Eastern Europe in the narrow sense of the word is geographically central and northeastern Europe , inhabited mainly by Slavic peoples , making up 2/3 of the territory of this subcontinent of Eurasia. The term is very context sensitive and even volatile; as noted in a United Nations document, there are “almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are areas of science” and “each assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct”.
Eastern Europe is a region located between Central Europe and Western Asia , with the distinctive features of Byzantium , formed under the strong influence of the Ottoman Empire . Thus, European historians recognize the continuity of the largest countries in Eastern Europe to the culture of the Hellenic , Roman and Byzantine empires. Therefore, even in the colonial period of Western Europe in England and France, in the full sense, only the Russian , German and Austrian empires were considered, which were mostly east of the Elbe . The empires of the East were opposed to the civilizations of the West.
Another definition was created during the Cold War and was used more or less synonymously with the term Eastern Bloc . By this definition, all the former socialist European states - this is Eastern Europe. Sometimes these states are divided into countries of Central and Eastern Europe .
Although the territory of Eastern Europe is larger than the territory of Southern , Western and Northern Europe combined, in 2016, 34% live on the territory of 5 million km² population of Europe.
Content
- 1 Climate
- 2 History of the term
- 3 See also
- 4 notes
- 5 Literature
- 6 References
Climate
The climate of the countries of Eastern Europe is less humid and colder (in Western Europe, the average annual temperature ranges from 0 to 15 ° C, in Eastern Europe, from −5 to 10 ° C) than the climate of Western countries. At the same time, soil fertility is almost twice as high (at equal latitudes) in the Balkans, southern Russia and the Volga region. But grazing in Western Europe is longer, almost year-round, even in Scandinavia. The maximum shadow temperatures in Europe are also characteristic of the Volga region and European Kazakhstan. Eastern Europe has the largest reserve of black earth soils among all the economic and political regions of the world.
Term History
Until the sixteenth century, the territory of modern Eastern Europe (Eastern Europe) between the Vistula and the Don was described by the scribes of the West as European Sarmatia [1] .
The first attempt to understand the term “Eastern Europe” was made by Sergey Solovyov in his work History of Russia from Ancient Times (1851-1879), and by Eastern Europe he understood the Russian Plain and the European part of Russia : the territory between the Baltic , White , Black , Caspian Seas and the Urals , which includes the Volga and Dnieper river basins [2] . The Catholic Encyclopedia published in 1913 indicates that the Balkan states belonged to Eastern Europe, as well as parts of countries such as Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire . It was pointed out that the eastern border of Europe should be determined ethnologically .
According to the UN definition, the following states are included in Eastern Europe:
- Belarus
- Bulgaria
- Hungary
- Moldova
- Poland
- Russia
- Romania
- Slovakia
- Ukraine
- Czech
Some sources refer the Baltic countries to Northern Europe, while others, such as the CIA World Fact Book to Eastern. In the sports associations of the Baltic countries, they often identify with Eastern Europe [3] .
According to the political approach, Eastern Europe was formed after the Second World War and represents those European countries that fell into the sphere of Soviet influence: Bulgaria , Romania , Hungary , Czechoslovakia , Poland and East Germany [4] . After the collapse of the USSR, the newly formed Baltic countries also began to be considered part of Eastern Europe [5] , although sometimes the Baltic States are still separated from Eastern Europe [6] .
In modern German sources, even the Balkan states are referred to Eastern Europe [7] :
- Albania
- Serbia
- Slovenia
- Montenegro
and Transcaucasian:
- Azerbaijan
- Armenia
- Georgia
According to the geographical approach, Eastern Europe is identified with the East European Plain. Then, in addition to Poland , the Baltic states , Ukraine and Belarus , Finland , Bulgaria and even 13% of the territory of Kazakhstan can belong to Eastern Europe [8] .
See also
- european part of Russia
- Northern Europe
- Central Europe
- Southern Europe
- Central and Eastern Europe
Notes
- ↑ Treatise on Two Sarmatians
- ↑ History of Russia since ancient times
- ↑ East European Hockey League
- ↑ The Gorbachev Doctrine and the USSR’s withdrawal from Eastern Europe (Inaccessible link) . Date of treatment March 20, 2016. Archived March 31, 2016.
- ↑ NATO will increase its presence in Eastern Europe
- ↑ media: NATO plans to deploy troops in Eastern Europe and the Baltic
- ↑ At Eurovision 2015 in Vienna, Eastern Europe set the tone
- ↑ East European Plain
Literature
- Lipton, David (2002), "Eastern Europe" , in David R. Henderson (ed.), Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (1st ed.), Library of Economics and Liberty , < http://www.econlib.org/library /Enc1/EasternEurope.html >
- Myant, Martin. Transition Economies: Political Economy in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia / Martin Myant, Jan Drahokoupil. - Wiley-Blackwell, 2010 .-- ISBN 978-0-470-59619-7 .