Eastern Europe

Geographic features of Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of the European continent. There is no consensus on the precise area it covers, partly because the term has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic connotations. There are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region".[1] A related United Nations paper adds that "every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct".[2]

One definition describes Eastern Europe as a cultural entity: the region lying in Europe with the main characteristics consisting of Byzantine, Eastern Orthodox, and some Ottoman culture influences.[3][4] Another definition was created during the Cold War and used more or less synonymously with the term Eastern Bloc. A similar definition names the formerly communist European states outside the Soviet Union as Eastern Europe.[4] Some historians and social scientists view such definitions as outdated or relegated,[1][5][6][7][8] but they are still sometimes used for statistical purposes.[3][9][10]

Definitions

The European regional grouping according to The World Factbook:
  Eastern Europe
Picture shows also Northern Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe, Southern Europe, Southeastern Europe, Southwestern Europe, and other regions

Several other definitions of Eastern Europe exist today, but they often lack precision, are too general or outdated. These definitions vary both across cultures and among experts, even political scientists,[11] as the term has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic connotations.

There are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region".[1] A related United Nations paper adds that "every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct".[2]

Geographical

While the eastern geographical boundaries of Europe are well defined, the boundary between Eastern and Western Europe is not geographical but historical, religious and cultural.

The Ural Mountains, Ural River, and the Caucasus Mountains are the geographical land border of the eastern edge of Europe.

In the west, however, the historical and cultural boundaries of "Eastern Europe" are subject to some overlap and, most importantly, have undergone historical fluctuations, which make a precise definition of the western geographic boundaries of Eastern Europe and the geographical midpoint of Europe somewhat difficult.

Religious

Eastern and Western Christianity in 1054

The East–West Schism which began in the 11th century and lasts until this very day divided Christianity in Europe, and consequently the world, into Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity.

Western Europe according to this point of view is formed by countries with dominant Roman Catholic and Protestant churches (including Central European countries like Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia).

Eastern Europe is formed by countries with dominant Eastern Orthodox churches, like Belarus, Bulgaria, Greece, Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine for instance.

The schism is the break of communion and theology between what are now the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Roman Catholic from 11th century, as well as from the 16th century also Protestant) churches. This division dominated Europe for centuries, in opposition to the rather short lived Cold War division of 4 decades.

Since the Great Schism of 1054, Europe has been divided between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in the West, and the Eastern Orthodox Christian (many times incorrectly labeled "Greek Orthodox") churches in the east. Due to this religious cleavage, Eastern Orthodox countries are often associated with Eastern Europe. A cleavage of this sort is, however, often problematic; for example, Greece is overwhelmingly Orthodox, but is very rarely included in "Eastern Europe", for a variety of reasons, the most prominement being that Greece's history for the most part was more so influenced by Mediterannean cultures and contact.[15]

European Union

The official European Union website Europa classifies several European countries as Central European: Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia.[16][17][18][19][20]

Eurovoc, a multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union, provides a somewhat different view with entries for "23 EU languages"[21] (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish), plus the languages of candidate countries (Albanian, Macedonian and Serbian). Of these, those in italics are classified as "Eastern Europe" in this source, similar to the Cold War division of Europe.[22]

Cold War

Regions used for statistical processing purposes by the United Nations Statistics Division.[5][6][1][7][8][3][10]

Another definition was used during the 40 years of Cold War between 1947 and 1989, and was more or less synonymous with the term Eastern Bloc. A similar definition names the formerly communist European states outside the Soviet Union as Eastern Europe.[4]

The fall of the Iron Curtain brought the end of the East–West division in Europe,[23] but this geopolitical concept is sometimes still used for quick reference by the media or sometimes for statistical purposes.[24]

Historians and social scientists generally view such definitions as outdated or relegated.[5][6][1][7][8][9][3][10]

Contemporary developments

Baltic states

  Current EU members
  EU members in process of withdrawing: United Kingdom
  Official EU candidates: Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Turkey, and Serbia
  States that froze or withdrew their EU applications: Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland
  States officially recognized as eligible to apply for EU membership: Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.[25]

Since 1989, Eastern Bloc states gradually joined NATO, a Western military alliance.

  Current members
  Candidate countries
  Promised membership
  Membership not a goal
  Undeclared intent

EuroVoc, National Geographic Society, Committee for International Cooperation in National Research in Demography, STW Thesaurus for Economics and most other modern sources place the Baltic states in Northern Europe whereas the CIA World Factbook and UNESCO place the region in Eastern Europe with a strong assimilation to Northern Europe. The Baltic states have seats in the Nordic Council as observer states. They also are members of the Nordic-Baltic Eight whereas Central European countries formed their own alliance called the Visegrád Group.[26] The Northern Future Forum, the Nordic Investment Bank and Nordic Battlegroup are other examples of Northern European cooperation that includes the three Baltic states that make up the Baltic Assembly.

