The economic downturn has made it harder to speak sensibly of a region called “eastern Europe”

The pre-war definition of Eastern as opposed to Central Europe was clear.

Central Europe was Catholic or Protestant, used Latin script, and men wore their shirts tucked into their trousers.

Eastern Europe was Orthodox, used Cyrillic script, and the men wore their shirts over the tops of their trousers.

'Central Europe' (Mitteleuropa) is not a euphemism at all but a well-defined geographic term with a long history.

By the old definition, pre-war Poland, with its significant Belorusian and Ukrainian minorities east of the River Bug straddled that divide. Today, Poland, along with Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and the three Baltic countries, are Central Europe. As are Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. Shirts firmly tucked into trousers.

The difference between Central and Eastern Europe today is clearer than it has been for centuries.

Ethnic classification? Doesn't make any sense.

Estonians are Finno-Ugric (like Finland). Latvians and Lithanians are Baltic, which is not slavic. While a big part is indeed Slavic, many are not. Romanians are Romanic like Italians and Spanish. Albanians are totally different.

Also the religions are different, raging from very non-religious countries like Estonia and Czech Republic to Catholic Poland and Lithuania, orthodox Serbia and muslim Bosnia and Albania.

That's a lot of diversity.

Thank you the Economist. A fine article in the right direction. Most certainly there is a tendency in Western Europe to lump the "easterns" all together, be it "eastern Europe" in the Anglo-Saxon world or "Les pays de l"Est" in the Francophone. Its a combination of intellectual laziness, ignorance and arrogance.
Currently there is a definitive split between what is more like a modern version of Central-Eastern Europe : the 21st century members of the EU plus the non-member Balkans on the one hand and Eastern Europe being the non EU ex-Soviet States such as the Ukraine, Moldova and the Byelarus. More to do with commitment to democracy/lack of it, everyone subject to the law and economic integration.
As to the current economic crisis, many so-called "easterners" such as the Poles are looking at the UK, Iceland, Ireland, Italy and Greece as classic examples of how NOT to run an economy! Pity the UK is not on the chart......

Thank you for this excellent article - it was about time someone noticed the differences.
I would posit the re-emergence of "Central Europe" (or Mitteleuropa) since 1989 and suggest that European countries not traditionally considered western Europe, but inside the EU, be called Central Europe.

For all us, Poles (also Czechs, Hungarians, etc.) it was always a surprising, somewhat funny experience to see Greece (corrupted, ill-educated, anti-western, anti-american, xenophobic society) described NOT as Eastern Europe. One of the reason for that is they joined EU twenty years earlier, although they have stolen 5-10 times more EU funds per capita than even Bulgaria does now. What a pity to be NOT in the right place and time on a map!

My high school biology teacher told me that the principles of taxonomy so important in biology would help me greatly if I applied them to other areas.

Sadly, she was wrong. Attmpts at classification usually seem to cause a fight.

As this excellent article points out, attempts to find and use rational categories are objectionable to most proples affected by them.

My Baltic friends usually object to my including Moldova in the category, "victims of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact." Although I am not able to clarify why they object, I think that perhaps it is not because of accuracy but because including Moldova dilutes their own victimhood.

As a working hypothesis, I contend that all ethnic terms in current use are either incorrect, incomplete or insulting to someone.

A very timely and good article by The Economist!

I would also like to add (or stress) that those "by words" of how "so and that" are various countries - take Romania for instance - are yet another (again and again) example of how little people in Western Europe generally know about Central Europe, at least.

Plus some reflex (or rather desperate efforts, albeit nonsensical) of the bureaucrats to find a “typical” example country (Germans would say "muster") for each of their main concern, and so uncannily inducing false differences between countries in Central Europe. That imaginary picture actually prevents people in (the traditionally called) Western Europe understanding the real and the positive diversity in Central Europe.
And it also prevents everybody to address the true issues – most notably the link between former communists and corruption that still exist in ALL former socialist countries. Not that there is no corruption in the “traditional west”, but the idea is that in the west the source of corruption is not communism (except some soviet money in some political parties in Germany, etc).

Is important for Bruxelles to understand that cosing with the neocommunists in all these countries in Central Europe, either directly or via Russian interests, is equal to sapping the efforts of the people in these countries to get rid of their soviet-imposed past and heal the societal wounds.

I agree with the suggestion of JoeSolaris, though I warn that Mittleeuropa is much smaller than Central Europe, and also less relevant today - it was only especially relevant for the Germanic/Austrian attempts to justify their militaristic expansionism into their eastern neighbourhood and trampling over Poles, Romanians, Czechs, Hungarians, etc.

