to put a brake on this ongoing phenomenon, the commanding force of and strong unity between the UK and the US was necessary.

Stalin took note of Churchill's speech and responded in Pravda in mid-March 1946. He accused Churchill of warmongering, and defended Soviet "friendship" with eastern-European states as a necessary safeguard against another invasion. Stalin further accused Churchill of hoping to install right-wing governments in eastern Europe with the goal of agitating those states against the Soviet Union. Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's chief propagandist, used the term against the West in an August 1946 speech:

Hard as bourgeois politicians and writers may strive to conceal the truth of the achievements of the Soviet order and Soviet culture, hard as they may strive to erect an iron curtain to keep the truth about the Soviet Union from penetrating abroad, hard as they may strive to belittle the genuine growth and scope of Soviet culture, all their efforts are foredoomed to failure.

Political, economic, and military realities

Eastern Bloc

While the Iron Curtain remained in place, much of Eastern Europe and many parts of Central Europe – except West Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and most of Austria (all of Austria after the withdrawal of occupying Allied forces and the declaration of Austria's neutrality that resulted from the Austrian State Treaty in 1955) – found themselves under the hegemony of the Soviet Union which had annexed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as Soviet Socialist Republics.

Germany effectively gave Moscow a free hand in much of these territories in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, signed before Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

Other Soviet-annexed territories included:

Eastern Poland (incorporated into the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs),
Part of eastern Finland (became part of the Karelo-Finnish SSR)
Northern Romania (part of which became the Moldavian SSR).
Kaliningrad Oblast, the northern half of East Prussia, taken in 1945.
Part of eastern Czechoslovakia (Carpathian Ruthenia, incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR).

Between 1945 and 1949 the Soviets converted the following areas into satellite states:

The German Democratic Republic
The People's Republic of Bulgaria
The People's Republic of Poland
The Hungarian People's Republic
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
The People's Republic of Romania
The People's Republic of Albania (which re-aligned itself in the 1950s and early 1960s away from the Soviet Union towards the People's Republic of China (PRC) and split from the PRC towards a strongly isolationist worldview in the late 1970s)

Soviet-installed governments ruled the Eastern Bloc countries, with the exception of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which changed its orientation away from the Soviet Union in the late 1940s to a progressively independent worldview.

The majority of European states to the east of the Iron Curtain developed their own international economic and military alliances, such as Comecon and the Warsaw Pact.

West of the Iron Curtain

To the west of the Iron Curtain, the countries of Western Europe, Northern Europe, and Southern Europe — along with Austria, West Germany, Liechtenstein and Switzerland — operated Market Economies. With the exception of a period of Fascism in Spain (until 1975) and Portugal (until 1974) and a military dictatorship in Greece (1967–1974), democratic governments ruled these countries.

Most of the states of Europe to the west of the Iron Curtain — with the exception of neutral Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Malta and Ireland — allied themselves with Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States within NATO. Spain was a unique anomaly in that it stayed neutral and non-aligned until 1982, when, following democracy's return, it joined NATO. Economically, the European Community (EC) and the European Free Trade Association represented Western counterparts to COMECON. Most of the nominally neutral states were economically closer to the United States than they were to the Warsaw Pact.

Further division in the late 1940s

In January 1947, Harry Truman appointed General George Marshall as Secretary of State, scrapped Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) directive 1067 (which embodied the Morgenthau Plan), and supplanted it with JCS 1779, which decreed that an orderly and prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany." Officials met with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and others to press for an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already removed by the Soviets.

After five and a half weeks of negotiations, Molotov refused the demands and the talks were adjourned. Marshall was particularly discouraged after personally meeting with Stalin, who expressed little interest in a solution to German economic problems. The United States concluded that a solution could not wait any longer. In a 5 June 1947 speech, Marshall announced a comprehensive program of American assistance to all European countries wanting to participate, including the Soviet Union and those of Eastern Europe, called the Marshall Plan.

Stalin opposed the Marshall Plan. He had built up the Eastern Bloc protective belt of Soviet-controlled nations on his Western border, and wanted to maintain this buffer zone of states combined with a weakened Germany under Soviet control. Fearing American political, cultural and economic penetration, Stalin eventually forbade Soviet Eastern bloc countries of the newly formed Cominform from accepting Marshall Plan aid. In Czechoslovakia, that required a Soviet-backed Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, the brutality of which shocked Western powers more than any event so far and set in a motion a brief scare that war would occur and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress.

Relations further deteriorated when, in January 1948, the U.S. State Department also published a collection of documents titled Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941: Documents from the Archives of The German Foreign Office, which contained documents recovered from the Foreign Office of Nazi Germany revealing Soviet conversations with Germany regarding the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, including its secret protocol dividing eastern Europe, the 1939 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement, and discussions of the Soviet Union potentially becoming the fourth Axis Power. In response, one month later, the Soviet Union published Falsifiers of History, a Stalin-edited and partially rewritten book attacking the West.

After the Marshall Plan, the introduction of a new currency to Western Germany to replace the debased Reichsmark and massive electoral losses for communist parties, in June 1948, the Soviet Union cut off surface road access to Berlin, initiating the Berlin Blockade, which cut off all non-Soviet food, water and other supplies for the citizens of the non-Soviet sectors of Berlin. Because Berlin was located within the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany, the only available methods of supplying the city were three limited air corridors. A massive aerial supply campaign was initiated by the United States, Britain, France, and other countries, the success of which caused the Soviets to lift their blockade in May 1949.

Emigration restrictions

One of the conclusions of the Yalta Conference was that the western Allies would return all Soviet citizens who found themselves in their zones to the Soviet Union. This affected the liberated Soviet prisoners of war (branded as traitors), forced laborers, anti-Soviet collaborators with the Germans, and anti-communist refugees.

Migration from east to west of the Iron Curtain, except under limited circumstances, was effectively halted after 1950. Before 1950, over 15 million people (mainly ethnic Germans) emigrated from Soviet-occupied eastern European countries to the west in the five years immediately following World War II. However, restrictions implemented during the Cold War stopped most east–west migration, with only 13.3 million migrations westward between 1950 and 1990. More than 75% of those emigrating from Eastern Bloc countries between 1950 and 1990 did so under bilateral agreements for "ethnic migration."

About 10% were refugees permitted to emigrate under the Geneva Convention of 1951. Most Soviets allowed to leave during this time period were ethnic Jews permitted to emigrate to Israel after a series of embarrassing defections in 1970 caused the Soviets to open very limited ethnic emigrations. The fall of the Iron Curtain was accompanied by a massive rise in European East-West migration.

Physical barrier

“Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same – still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state.”

– Ronald Reagan at the Tear down this wall! speech in 1987, which was written by Peter Robinson

The Iron Curtain took physical shape in the form of border defences between the countries of western and eastern Europe. There were some of the most heavily militarised areas in the world, particularly the so-called "inner German border" – commonly known as die Grenze in German – between East and West Germany.

Elsewhere along the border between West and East, the defence works resembled those on the intra-German border. During the Cold War, the border zone in Hungary started 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from the border. Citizens could only enter the area if they lived in the zone or had a passport valid for traveling out. Traffic control points and patrols enforced this regulation.

