Iron Curtain

Countries behind Iron Curtain are shaded red. Yugoslavia, although communist-run, was independent of the Eastern Bloc. Similarly, communist Albania broke with the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, aligning itself with the People's Republic of China after the Sino-Soviet split.

The Iron Curtain is a word related to the Cold War. It means the border between the states that were members of the Warsaw Pact (in Eastern Europe), and those that were not (then called The West).

This border was between East Germany and West Germany, between Czechoslovakia and Austria, and between Hungary and Austria.

The idea of the Iron Curtain was referring to the separation of the communist Europe compared to the democratic west, it was the idea that what was happening the satellite states and in Russia was secret to the rest of the world. Satellite states refers to a country being not actively controlled by another, in this case Russia was controlling countries such as Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and others which were previously controlled by Germany in WW2.

The idea of the Iron Curtain was first made public by Winston Churchill, a famous British Prime minister during WW2, invited to speak at a selection of American University's by Harry S. Truman (the American president at the time). Churchill's speech was seen by Khrushchev; president of the USSR from 1958 till 1964 as a declaration of war as Churchill urged the imperialistic forces of the world to fight the soviet union.