Who is eastern european

German democracy rests on the assumption that nationalism leads ineluctably to Nazism. In Germany, as a result, ethno-nationalism came close to being criminalized. Central and eastern Europeans, by contrast, find it difficult to share such a negative view of nationalism — first, because their states are children of the age of nationalism that accompanied the breakup of multinational empires; and second, because nationalism played an essential role in the mostly nonviolent anti-communist revolutions that began in In central and eastern Europe, unlike in Germany, nationalism and liberalism are likely to be seen as mutually supporting rather than clashing ideas.

Poles would find it absurd to cease honouring the nationalistic leaders who lost their lives defending Poland against Hitler or Stalin. The region also was forced to suffer for decades under communist propaganda that reflexively, indeed numbingly, denounced nationalism. For a time during the s, the Yugoslav wars led Europe as a whole including the post-communist portion to see or pretend to see nationalism as the root of all evil.

In the long run, however, the identification of liberalism with anti-nationalism did more than merely make people less prone to support liberal parties in post-communist countries. The revolutions of seemed exciting at the time, but viewed in retrospect, they turn out to have been colourless revolutions. In , central and eastern Europeans were not dreaming of some perfect world that had never existed.

A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag. It also made emigration the natural choice of central and eastern European revolutionaries. One of the crucial problems with communism was that its ideal was a society that never existed and that nobody was sure ever would exist. One of the central problems for westernizing revolutions, on the other hand, is that the model they aim to imitate is constantly morphing before our eyes.

The socialist utopia may have been eternally unreachable, but at least it possessed a comfortingly unchanging quality. Western liberal democracy, by contrast, has proved shape-shifting and protean to an extreme. Because western normality is defined not as an ideal but as an existing reality, every change in western societies brings a new image of what is normal.

In the eyes of conservative Poles in the days of the Cold War, western societies were normal because, unlike communist systems, they cherished tradition and believed in God. As a result, Central and East Europeans are becoming mistrustful and resentful of norms coming from the West. Ironically, as we shall see below, eastern Europe is now starting to view itself as the last bastion of genuine European values.

Eastern Europeans often relieve their normative dissonance — say, between paying bribes to survive in the East and fighting corruption to be accepted in the West — by concluding that the West is really just as corrupt as the East, but westerners are simply in denial and hiding the truth. A liberal revolution of normality was not thought to be a leap in time from a dark past to the bright future. It was instead imagined as a movement across physical space, as if all of eastern Europe would be relocating to the House of the West, previously seen only in photographs and films.

Explicit analogies were drawn between the unification of Germany realized after the Wall came down, and the idea of a unified Europe. In the early s, in fact, many eastern Europeans burned with envy at the astonishingly lucky East Germans, who had overnight collectively migrated to the West, waking up miraculously with West German passports in their hands and so some thought deutschmark-stuffed wallets in their pockets.

If the revolution was a regionwide westward migration, then the main question was which eastern European countries would arrive first at their shared destination.

On 13 December , General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared a state of emergency in Poland, and tens of thousands of participants in the anti-communist Solidarity movement were arrested and interned. A year later, the Polish government proposed to release those willing to sign a loyalty oath as well as those prepared to emigrate. In response to these offers, Adam Michnik penned two open letters from his prison cell. Solidarity activists should not swear loyalty to the government because the government had broken its faith with Poland.

As for why the jailed dissidents should shun emigration, Michnik thought this required a more nuanced answer. A dozen years before, as a Polish Jew and one of the leaders of the March student protests in Poland, Michnik had been distressed to see some of his best friends leave the country. He also watched as the communist regime tried to persuade ordinary people that those who left had done so because they cared nothing about Poland. Only Jews emigrate — that was how the government had tried to turn Pole against Pole.

By , Michnik was no longer angry at his friends who had left the country fourteen years before. Leaving would also undermine the democratic movement and help the communists by rendering society too easily pacified and by associating the opposition cause with selfishness and disloyalty to the nation. By deciding not to emigrate, Michnik argued, the imprisoned activists would also give meaning to those who had decided to emigrate earlier and were supporting the Polish resistance from abroad.

Freedom itself means that people have a right to do what they want. But in , to emigrate or not to emigrate was the ultimate loyalty test for Solidarity activists. Only by choosing to remain in jail instead of taking up the attractive offer of personal freedom in the West could they earn the trust of their fellow citizens, upon which the future of a free Polish society depended. If in emigration was an act of betrayal, that is not how it seemed in Central and eastern Europeans would wake from the communist nightmare to freer, more prosperous, and, above all, more western countries.