Those who lived within the 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) border-zone needed special permission to enter the area within 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) of the border. The area was very difficult to approach and heavily fortified. In the 1950s and 1960s, a double barbed-wire fence was installed 50 metres (160 ft) from the border. The space between the two fences was laden with land mines. The minefield was later replaced with an electric signal fence (about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) from the border) and a barbed wire fence, along with guard towers and a sand strip to track border violations. Regular patrols sought to prevent escape attempts. They included cars and mounted units. Guards and dog patrol units watched the border 24/7 and were authorised to use their weapons to stop escapees. The wire fence nearest the actual border was irregularly displaced from the actual border, which was marked only by stones. Anyone attempting to escape would have to cross up to 400 metres (1,300 ft) before they could cross the actual border. Several escape attempts failed when the escapees were stopped after crossing the outer fence.

The creation of these highly militarised no-man's lands led to de facto nature reserves and created a wildlife corridor across Europe; this helped the spread of several species to new territories. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, several initiatives are pursuing the creation of a European Green Belt nature preserve area along the Iron Curtain's former route. In fact, a long-distance cycling route along the length of the former border called the Iron Curtain Trail (ICT) exists as a project of the European Union and other associated nations. The trail is 6,800 km (4,200 mi) long and spans from Finland to Greece.

The term "Iron Curtain" was only used for the fortified borders in Europe; it was not used for similar borders in Asia between socialist and capitalist states (these were, for a time, dubbed the Bamboo Curtain). The border between North Korea and South Korea is very comparable to the former inner German border, particularly in its degree of militarisation, but it has never conventionally been considered part of any Iron Curtain.

Soviet Union

Land border to Finland and Norway

The Soviet Union built a fence along the entire border towards Norway and Finland. It is located one or a few kilometres from the border, and has automatic alarms detecting if someone climbs over it.

Historian Juha Pohjonen stated in a 2005 study that people who escaped the USSR to Finland were sent back, based on a policy that was implemented unilaterally by Urho Kekkonen when he took office in 1956.

Sea border of the Baltics

The Soviets initially attempted to apply mare clausum to the Baltic Sea, stopping any ships that were not of countries immediately around the sea. This was never accepted in international law, and was constantly opposed by Western Powers. By 1946, “all islands in the Baltic Sea belonging to the Soviet Union” and 36 village soviets along Estonia's northern and northwestern coast were defined as belonging to the "border belt," a naval boundary surrounding the Baltic SSRs.

Poland

The People's Republic of Poland was a member of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon. It bordered no western countries, but it had many ports to the Baltic Sea. These were heavily guarded by mines and the Border Guard. The port cities were very open, as Poland was a major trading hub with other nations.

German Democratic Republic

The inner German border was marked in rural areas by double fences made of steel mesh (expanded metal) with sharp edges, while near urban areas a high concrete barrier similar to the Berlin Wall was built. The installation of the Wall in 1961 brought an end to a decade during which the divided capital of divided Germany was one of the easiest places to move west across the Iron Curtain.

The barrier was always a short distance inside East German territory to avoid any intrusion into Western territory. The actual borderline, marked by posts and signs, was overlooked by numerous watchtowers set behind the barrier. The strip of land on the West German side of the barrier — between the actual borderline and the barrier — was readily accessible but only at considerable personal risk, because it was patrolled by both East and West German border guards.

Several villages, many historic, were destroyed as they lay too close to the border, for example Erlebach. Shooting incidents were not uncommon, and several hundred civilians and 28 East German border guards were killed between 1948 and 1981, some of which may have been incidents of "friendly fire".

The Helmstedt–Marienborn border crossing (German: Grenzübergang Helmstedt-Marienborn), named Grenzübergangsstelle Marienborn (GÜSt) by the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was the largest and most important border crossing on the inner German border during the division of Germany. Due to its geographical location, allowing for the shortest land route between West Germany and West Berlin, most transit traffic to and from West Berlin used the Helmstedt-Marienborn crossing. Most travel routes from West Germany to East Germany and Poland also used this crossing. The border crossing existed from 1945 to 1990 and was situated near the East German village of Marienborn at the edge of the Lappwald. The crossing interrupted the Bundesautobahn 2 (A 2) between the junctions Helmstedt-Ost and Ostingersleben.

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961 to stop the flow of East German workers into West Berlin, an exclave of the Federal Republic of Germany. It largely succeeded in this instance, but led to the deaths of 140 people attempting to cross into West Berlin. It was officially described as an "anti-fascist protection rampart" (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall), to serve the purpose of protecting East Berlin and the GDR from "fascist powers" in the West.

Czechoslovakia

In parts of Czechoslovakia, the border strip became hundreds of meters wide, and an area of increasing restrictions was defined as the border was approached. Only people with the appropriate government permissions were allowed to get close to the border.

Hungary

The Hungarian outer fence became the first part of the Iron Curtain to be dismantled. After the border fortifications were dismantled, a section was rebuilt for a formal ceremony. On 27 June 1989, the foreign ministers of Austria and Hungary, Alois Mock and Gyula Horn, ceremonially cut through the border defences separating their countries.

Romania

The number of victims that died at the Romanian border far exceeded the number of victims at the Berlin Wall.

Bulgaria

The Yugoslav-Bulgarian border became closed in 1948 after the Tito–Stalin split. The area around the border was restructured, with land ownership on both sides no longer legal. Loudspeakers were installed for spreading propaganda and insults. The installations were not as impressive as the one on for example the inner-German border, but they resembled the same system. In the GDR, there was a long time rumor that the border of Bulgaria was easier to cross than the inner German border for escaping the East Bloc.

In Greece, a highly militarized area called the "Επιτηρούμενη Ζώνη" ("Surveillance Area") was created by the Greek Army along the Greek-Bulgarian border, subject to significant security-related regulations and restrictions. Inhabitants within this 25 kilometres (16 mi) wide strip of land were forbidden to drive cars, own land bigger than 60 square metres (650 sq ft), and had to travel within the area with a special passport issued by Greek military authorities. Additionally, the Greek state used this area to encapsulate and monitor a non-Greek ethnic minority, the Pomaks, a Muslim and Bulgarian-speaking minority which was regarded as hostile to the interests of the Greek state during the Cold War because of its familiarity with their fellow Pomaks living on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

The border was dismantled at the end of the 1990s.

Fall

Following a period of economic and political stagnation under Brezhnev and his immediate successors, the Soviet Union decreased its intervention in Eastern Bloc politics. Mikhail Gorbachev (General Secretary from 1985) decreased adherence to the Brezhnev Doctrine, which held that if socialism were threatened in any state then other socialist governments had an obligation to intervene to preserve it, in favor of the "Sinatra Doctrine". He also initiated the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring). A wave of revolutions occurred throughout the Eastern Bloc in 1989.

Speaking at the Berlin Wall on 12 June 1987, Reagan challenged Gorbachev to go further, saying "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

In February 1989, the Hungarian politburo recommended to the government led by Miklós Németh to dismantle the iron curtain. Nemeth first informed Austrian chancellor Franz Vranitzky. He then received an informal clearance from Gorbachev (who said "there will not be a new 1956") on 3 March 1989, on 2 May of the same year the Hungarian government announced and started in Rajka (in the locality known as the "city of three borders", on the border with Austria and Czechoslovakia) the destruction of the Iron Curtain. For public relation Hungary reconstructed 200m of the iron curtain so it could be cut during an official ceremony by Hungarian foreign minister Gyula Horn, and Austrian foreign minister Alois Mock, on 27 June 1989, which had the function of "calling all European peoples still under the yoke of the national-communist regimes to freedom". However, the dismantling of the old Hungarian border facilities did not open the borders, nor did the previous strict controls be removed, and the isolation by the Iron Curtain was still intact over its entire length. Despite dismantling the already technically obsolete fence, the Hungarians wanted to prevent the formation of a green border by increasing the security of the border or to technically solve the security of their western border in a different way. After the demolition of the border facilities, the stripes of the heavily armed Hungarian border guards were tightened and there was still a firing order.

