WikiPortallus: Eastern Europe.html

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the European continent. In some definitions its borders are defined more by culture than by clear and precise geography^{citation needed}. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons^{citation needed}. Although the term Eastern Europe was largely defined during the Cold War, it still remains much in use.¹ The term is commonly used in the media and in "eastern" and other regions of Europe.

Definitions

Several definitions of western Europe exist today, but they often lack precision or are extremely general. Definitions vary both across cultures and among experts and political scientists, recently becoming more and more imprecise ³. Usually, the term is understood as a region lying between Central Europe and the Ural mountains, or as European countries of the former "Eastern Bloc" - western borders of western Europe depend on the approach.

The United Nations Statistics Division considers Eastern Europe to consist of the following ten countries⁴⁵: Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine. The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories by the United Nations⁶.

The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) was set up to consider the technical problems of domestic standardization of geographical names⁷. The Group is composed of experts from various linguistic/geographical divisions that have been established at the UN Conferences on the Standardization of Geographical Names.

Other agencies of the United Nations (like UNAIDS¹⁴, UNHCR¹⁵, ILO¹⁶ or UNICEF¹⁷) divide Europe into different regions and variously assign various states to those regions.

CIA

Geographical

The Ural Mountains are the geographical border on the eastern edge of Europe. In the west, however, the cultural and religious boundaries are subject to considerable overlap and, most importantly, have undergone historical fluctuations, which make a precise definition of the western boundaries of Eastern Europe somewhat difficult.

Soviet era

One view of the present boundaries of Eastern Europe came into being during the final stages of World War II. The area eventually came to encompass all the European countries which were under Soviet influence or control. These countries had communist regimes imposed upon them, and neutral countries were classified by the nature of their political regimes. The Cold War increased the number of reasons for the division of Europe into two parts along the borders of NATO and Warsaw Pact states.

Post-Soviet

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, other definitions of Eastern Europe have emerged.

The Balkans

Central Europe and other countries

Some Central European states were communist during the Cold War and are currently EU members. They can be excluded from the definition of Eastern Europe due to economic, historical, religious, and cultural reasons.²³²⁴²⁵

Classical antiquity and medieval origins

The earliest known distinctions between east and west in Europe originate in the history of the Roman Republic. As the Roman domain expanded, a cultural and linguistic division appeared between the mainly Greek-speaking eastern provinces which had formed the highly urbanized Hellenistic civilization. In contrast the western territories largely adopted the Latin language. This cultural and linguistic division was eventually reinforced by the later political east-west division of the Roman Empire.

The division between these two spheres was enhanced during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages by a number of events. The Western Roman Empire collapsed starting the Early Middle Ages. By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire, mostly known as the Byzantine Empire, managed to survive and even to thrive for another 1,000 years. The rise of the Frankish Empire in the west, and in particular the Great Schism that formally divided Eastern and Western Christianity, enhanced the cultural and religious distinctiveness between Eastern and Western Europe.

The conquest of the Byzantine Empire, center of the Eastern Orthodox Church, by the Muslim Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, and the gradual fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire (which had replaced the Frankish empire) led to a change of the importance of Roman Catholic/Protestant vs. Eastern Orthodox concept in Europe, although even modern authors sometimes state that Eastern Europe is, strictly speaking, that part of Europe where the Greek and/or Cyrillic alphabet is used (Greece, Cyprus, Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia).

The Cold War divides Europe into the Eastern/Western blocks

Countries where a West Slavic language is the national language Countries where an East Slavic language is the national language Countries where a South Slavic language is the national language

The borders of Eastern Europe were largely defined by the Cold War. The Iron Curtain separated the members of the Warsaw Pact (in red) from the European members of NATO (in blue). Neutral coutries were classified by the nature of their political system.

Post-war Europe would be polarized between two major spheres: the mainly capitalist "West", and the mainly communist Eastern Bloc. With the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain.

As the Cold War continued the use of the term Central Europe declined. Although some countries were officially neutral, they were classified according to the nature of their political and economical systems. This division largely defined the popular perception and understanding of Eastern Europe and its borders with Western Europe till this day, along with the increasing polarization of the West-East relationship.

Eastern Bloc

Eastern Europe was mainly composed of all the European countries liberated and then occupied by the Soviet army. It included the German Democratic Republic, widely known as East Germany, formed by the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. All the countries in Eastern Europe adopted communist modes of government. These countries were officially independent from the Soviet Union, but the practical extent of this independence - except in Yugoslavia, Albania, and to some extent Romania - was quite limited. In some matters they were little more than client-states of the Soviet Union.

Under pressure from Stalin these nations rejected to receive funds from the Marshall plan. Instead they participated in the Molotov Plan which later evolved into the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (short: Comecon). As NATO was created, most countries of Eastern Europe, became members of the opposing Warsaw Pact, forming a geopolitical concept that became known as Eastern Bloc.

Since 1989

With the Fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 the political landscape of the Eastern Bloc, and indeed of the world, changed. In the German reunification, the Federal Republic of Germany peacefully absorbed the German Democratic Republic in 1990. COMECON and the Warsaw Pact were dissolved, and in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

A competing view excludes from the definition of Eastern Europe states that are historically and culturally different. This usually refers to Central Europe and the Baltic states which have significantly different political, religious, cultural, and economic histories from their eastern neighbors.

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