Eastern Europe

Regions of central Europe roughly east of longitude 24° E

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Eastern Europe is the eastern part of the European continent. There is no consensus on the precise area it covers, 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". 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, Eastern Orthodox, Russian and some Ottoman culture influences.

Geographical type: Region

Notable Places

Estonia - Territory in north central Europe, ruled since 1991 by the Eesti Vabariik
Latvia - Territory in north central Europe, ruled since 1990 by the Latvijas Republika
Lithuania - Territory in north central Europe, ruled since 1991 by the Lietuvos Respublika
Romania - Territory in southeast Europe, ruled since 1991 by the Statul Român
Russia - Territory in eastern Europe and northern Asia, ruled since 1991 by the Rossiyskaya Federatsiya
Ukraine - Territory in eastern Europe, ruled since 1991 by the republic of Uryad Ukrayiny

Other Places

Belarus - Territory in eastern Europe, ruled since 1991 by the Respublika Byelarus'
- Economic Freedom of the World
Moldova - Territory in eastern Europe, ruled since 1991 by the Republica Moldova
- Economic Freedom of the World

Articles

The Troops Don't Defend Our Freedoms, by Jacob G. Hornberger, 21 Oct 2005
Examines whether foreign invasion, terrorists taking over the government and the federal government, through the President and its orders to a "loyal and obedient" standing army, are plausible threats to the freedom and well-being of Americans

Think back to 1989 and the years following — when the Berlin Wall fell, East and West Germany were united, Soviet troops withdrew from Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union was dismantled. The Pentagon didn't know what to do. Unexpectedly, its 50-year-old "official enemy" was gone. (The Soviet Union had previously been America's "ally" that had "liberated" Eastern Europe from Nazi Germany.) With the fall of the Soviet empire (and, actually, before the fall), the obvious question arose: Why should the United States continue to have an enormous standing army and spend billions of dollars in taxpayer money to keep it in existence?

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Eastern Europe" as of 26 Oct 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.