In April 1989, the People's Republic of Poland legalised the Solidarity organisation, which captured 99% of available parliamentary seats in June. These elections, in which anti-communist candidates won a striking victory, inaugurated a series of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe that eventually culminated in the fall of socialism.

The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction, at the end of which there was no longer a GDR and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg and was brought up by him to Miklós Németh, the then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea. The Paneuropa Picnic itself developed from a meeting between Ferenc Mészáros of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) and the President of the Paneuropean Union Otto von Habsburg in June 1989. The local organization in Sopron took over the Hungarian Democratic Forum, the other contacts were made via Habsburg and the Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Paneuropean Union distributed thousands of brochures inviting them to a picnic near the border at Sopron.

The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of possible GDR refugees, but thought of a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation. More than 600 East Germans attending the "Pan-European Picnic" on the Hungarian border broke through the Iron Curtain and fled into Austria. The refugees went through the iron curtain in three big waves during the picnic under the direction of Walburga Habsburg. Hungarian border guards had threatened to shoot anyone crossing the border, but when the time came, they did not intervene and allowed the people to cross.

It was the largest escape movement from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. The patrons of the picnic, Otto Habsburg and the Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay, who were not present at the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction to an opening of the border on the Iron Curtain. In particular, it was examined whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. After the pan-European picnic, Erich Honecker dictated the Daily Mirror of 19 August 1989: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West". But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus the bracket of the Eastern Bloc was broken. Now tens of thousands of the media-informed East Germans made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or to oblige its border troops to use force of arms. The leadership of the GDR in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock the borders of their own country.

In a historic session from 16 to 20 October, the Hungarian parliament adopted legislation providing for multi-party parliamentary elections and a direct presidential election.

The legislation transformed Hungary from a People's Republic into the Republic, guaranteed human and civil rights, and created an institutional structure that ensured separation of powers among the judicial, legislative, and executive branches of government. In November 1989, following mass protests in East Germany and the relaxing of border restrictions in Czechoslovakia, tens of thousands of East Berliners flooded checkpoints along the Berlin Wall, crossing into West Berlin.

In the People's Republic of Bulgaria, the day after the mass crossings across the Berlin Wall, leader Todor Zhivkov was ousted. In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, following protests of an estimated half-million Czechoslovaks, the government permitted travel to the west and abolished provisions guaranteeing the ruling Communist party its leading role, preceding the Velvet Revolution.

In the Socialist Republic of Romania, on 22 December 1989, the Romanian military sided with protesters and turned on Communist ruler Nicolae Ceaușescu, who was executed after a brief trial three days later. In the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, a new package of regulations went into effect on 3 July 1990 entitling all Albanians over the age of 16 to own a passport for foreign travel. Meanwhile, hundreds of Albanian citizens gathered around foreign embassies to seek political asylum and flee the country.

The Berlin Wall officially remained guarded after 9 November 1989, although the inter-German border had become effectively meaningless. The official dismantling of the Wall by the East German military did not begin until June 1990. On 1 July 1990, the day East Germany adopted the West German currency, all border-controls ceased and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl convinced Gorbachev to drop Soviet objections to a reunited Germany within NATO in return for substantial German economic aid to the Soviet Union. With the exception of the Kars-Gyumri railway crossing which operated during the Soviet Era, the Turkish–Armenian border has remained closed since the 1920s and is sometimes described as the last vestige of the Iron Curtain.

Monuments

There is an Iron Curtain monument in the southern part of the Czech Republic at approximately 48.8755°N 15.87477°E. A few hundred meters of the original fence, and one of the guard towers, has remained installed. There are interpretive signs in Czech and English that explain the history and significance of the Iron Curtain. This is the only surviving part of the fence in the Czech Republic, though several guard towers and bunkers can still be seen. Some of these are part of the Communist Era defences, some are from the never-used Czechoslovak border fortifications in defence against Adolf Hitler, and some towers were, or have become, hunting platforms.

Another monument is located in Fertőrákos, Hungary, at the site of the Pan-European Picnic. On the eastern hill of the stone quarry stands a metal sculpture by Gabriela von Habsburg. It is a column made of metal and barbed wire with the date of the Pan-European Picnic and the names of participants. On the ribbon under the board is the Latin text: In necessariis unitas – in dubiis libertas – in omnibus caritas ("Unity in unavoidable matters – freedom in doubtful matters – love in all things"). The memorial symbolises the Iron Curtain and recalls forever the memories of the border breakthrough in 1989.

Another monument is located in the village of Devín, now part of Bratislava, Slovakia, at the confluence of the Danube and Morava rivers.

There are several open-air museums in parts of the former inner German border, as for example in Berlin and in Mödlareuth, a village that has been divided for several hundred years. The memory of the division is being kept alive in many places along the Grenze.

Analogous terms

Throughout the Cold War the term "curtain" would become a common euphemism for boundaries – physical or ideological – between socialist and capitalist states.

An analogue of the Iron Curtain, the Bamboo Curtain, surrounded the People's Republic of China. As the standoff between the West and the countries of the Iron and Bamboo curtains eased with the end of the Cold War, the term "curtain" fell out of any but historical usage.
The short distance, 3.8 km (2.4 mi), between the Soviet Union (Big Diomede) and the U.S. (Little Diomede Island, state of Alaska) in the Bering Sea became known as the "Ice Curtain" during the Cold War.
A field of cacti surrounding the U.S. Naval station at Guantanamo Bay planted by Cuba was occasionally termed the "Cactus Curtain".
The phrase "Grass Curtain" was used by South Sudanese during the First Sudanese Civil War to describe the oppression that hid political violence in Southern Sudan from wider attention.
The phrase "Tofu Curtain" has been used to describe socioeconomic divides between more affluent, college educated green liberals and their working class neighbors. The term proliferates a county line in Western Massachusetts, a street in Melbourne, Australia, and other borders around the globe with usage recorded as early as 1984.
The phrase Steel Curtain was used to describe the defense of the Pittsburgh Steelers, an American Football team based in Pittsburgh, PA, in the 1970s. The city of Pittsburgh has long ties with the industrial steel industry.

Paranoia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia

Paranoia is an instinct or thought process that is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety, suspicion, or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself (e.g., "Everyone is out to get me"). Paranoia is distinct from phobias, which also involve irrational fear, but usually no blame.

Making false accusations and the general distrust of other people also frequently accompany paranoia. For example, a paranoid person might believe an incident was intentional when most people would view it as an accident or coincidence. Paranoia is a central symptom of psychosis.

Signs and symptoms

A common symptom of paranoia is attribution bias. These individuals typically have a biased perception of reality, often exhibiting more hostile beliefs than average. A paranoid person may view someone else's accidental behavior as though it is intentional or signifies a threat.

An investigation of a non-clinical paranoid population found that characteristics such as feeling powerless and depressed, isolating oneself, and relinquishing activities, were associated with more frequent paranoia. Some scientists have created different subtypes for the various symptoms of paranoia, including erotic, persecutory, litigious, and exalted.

Some research suggests that symptoms of paranoid personality disorder are associated with a higher number of divorces, likely due to how paranoid patterns of thinking hinder relationships. This seems to fall in line with some older sources, which allege that paranoid individuals tend to be of a single status.