Caucasus

The Caucasus nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia are included in definitions or histories of Eastern Europe. They are located in the transition zone of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. They participate in the European Union's Eastern Partnership program, the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, and are members of the Council of Europe, which specifies that all three have political and cultural connections to Europe. In January 2002, the European Parliament noted that Armenia and Georgia may enter the EU in the future. [27] However, Georgia is currently the only Caucasus nation actively seeking NATO and EU membership.

The Caucasus nations differ somewhat with Christian Georgia and Armenia culturally oriented more toward Eastern Europe and with Shiite Muslim Azerbaijan culturally oriented more toward the Asian Middle East.

There are three de-facto independent Republics with limited recognition in the Caucasus region. All three states participate in the Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations:

Other former Soviet states

Several other former Soviet republics may be considered part of Eastern Europe

Disputed states:

Central Europe

The term "Central Europe" is often used by historians to designate states formerly belonging to the Holy Roman Empire or the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, including parts of modern-day Belarus and Ukraine.

In some media, "Central Europe" can thus partially overlap with "Eastern Europe" of the Cold War Era. The following countries are labeled Central European by some commentators, though others still consider them to be Eastern European.[28][29][30]

Southeastern Europe

Most Southeastern European states did not belong to the Eastern Bloc (except Bulgaria, Romania, and for a brief time, Albania) although some of them were represented in the Cominform. Only some of them can be included in the classical former political definition of Eastern Europe. Some can be considered part of Southern Europe.[3] However, this is rare and most can be characterized as belonging to Southeast Europe, but some of them may also be included in Central Europe (such as Slovenia) or Eastern Europe.[37]

Partially recognized states:

History

Classical antiquity and medieval origins

Ancient kingdoms of the region included Orontid Armenia Albania, Colchis and Iberia. These kingdoms were either from the start, or later on incorporated into various Iranian empires, including the Achaemenid Persian, Parthian, and Sassanid Persian Empires.[44] Parts of the Balkans and more northern areas were ruled by the Achaemenid Persians as well, including Thrace, Paeonia, Macedon, and most of the Black Sea coastal regions of Romania, Ukraine, and Russia.[45][46] Owing to the rivalry between Parthian Iran and Rome, and later Byzantium and the Sassanid Persians, the former would invade the region several times, although it was never able to hold the region, unlike the Sassanids who ruled over most of the Caucasus during their entire rule.[47]

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. Much of Eastern Europe was invaded and occupied by the Mongols.

The conquest of the Byzantine Empire, center of the Eastern Orthodox Church, by the 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. Armour points out that the Cyrillic alphabet use is not a strict determinant for Eastern Europe, where from Croatia to Poland and everywhere in between, the Latin alphabet is used.[48] Greece's status as the cradle of Western civilization and an integral part of the Western world in the political, cultural and economic spheres has led to it being nearly always classified as belonging not to Eastern, but to Southern or Western Europe.[49] During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Eastern Europe enjoyed a relative high standard of living. This period is also called the east-central European golden age of around 1600.[50]

Interwar years

A major result of the First World War was the breakup of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires, as well as partial losses to the German Empire. A surge of ethnic nationalism created a series of new states in Eastern Europe, validated by the Versailles Treaty of 1919. Poland was reconstituted after the partitions of the 1790s had divided it between Germany, Austria, and Russia. New countries included Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine (which was soon absorbed by the Soviet Union), Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Austria and Hungary had much reduced boundaries. Romania, Bulgaria and Albania likewise were independent. Many of the countries were still largely rural, with little industry and only a few urban centers. Nationalism was the dominant force but most of the countries had ethnic or religious minorities who felt threatened by majority elements. Nearly all became democratic in the 1920s, but all of them (except Czechoslovakia and Finland) gave up democracy during the depression years of the 1930s, in favor of autocratic or strong-man or single party states. The new states were unable to form stable military alliances, and one by one were too weak to stand up against Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, which took them over between 1938 and 1945.

World War II and the onset of the Cold War

Pre-1989 division between the "West" (grey) and "Eastern Bloc" (orange) superimposed on current borders:
  Russia (the former RSFSR)
  Other countries formerly part of the USSR
  Members of the Warsaw Pact
  Other former Communist states not aligned with Moscow

Russia, defeated in the First World War, lost territory as the Baltics and Poland made good their independence. The region was the main battlefield in the Second World War (1939–45), with German and Soviet armies sweeping back and forth, with millions of Jews killed by the Nazis, and millions of others killed by disease, starvation, and military action, or executed after being deemed as politically dangerous.[51] During the final stages of World War II the future of Eastern Europe was decided by the overwhelming power of the Soviet Red Army, as it swept the Germans aside. It did not reach Yugoslavia and Albania however. Finland was free but forced to be neutral in the upcoming Cold War. The region fell to Soviet control and Communist governments were imposed. Yugoslavia and Albania had their own Communist regimes. The Eastern Bloc with the onset of the Cold War in 1947 was mostly behind the Western European countries in economic rebuilding and progress. Winston Churchill, in his famous "Sinews of Peace" address of March 5, 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, stressed the geopolitical impact of the "iron curtain":

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia.
The political borders of Eastern Europe were largely defined by the Cold War from the end of World War II to 1989. The Iron Curtain separated the members of the Warsaw Pact (in red) from the European members of NATO (in blue).

