The 'Iron Curtain' speech by Churchill, 1946
Stalin had started to promote communism in the Eastern European countries by early 1946. With Soviet backing, the Communist won elections easily and one-party dictatorships were set up in Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. These became Soviet satellites. At first, Yugoslavia was also one of the satellites. However, Yugoslavia left the Soviet bloc in 1948. Her leader Marshal Josef Tito was able to maintain in Yugoslavia a communist government that was independent of Moscow.
The tern ' Iron Curtain' was first used in Churchill's speech on 5 March 1946. He used it to describe the barrier set up by the Soviet Union along the borders of her satellites in Eastern Europe.