Some researchers have arranged types of paranoia by commonality. The least common types of paranoia at the very top of the hierarchy would be those involving more serious threats. Social anxiety is at the bottom of this hierarchy as the most frequently exhibited level of paranoia.

Causes

Social and environmental

Social circumstances appear to be highly influential on paranoid beliefs. According to a mental health survey distributed to residents of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua (in Mexico) and El Paso, Texas (in the United States), paranoid beliefs seem to be associated with feelings of powerlessness and victimization, enhanced by social situations. Paranoid symptoms were associated with an attitude of mistrust and an external locus of control. Citing research showing that women and those with lower socioeconomic status are more prone to locating locus of control externally, the researchers suggested that women may be especially affected by the effects of socioeconomic status on paranoia.

Surveys have revealed that paranoia can develop from difficult parental relationships and untrustworthy environments, for instance those that were highly disciplinary, strict, and unstable, could contribute to paranoia. Some sources have also noted that indulging and pampering the child could contribute to greater paranoia, via disrupting the child's understanding of their relationship with the world. Experiences found to enhance or create paranoia included frequent disappointment, stress, and a sense of hopelessness.

Discrimination has also been reported as a potential predictor of paranoid delusions. Such reports that paranoia seemed to appear more in older patients who had experienced greater discrimination throughout their lives. Immigrants are more subject to some forms of psychosis than the general population, which may be related to more frequent experiences of discrimination and humiliation.

Psychological

Many more mood-based symptoms, for example grandiosity and guilt, may underlie functional paranoia.

Colby (1981) defined paranoid cognition as "persecutory delusions and false beliefs whose propositional content clusters around ideas of being harassed, threatened, harmed, subjugated, persecuted, accused, mistreated, killed, wronged, tormented, disparaged, vilified, and so on, by malevolent others, either specific individuals or groups" (p. 518). Three components of paranoid cognition have been identified by Robins & Post: "a) suspicions without enough basis that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving them; b) preoccupation with unjustified doubts about the loyalty, or trustworthiness, of friends or associates; c) reluctance to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against them" (1997, p. 3).

Paranoid cognition has been conceptualized by clinical psychology almost exclusively in terms of psychodynamic constructs and dispositional variables. From this point of view, paranoid cognition is a manifestation of an intra-psychic conflict or disturbance. For instance, Colby (1981) suggested that the biases of blaming others for one's problems serve to alleviate the distress produced by the feeling of being humiliated, and helps to repudiate the belief that the self is to blame for such incompetence. This intra-psychic perspective emphasizes that the cause of paranoid cognitions is inside the head of the people (social perceiver), and dismisses the possibility that paranoid cognition may be related to the social context in which such cognitions are embedded. This point is extremely relevant because when origins of distrust and suspicion (two components of paranoid cognition) are studied many researchers have accentuated the importance of social interaction, particularly when social interaction has gone awry. Even more, a model of trust development pointed out that trust increases or decreases as a function of the cumulative history of interaction between two or more persons.

Another relevant difference can be discerned among "pathological and non-pathological forms of trust and distrust". According to Deutsch, the main difference is that non-pathological forms are flexible and responsive to changing circumstances. Pathological forms reflect exaggerated perceptual biases and judgmental predispositions that can arise and perpetuate them, are reflexively caused errors similar to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It has been suggested that a "hierarchy" of paranoia exists, extending from mild social evaluative concerns, through ideas of social reference, to persecutory beliefs concerning mild, moderate, and severe threats.

Physical

A paranoid reaction may be caused from a decline in brain circulation as a result of high blood pressure or hardening of the arterial walls.

Drug-induced paranoia, associated with cannabis and stimulants like amphetamines or methamphetamine, has much in common with schizophrenic paranoia; the relationship has been under investigation since 2012. Drug-induced paranoia has a better prognosis than schizophrenic paranoia once the drug has been removed. For further information, see stimulant psychosis and substance-induced psychosis.

Based on data obtained by the Dutch NEMESIS project in 2005, there was an association between impaired hearing and the onset of symptoms of psychosis, which was based on a five-year follow up. Some older studies have actually declared that a state of paranoia can be produced in patients that were under a hypnotic state of deafness. This idea however generated much skepticism during its time.

Diagnosis

In the DSM-IV-TR, paranoia is diagnosed in the form of:

Paranoid personality disorder (F60.0)
Paranoid schizophrenia (a subtype of schizophrenia) (F20.0)
The persecutory type of delusional disorder (F22.8)

According to clinical psychologist P. J. McKenna, "As a noun, paranoia denotes a disorder which has been argued in and out of existence, and whose clinical features, course, boundaries, and virtually every other aspect of which is controversial. Employed as an adjective, paranoid has become attached to a diverse set of presentations, from paranoid schizophrenia, through paranoid depression, to paranoid personality—not to mention a motley collection of paranoid 'psychoses', 'reactions', and 'states'—and this is to restrict discussion to functional disorders. Even when abbreviated down to the prefix para-, the term crops up causing trouble as the contentious but stubbornly persistent concept of paraphrenia".

At least 50% of the diagnosed cases of schizophrenia experience delusions of reference and delusions of persecution. Paranoia perceptions and behavior may be part of many mental illnesses, such as depression and dementia, but they are more prevalent in three mental disorders: paranoid schizophrenia, delusional disorder (persecutory type), and paranoid personality disorder.

Treatment

Paranoid delusions are often treated with antipsychotic medication, which exert a medium effect size. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) lessens paranoid delusions relative to control conditions according to a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis of 43 studies reported that metacognitive training (MCT) reduces (paranoid) delusions at a medium to large effect size relative to control conditions.

History

The word paranoia comes from the Greek παράνοια (paránoia), "madness", and that from παρά (pará), "beside, by" and νόος (nóos), "mind". The term was used to describe a mental illness in which a delusional belief is the sole or most prominent feature. In this definition, the belief does not have to be persecutory to be classified as paranoid, so any number of delusional beliefs can be classified as paranoia. For example, a person who has the sole delusional belief that they are an important religious figure would be classified by Kraepelin as having "pure paranoia". The word "paranoia" is associated from the Greek word "para-noeo". Its meaning was "derangement", or "departure from the normal". However, the word was used strictly and other words were used such as "insanity" or "crazy", as these words were introduced by Aulus Cornelius Celsus. The term "paranoia" first made an appearance during plays of Greek tragedians, and was also used by philosophers such as Plato and Hippocrates. Nevertheless, the word "paranoia" was the equivalent of "delirium" or "high". Eventually, the term fell out of use for two millennia. "Paranoia" was revived in the 18th century, appearing in the works of nosologists such as François Boissier de Sauvage (1759) and Rudolph August Vogel (1772).

According to Michael Phelan, Padraig Wright, and Julian Stern (2000), paranoia and paraphrenia are debated entities that were detached from dementia praecox by Kraepelin, who explained paranoia as a continuous systematized delusion arising much later in life with no presence of either hallucinations or a deteriorating course, and paraphrenia as an identical syndrome to paranoia but with hallucinations. Even at the present time, a delusion need not be suspicious or fearful to be classified as paranoid. A person might be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia without delusions of persecution, simply because the delusions refer mainly to the self.

