Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountains, whilst its western boundary is defined in various ways.[1] Most definitions include the countries of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Romania while less restrictive definitions may also include some or all of the Visegrád group, the Baltic states, the Balkans and the Caucasus.[2][3] A majority of nations situated in Eastern Europe are former socialist republics of the Soviet Union.
The region represents a significant part of European culture; the main socio-cultural characteristics of Eastern Europe have historically been defined by the traditions of the Slavs and Greeks, as well as by the influence of Eastern Christianity as it developed through the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire.[4][5] Another definition was created by the Cold War, as Europe was ideologically divided by the Iron Curtain, with "Eastern Europe" being synonymous with communist states constituting the Eastern Bloc under the influence of the Soviet Union.[5][6][7][8][9][4][10][11]
The term is sometimes considered to be pejorative, through stereotypes about Eastern Europe being inferior (poorer, less developed) to Western Europe; the term Central and Eastern Europe is sometimes used instead for a more neutral grouping.[12][13][14][15][16]
Definitions
Several definitions of Eastern Europe exist in the early 21st century, but they often lack precision and may be anachronistic. These definitions are debated across cultures and among experts, even
There are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region".
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 and is harder to designate.
The
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 makes a precise definition of the western geographic boundaries of Eastern Europe and the geographical midpoint of Europe somewhat difficult.
Religious and cultural influence
After the
A large section of Eastern Europe is formed by countries with dominant Orthodox churches, like
The schism refers to the historical break of communion and theology between the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) churches. Later developments meant that the divide was no longer solely between Catholic and Orthodox churches. From the 16th century, both Western and Eastern forms of Protestantism began to emerge in Europe.[31][32] Additionally, Eastern Catholic Churches began to spread in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, following the establishment of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 1596.[32][33][34][35] However, the concept of Eastern Catholicism itself predates this.[35]
Since the Great Schism of 1054, Europe has been divided between
Cold War (1947–1991)
The
Historians and social scientists generally view such definitions as outdated or relegated.[7][6][8][9][10][4][11]
EuroVoc
Contemporary developments
Baltic states
UNESCO,[42] EuroVoc, National Geographic Society, Committee for International Cooperation in National Research in Demography, and the STW Thesaurus for Economics place the Baltic states in Northern Europe, whereas the CIA World Factbook places the region in Eastern Europe with a strong assimilation to Northern Europe. They are members of the Nordic-Baltic Eight regional cooperation forum whereas Central European countries formed their own alliance called the Visegrád Group.[43] The Northern Future Forum, the Nordic Investment Bank, the Nordic Battlegroup, the Nordic-Baltic Eight and the New Hanseatic League are other examples of Northern European cooperation that includes the three countries collectively referred to as the Baltic states.
Caucasus states
The
There are two de facto republics with limited recognition in the South Caucasus region that exist under the presence of Russian military. Both states participate in the Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations:
Former republics with limited recognition:
- Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (1991–2000) – existed in former Soviet territory until it was driven into exile during the Second Chechen War
- Republic of Artsakh (1991–2023) – breakaway state from Azerbaijan that ceased to exist by 1 January 2024[47]
Post-Soviet states
Some European republics of the former Soviet Union are considered a part of Eastern Europe:
Central Europe
The term "Central Europe" is often used by historians to designate states formerly belonging to the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg Empire, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In some media, "Central Europe" can thus partially overlap with "Eastern Europe" of the Cold War Era. The following countries are labelled Central European by some commentators, though others still consider them to be Eastern European.[49][50][51]
- Czech Republic
- Croatia (can variously be included in Southeastern[52] or Central Europe)[53]
- Hungary (most often placed in Central Europe but sometimes in Southeastern Europe)[54]
- Northeastern or Central Europe)
- Poland
- Romania (can be included in Southeastern Europe[55] or partially in Central Europe)[56]
- Serbia (most often placed in Southeastern Europe but sometimes partially included in Central Europe)[57]
- Slovakia
- Slovenia (most often placed in Central Europe but sometimes in Southeastern Europe)[58]
Southeastern Europe
Some countries in Southeast Europe can be considered part of Eastern Europe. Some of them can sometimes, albeit rarely, be characterized as belonging to Southern Europe,[4] and some may also be included in Central Europe.
