Why this term has to go: Eastern Europe

Just about everyone is familiar with the term “Eastern Europe”, but depending on who you ask, you can get vastly different definitions about what that term actually means.

Before we delve into the reasoning behind the call to eliminate that term from our vocabulary, let’s try to list the possible meanings:

Geographical:

• the eastern half of Europe (east/west)
• the eastern third of Europe (east/central/west)
• the eastern part of Europe minus the southern and northern Europe (east, west, north, south)
• the eastern part of Europe minus the northern, western, central, and southern Europe (east, west, north, central, south)

Economy-related:

• the poor part of Europe minus Portugal
• the formerly-communist part of Europe

Culture/History related:

• the Slavic part of Europe (plus Hungary, Baltics, Romania, Moldova)
• the Orthodox part of Europe
• the former-USSR+Satellites part of Europe
• the parts of Europe to the east of the Germany-Austria-Italy borders that were historically not in the Germanic (HRE, Austria-Hungary, Sweden) or Italic sphere of influence

If I tried, I could probably remember some more ways the term “Eastern Europe” is (ab)used, but this should suffice to illustrate the point.

As you may have noticed, I marked some bullet points bold and some italic. Take a minute and try to figure out the pattern behind it.

In case you haven’t figured it out, the parts in bold are how people from “the west” traditionally delimit Europe. The parts in italic are how people who actually live there generally delimit Europe. And the parts without a style are more options that are possible but rarely used because they’re even bigger simplifications than the rest.

Now, why should the term “Eastern Europe” die on the trash heap of history? Because it is more often than not used as a slur and a way to “other” Slavic people (and Hungarians, Romanians, Moldovans, and the Baltic nations).

If this sounds like nonsense to you, think about it for a moment.

It’s never used geographically without doing some alterations to the borders so as to exclude rich(-er) countries from the definition.

It’s never used in the economic sense without excluding Portugal.

So if we look at the cross-section of actual usage, it refers to Slavic countries plus HU, RO, MD, and BNs. This would be all well and good, if these countries actually had that much in common, besides being included under the “Eastern Europe” umbrella.

“But they were all communist,” you may argue.

True, they were. For less than a century. Prior to that, many countries from that club shared a millennium of their history with Austria-Hungary, the Holy Roman Empire, the Franks, etc.

“But they’re all poor countries,” you may continue.

Compared to whom? Slovakia, Czechia, and Slovenia are already ahead or right at the heels of Portugal. During the 2008 crash, PIIGS included 5 supposedly “rich” western countries. Comparing the economy of e.g. Slovenia right after the end of communism in ’91 with former East Germany right after the reunification, you’d notice about a 10% better situation in the former DDR. Fast forward until 2004 when Slovenia joined the EU, and former East Germany managed to pull ahead to about 20% while getting billions of free money from former West Germany. Since EU-accession, the former East Germany and Slovenia grew at about the same rate, even though, throughout this time, Slovenia has been working with loans and the former DDR with direct transfers. Czechia and Slovakia have literally rocketed from a much worse starting position to be on par with Slovenia since then as well, which means they much surpassed the growth in the former DDR — on loans as well. Yes, income is lower in all of these countries, but to paint them as poor countries is inaccurate.

“But… but…”

There isn’t much else, really.

If you look at it historically and culturally, the sensible division would be north-south-west-center-east with the east starting with Belarus and Ukraine.

If you look at it geographically, well…

If you look at it financially and draw the line at the lowest commonly-accepted western country’s levels, you’d still end up with almost the exact same delimitation (PPP) (real) or with pretty much the same if you create proper groupings.

I do not expect that the average person living in one of the richer European countries is aware of any of this. I’ve met PhD-level-educated Germans that thought Poland is dangerous to visit and who didn’t know Slovenia is even a part of the EU. Obviously, that doesn’t mean that all Germans are ignorant, but I honestly don’t expect many “westerners” to have known this, so no hard feelings.

However, now, you do.

The only reason you’d keep using the term “Eastern Europe” when referring to non-Russian-speaking countries that aren’t part of “rich” Europe is thus an attempt of “othering” them — an attempt to remove them from the history they share with other former central European empires such as Germany and Austria (which, as we all know, has been attempted before in a much more direct and painful way).

So, the next time you’re thinking about saying/writing the words “Eastern Europe”, stop for a moment and think — who do you mean by that? And why did you choose that term specifically? Was it a rare case of accuracy, was it intellectual laziness, or was it arrogance and a sense of your own supremacy?

Unless it’s the former, you may want to rethink using it.