Vintage photos show what life looked like behind the Iron Curtain

• Before the end of the Cold War, the Iron Curtain cut off the Soviet Union from the rest of Europe.
• Life there was restricted, but as its leaders changed, Western influence began to reach residents.
• Still, some older generations held on to the communist structure and devotion to the state.

The Iron Curtain was a figurative and ideological wall — and eventually a physical one — that separated the Soviet Union from western Europe after World War II.