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'Eastern Europe' is the eastern region of Europe variably defined. It can denote:
# The region lying between the variously and vaguely defined areas of Central Europe and Russia. This contemporary delineation is more commonly used to identify the region since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact
#A diverse area of land stretching from east to west as follows:
::Its eastern limit is the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, and Caspian Sea within Russia.
::Its western limit is the boundary between the European Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States (sometimes excluding Kaliningrad).
Politically, "Eastern Europe" may in fact cover all of northeastern Eurasia, since Russia is one single transcontinental geopolitical entity. Cyprus is also frequently taken to be a European state, although geographically it is in Asia. The same approach is also sometimes taken with the post-Soviet states of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus.
The boundaries of Eastern Europe can be subject to considerable overlap and fluctuation depending on the context they are used in, which makes differentiation difficult. As is also true of continents, regions are only social constructs and should not be understood as physical features defined by abstract, neutral criteria.
In recent years, with the spreading of the European Union, many countries in Eastern Europe have sharply increased their economies, quality of life and cities. This has also boosted tourism, the film industry, and even, to a lesser extent, immigration.
In many outdated sources, the term "Eastern Europe" still encompasses most, or all, such European countries that until the end of the Cold War (around 1989) were Communist states or countries under Soviet influence, the former Eastern bloc. The majority of people in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and former states of Yugoslavia (i. e. Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia) often consider their countries to be part of Central Europe rather than Eastern Europe, while many sources, especially in English-speaking countries, as well as the United Nations, continue to classify these countries as Eastern Europe.
More recently, the term "Eastern Europe" has been used to refer to all European countries that were previously ruled by Communist regimes, the so-called "Eastern bloc." The idea of an "Iron Curtain" separating "Western Europe" and Soviet-controlled "Eastern Europe" was dominant throughout the period of Cold War which followed the Second World War. This dualism failed to account fully for some exceptions, as Yugoslavia and Albania, which were Communist states outside Moscow's control. In recent years, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991), the term "Eastern Europe" is sometimes used to identify a region, in effect retroactively, as consisting only of those European countries that were parts of the Soviet Union itself.
As a cultural and ethnic concept, the term Eastern Europe was defined by 19th century German nationalists to be synonymous with "Slavic Europe", as opposed to Germanic (Western) Europe. This concept was re-enforced during the years leading up to World War II and was often used in a racist terminology to characterize Eastern/Slavic culture as being backwards and inferior to Western/Germanic culture, language, and customs (as in ''Mein Kampf''). Eastern Europe would then refer to the imaginary line which divided predominantly German lands from predominantly Slavic lands. The dividing line has thus changed over time as a result of the World Wars, as well as numerous expulsions and genocides.
As the ideological division of the Cold War has now disappeared, the cultural division of Europe between Western Christianity, on the one hand, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Islam, on the other, has re-emerged. It follows the so-called ''Huntington line'' of "clashing civilizations" corresponding roughly to the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500. This line runs along what are now the eastern boundaries separating Norway, Finland, Estonia and Latvia from Russia, continues east of Lithuania, cuts in northwestern Ukraine, swings westward separating Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then along the line now separating Slovenia, Croatia and northern Serbia from the rest of ex-Yugoslavia. In the Balkans this line coincides with the historic border between the Hungarian Kingdom (later Habsburg) and Ottoman empires, whereas in the north it marks the then eastern boundaries of Kingdom of Sweden and Teutonic Order, and the subsequent spread of Lutheran Reformation. The peoples to the west and north of the ''Huntington line'' are Protestant or Catholic; they shared most of the common experiences of Western European history — feudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution.
The 1995 and 2004 enlargements arguably brought the European Union's eastern border up to the boundary between Western and Eastern Orthodox civilizations. Most of Europe's historically Protestant and Roman Catholic countries (with the exception of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Croatia, and the various European microstates) were now EU members, while most of Europe's historically Eastern Orthodox countries (with the exception of Greece and Cyprus) were outside the EU. This was, however, temporary, as the 2007 accession of Bulgaria and Romania, both predominantly Eastern Orthodox and located in Southeastern Europe, have shifted the EU's borders further east to reach the west coast of the Black Sea.
A view that Europe is divided strictly into the West and the East is considered pejorative by many in the nominally eastern countries. For example, many people in Estonia, Poland, Latvia, the Czech Republic or Slovenia may feel the label stigmatizing in comparison with countries that successfully have asserted their belonging to "the West" despite their equally, or more, "eastern" location — and history — as parts of Imperial Russia (Finland) or Eastern Orthodoxy (Greece). Czechs, for instance, will often point out that Prague is significantly west of Vienna, but Austria is never categorized as Eastern Europe.
On the other hand, the approbative term "New Europe" has been coined by neoconservative Americans to describe those former Eastern-Bloc countries which disavow the antipathy towards the politics of the United States that is common in Western Europe.