In some media, "Southeast Europe" can thus partially overlap with "Eastern Europe" of the Cold War Era. The following countries are labelled Southeast European by some commentators, though others still consider them to be Eastern European.[59]
- Albania
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Southeastern Europe)
- Greece (Sometimes grouped in Southern Europe with countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal)
- Hungary (most often placed in Central Europe but sometimes in Southeastern Europe)[60][61]
- Southeastern Europe)[62]
- Montenegro
- North Macedonia
- Romania (can variously be included in Southeastern[55] or Central Europe)[56]
- Serbia (mostly placed in Southeastern but sometimes in Central Europe)[57]
- Slovenia (most often placed in Central Europe but sometimes in Southeastern Europe)[58][61]
- Turkish Straits)
Kazakhstan
Despite being frequently classified as a Central Asian country, about 4% of Kazakhstan's territory, situated west of the Ural River, geographically lies in Eastern Europe, thus technically making it a transcontinental country.[63][64]
History
It has been suggested that this section be History of Eastern Europe. (Discuss ) (November 2023) |
Classical antiquity and medieval origins
Ancient kingdoms of the region included
The earliest known distinctions between east and west in Europe originate in the history of the
The rise of the
During the Ostsiedlung, towns founded under Magdeburg rights became centers of economic development and scattered German settlements were founded all over Eastern Europe.[71] Introduction of German town law is often seen as a second great step after introduction of Christianity at the turn of the first and second millennia. The ensuing modernization of society and economy allowed the increased role played by the rulers of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary.[72]
1453 to 1918
The conquest of the
Serfdom
Serfdom was a prevalent status of agricultural workers until the 19th century. It resembled slavery in terms of lack of freedom, with the distinction that the landowners could not buy and sell serfs separately from the specific plots of land that they were permanently attached to. The system emerged in the 14th and 15th century, the same time it was declining in Western Europe.[77] The climax came in the 17th and 18th century. The early 19th century saw its decline, marked especially by the abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861. Emancipation meant that the ex-serfs paid for their freedom with annual cash payments to their former masters for decades. The system varied widely country by country, and was not as standardized as in Western Europe. Historians, until the 20th century, focused on master-serf economic and labor relations, portraying the serfs as slave-like, passive, and isolated. 20th century scholars downplayed the evils and emphasize the complexities.[78][79]
Interwar period (1919–1939)
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
Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania likewise were independent. Many of the countries were still largely rural, with little industry and only a few urban centres. 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, 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 onset of the Cold War
Russia ended its participation in the First World War in March 1918 and lost territory, as the Baltic countries and Poland became independent. 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.[82] 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.
Throughout Eastern Europe, German-speaking populations were expelled to the reduced borders of Germany in one of the largest ethnic cleansing operations in history.[83] Regions where Germans had formed the local population majority were re-settled with Polish- or Czech-speakers.
The region fell to Soviet control and Communist governments were imposed. Yugoslavia, Albania (and later Romania) had their own Communist regimes independent of Moscow. The
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.
Eastern Bloc
Eastern Europe after 1945 usually meant all the European countries liberated from Nazi Germany and then occupied by the Soviet army. It included the
The communists had a natural reservoir of popularity in that they had destroyed the Nazi invaders.[84] Their goal was to guarantee long-term working-class solidarity. The Soviet secret police, the NKVD, working in collaboration with local communists, created secret police forces using leadership trained in Moscow. This new secret police arrived to arrest political enemies according to prepared lists.[85] The national Communists then took power in a gradualist manner, backed by the Soviets in many, but not all, cases. For a while, cooperative non-Communist parties were tolerated.[86] The Communist governments nationalized private businesses, placing them under state ownership, and monitored the media and churches.[86] When dividing up government offices with coalition partners, the Communists took control of the interior ministries, which controlled the local police.[87] They also took control of the mass media, especially radio,[88] as well as the education system.[89] They confiscated and redistributed farmland,[90] and seized control of or replaced the organizations of civil society, such as church groups, sports, youth groups, trade unions, farmers' organizations, and civic organizations. In some countries, they engaged in large-scale ethnic cleansing, moving ethnic groups such as Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and Hungarians far away from where they previously lived, often with high loss of life, to relocate them within the new post-war borders of their respective countries.[91]
Under Stalin's direct instructions, these nations rejected grants from the American Marshall Plan. Instead, they joined 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. This consisted of:
- First and foremost was the People's Republic of Hungary, People's Republic of Bulgaria, and Socialist Republic of Romania.
