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Eastern Europe

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. 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. Although the term Eastern Europe was largely defined during the Cold War, it still remains much in use. The term is commonly used in the media and in everyday use both in "eastern" and other regions of Europe.

Definitions

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 . 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: 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 Nations.

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

Eastern Europe, Northern and Central Asia Division: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Russian Federation, Ukraine and three countries of Central Asia.
East Central and South-East Europe Division:Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine.
Romano-Hellenic Division: Fourteen countries including Belgium, Cyprus, France, Greece, Holy See, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland,Romania, Moldova and Turkey.
Baltic Division: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

Other agencies of the United Nations (like UNAIDS, UNHCR, ILO or UNICEF) divide Europe into different regions and variously assign various states to those regions.

CIA

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

Central Europe: Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia
Eastern Europe: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine
Southeastern Europe: Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Montenegro, Serbia and part of Turkey
Russia is defined as a transcontinental country.

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

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

The Balkans

Some Balkan states can be considered 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 during the Cold War but currently EU members. They are often excluded from the definition of Eastern Europe due to economic, historical, religious, and cultural reasons.

Other countries:

often included in Eastern Europe, currently perceived as Southeastern European or Central European.
was sometimes included in Eastern Europe but only in the context of its inclusion in the Warsaw Pact.
is usually considered part of Southern Europe, but is sometimes classified as part of Eastern or Southeastern Europe.
is generally considered part of Eastern Europe, but is sometimes included in Southeastern Europe
is a member of the European Union and is therefore culturally and by default considered a part of Southeastern Europe, though it is technically situated in Southwestern Asia.

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 blocs

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 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.

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.

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 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, the countries of Eastern Europe, except Yugoslavia, became members of the opposing Warsaw Pact.

First and foremost was the Soviet Union (which by itself included Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, etc). Other countries dominated by the Soviet Union were the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia (which later separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Hungary, and Bulgaria.

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.