The estern face of Europe

Júlia Lotina Cartanyà

THE EASTERN FACE OF EUROPE

Global regions are often social constructs settled by abstract notions, neutral criteria and not fundamentally confined physical characteristics. The term Eastern Europe suggests a self-contained world of kindred regions, which emulates to an idea that is constantly changing. These alterations give way to topics that are new or need to be formulated in different approaches. The presented included comparisons between Europe, boundaries inquiry, self-recognition, transnational traditions, media uses, cultivation of memory and many others issues fraught with political and cultural debate.

Is there such a thing of Eastern Europe? And if so, where does it begin and end? Why do we mainly conceive Prague, Ljubljana and Zagreb farther west than Vienna – never mind Athens – just as Serbia is further east than Finland? And why does “Eastern Europe” not sound like the neutral, symmetrical complement to “Western Europe”? (Thomas Grob)

Asking, “Where is Eastern Europe?” apparently seems quite silly. Clearly, Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. However, where to establish the first frame stone can easily lead into discussion. For example, while for Berliners the East starts at the Polish border, for western Poles in Warsaw, for eastern Poles and Slovaks in Belarus and Ukraine, for western Ukrainians east of Kiev, and for Croats in Serbia. (Thomas Grob) In the same way, Czechs refuse the suggestion that they are part of Eastern Europe considering that they place at the heart of Europe. It’s pretty outstanding the fact that all of them admit that Eastern Europe exists, but they all believe that the region starts just east of whatever country they happen to live in.

The explanation for establishing this limits is based on history, geography, culture or even religion. Therefore, boundaries are the object of the important fluctuation and overlap conditioned by the context in which they are used. These uncertainties enclose the concept of Europe itself regarding both regions as naively perceived.

According to the United Nations Statistic Division, Eastern Europe encompass the countries of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation and Slovakia well as the Slavic republics of Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. Eastern is also defined by the nations bordered on the north by the Barents and the Baltic seas; the Caspian, Black and the Adriatic seas and the Caucasus on the south; and the Ural mountains. According to this Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro (countries of the former Yugoslavia), classified by the UNDS as Southern Europe would be included, together with the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the Transcaucasia countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia (through they are defined by the UNDS as Northern Europe and Western Asia respectively).

Unfortunately, the English vocabulary lacks an appropriate and broadly acceptable collective name for Eastern Europe. In German speaking they have appropriately named “Zwischeneuropa”, that means in-between Europe. This term encapsulates their underlying quandary, that of breathing between East and West, or between Germany and Russia, or in early modern times, between Turks and Habsburgs (Patrick Burke). The English nearest equivalent is “the land between”, but it has never go by common usage.

There have been a recent emphasis in referring to these regions as Central Europe. However, this current notion have been rejected by most citizens of the European Union arguing that Central Europe allude to Austria and Germany, the imperialism former central powers. On the other hand, some scholars define “Eastern Europe” as “The Other Europe”, pointing to the network of regions that lies at the east of acknowledged members of the European Union such Germany or France.

In order to better approach what does Eastern Europe represent is such a suitable indicator the region’s role and presence in the worldwide most important media. In the international press Eastern Europe isn’t usually regarded as part of Europe because Europe section is likely to focus on EU members. Thus, some newspapers, such Le Monde, locates Eastern Europe countries to the margins in order to justify a minor presence and concern.

Most of the news concerning traditional Eastern European countries are the ones related to Russia geopolitics strategies and the response they cause on other Eastern European countries, such as Poland or, in the case of BBC, the wave of racism against the Polish community in the UK after Brexit.

Eastern Europe has been further confined in many other approaches as the region where Slavs lived or the battleground of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman empires. It has been described as the “shatter zone” (Catherine Lovatt) where mixed and fragmented regions has been tied together into nation-states across the divisions of civilization and culture. But above all that designations the one that chiefly prevails in our social-constructed mentality is the associated with soviet-dominated communist countries.

Each and every attempt to approach the comprehension of this naively perceived region is inherent to our collective fiction, and to some extent we can reconstruct precisely how it originated. It may be found in older images of Russia, but it goes back primarily to French Enlightenment.