The "Eastern Europe" label is more of an ethnic classification than a collection of macro-economic indicators. As such it exists as a cultural space in people's minds, so no amount of economic convergence with western Europe will make it go away. Eastern Europe could be richer than western Europe and the label would persist.

"Post-Soviet" needs to be retired; of that there is no question. It's been 20 years. "New member" is also of limited value.

But "Eastern Europe"? Not so sure this is so wrong-headed. "Central Europe" sounds like a euphemism. Diversity is not much of a counterargument -- Western Europe is also a patchwork of different interests and cultures. You can still have a common designation for a region.

In any case, I'm not so sure it's a bad thing to point up the second-class citizen status of Eastern European countries -- that is how they are treated in real life by the big complacent Western European powers. That is the point of this piece, probably...

How about "Beastern" Europe or the "B"'s -- almost all of the credit ratings east of the old dividing line start with "B". ..

Perhaps the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of London should consider changing its name?! It has always been a standing joke at the institution that some of the countries is studies (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Hungary, Romaania) are neither East European nor Slavonic!

The Economist at its best. Thank you very much for this very interesting article. Unfortunately, there are still many in the "old West" who are either not willing or not able to see things as they really are. As if there had not been any change in the last two decades.

A very good article. Taxonomic attempts to group several countries into regions (Northern, Central, Southern, Eastern, Latin, Germanic, Slavic, Scandinavia, Balkans, etc) run into the evident diversity. This happens even inside old Western nations such as the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal and France, not to mention newer nations as Italy, Germany and Belgium.

Can some one say, for instance, that Norway and Iceland, culturally identical nations which for nearly ten centuries were ruled by Danish kings, suffered the same under the recent recession? Or Slovakia, a Slavic and Central European country as Poland and the Czech Republic: she was for nearly ten centuries ruled by the Hungarians, but is she similar to any of these three countries? Such labels are misleading, particularly for short-term economic decisions.

That tendency to group nations is a sort of intellectual laziness to
do real analysis. We suffered in Brazil much under the "Third World", "Emerging", and "Latin American" labels, where a crisis in Russia, South Korea or Argentina would hit us...

Latin America has at least six regions and enormous diversity inside the larger countries, as the recent near division of Bolivia showed. Labels are very useful for long-term policies, as international organisms such as the OSCE, the CoE, and even the EU show, but most not be taken very seriously. At the end each nation has its own strong peculiarities.

Regards from Rio de Janeiro

Error on chart: Finland is also in Eurozone, but is not indicated so.

The article is not much revealing but reading the comments, I realize that it’s still educative for many readers therefore I praise the Economist for publishing it. It’s really funny to read comments suggesting different “ethnicity” of “Eastern Europeans” (written by people whose country is crammed with immigrants with all and sundry ethnicities :-) or comments stating that EE is a synonym for a bad reputation which can be improved by immigration of skilled Europeans not realizing that a) this is already happening - by Eurostat figures, the Czech Rep. and Slovenia had highest immigration increase in EU in 2007 (see article here), moreover most immigrants came from Europe, thus not representing any security and cultural threat to EU – unlike immigrants attracted by “Western Europe” - and b) that the article was not about replacing a single term with a political correct one but rather introducing more terms that would better reflect historical heritage and current development of various EE regions...

I understand that the term Eastern Europe (EE) was invented right after WW2 to denote countries that became part of the Soviet block at the Yalta conference by people from the other block and as such it reflected all the prejudices about the enemy (it’s natural that media had presented only negative information and with limited opportunities to experience the real situation on the other side of the “wall” – restricted freedom but still allowing relatively comfortable living – there’s no wonder that many terrible prejudices emerged and deeply anchored in minds of common people).

But right after the fall of the bipolar world, the term lost it’s meaning – 40 years is not enough to unify differences among various thousand-years long evolving cultures that the Soviet block embraced, to be able to justify its use...

Instead, I suggest using that the term "post-communist Europe" if someone wants to denote European countries that experienced communism. "Post" correctly specifies that it relates to the past that is not valid anymore and, at the same time, "communist" specifies exactly the "shared property" by which they are related. In fact, the communist experience anchored in the national historical memories (because especially the younger generation can hardly imagine that era else than from textbooks today and even many people that experienced the era already forgot) can be very handy as a memento for vigilance and to amend various utopias that self-sure EU15 politicians propose...

