The Physical Environment

Abstract

The eight states, which since 1945 have been organised on Marxist—Leninist principles, are commonly referred to collectively as Eastern Europe, but it would be more appropriate to speak of them as comprising_‘East Central and Southeastern Europe’. Although there has always been much disagreement over the extent and definition of the major regional divisions of Europe, the term ‘Eastern Europe’ has commonly included the so-called European Russia, while much of the study area was before 1945 included in the vaguely defined but conceptually live Central Europe. Likewise, South-eastern Europe has come to have a wider connotation than its predecessor, the Balkans. In common usage, Eastern Europe has come to mean in the last quarter of a century the eight states associated with the Soviet Union through their political ties in the immediate post-war years, so that the German Democratic Republic has been included under a label which was unthinkable before 1945. In nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Europe, central Europe was a real image, but the division of Europe between conflicting ideologies in the years of the Cold War split it asunder, leaving only a vacuum, so that it is now a term seldom heard. Whatever arguments may be made to the contrary, we must accept that common usage has made a bodily shift in the concept of Eastern Europe, from which the Soviet Union is now generally excluded.