Eastern Europe is the eastern part of the European continent. There is no consensus as to the precise area it refers to, partly because the term has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic connotations. There are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region".[1] A related United Nations paper adds that "every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct".[2]
One definition describes Eastern Europe as a cultural (and econo-cultural) entity: the region lying in Europe with main characteristics consisting in Byzantine, Orthodox, and some Turco-Islamic influences.[2][3] 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outside the Soviet Union as Eastern Europe.[3] Historians and social scientists increasingly view such definitions as outdated or relegating,[4][5][6][7][8] but they are still heard in everyday speech and used for statistical purposes.[9][10][11]
References[]
- ↑ "The Balkans", Global Perspectives: A Remote Sensing and World Issues Site. Wheeling Jesuit University/Center for Educational Technologies, 1999–2002.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 A Subdivision of Europe into Larger Regions by Cultural Criteria prepared by Peter Jordan, the framework of the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (StAGN), Vienna, Austria, 2006
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Ramet, Sabrina P. (1998). Eastern Europe: politics, culture, and society since 1939. Indiana University Press, 15. ISBN 0253212561. Retrieved on 2011-10-05. This definition is fulfilled by Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo, Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
- ↑ "The geopolitical conditions (...) are now a thing of the past, and some specialists today think that Eastern Europe has outlived its usefulness as a phrase." (2005) "Regions, Regionalism, Eastern Europe by Steven Cassedy". New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Charles Scribner's Sons. Retrieved on 2010-01-31.
- ↑ The Economist: Eastern Europe a bogus term - South Eastern Europe - The Sofia Echo.
- ↑ "One very common, but now outdated, definition of Eastern Europe was the Soviet-dominated communist countries of Europe."http://www.cotf.edu/earthinfo/balkans/BKdef.html
- ↑ "Too much writing on the region has – consciously or unconsciously – clung to an outdated image of 'Eastern Europe', desperately trying to patch together political and social developments from Budapest to Bukhara or Tallinn to Tashkent without acknowledging that this Cold War frame of reference is coming apart at the seams. Central Europe Review: Re-Viewing Central Europe By Sean Hanley, Kazi Stastna and Andrew Stroehlein, 1999
- ↑ (2004) The handbook of political change in Eastern Europe. Edward Elgar Publishing [via Google Books], 2. ISBN 9781781954324. Retrieved on 2011-10-05. “The term 'Eastern Europe' is ambiguous and in many ways outdated.”
- ↑ [1] Template:Wayback. Eurovoc.europa.eu. Retrieved on 2015-03-04.
- ↑ United Nations Statistics Division- Standard Country and Area Codes Classifications (M49).
- ↑ Population Division, DESA, United Nations: World Population Ageing 1950-2050