When no magic and instant westernization came, many took their families and left for the West. The personal choice to decamp to western Europe could no longer be stigmatized as disloyal to nations devoted to becoming like the West. A revolution that had made imitation of the West its goal could give no strong reasons against westward emigration. Revolutions as a rule force people to cross borders — moral borders if not territorial ones. When the French Revolution broke out, many of its enemies decamped.

When the Bolsheviks set up their dictatorship in Russia, millions of White Russians left the country and lived abroad for years with suitcases packed in hopes of a Bolshevik collapse. In these cases, however, the defeated enemies of the revolution were the ones who left. The contrast brings out the historical anomaly of After the velvet revolutions, it was the winners — not the losers — who moved away.

Those most impatient to see their countries change were also the ones most eager to plunge into the life of a free citizenry. They were the first to go abroad to study, work, and live in the West, taking their pro-western inclinations with them. It is hard to picture Leon Trotsky, after his Bolsheviks won, deciding that it was time to go study at Oxford.

And they had good reasons to do so. Unlike the French and Russian revolutionaries, who believed that they were building a new civilization hostile to the old order of throne and altar, and that Paris and Moscow were where this future was being forged, the revolutionaries of were strongly motivated to travel to the West in order to see up close how the normal society they hoped to build at home actually worked in practice. Every revolutionary wants to live in the future, and if Germany was the future of Poland, then the most heartfelt revolutionaries might as well pack up and move to Germany.

The dream of a collective return to Europe made such a choice both logical and legitimate. Why should a young Pole or Hungarian wait for his country one day to become like Germany, when he could start working and raising a family in Frankfurt or Hamburg tomorrow? After all, it is easier to change countries than to change your country. When borders were opened after , exit was favoured over voice because political reform requires the focused cooperation of many organized social interests, while emigration requires only you and yours.

The mistrust of nationalistic loyalties and the prospect of a politically united Europe also helped to make emigration the political choice for many liberal-minded eastern Europeans. This brings us to the refugee crisis that struck Europe in and In , the open society meant a promise of freedom, above all a freedom to do what had been previously forbidden, namely to travel to the West.

Today, openness to the world, for large swaths of the central and eastern European electorate, connotes not freedom but danger: immigrant invasion, depopulation, and loss of national sovereignty. What central and eastern Europeans realized in the course of the refugee crisis was that, in our connected but unequal world, migration is the most revolutionary revolution of them all.

The twentieth-century revolt of the masses is a thing of the past. We are now facing a twenty-first-century revolt of the migrants. Undertaken anarchically, not by organized revolutionary parties but by millions of disconnected individuals and families, this revolt faces no collective-action problems. It is inspired not by ideologically coloured pictures of a radiant, imaginary future, but by glossy photos of life on the other side of the border.

Globalization has made the world a village, but this village lives under a kind of dictatorship — a dictatorship of global comparisons. The remaining 3, square miles are water regions. The Republic of Poland is known for being the most religious-minded country in all of Europe.

The Polish country is the place to go for a look at some of the most beautiful natural scenery you'll ever have the pleasure of seeing. Called the Slovak Republic in official terms, Slovakia is like many other Eastern European countries in that it is surrounded by land.

To the north of Slovakia lies Poland, while Hungary borders the southern edge of Slovakia. The population of Slovakia is just under 5. About 5. The boundaries of Slovakia's land surround roughly 18, square miles, making the population density about persons per square mile. As a country predominantly comprised of mountainous regions, Slovakia is a prime place to spend your winters, especially if you love cold weather and all sorts of snow-related sports.

The capital of the Slovak Republic is Bratislava , which is a major city located in the westernmost part of Slovakia. Bratislava is so far west that it almost appears to sit outside of the Slovakian borders, but don't be fooled.

The capital is definitely within the confines of Slovakia. More formally called the Ukraine, this Eastern European country is surrounded by seven fellow European countries and the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Starting with Ukraine's southwestern border and moving clockwise around the country's borders, Ukraine shares boundaries with Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, and Russia.

Although Ukraine takes up its fair share of space, people seem to revere Ukraine as a smaller country. Maybe it's due to the country's location and proximity to Russia, which is a massive country to begin with. But either way, Ukraine happens to be far larger than people think. Ukraine's total area is about , square miles in total, making it the second-largest country in Europe. The Ukrainian population has been said to hover just below 44 million people, making Ukraine the 33rd-largest countries around the world.

Even so, Ukraine only accounts for about 0. Eastern Europe Countries Belarus Belarus is practically front and center in relation to the other nine Eastern European countries. Czechia The Czech Republic , or Czechia, is located amid many European countries, making the Czech Republic an entirely-landlocked country with no line of direct access to any major body of water.

Slovakia Called the Slovak Republic in official terms, Slovakia is like many other Eastern European countries in that it is surrounded by land. Show Source.