Winston churchill first spoke of the iron curtain in 1946 in his iron curtain speech. The iron curtain was an imaginary boundary that divided europe into two from the end of ww2 in 1946 untill the end of the cold war in 1991. The term symbolized efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union. On either side of the Iron Curtain, states developed their own international economic and military alliances.