In all other cases, various regions should be denoted separately based on more longer historical and cultural anchoring than the 40 years, in particular the traditional division on Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). Please note that the culture of Byzantium was in fact superior to the feudal Catholic Western Roman culture, until its fall caused by conquering Constantinople by Osman Empire in 1453 and therefore the term “East” should not bear the slanderous undercurrent. Western Roman Empire started to gain its importance with naval discoveries and industrial revolution. Here, a clear distinction should be made between colonial powers benefiting from resources and business from colonies and countries that had to rely on themselves. The differences between these two groups – different approach to business, to immigration, to foreign politics and various priorities based on their past experience prevailed even today. Therefore, I suggest the following taxonomy:

Eastern Europe – countries descendant of or influenced by the Byzantine cultural sphere (orthodox Christianity, Cyrillic alphabet)

Western Europe – former colonial powers (Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain + Ireland, Netherlands)

Central Europe – non-colonial, mostly catholic self-sufficient countries focused on industry in central Europe (nowadays Germany, Austria, Italy and post-communist countries with Catholic heritage including Lithuania and possibly Switzerland)

Northern Europe – protestant countries at the north of Europe (Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia)

Southern Europe – encompasses Mediterranean countries (some members intersects with other categories)

Of course, we can find sub-regions even within these regions (e.g. the Visegrad Group) but it's OK for the basic bearing.

I see Charlemagne’s article as a theme-continuation of his blog-post of Jan 5th, “Why ‘peripheral’ is not a good shorthand for ‘broke’".

I said then: “In an organization of independent nation-states it is anyway unsound in my opinion to lump countries together in a 'simplifying' abbreviation. If this abbreviation has the intention to ‘sully’ such societies, it is not only unsound but even discriminatory.”

This applies to the geographical term “Eastern Europe” in the same way - insofar as it is used in a socially discriminatory way - as e.g. to the Anglo term PIGS for the South-Med countries, as utilized by Charlemagne also. Thus I have difficulties to understand the difference Charlemagne makes between the ‘beloved’ term PIGS (as e.g. in his post of Jan 5th) and other such geographical lump-abbreviations.

BTW, for reasons of clarification: The German media as well as the Federal Office for Statistics still differ between the former West German Laender and the former East German territories. The problem can thus be reduced to the question about how a “geographical” term is used . . . whereas there should not be any doubts about the manner in which the shorthand “PIGS” is used by this magazine.

Another Economist masterpiece in opening up a pointless debate, this time on the semantics of "eastern Europe". The sensitivities of the term are only perhaps to those who are ashamed of their own histories, which cannot be denied- just as those suffered by those in southern Europe which deny having been backward with die hard far-right military regimes.
As to refering to the Council of Europe and OSCE as "talking shops" is dishonest at best and nasty at worst, with perhaps part of the Economist's own smarmy campaign against anything that smells of intergovernmentalism the real reason for this tirade. Considering that the European Court of Human Rights sits in the CoE, with the UK having the honour of being the country with most cases having been brought to it (a tiny querk of not having a written constitution); and the OSCE having probably done more for transtions in the former USSR and Yugoslavia, it is a wonder how the opportunity to recognise this wasn't taken- perhaps a read of Wikipedia is recommended, or of finding Mr. Lucas another posting.

It's not ethnic divide but more cultural and socioeconomic watershed. Landlords (germans) - slaves (estonians). Stock traders (City dwellers) - plumbers (poles)

What??? Finland is a proud member of eurozone btw.

Felipe Coelho wrote: "That tendency to group nations is a sort of intellectual laziness to do real analysis"

You are absolutely right. Arguments about a group's collective name are a useless exercise for it very much depends on one's historical and cultural perceptions. A reference to the Stans' prospects for joining EU is certainly off-topic for one could just as readily speculate on the EU absorbing Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. For all intents and purposes none of these states is in Europe, however you want to define it. The article should have focused on a foreseable European reality, not on some fictional hypothesis as to a possible shape of a political map in, say, 2059.

I certainly fully support the view that continuing use by the Economist of the term "post-Soviet" (or some variation thereof) is completely improper and should be eliminated, just as no one would refer to some other nonsensical fiction like "post Viking" or "post-Roman" European space.

Through to 2013, Euro 68bn of funding is being made available to Poland from the EU. That doesn't sound like ignorance nor arrogance to me. It sounds like one of the most strategically enlightened and generous acts in history, and perhaps one of the most unappreciated. If Poles and others here in the east of Europe want others to feel differently about the geographic expression of which they are obviously a part (the geographic centre of Europe is near Wroclaw),Polish politicians need to use the money to build a society that is self sustaining and where their young people want to live, work and vote; which provides decent care for old people and where road deaths are not 5x the European average. We'll need to come back to this question after 2013 to see whether the divisions between east and west are real, or simply being masked by massive EU transfer funding. One thing for sure, the difference in both perception and reality will be determined more by Polish politicians doing their job than by "ignorant" west Europeans using politically correct terminology.