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Eastern Europe is a general term that refers 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 everyday use both in "eastern" and other regions of Europe.

Contents

Definitions

Eastern Europe as defined by the United Nations' Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use (marked red):      Northern Europe      Western Europe      Eastern Europe      Southern Europe
Eastern Europe as defined by the United Nations' Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use (marked red):      Northern Europe      Western Europe      Eastern Europe      Southern Europe
According to the members of The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names:      Eastern Europe, Northern and Central Asia Division      East Central and South-East Europe Division
According to the members of The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names[2]:      Eastern Europe, Northern and Central Asia Division      East Central and South-East Europe Division
Pre-1989 division between the "West" (grey) and "Eastern Bloc" (orange) superimposed on current borders: Russia (dark orange), other countries formerly part of the USSR (medium orange),members of the Warsaw pact (light orange), and other former Communist regimes not aligned with Moscow (lightest orange).
Pre-1989 division between the "West" (grey) and "Eastern Bloc" (orange) superimposed on current borders: Russia (dark orange), other countries formerly part of the USSR (medium orange),members of the Warsaw pact (light orange), and other former Communist regimes not aligned with Moscow (lightest orange).
CIA World Factbook classification:      Eastern Europe      Southeastern Europe      Transcontinental
CIA World Factbook classification:      Eastern Europe      Southeastern Europe      Transcontinental

Several definitions of Eastern 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 Eastern Europe depend on the approach.

UN

The United Nations Statistics Division considers Eastern Europe to consist of the following ten countries[4][5]: Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia (a transcontinental country), 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 Nations[6].

The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) was set up to consider the technical problems of domestic standardization of geographical names[7]. 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.

CIA

The CIA World Factbook[14] describes the following countries as located in:

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.

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

Post-Soviet

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

The Baltic states were Soviet republics but currently EU members that can be included in definitions of both Eastern and Northern Europe.[16][17]

Kazakhstan is considered part of Central Asia, with a small portion west of the Urals in Eastern Europe.[18]

The Balkans

Some Balkan states can be considered both Eastern[citation needed] and Southern European. Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia are currently EU members, Croatia, Republic of Macedonia and Turkey are currently official candidate countries, Serbia, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro are officially recognised as potential candidates.

Central Europe and other countries

Some Central European states were communist states during the Cold War but currently EU members often excluded from the definition of Eastern Europe due to economic, historical, religious, and cultural reasons.[19][20][21]

Other countries:

Classical antiquity and medieval origins

Europe divided by religion.
Europe divided by religion.

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 blocs

     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
     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.
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.

During the final stages of WWII the future of Europe was decided between the Allies at the 1945 Yalta Conference, between the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill, the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin.

Post-war Europe would be divided into two major spheres: the "West" mainly influenced by the USA, and the Eastern Bloc dominated by the Soviet Union. With the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain.

This term had been used during World War II by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and later Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk in the last days of the war; however, its use was hugely popularised by Winston Churchill, who used it in his famous "Sinews of Peace" address March 5, 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri:

“ 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; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow. ”

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.

A divided Europe

Eastern Europe

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 Marshal plan. Instead they participated in the Molotov Plan which later evolved into the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (short: Comecon). As NATO was created, the countries of Eastern Europe, except Yugoslavia, became members of the opposing Warsaw Pact.

  • The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (formed after WWII and before its later dismemberment) was not a member of the Warsaw Pact. It was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization created in an attempt to avoid being assigned to any of the two blocs. It was demonstratively independent from the Soviet Union for most of the Cold War period.
  • Albania broke with the Soviet Union in the early 1960s as a result of the Sino-Soviet split, aligning itself instead with China. Albania formally left the Warsaw pact in September 1968, after the suppression of the Prague spring. When China established diplomatic relations with the United States in 1978, Albania also broke with China.

Since 1989

With the Fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 the political landscape of Eastern Europe, 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.

Many European nations which had been part of the Soviet Union regained their independence. Czechoslovakia peacefully separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.

Yugoslavia fell apart, creating new nations: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and the Republic of Macedonia (see Breakup of Yugoslavia).

Many countries of this region joined the European Union, namely the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Romania.

The term Central Europe reappeared.

See also

References and notes

  1. ^ Q&A: US missile defence BBC
  2. ^ United Nations Statistics Division - Geographical Names and Information Systems
  3. ^ Drake, Miriam A. (2005) Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, CRC Press
  4. ^ United Nations Statistics Division- Standard Country and Area Codes Classifications (M49)
  5. ^ World Population Prospects Population Database
  6. ^ United Nations Statistics Division- Standard Country and Area Codes Classifications (M49)
  7. ^ United Nations Statistics Division - Geographical Names and Information Systems
  8. ^ United Nations Statistics Division - Geographical Names and Information Systems
  9. ^ Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Uzbekistan.
  10. ^ United Nations Statistics Division - Geographical Names and Information Systems
  11. ^ United Nations Statistics Division - Geographical Names and Information Systems
  12. ^ Other countries in this division are Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Greece, Holy See, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.
  13. ^ United Nations Statistics Division - Geographical Names and Information Systems
  14. ^ The CIA World Factbook
  15. ^ In the geography section Estonia is described as located in Eastern Europe, but in the economy section as Central European
  16. ^ Wallace, W. The Transformation of Western Europe London, Pinter, 1990
  17. ^ Huntington, Samuel The Clash of Civilizations" Simon & Shuster 1996
  18. ^ Kazakhstan - MSN Encarta
  19. ^ Wallace, W. The Transformation of Western Europe London, Pinter, 1990
  20. ^ Huntington, Samuel The Clash of Civilizations" Simon & Shuster 1996
  21. ^ Johnson, Lonnie Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends Oxford University Press, USA, 2001
  22. ^ CIA World Factbook
  23. ^ Energy Statistics for the U.S. Government
  24. ^ NATO 2004 information on the invited countries
v • d • e
Regions of the world
See also Continents of the world
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Europe"

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