Eastern Bloc during the Cold War to 1989

The Soviet secret police, the NKVD, working in collaboration with local communists, created secret police forces using leadership trained in Moscow. As soon as the Red Army had expelled the Germans, this new secret police arrived to arrest political enemies according to prepared lists. The national Communists then took power in a normally gradualist manner, backed by the Soviets in many, but not all, cases. They took control of the Interior Ministries, which controlled the local police. They confiscated and redistributed farmland. Next the Soviets and their agents took control of the mass media, especially radio, as well as the education system. Third the communists seized control of or replaced the organizations of civil society, such as church groups, sports, youth groups, trade unions, farmers organizations, and civic organizations. Finally they engaged in large scale ethnic cleansing, moving ethnic minorities far away, often with high loss of life. After a year or two, the communists took control of private businesses and monitored the media and churches. For a while, cooperative non-Communist parties were tolerated. The communists had a natural reservoir of popularity in that they had destroyed Hitler and the Nazi invaders. Their goal was to guarantee long-term working-class solidarity.[52][53] Eastern Europe after 1945 usually meant all the European countries liberated and then occupied by the Soviet army. It included the German Democratic Republic (also known as East Germany), formed by the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. All the countries in Eastern Europe adopted communist modes of control. 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. Under pressure from Stalin these nations rejected grants from the American Marshall plan. Instead they participated in the Molotov Plan which later evolved into the Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance). When NATO was created in 1949, most countries of Eastern Europe became members of the opposing Warsaw Pact, forming a geopolitical concept that became known as the Eastern Bloc.

Since 1989

2004-2013 EU enlargements
  existing members
  new members in 2004

 Cyprus
 Czech Republic
 Estonia
 Hungary
 Latvia
 Lithuania
 Malta
 Poland
 Slovakia
 Slovenia
  existing members
  new members in 2007

 Bulgaria
 Romania
  existing members
  new members in 2013

 Croatia

With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the political landscape of the Eastern Bloc, and indeed the world, changed. In the German reunification, the Federal Republic of Germany peacefully absorbed the German Democratic Republic in 1990. In 1991, COMECON, the Warsaw Pact, and the Soviet Union were dissolved. Many European nations which had been part of the Soviet Union regained their independence (Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, as well as the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia). Czechoslovakia peacefully separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Many countries of this region joined the European Union, namely Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.

See also

European geography:

Notes

    1. 1 2 3 4 5 "The Balkans", Global Perspectives: A Remote Sensing and World Issues Site. Wheeling Jesuit University/Center for Educational Technologies, 1999–2002.
    2. 1 2 A Subdivision of Europe into Larger Regions by Cultural Criteria prepared by Peter Jordan, the framework of the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (StAGN), Vienna, Austria, 2006
    3. 1 2 3 4 5 "United Nations Statistics Division- Standard Country and Area Codes Classifications (M49)-Geographic Regions".
    4. 1 2 3 Ramet, Sabrina P. (1998). Eastern Europe: politics, culture, and society since 1939. Indiana University Press. p. 15. ISBN 0253212561. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
    5. 1 2 3 "Regions, Regionalism, Eastern Europe by Steven Cassedy". New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Charles Scribner's Sons. 2005. Retrieved 2010-01-31.
    6. 1 2 3 "“Eastern Europe” Wrongly labelled". economist.com.
    7. 1 2 3 Central Europe Review: Re-Viewing Central Europe By Sean Hanley, Kazi Stastna and Andrew Stroehlein, 1999
    8. 1 2 3 Frank H. Aarebrot (14 May 2014). The handbook of political change in Eastern Europe. Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 1–. ISBN 978-1-78195-429-4.
    9. 1 2 Archived April 3, 2015, at the Wayback Machine.. Eurovoc.europa.eu. Retrieved on 2015-03-04.
    10. 1 2 3 Population Division, DESA, United Nations: World Population Ageing 1950-2050
    11. ↑ Drake, Miriam A. (2005) Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, CRC Press
    12. ↑ "Atlas of the Historical Geography of the Holy Land". Rbedrosian.com. Archived from the original on 10 June 2013. Retrieved 23 February 2013.
    13. ↑ "home.comcast.net". Archived from the original on February 13, 2013. Retrieved 23 February 2013.
    14. ↑ Dragan Brujić (2005). "Vodič kroz svet Vizantije (Guide to the Byzantine World)". Beograd. p. 51.
    15. ↑ Peter John, Local Governance in Western Europe, University of Manchester, 2001, ISBN 9780761956372
    16. ↑ "EUROPA - Hungary in the EU". 5 November 2010.
    17. ↑ "EUROPA - Czech Republic in the EU". 5 November 2010.
    18. ↑ "EUROPA - Poland in the EU". 5 November 2010.
    19. ↑ "EUROPA - Slovakia in the EU". 5 November 2010.
    20. ↑ "EUROPA - Slovenia in the EU". 2016-02-17. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
    21. ↑ "EuroVoc". European Union. Retrieved 2016-01-30.
    22. ↑ "EuroVoc – 7206 Europe". European Union. Retrieved 2016-12-11.
    23. ↑ V. Martynov, The End of East-West Division But Not the End of History, UN Chronicle, 2000 (available online)
    24. ↑ "Migrant workers: What we know". BBC News. 2007-08-21.
    25. ↑ European Parliament, European Parliament Resolution 2014/2717(RSP), 17 July 2014: “...pursuant to Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – like any other European state – have a European perspective and may apply to become members of the Union...”
    26. ↑ http://www.visegradgroup.eu/about About the Visegrad Group
    27. ↑ (PDF) http://www.libertas-institut.com/de/PDF/Armenia%20ante%20portas.pdf Missing or empty |title= (help)
    28. ↑ Wallace, W. The Transformation of Western Europe London, Pinter, 1990
    29. ↑ Huntington, Samuel The Clash of Civilizations Simon & Schuster, 1996
    30. ↑ Johnson, Lonnie Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbours, Friends Oxford University Press, USA, 2001
    31. ↑ Lonnie Johnson, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends, Oxford University Pres
    32. ↑ "In the Heavy Shadow of the Ukraine/Russia Crisis, page 10" (PDF). European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. September 2014. Retrieved 15 January 2015.
    33. ↑ "UNHCR in Central Europe". UNCHR. Archived from the original on 2013-08-26.
    34. ↑ "Central European Green Corridors - Fast charging cross-border infrastructure for electric vehicles, connecting Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Germany and Croatia" (PDF). Central European Green Corridors. October 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-04-02.
    35. ↑ "Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE Homepage". Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE.
    36. ↑ Armstrong, Werwick. Anderson, James (2007). "Borders in Central Europe: From Conflict to Cooperation". Geopolitics of European Union Enlargement: The Fortress Empire. Routledge. p. 165. ISBN 978-1-134-30132-4.
    37. ↑ Bideleux and Jeffries (1998) A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change
    38. ↑ inter alia, Peter John, Local Governance in Western Europe, 2001
    39. ↑ Greek Ministry of Tourism Travel Guide, General Information Archived 2010-03-21 at the Wayback Machine.
    40. ↑ "Greece Location - Geography". indexmundi.com. Retrieved 2014-12-07.
    41. ↑ "UNdata | country profile | Greece". data.un.org. Retrieved 2014-12-07.
    42. ↑ Energy Statistics for the U.S. Government Archived February 5, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
    43. ↑ "7 Invitees - Romania".
    44. ↑ Rapp, Stephen H. (2003), Studies In Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts And Eurasian Contexts, pp. 292-294. Peeters Bvba ISBN 90-429-1318-5.
    45. ↑ The Oxford Classical Dictionary by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth,ISBN 0-19-860641-9,"page 1515,"The Thracians were subdued by the Persians by 516"
    46. ↑ "A Companion to Ancient Macedonia". Retrieved 22 April 2015.
    47. ↑ "An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires". Retrieved 22 April 2015.
    48. ↑ Armour, Ian D. 2013. A History of Eastern Europe 1740–1918: Empires, Nations and Modernisation. London: Bloomsbury Academic. p. 23. ISBN 978-1849664882
    49. ↑ See, inter alia, Norman Davies, Europe: a History, 2010, Eve Johansson, Official Publications of Western Europe, Volume 1, 1984, Thomas Greer and Gavin Lewis, A Brief History of the Western World, 2004
    50. ↑ Baten, Jörg (2016). A History of the Global Economy. From 1500 to the Present. Cambridge University Press. p. 46. ISBN 9781107507180.
    51. ↑ Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2011) excerpt and text search
    52. ↑ Anne Applebaum (2012). Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956. Random House Digital, Inc. pp. 31–33. ISBN 9780385536431.
    53. ↑ Also Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 introduction, pp xxix–xxxi online at Amazon.com

    Further reading

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    Coordinates: 50°N 30°E / 50°N 30°E / 50; 30

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