Relations to violence

It has generally been agreed upon that individuals with paranoid delusions will have the tendency to take action based on their beliefs. More research is needed on the particular types of actions that are pursued based on paranoid delusions. Some researchers have made attempts to distinguish the different variations of actions brought on as a result of delusions. Wessely et al. (1993) did just this by studying individuals with delusions of which more than half had reportedly taken action or behaved as a result of these delusions. However, the overall actions were not of a violent nature in most of the informants. The authors note that other studies such as one by Taylor (1985), have shown that violent behaviors were more common in certain types of paranoid individuals, mainly those considered to be offensive such as prisoners.

Other researchers have found associations between childhood abusive behaviors and the appearance of violent behaviors in psychotic individuals. This could be a result of their inability to cope with aggression as well as other people, especially when constantly attending to potential threats in their environment. The attention to threat itself has been proposed as one of the major contributors of violent actions in paranoid people, although there has been much deliberation about this as well. Other studies have shown that there may only be certain types of delusions that promote any violent behaviors, persecutory delusions seem to be one of these.

Having resentful emotions towards others and the inability to understand what other people are feeling seem to have an association with violence in paranoid individuals. This was based on a study of people with paranoid schizophrenia (one of the common mental disorders that exhibit paranoid symptoms) theories of mind capabilities in relation to empathy. The results of this study revealed specifically that although the violent patients were more successful at the higher level theory of mind tasks, they were not as able to interpret others' emotions or claims.

Paranoid social cognition

Social psychological research has proposed a mild form of paranoid cognition, paranoid social cognition, that has its origins in social determinants more than intra-psychic conflict. This perspective states that in milder forms, paranoid cognitions may be very common among normal individuals. For instance, it is not considered strange to have self-centered thoughts of being talked about, or to be suspicious of others' intentions, or to assume ill-will or hostility (e.g., a feeling of everything going against them). According to Kramer (1998), these milder forms of paranoid cognition may be considered an adaptive response to cope with or make sense of a disturbing and threatening social environment.

Paranoid cognition captures the idea that dysphoric self-consciousness may be related to the position a person occupies in a social system. This self-consciousness conduces to a hypervigilant and ruminative mode to process social information that finally will stimulate a variety of paranoid-like forms of social misperception and misjudgment. This model identifies four components that are essential to understanding paranoid social cognition: situational antecedents, dysphoric self-consciousness, hypervigilance and rumination, and judgmental biases.

Situational antecedents

Perceived social distinctiveness, perceived evaluative scrutiny and uncertainty about the social standing.

Perceived social distinctiveness: According to the social identity theory, people categorize themselves in terms of characteristics that made them unique or different from others under certain circumstances. Gender, ethnicity, age, or experience may become extremely relevant to explain people's behavior when these attributes make them unique in a social group. This distinctive attribute may have influence not only in how people are perceived, but may also affect the way they perceive themselves.
Perceived evaluative scrutiny: According to this model, dysphoric self-consciousness may increase when people feel under moderate or intensive evaluative social scrutiny such as when an asymmetric relationship is analyzed. For example, when asked about relationships, doctoral students remembered events that they interpreted as significant to their degree of trust in their advisors when compared with their advisors. This suggests that students are willing to pay more attention to their advisor than their advisor is to them. Also, students spent more time ruminating about behaviors, events, and their relationship in general.
Uncertainty about social standing: Knowledge about social standing is another factor that may induce paranoid social cognition. Many researchers have argued that experiencing uncertainty about a social position in a social system constitutes an adverse psychological state, one which people are highly motivated to reduce.

Dysphoric self-consciousness

An aversive form of heightened 'public self-consciousness' is characterized by the feelings that one is under intensive evaluation or scrutiny. Becoming self-tormenting will increase the odds of interpreting others' behaviors in a self-referential way.

Hypervigilance and rumination

Self-consciousness was characterized as an aversive psychological state. According to this model, people experiencing self-consciousness will be highly motivated to reduce it, trying to make sense of what they are experiencing. These attempts promote hypervigilance and rumination in a circular relationship: more hypervigilance generates more rumination, whereupon more rumination generates more hypervigilance. Hypervigilance can be thought of as a way to appraise threatening social information, but in contrast to adaptive vigilance, hypervigilance will produce elevated levels of arousal, fear, anxiety, and threat perception. Rumination is another possible response to threatening social information. Rumination can be related to the paranoid social cognition because it can increase negative thinking about negative events, and evoke a pessimistic explanatory style.

Judgmental and cognitive biases

Three main judgmental consequences have been identified:

The sinister attribution error: This bias captures the tendency that social perceivers have to overattribute lack of trustworthiness to others.
The overly personalistic construal of social interaction: Refers to the inclination that paranoid perceiver has to interpret others' action in a disproportional self-referential way, increasing the belief that they are the target of others' thoughts and actions. A special kind of bias in the biased punctuation of social interaction, which entail an overperception of causal linking among independent events.
The exaggerated perception of conspiracy: Refers to the disposition that the paranoid perceiver has to overattribute social coherence and coordination to others' actions.

Meta-analyses have confirmed that individuals with paranoia tend to jump to conclusions and are incorrigible in their judgements, even for delusion-neutral scenarios.

Criminal conspiracy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_conspiracy

In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime at some time in the future. Criminal law in some countries or for some conspiracies may require that at least one overt act be undertaken in furtherance of that agreement to constitute an offense. There is no limit to the number participating in the conspiracy, and in most countries the plan itself is the crime, so there is no requirement that any steps have been taken to put the plan into effect (compare attempts which require proximity to the full offense).

For the purposes of concurrence, the actus reus is a continuing one and parties may join the plot later and incur joint liability and conspiracy can be charged where the co-conspirators have been acquitted or cannot be traced. Finally, repentance by one or more parties does not affect liability (unless, in some cases, it occurs before the parties have committed overt acts) but may reduce their sentence.

An unindicted co-conspirator, or unindicted conspirator, is a person or entity that is alleged in an indictment to have engaged in conspiracy but who is not charged in the same indictment. Prosecutors choose to name persons as unindicted co-conspirators for a variety of reasons including grants of immunity, pragmatic considerations, and evidentiary concerns.

England and Wales

Common law offence

At common law, the crime of conspiracy was capable of infinite growth, able to accommodate any new situation and to criminalize it if the level of threat to society was sufficiently great. The courts were therefore acting in the role of the legislature to create new offences and, following the Law Commission Report No. 76 on Conspiracy and Criminal Law Reform, the Criminal Law Act 1977 produced a statutory offence and abolished all the common law varieties of conspiracy, except two: that of conspiracy to defraud, and that of conspiracy to corrupt public morals or to outrage public decency.

Conspiracy to defraud

Section 5(2) of the Criminal Law Act 1977 preserved the common law offence of conspiracy to defraud. Conspiracy to defraud was defined in Scott v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis per Viscount Dilhorne:

"to defraud" ordinarily means ... to deprive a person dishonestly of something which is his or of something to which he is or would or might but for the perpetration of the fraud be entitled.

... an agreement by two or more [persons] by dishonesty to deprive a person of something which is his or to which he is or would be or might be entitled [or] an agreement by two or more by dishonesty to injure some proprietary right of his suffices to constitute the offence.

Conspiracy to corrupt public morals or to outrage public decency

Section 5(3) Criminal Law Act 1977 preserved the common law offence of conspiracy to corrupt public morals or of conspiracy to outrage public decency. These are offences under the common law of England and Wales.

Section 5(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977 does not affect the common law offence of conspiracy if, and in so far as, it can be committed by entering into an agreement to engage in conduct which tends to corrupt public morals, or which outrages public decency, but which does not amount to or involve the commission of an offence if carried out by a single person otherwise than in pursuance of an agreement. One authority maintains that conspiracy to "corrupt public morals" has no definitive case law, that it is unknown whether or not it is a substantive offence, and that it is unlikely that conspirators will be prosecuted for this offence.