Contents

United Nations Statistics Division

Former Eastern Bloc

Other definitions

Southeastern Europe and the Balkan peninsula

Central Europe

Baltic States (see also Northern Europe)

Eurasia

Sub-national entities in Eastern Europe

See also

External links

United Nations Statistics Division

The United Nations Statistics Division defines Eastern Europe as:

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Former Eastern Bloc

^{These countries used to be part of the Eastern Bloc}
Main articles: Eastern Bloc



★ Byelorussian SSR

★ People's Republic of Bulgaria

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★ German Democratic Republic

★ People's Republic of Hungary

★ Moldavian SSR

★ People's Republic of Poland

★ Socialist Republic of Romania

★ Russian SFSR

★ Ukrainian SSR

Other definitions

Southeastern Europe and the Balkan peninsula

Commonly the definition of Eastern Europe is expanded to include these other previously mostly Communist/Socialist countries:
^{Note:The parentheis "()" label the The United Nations Statistics Division}

★ (Southern Europe)

★ ('Southern Europe')

★ (''Eastern Europe'')

★ ('Southern Europe')

★ ('Southern Europe')

★ ('Southern Europe')

★ ('Eastern Europe')

★ ('Southern Europe')

★ ('Southeastern Europe')

★ ('Southern Europe')

★ ('Southern Europe')

★ ('Southern Europe')

Central Europe

A number of countries that are also considered part of Central Europe became included in "Eastern Europe" during the era of the Cold War due to their being Communist states. Today they are sometimes considered part of Central Europe and sometimes part of Eastern Europe.

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Countries formerly in this group:

★ (became Czech Republic and Slovakia)

★ (reunited with West Germany)

Baltic States (see also Northern Europe)

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Eurasia

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Sub-national entities in Eastern Europe

See also

★ Northern Europe

★ Southeastern Europe

★ Enlargement of the European Union

External links

★ Civic Education Trends in Post-Communist Countries of Central and Eastern Europe

★ Information about Eastern European People

★ Transitions Online

★ Business portal for Central and Eastern Europe

★ Slavic and East European Resources

★ Toronto Slavic Quarterly

★ The Slavonic and East European Review

★ The Slavic Review

★ Osteuropa, German interdisciplinary monthly magazine to the analysis of politics, economics, culture and history in Eastern Europe (based 1925)
'Academic Institutions'

★ Center For Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh

★ Russian and East European Network Information Center, University of Texas

★ American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies

★ American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

★ American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies, University of Illinois

★ Center For Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Stanford University

★ The East Central European Center, Columbia University

★ The Slavic and East European Language Resource Center, Duke University and The University of North Carolina

★ Wirth Institute For Austrian and Central European Studies, University of Alberta

★ Association for the Study of Nationalities

★ Association for Women in Slavic Studies

★ British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies

★ Centre for Central and Eastern European Studies, University of Liverpool

★ Council for Slavonic and East European Library and Information Services

★ Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham

★ School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

★ Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, University of Nottingham

★ Oxford Austrian Studies Association

★ School of Slavonic, Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow

★ European Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies

★ Herder Institute

★ Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte und Landeskunde

★ Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Japan

★ The Research Network for Postsocialist Cultural Stud

★ The Society for the Advancement of Central and East European Cultures, University of Colorado-Boulder