| EASTERN EUROPE
Computer rendering of Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is the eastern part of the European continent. There is no consistent definition of the precise area it covers, partly because the term has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic connotations. There are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region". A related United Nations paper adds that "every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct". One definition describes Eastern Europe as a cultural entity: the region lying in Europe with the main characteristics consisting of Greek, Byzantine, Slavic, Eastern Orthodox, Russian, and some Ottoman cultural influences. 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. Most historians and social scientists view such definitions [which?] as outdated or relegated, but they are still sometimes used for statistical purposes.
Definitions :
Several definitions of Eastern Europe exist today but they often lack precision, are too general, or are outdated. These definitions vary both across cultures and among experts, even political scientists, as the term has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic connotations. It has also been described as a "fuzzy" term, as the idea itself of Eastern Europe is in constant redefinition. The solidification of the idea of a "Eastern Europe" dates back chiefly to the (French) Enlightenment.
There are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region". A related United Nations paper adds that "every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct".
Geographical
:
The Ural Mountains, Ural River, and the Caucasus Mountains are the geographical land border of the eastern edge of Europe. E.g. Kazakhstan, which is mainly located in Central Asia with the most western parts of it located west of the Ural River also shares a part of Eastern 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 makes a precise definition of the western geographic boundaries of Eastern Europe and the geographical midpoint of Europe somewhat difficult.
Religious
:
Western Europe according to this point of view is formed by countries with dominant Roman Catholic and Protestant churches (including Central European countries such as Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia).
Eastern Europe is formed by countries with dominant Orthodox churches, like Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine for instance. The Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe.
The schism is the break of communion and theology between what are now the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Roman Catholic from the 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.
Expansion of Christianity
Religious division in 1054 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 labelled "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 prominent being that Greece's history, for the most part, was more influenced by Mediterranean cultures and contact.
Cold
War :
Central and Eastern Europe :
Contemporary
developments :
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Estonia
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Armenia
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Republic of Abkhazia
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Belarus
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Transnistria
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.
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Austria
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.
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Albania
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Kosovo
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. The mainly Greek-speaking eastern provinces 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 deepened during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages due to a number of events. The Western Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century, marking the start of the Early Middle Ages. By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire (mostly labelled as the Byzantine Empire by subsequent historians) 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 in 1054, heightened the cultural and religious distinctiveness between Eastern and Western Europe. Much of Eastern Europe was invaded and occupied by the Mongols.
1453
to 1918 :
Serfdom
:
Interwar
years :
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 favour 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 the onset of the Cold War :
Throughout Eastern Europe, German-speaking populations living there since generations were expelled to within the reduced borders of Germany in what some consider as the largest scale of ethnic cleansing in history. Regions where Germans had formed the local population majority were re-settled with Polish- and Czech-speakers, forming new Slavic dialects.
Languages in Central and Eastern Europe after 1945 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 normal 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.
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.
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First and foremost was the Soviet Union (which included the modern-day
territories of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine,
and Moldova). Other countries dominated by the Soviet Union were
the German Democratic Republic, People's Republic of Poland, Czechoslovak
Socialist Republic, People's Republic of Hungary, People's Republic
of Bulgaria, and Socialist Republic of Romania.
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. 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 fulfil 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. 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 eurozone: 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 and/or local governments and, as an exclusive property, the management and protection of them aim at serving the public interest.
Source :
https://en.wikipedia.org/ |