These two offences cover situations where, for example, a publisher encourages immoral behaviour through explicit content in a magazine or periodical, as in the 1970 case of Knuller (Publishing, Printing and Promotions) Ltd v Director of Public Prosecutions, which ultimately was decided in 1973 by the House of Lords. In the 1991 case of R v Rowley, the defendant left notes in public places over a period of three weeks offering money and presents to boys with the intention of luring them for immoral purposes, but there was nothing lewd, obscene or disgusting in the notes, nor were they printed by a news magazine at the behest of Rowley, which would have invoked the element of conspiracy. The judge ruled that the jury was entitled to look at the purpose behind the notes in deciding whether they were lewd or disgusting. On appeal against conviction, it was held that an act outraging public decency required a deliberate act which was in itself lewd, obscene or disgusting, so Rowley's motive in leaving the notes was irrelevant and, since there was nothing in the notes themselves capable of outraging public decency, the conviction was quashed.

Statutory offence

This offence was created as a result of the Law Commission's recommendations in their Report, Conspiracy and Criminal Law Reform, 1976, Law Com No 76. This was part of the commission's programme of codification of the criminal law. The eventual aim was to abolish all the remaining common law offences and replace them, where appropriate, with offences precisely defined by statute. The common law offences were seen as unacceptably vague and open to development by the courts in ways which might offend the principle of certainty. There was an additional problem that it could be a criminal conspiracy at common law to engage in conduct which was not in itself a criminal offence: see Law Com No 76, para 1.7. This was a major mischief at which the 1977 Act was aimed,^{[citation needed]} although it retained the convenient concept of a common law conspiracy to defraud: see Law Com No 76, paras 1.9 and 1.16. Henceforward, according to the Law Commission, it would only be an offence to agree to engage in a course of conduct which was itself a criminal offence.

Section 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977 provides:

if a person agrees with any other person or persons that a course of conduct shall be pursued which, if the agreement is carried out in accordance with their intentions, either –
(a) will necessarily amount to or involve the commission of any offence or offences by one or more of the parties to the agreement, or
(b) would do so but for the existence of facts which render the commission of the offence or any of the offences impossible, [added by S.5 Criminal Attempts Act 1981]
he is guilty of conspiracy to commit the offence or offences in question.

Section 1A (inserted by the Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act 1998, s. 5) bans conspiracies part of which occurred in England and Wales to commit an act or the happening of some other event outside the United Kingdom which constitutes an offence under the law in force in that country or territory. Many conditions apply including that prosecutions need consent from the attorney general.

Exceptions

Under section 2(1) the intended victim of the offence cannot be guilty of conspiracy.
Under section 2(2) there can be no conspiracy where the only other person(s) to the agreement are:
1. a spouse or civil partner;
2. a person under the age of criminal responsibility; or
3. an intended victim of that offence.

Mens rea

There must be an agreement between two or more persons. The mens rea of conspiracy is a separate issue from the mens rea required of the substantive crime. Lord Bridge in R v Anderson, quoted in R v Hussain, said:

[A]n essential ingredient in the crime of conspiring to commit a specific offence or offences under section 1(1) of the Act of 1977 is that the accused should agree that a course of conduct be pursued which he knows must involve the commission by one or more of the parties to the agreement of that offence or those offences.

Lord Bridge in R v Anderson also said:

But, beyond the mere fact of agreement, the necessary mens rea of the crime is, in my opinion, established if, and only if, it is shown that the accused, when he entered into the agreement, intended to play some part in the agreed course of conduct in furtherance of the criminal purpose which the agreed course of action was intended to achieve. Nothing less will suffice; nothing more is required.

It is not therefore necessary for any action to be taken in furtherance of the criminal purpose in order for a conspiracy offence to have been committed. This distinguishes a conspiracy from an attempt (which necessarily does involve a person doing an act): see Criminal Attempts Act 1981.

Things said or done by one conspirator

Adrian Keane in The Modern Law of Evidence, quoted approvingly by Lord Steyn in R v Hayter, wrote:

In two exceptional situations, a confession may be admitted not only as evidence against its maker but also as evidence against a co-accused implicated thereby. The first is where the co-accused by his words or conduct accepts the truth of the statement so as to make all or part of it a confession statement of his own. The second exception, which is perhaps best understood in terms of implied agency, applies in the case of conspiracy: statements (or acts) of one conspirator which the jury is satisfied were said (or done) in the execution or furtherance of the common design are admissible in evidence against another conspirator, even though he was not present at the time, to prove the nature and scope of the conspiracy, provided that there is some independent evidence to show the existence of the conspiracy and that the other conspirator was a party to it.

History

According to Edward Coke, conspiracy was originally a statutory remedy against false accusation and prosecution by "a consultation and agreement between two or more to appeal or indict an innocent man falsely and maliciously of felony, whom they cause to be indicted and appealed; and afterward the party is lawfully acquitted". In Poulterer's Case, 77 Eng. Rep. 813 (K.B. 1611), the court reasoned that the thrust of the crime was the confederating of two or more, and dropped the requirement that an actual indictment of an innocent take place, whereby precedent was set that conspiracy only need involve an attempted crime, and that the agreement was the act, which enabled subsequent holdings against an agreement to commit any crime, not just that originally proscribed.

Conspiracy to trespass

In Kamara v Director of Public Prosecutions, nine students, who were nationals of Sierra Leone, appealed their convictions for conspiracy to trespass, and unlawful assembly. These persons, together with others who did not appeal, conspired to occupy the London premises of the High Commissioner for Sierra Leone in order to publicize grievances against the government of that country. Upon their arrival at the commission, they threatened the caretaker with an imitation firearm and locked him in a reception room with ten other members of the staff. The students then held a press conference on the telephone, but the caretaker was able to contact the police, who arrived, released the prisoners, and arrested the accused. In this case the Court felt that the public interest was clearly involved because of the statutory duty of the British Government to protect diplomatic premises. Lauton J delivered the judgment of the Court of Appeal dismissing the appeal from conviction.

Conspiracy to corrupt public morals and conspiracy to outrage public decency

These offences were at one time tied up with prostitution and homosexual behaviour. After the Second World War, due to the fame of several convicts, the Wolfenden report was commissioned by government, and was published in 1957. Thereupon came the publication of several books, both pro and contra the report. Of these books we can isolate two representatives: Lord Devlin wrote in favour of societal norms, or morals, while H. L. A. Hart wrote that the state could ill regulate private conduct. In May 1965, Devlin is reported to have conceded defeat.

The Street Offences Act 1959 prohibited England's prostitutes from soliciting in the streets. One Shaw published a booklet containing prostitutes' names and addresses; each woman listed had paid Shaw for her advertisement. A 1962 majority in the House of Lords not only found the appellant guilty of a statutory offence (living on the earnings of prostitution), but also of the "common law misdemeanour of conspiracy to corrupt public morals".

In the case of Knuller (Publishing, Printing and Promotions) Ltd v DPP, which was decided in 1973 in the House of Lords, the appellants were directors of a company which published a fortnightly magazine. On an inside page under a column headed "Males" advertisements were inserted inviting readers to meet the advertisers for the purpose of homosexual practices. The appellants were convicted on counts of

conspiracy to corrupt public morals, and
conspiracy to outrage public decency.

