What was fall of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe?

Most people think of the fall of the Iron Curtain as the breaking of the Berlin wall. The original term came from a famous quote of Churchill, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent", and it came to represent the split between Eastern Europe dominated by Soviet influence during the cold war, and Western Europe influenced by US super power. The fall of the Berlin wall, represented the end of this split, and to many people and historians it represents the end of the cold war, although it took a few years for the remains of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, to finally fall.