| Eastern Europe is, by convention, that part of Europe from the Ural and Caucasus mountains in
the East to an arbitrarily chosen boundary in the West. Usually some or all of the countries adjacent to Russia's western border
are included. As is also true of continents, regions are only social constructs and should not be understood as physical features
defined by abstract, neutral criteria.
History
As a term, the origins of "Eastern Europe" are fairly recent. For many years Europe was divided on a North-South axis, with
the southern Mediterranean states having much in common, and the northern
Atlantic Ocean and Baltic
Sea bordering states also having much in common. The term "Eastern Europe" first arose in the 18th and 19th centuries, and was used to describe
an area that was falling behind the rest of Europe economically. It was seen as a region where serfdom and reactionary autocratic governments persisted long
after those things faded in the west. It was always a very vague notion, however, and many countries in the region did not fit
the stereotypical view.
Much of Eastern Europe has ties to both the east and west. While all of the countries were heavily influenced by Roman Catholic or Protestant
Christianity and have very close historical and cultural ties to Germany, Italy, France or Scandinavia (e.g. the Hanseatic league in the Baltics), many countries also
had relations with the East. Russia was under the control of the Mongols for centuries and inherited political and social conventions from them. Further south the Ottoman Empire and Islam had a very
strong influence. The nations of the Balkans as well as Hungary and Romania were all at one time controlled by the
Turks.
The term is recently used in the Western countries to refer to
all European countries that were previously under communist regimes,
the so-called Eastern Bloc. The concept of Eastern Europe was greatly
strengthened by the domination of the region by Communism and more specifically
the Soviet Union after the Second World War. The idea of an "Iron Curtain"
separating Eastern and Western Europe was dominant throughout the Cold War. This
strict dualism causes problems, however, as it fails to account for complexities of the region. For instance, communist countries
such as Yugoslavia
and Albania refused to be controlled by the Kremlin, which however didn't make much difference to anti-Communists in the west.
Furthermore, a view that Europe is divided stricly into the West and the East is considered pejorative by the population of
the nominally eastern countries, especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall
and Communism in Europe overall. The Europeans from eastern countries do not classify themselves as "East Europeans" but prefer
to include themselves in other groups, associating themselves with Central
Europe, with Northern Europe, or with Southern Europe. Peoples like Estonians and Poles may feel the lable stigmatizing in comparison with countries that successfully have asserted their belonging to the
West despite their Eastern location — and history as parts of Eastern Orthodoxy (Greece) or Imperial Russia (Finland).
Eastern Europe
The countries meant by the term Eastern Europe were all formerly within the Soviet Union:
Southeastern Europe/Balkan Peninsula
Commonly this definition is expanded to include these other previously communist countries:
Greece and the European part of Turkey are
usually not included, old NATO members as they are.
Central Europe
The previously communist countries of Central Europe became included
in the era of the Cold War:
Prior to the German reunification, East Germany was often counted to Eastern Europe.
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