The appeal on count 1 was dismissed, while the appeal on count 2 was allowed because in the present case there had been a misdirection in relation to the meaning of "decency" and the offence of "outrage". The list of cases consulted in the ratio decidendi is lengthy, and the case of Shaw v DPP is a topic of furious discussion.

Conspiracy to effect a public mischief

In Withers v Director of Public Prosecutions, which reached the House of Lords in 1974, it was unanimously held that conspiracy to effect a public mischief was not a separate and distinct class of criminal conspiracy. This overruled earlier decisions to the contrary effect. The Law Commission published a consultation paper on this subject in 1975.

Conspiracy to murder

The offence of conspiracy to murder was created in statutory law by section 4 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.

Northern Ireland

Common law offence

Article 13(1) of the Criminal Attempts and Conspiracy (Northern Ireland) Order 1983 (S.I. 1983/1120 (N.I. 13)) does not affect the common law offence of conspiracy so far as it relates to conspiracy to defraud.

Statutory offence

Part IV of the Criminal Attempts and Conspiracy (Northern Ireland) Order 1983 (S.I. 1983/1120 (N.I. 13)) explains the offence of conspiracy.

United States

Conspiracy has been defined in the United States as an agreement of two or more people to commit a crime, or to accomplish a legal end through illegal actions. Conspiracy law usually does not require proof of specific intent by the defendants to injure any specific person to establish an illegal agreement. Instead, usually the law requires only that the conspirators have agreed to engage in a certain illegal act; however, the application of conspiracy laws requires a tacit agreement among members of a group to commit a crime. Such laws allow the government to charge a defendant regardless of whether the planned criminal act has been committed or the possibility of the crime being carried out successfully. In most U.S. jurisdictions, for a person to be convicted of conspiracy, not only must he or she agree to commit a crime, but at least one of the conspirators must commit an overt act (the actus reus) in furtherance of the crime. In United States v. Shabani, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this "overt act" element is not required under the federal drug conspiracy statute, 21 U.S.C. section 846. The conspirators can be guilty even if they do not know the identity of the other members of the conspiracy.

California criminal law is somewhat representative of other jurisdictions. A punishable conspiracy exists when at least two people form an agreement to commit a crime, and at least one of them does some act in furtherance to committing the crime. Each person is punishable in the same manner and to the same extent as is provided for the punishment of the crime itself. One example of this is the Han twins murder conspiracy case, where one twin sister attempted to hire two youths to have her twin sister killed. One important feature of a conspiracy charge is that it relieves prosecutors of the need to prove the particular roles of conspirators. If two persons plot to kill another (and this can be proven), and the victim is indeed killed as a result of the actions of either conspirator, it is not necessary to prove with specificity which of the conspirators actually pulled the trigger. It is also an option for prosecutors, when bringing conspiracy charges, to decline to indict all members of the conspiracy (though the existence of all members may be mentioned in an indictment). Such unindicted co-conspirators are commonly found when the identities or whereabouts of members of a conspiracy are unknown, or when the prosecution is concerned only with a particular individual among the conspirators. This is common when the target of the indictment is an elected official or an organized crime leader, and the co-conspirators are persons of little or no public importance. More famously, President Richard Nixon was named as an unindicted co-conspirator by the Watergate special prosecutor in an event leading up to his eventual resignation.

Conspiracy against the United States

Conspiracy against the United States, or conspiracy to defraud the United States, is a federal offense in the United States under 18 U.S.C. § 371. The crime is that of two or more persons who conspire to commit an offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States.

Conspiracy against rights

The United States has a federal statute dealing with conspiracies to deprive a citizen of rights secured by the U.S. Constitution.

Unindicted co-conspirators

The United States Attorneys' Manual generally recommends against naming unindicted co-conspirators, although their use is not generally prohibited by law or policy. Some commentators have raised due-process concerns over the use of unindicted co-conspirators. Although there have been few cases on the subject, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals addressed these concerns in 1975 United States v. Briggs.

President Richard Nixon

Unindicted co-conspirator was familiarized in 1974 when then President Richard Nixon was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in indictments stemming from the Watergate Investigation. Nixon was not indicted, because of concerns about whether the U.S. Constitution allowed the indictment of a sitting President (executive privilege).

President Donald Trump

Unindicted co-conspirator made a resurgence in the public discourse when U.S. President Donald Trump was allegedly named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the conviction of Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen for lying to Congress, tax evasion, uttering fraudulent documents, and campaign finance offenses. Although Trump was not named explicitly, with the term "Un-indicted co-conspirator number 1" used instead, Cohen subsequently testified in Congress that "Un-indicted co-conspirator number 1" referred to Donald Trump.

Mueller investigation

Special counsel Robert Mueller used "coordination" and "conspiracy" in a synonymous fashion as he looked for evidence of agreed coordination, not just a mutual understanding ("two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests"). Mueller expressly explained why he was not interested in proving mere collusion, which he, for the purposes of his investigation, determined was not the same as "conspiracy". There had to be "coordination", which implies a conscious "agreement". In discussing conspiracy vs. collusion, Mueller wrote:

To establish whether a crime was committed by members of the Trump campaign with regard to Russian interference, investigators "applied the framework of conspiracy law", and not the concept of "collusion", because collusion "is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law". They also investigated if members of the Trump campaign "coordinated" with Russia, using the definition of "coordination" as having "an agreement — tacit or express — between the Trump campaign and the Russian government on election interference". Investigators further elaborated that merely having "two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests" was not enough to establish coordination.
The report writes that the investigation "identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign", found that Russia "perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency" and that the 2016 Trump presidential campaign "expected it would benefit electorally" from Russian hacking efforts. However, ultimately "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities". The evidence was not necessarily complete due to encrypted, deleted, or unsaved communications as well as false, incomplete, or declined testimony.

International law

Conspiracy law was used at the Nuremberg Trials for members of the Nazi leadership charged with participating in a "conspiracy or common plan" to commit international crimes. This was controversial because conspiracy was not a part of the European civil law tradition. Nonetheless, the crime of conspiracy continued in international criminal justice, and was incorporated into the international criminal laws against genocide. Of the Big Five, only the French Republic exclusively subscribed to the civil law; the USSR subscribed to the socialist law, the U.S. and the U.K. followed the common law; and the Republic of China did not have a cause of action at this particular proceeding. In addition, both the civil and the customary law were upheld. The jurisdiction of the International Military Tribunal was unique and extraordinary at its time, being a court convened under the law of nations and the laws and customs of war. It was the first of its sort in human history, and found several defendants not guilty.

Chosen people

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chosen_people

Throughout history, various groups of people have seen themselves as the chosen people of a deity, for a particular purpose. The phenomenon of "chosen people" is well known among the Israelites and Jews, where the term (Hebrew: עם סגולה / העם הנבחר, romanized: am segulah / ha-am ha-nivhar) refers to the Israelites as being selected by Yahweh to worship only him and to fulfill the mission of proclaiming his truth throughout the world. Some claims of chosenness are based on parallel claims of Israelite ancestry, as is the case for the Christian Identity and Black Hebrew sects—both which regard themselves (and not Jews) as the "true Israel". Others see the concept as spiritual, whereby individuals who genuinely believe in God are considered to be the "true" chosen people, "the elect". This view is common among many Christian denominations which historically believed that the church replaced Israel as the people of God.

Anthropologists commonly regard claims of chosenness as a form of ethnocentrism.

The concept of a people favoured or selected by God—summarizable in slogans such as Gott mit uns—can feed into generalised nationalism.

