Redefining ‘Eastern Europe’: A New Regional Geography of Post-Socialist Europe?

Abstract

Historically, Eastern Europe has been a zone of conflict shaped by outside influences originating from east and west that have swept across the region in alternating waves each heralding a new socio-economic modernisation. Between 1948 and 1990 ‘Eastern Europe’ referred to a group of eight countries that had communist governments and were part of an international territorial system made up of ‘Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union’. The collapse of the communist system in 1989-90 has led to a new modernisation from the west, termed ‘transition’ or ‘transformation.’ The current processes of ‘globalisation,’ ‘internationalisation’ and ’Europeanisation’. in conjunction with the ambitious politicosocial and economic policies of the new governments acting on the conditions inherited from the socialist period, and revived historical and cultural identities suppressed in the communist period, are transforming the eastern territories of Europe. As a result the earlier concept of ‘Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union’ is no longer valid Four new ‘subcontinental regions’ are taking shape. These are Central Europe, Baltic Europe, Balkan Europe and the Eastern Borderlands.