According to Wolff, the notion of Eastern Europe was preconceived around the middle of the 18th century, coinciding with the arrival of Dutch, German and mainly French intellectuals to the region. These visitors, impregnated with the illustrate spirit of “La Raison” shocked thoroughly through a paradigm they’ve never sought to experience. They found a region where serfdom, despotic governments and religion instability were the dominant rule. Regarding Louis Philippe count of Ségur testimony, he felt he has left Europe completely and moved back ten centuries. The east-west dividing line characterized a descent from the core of the enlightened civilization into barbarian uncivilized eastern areas. It was with the upcoming of this idea that outsiders began to conceive Eastern Europe as a single entity, clearly independent in all senses against the areas to its east.

Whether Eastern Europeans like it or not, the communist experience is still in their collective memory. Communism may have left Eastern Europe, but its long shadow is still there (Francis Tapon). The “externally perceived” region erected by Western Europe persevered on the 20th century and adapted to different approaches shaping the new historical perspectives while redefining its own identity. Our current understanding of “Eastern Europe” is shaped by the Cold War and the Iron Curtain, term coined by Churchill in the 1945s in order to define the Soviet-dependent bloc (Thomas Grob).

In the last decade, the differences within Eastern European regions and Europe were political rather than moral, cultural or ethnic. After the Second World War, Eastern Europe was identified with communism and Soviet Union high influence. The contrasts were not only externally perceived but also internally. Even Eastern Europe regions were the former satellites of the URSS, there were great divergences between them. It is in this period when the traits of a transition from a “naively perceived” to a “denoted” region can be briefly perceived, but nor mutated from its original form at least. This “breaking” suggestion is due to the observed tendency consisting on performing further spatial interactions with the same central place (Soviet Union, for instance) by the spread of ideas, resources and other stuff while creating a not homogeneous but nodal or functional region.

In 1948 many European nations experienced an important economic growth due to the implementation of the Marshall Plan, with exception of the Soviet Union. This change of paradigm led to the creation of the German state and a “capitalist economic revival” which implicated the division of Europe into two blocks giving birth to the Cold War. Along with the creation of Western and Eastern blocks, the difference between Europe and “the other face of Europe” arose.

After the collapse of communism, scholars recognized the complexity to encompass the entire diversity of post-communist states and let the notion of Eastern Europe aside in favor of new terms such as the ECE (Eastern Central Europe) that covers all countries incorporated to the EU after the defeat of communism, adopting a regionalizing tendency towards instituted regions and at the same time minimizing the distinction between Eastern and Western countries integrating all together in formal international entities with clearly demarcated boundaries.

As an example, the expansion of NATO in 1999 to include Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, and in 2004 to include Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia has erased boundaries that appeared fixed before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In this context, struggles for political recognition focusing on the acceptance into Euro-Atlantic institutions such as NATO, the European Union, the IMF or the World Bank have become a priority for the countries of Eastern Europe. Most of this countries in order to being plenty engaged in supra-state organizations have been forced to accept certain ideological, political or even economical premises, that not always played in their favor. For instance, in the field of economics, some of these countries such Poland or Russia have been subdued by the “Shock Doctrine”, consisting on the transition to a capitalist model based on marked-oriented economies following the patters dictated by the Chicago School of economics. In nearly all cases, adapting the new measures to a global scale without taking into account the local reality.

Eastern Europe have been always simultaneously both the other Europe and Europe’s Other, and in this sense dependent on images produced in the West. This inquiry touch on the basis of the European identity, as our mental maps or the geographies we carry in our heads. We don’t know the enormous influence they have until we realize that questions of relevant importance such: “Shall Eastern Europe be considered part of Europe?” articulate it responses in that way.

To sum up, I dare say that regions are seldom less physical than mental, as it has been demonstrated. We don’t even realize that at the back of cultural, historical or ideological prejudices “social accepted constructions” which we regard as truthful are hidden. In many cases they decide unconsciously our perceptions and prevent us to approach many other – and not less determined– perspectives.

References:

OSTERGREN, R. C &RICE, J. C. (2011), The Europeans: a Geography of People, Culture, and Environment. New York: Guilford Press.

WOLFF, L. (1994) Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford, Stanford University Press.

THOMAS GROB, The concept of Eastern Europe in past and present.

PATRICK BURKE, Eastern Europe: Country Fact Files.

CATHERINE LOVATT, Re-defining East and Weast.

FRANCIS TAPON, The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us.

STEVEN CASSEDY, Regions and Eastern Europe Regionalism – The future of Eastern Europe.