Judaism

In Judaism, "chosenness" is the belief that the Jews, via descent from the ancient Israelites, are the chosen people—i.e., chosen to be in a covenant with God. The idea of the Israelites being chosen by God is found most directly in the Book of Deuteronomy, where it is applied to Israel at Mount Sinai upon the condition of their acceptance of the Mosaic covenant between themselves and God. The decalogue immediately follows, and the seventh-day Sabbath is given as the sign of the covenant, with a requirement that Israel keep it, or else be cut off. The verb 'bahar (בָּחַ֣ר (Hebrew)), and is alluded to elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible using other terms such as "holy people". Much is written about these topics in rabbinic literature. The three largest Jewish denominations—Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism—maintain the belief that the Jews have been chosen by God for a purpose. Sometimes, this choice is seen as charging the Jewish people with a specific mission—to be a light unto the nations, and to exemplify the covenant with God as described in the Torah. This is first prominently outlined in Genesis 12:2: "And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing."

While the concept of "chosenness" may be understood by some to connote ethnic supremacy — as sometimes implied in the hoary formulation "chosen race" — Conservative Judaism denies this, as it claims that as a result of being chosen, Jews also bear the greatest responsibility, which incurs the most severe punishment upon disobedience.

"Few beliefs have been subject to as much misunderstanding as the 'Chosen People' doctrine. The Torah and the Prophets clearly stated that this does not imply any innate Jewish superiority. In the words of Amos (3:2) 'You alone have I singled out of all the families of the earth—that is why I will call you to account for your iniquities.' The Torah tells us that we are to be "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" with obligations and duties which flowed from our willingness to accept this status. Far from being a license for special privilege, it entailed additional responsibilities not only toward God but to our fellow human beings. As expressed in the blessing at the reading of the Torah, our people have always felt it to be a privilege to be selected for such a purpose. For the modern traditional Jew, the doctrine of the election and the covenant of Israel offers a purpose for Jewish existence which transcends its own self interests. It suggests that because of our special history and unique heritage we are in a position to demonstrate that a people that takes seriously the idea of being covenanted with God can not only thrive in the face of oppression, but can be a source of blessing to its children and its neighbors. It obligates us to build a just and compassionate society throughout the world and especially in the land of Israel where we may teach by example what it means to be a 'covenant people, a light unto the nations.'"

Likewise, Rabbi Lord Immanuel Jakobovits views the concept of "chosenness" as God choosing different nations, and by extension individuals, to perform unique contributions to the world, similar to the concept of division of labor.

"Yes, I do believe that the chosen people concept as affirmed by Judaism in its holy writ, its prayers, and its millennial tradition. In fact, I believe that every people—and indeed, in a more limited way, every individual—is "chosen" or destined for some distinct purpose in advancing the designs of Providence. Only, some fulfill their mission and others do not. Maybe the Greeks were chosen for their unique contributions to art and philosophy, the Romans for their pioneering services in law and government, the British for bringing parliamentary rule into the world, and the Americans for piloting democracy in a pluralistic society. The Jews were chosen by God to be 'peculiar unto Me' as the pioneers of religion and morality; that was and is their national purpose."

Christianity

Seventh-day Adventism

Mormonism

In Mormonism, all Latter Day Saints are viewed as covenant, or chosen, people because they have accepted the name of Jesus Christ through the ordinance of baptism. In contrast to supersessionism, Latter Day Saints do not dispute the "chosen" status of the Jewish people. Most practicing Mormons receive a patriarchal blessing that reveals their lineage in the House of Israel. This lineage may be blood related or through "adoption"; therefore, a child may not necessarily share the lineage of her parents (but will still be a member of the tribes of Israel). It is a widely held belief that most members of the faith are in the tribe of Ephraim or the tribe of Manasseh.

Christian Identity

Christian Identity is a belief which holds the view that only either Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Nordic, or Aryan people and those of kindred blood are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and hence the descendants of the ancient Israelites.

Independently practiced by individuals, independent congregations, and some prison gangs, it is not an organized religion, nor is it connected with specific Christian denominations. Its theology promotes a racial interpretation of Christianity. Christian Identity beliefs were primarily developed and promoted by American authors who regarded Europeans as the "chosen people" and Jews as the cursed offspring of Cain, the "serpent hybrid" or serpent seed, a belief known as the two-seedline doctrine. White supremacist sects and gangs later adopted many of these teachings.

Christian Identity holds that all non-whites (people not of wholly European descent) will either be exterminated or enslaved in order to serve the white race in the new Heavenly Kingdom on Earth under the reign of Jesus Christ. Its doctrine states that only "Adamic" (white) people can achieve salvation and paradise.

Mandaeism

Mandaeans formally refer to themselves as Nasurai (Nasoraeans), meaning guardians or possessors of secret rites and knowledge. Another early self-appellation is bhiri zidqa meaning 'elect of righteousness' or 'the chosen righteous', a term found in the Book of Enoch and Genesis Apocryphon II, 4.

Rastafari

Based on Jewish biblical tradition and Ethiopian legend via Kebra Nagast, Rastas believe that Israel's King Solomon, together with Ethiopian Queen of Sheba, conceived a child which began the Solomonic line of kings in Ethiopia, rendering the Ethiopian people as the true children of Israel, and thereby chosen. Reinforcement of this belief occurred when Beta Israel, Ethiopia's ancient Israelite First Temple community, were rescued from Sudanese famine and brought to Israel during Operation Moses in 1985.

Unification Church

Sun Myung Moon taught that Korea is the chosen nation, selected to serve a divine mission and was "chosen by God to be the birthplace of the leading figure of the age" and was the birthplace of "Heavenly Tradition", ushering in God's kingdom.

Maasai religion

The traditional religion of the Maasai people from East Africa maintains that the Supreme God Ngai has chosen them to herd all cattle in the world, and this belief has been used to justify stealing from other ethnic groups.

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Friday, November 21, 2025

Iron Curtain

Pre-Cold War usage

During the Cold War

Building antagonism

Churchill speech

Political, economic, and military realities

Eastern Bloc

West of the Iron Curtain

Further division in the late 1940s

Emigration restrictions

Physical barrier

Soviet Union

Land border to Finland and Norway

Sea border of the Baltics

Poland

German Democratic Republic

Berlin Wall

Czechoslovakia

Hungary

Romania

Bulgaria

Fall

Monuments

Analogous terms

Paranoia

Signs and symptoms

Causes

Social and environmental

Psychological

Physical

Diagnosis

Treatment

History

Relations to violence

Paranoid social cognition

Situational antecedents

Dysphoric self-consciousness

Hypervigilance and rumination

Judgmental and cognitive biases

Criminal conspiracy

England and Wales

Common law offence

Conspiracy to defraud

Conspiracy to corrupt public morals or to outrage public decency

Statutory offence

Exceptions

Mens rea

Things said or done by one conspirator

History

Conspiracy to trespass

Conspiracy to corrupt public morals and conspiracy to outrage public decency

Conspiracy to effect a public mischief

Conspiracy to murder

Northern Ireland

Common law offence

Statutory offence

United States

Conspiracy against the United States

Conspiracy against rights

Unindicted co-conspirators

President Richard Nixon

President Donald Trump

Mueller investigation

International law

Chosen people

Judaism

Christianity

Seventh-day Adventism

Mormonism

Christian Identity

Mandaeism

Rastafari

Unification Church

Maasai religion

Hard problem of consciousness