- The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY; formed after World War II 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 either the NATO or Warsaw Pact blocs. The movement was demonstratively independent of both the Soviet Union and the Western bloc for most of the Cold War period, allowing Yugoslavia and its other members to act as a business and political mediator between the blocs.[92]
- The Socialist People's Republic of 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 away from China. Albania and especially Yugoslavia were not unanimously appended to the Eastern Bloc, as they were neutral for a large part of the Cold War period.[93]
Since 1989
With the
The economic changes were in harmony with the constitutional reforms: constitutional provisions on public finances can be identified and, in some countries, a separate chapter deals with public finances. Generally, they soon encountered the following problems: high inflation, high unemployment, low economic growth, and high government debt. By 2000 these economies were stabilized, and between 2004 and 2013 all of them joined the European Union. Most of the constitutions define directly or indirectly the economic system of the countries parallel to the democratic transition of the 1990s: free-market economy (sometimes complemented with the socially [and ecologically] oriented sector), economic development, or only economic rights are included as a ground for the economy.[94]
In the case of fiscal policy, the legislative, the executive and other state organs (Budget Council, Economic and Social Council) define and manage the budgeting. The average government debt in the countries is nearly 44%, but the deviation is great because the lowest figure is close to 10% but the highest is 97%. The trend shows that the sovereign debt ratio to GDP in most countries has been rising. Only three countries are affected by high government debt: Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia (over 70% of the GDP), while Slovakia and Poland fulfill the Maastricht requirement but only 10% below the threshold. The contribution to cover the finances for common needs is declared, the principle of just tax burden-sharing is supplemented sometimes with special aspects. Tax revenues expose typically 15–19 % of the GDP, and rates above 20% only rarely can be found.[94]
The state audit of the government budget and expenditures is an essential control element in public finances and an important part of the concept of checks and balances. The central banks are independent state institutions, which possess a monopoly on managing and implementing a state's or federation's monetary policy. Besides monetary policy, some of them even perform the supervision of the financial intermediary system. In the case of a price stability function, the inflation rate, in the examined area, relatively quickly dropped to below 5% by 2000. In monetary policy the differences are based on the euro-zone: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia use the common currency. The economies of this decade – similar to the previous one – show a moderate inflation. As a new phenomenon, a slight negative inflation (deflation) appeared in this decade in several countries (Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia), which demonstrates sensitivity regarding international developments. The majority of the constitutions determine the national currency, legal tender or monetary unit. The local currency exchange rate to the U.S. dollar shows that drastic interventions were not necessary. National wealth or assets are the property of the state or local governments and, as an exclusive property, the management and protection of them aim at serving the public interest.[94]
Demographics
See also
- Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations
- Eastern European Group
- Eastern Partnership
- Enlargement of the European Union
- Eurasian Economic Union
- Euronest Parliamentary Assembly
- European Union
- European Russia
- Eurovoc
- Future enlargement of the European Union
- Geography of the Soviet Union
- Intermarium
- List of Intangible Cultural Heritage elements in Eastern Europe
- List of political parties in Eastern Europe
- Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation
- Post-Soviet States
- European subregions
- Eurovoc#Eastern Europe
- East-Central Europe
- Central Europe
- Central and Eastern Europe
- Northern Europe
- Southeast Europe
- Western Europe
- Geographical midpoint of Europe
- Regions of Europe
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Further reading
- Applebaum, Anne. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 (2012)
- Berend, Iván T. Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe before World War II (2001)
- Connelly, John (2020). From Peoples Into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-16712-1.
- Day, Alan J. et al. A Political and Economic Dictionary of Eastern Europe (2nd ed 2007) abstract
- Donert, Celia, Emily Greble, and Jessica Wardhaugh. "New Scholarship on Central and Eastern Europe." Contemporary European History 26.3 (2017): 507-507. DOI: New Scholarship on Central and Eastern Europe
- Frankel, Benjamin. The Cold War 1945-1991. Vol. 2, Leaders and other important figures in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, and the Third World (1992), 379pp of biographies.
- Frucht, Richard, ed. Encyclopedia of Eastern Europe: From the Congress of Vienna to the Fall of Communism (2000)
- Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola, and Matthias Schündeln. "The long-term effects of communism in Eastern Europe." Journal of Economic Perspectives 34.2 (2020): 172–91. online
- Gal, Susan and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender After Socialism (Princeton University Press, 2000).
- Gorshkov, Boris B. "Serfdom: Eastern Europe." in Encyclopedia of European Social History, edited by Peter N. Stearns, (vol. 2: 2001), pp. 379–388. Online
- Ghodsee, Kristen R.Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life After Communism (Duke University Press, 2011).
- Held, Joseph, ed. The Columbia History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century (1993)
- Jeffries, Ian, and Robert Bideleux. The Balkans: A Post-Communist History (2007).
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- Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans, Vol. 1: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1983)
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- Mazower, Mark (2007). The Balkans: A Short History. Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-43196-7.
- Myant, Martin; Drahokoupil, Jan (2010). Transition Economies: Political Economy in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-470-59619-7.
- Nachtigal, Reinhard. "Current Historiography on Eastern Europe during the First World War: A Review." War & Society 41.4 (2022): 323–339. doi.org/10.1080/07292473.2022.2117908
- Ramet, Sabrina P. Eastern Europe: Politics, Culture, and Society Since 1939 (1999)
- Roskin, Michael G. The Rebirth of East Europe (4th ed. 2001); 204pp
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- Seton-Watson, Hugh. Eastern Europe Between the Wars 1918-1941 (1945) online
- Simons, Thomas W.Eastern Europe in the Postwar World (1991)
- Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2011)
- Stanković, Vlada, ed. (2016). The Balkans and the Byzantine World before and after the Captures of Constantinople, 1204 and 1453. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-1-4985-1326-5.
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- Eastern Europe Unmapped: Beyond Borders and Peripheries (1 ed.). Berghahn Books. 2020. JSTOR j.ctvw049zd.