East-Central Europe

Perspectives of arthistorians

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch

(I'm not Russian at all, I come from Lithuania, a true German)

T.S.Eliot, early 1920s

Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Easterns and Central European Art Since the 1950s (eds. Hoptman and Pospiszyl)

The concept of "Eastern Europe," as it has been understood in the past several decades, is neither geographic nor social; it is economic and political. A product of the Yalta Conference of 1945, it was created with the intention of outlining zones of influence in Europe. Subsequently, the territory between Germany and Russia fell under the influence of the Soviet Union and soon became isolated from the rest of the world, and, in the eyes of the world, politically homogenized. [..] For several decades, artistic freedom in Eastern Europe was singularly suppressed, creating conditions for the development of artistic expression markedly different from those of the West. In the scope of the book included post-Communist European countries, including former Yugoslavia and Russia.

East Art Map: Contemporary Art And Eastern Europe (eds. Irwin)

Sometimes ex-socialist Central, Eastern and South-Eastern countries, elsewhere Eastern Europe (also known as the former communist countries, East & Central Europe, or New Europe) is mentioned as the area of the focus. Included countries: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, former East Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania.

The Avant-Garde in the Shadow of Yalta. Art and Politics in Central-Eastern Europe, 1945-1989 [Polish] (Piotrowski)

East-Central Europe, i.e. Europe in the shadow of Yalta, is a historical discursive construct of a purely political character, which came into being as a result of World War II. This term refers to the territory between the "iron curtain" and the USSR - that part of the continent which in consequence of an agreement between the West and the USSR fell under the political control of the latter. The USSR itself did not fall under the "shadow of Yalta" since it remained one of the powers deciding about Europe's future, which is why - apart from other reasons - its art has not been taken into consideration in the present study. East-Central Europe is not what used to be called Central Europe ("Mitteleuropa"), though the latter remains in part one of its components: East-Central Europe consists of the eastern segment of the former Central Europe (without Austria, but with the eastern provinces of Germany) and the western segment of the former Eastern Europe. In short, East-Central Europe included the following countries which since the mid-1940s till 1989, under the terms of the Yalta treaty, remained more or less strictly dominated by the USSR: Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Poland, Hungary, and - to some extent - Bulgaria, where the avant-garde tendencies were, however, rather insignificant. Besides, the area includes two countries which for various reasons and with different consequences broke the "friendly" relations with the USSR: Yugoslavia and Romania.

The Violence of Participation (ed. Miessen)

In an interview, Hans-Ulrich Obrist asks Karl Schlögel, professor for Eastern European history, whether he understands idea of Europe as a geographical, cultural, or political construct. Schlögel says Europe has formed with diffuse transitions on the margins--in the Mediterranean world, in the eastern zone of the Mediterranean or the Levant, and also in the Caucasian space, and in what is called European Russia, or the Urals, and adds that the New Europe that is now coming into being now in a certain way is simply the reactivation of a Europe that I do believe already existed before the extreme and violent 20th century. I have to tell you--my point of reference for this integral Europe is really the Europe before 1914. Now, you can say that this is a nostalgic view, but I think that it developed a cultural density and a civilizatory power that really is the benchmark of Europe, unrivalled to this day. On Eastern European history he says it is predominantly history of those countries or peoples or societies that were captive or caught up in the Eastern Bloc, and to that extent the history of the Eastern Bloc--which is to say, the fifty or sixty years of forced cohabitation in that block--is in fact a part of the history of Eastern Europe, but only one part of it. If we go beyond the bloc divide, things immediately look very different. It is the history that played out between the Northeast, the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea, where the old empires clashed--those of the Tsar, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, and fundamentally also the German Empire.

Leap Into the City: Chișinău, Sofia, Pristina, Sarajevo, Warsaw, Zagreb. Cultural Positions, Political Conditions. Seven Scenes from Europe. (eds. Klingan and Kappert)

The term "eastern Europe" is associated both with a polarization between East and West and with the synthesizing of a geopolitical space.

Modern Art in Eastern Europe: From the Baltic to the Balkans, Ca. 1890-1939 (Mansbach)

Six chapters: 1. The Czech Lands, 2. Poland and Lithuania, 3. The Baltic States of Latvia and Estonia, 4. The Southern Balkans of the Former Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Macedonia, 5. Romania and 6. Hungary. Many places are left out (Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia, Slovak part of Czechoslovakia).

Avant-gardes Connections from Prague to Bucharest 1907-1930 [Hungarian] (Passuth)

Does not discuss the historical context of the Europe of the 1910s and 1920s.

Perspectives of historians

East-Central Europe (or Middle Europe, Median Europe, fr. Europe médiane) – a term defining the countries located between German-speaking countries and Russia. Those lands are situated “between two”: between two worlds, between two stages, between two futures. Median Europe is opposed to the Western and Eastern Europe, is one of the “Three Europes”.

Differing from ideas of Eastern Europe and Central Europe, the concept is based on different criteria of distinction and has different geographical spread.. In addition, countries of Central Europe and of Eastern Europe belong to two different cultural circles.

Definitions

Paul Robert Magocsi

East Central Europe according to Paul Robert Magocsi

(Canadian professor of history and political science)
Magocsi described this region in this work Historical Atlas of East Central Europe. He distinguished 3 main zones:

• The northern zone, located between the Baltic Sea (@north) and the alignment Ore Mountains-Sudetes-northern Carpathians-Prut river (@south) and the Dnieper (@east). The countries located by the author in this zone are: former East Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine (west of the Dnieper river) and Moldova.
• The Alpine-Carpathian zone, located on the south of the northern zone, bordered in the south by the rivers Kupa-Sava-Danube. This area roughly coincides with the former Habsburg Empire (minus Galicia) before the mid 19th century and the Danubian Principalities (Wallachia and Moldavia). The countries located by the author in this zone are: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia (north of the Kupa-Sava rivers), Serbia (Vojvodina) and notheast Italy.
• The Balkan zone, located on the south of the Alpine-Carpathian zone and matching with the Balkan peninsula. The countries located by the author in this zone are: Croatia (south of the Kupa-Sava rivers), Bosnia-Herzegovina, Central Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece and European Turkey.

Oscar Halecki

(1891-1973; Polish historian, social and Catholic activist; expert on medieval history of Poland and Lithuania, and history of Byzantine Empire.)
Oscar Halecki, who distinguished four regions in Europe (Western, West Central, East Central and Eastern Europe) defined East-Central Europe as a region from Finland to Greece, the eastern part of Central Europe, between Sweden, Germany, and Italy, on the one hand, and Turkey and Russia on the other. According to Halecki, in the course of European history, a great variety of peoples in this region created their own independent states, sometimes quite large and powerful; in connection with Western Europe they developed their individual national cultures and contributed to the general progress of European civilization.

Charles Ingrao

(American professor of history; specialization Early Modern Europe, Habsburg and Central European History)
Charles Ingrao wrote a historical perspective of Central Europe from the Habsburg point of view. He associates Central Europe with the nations comprising Austria-Hungary, both geographically and culturally. Ingrao suggests that the cultural imprint of the Habsburg rule over these nations is deeply rooted within their respective identities. Some of these nations were divided between the nation-states and the Habsburgs; Ingrao thus points out to the Italian-, Romanian- and Serbian questions. The peoples comprising the Dual Monarchy were the following (Census 1910): Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Ruthenians, Romanians, Croats, Slovaks, Serbs, Slovenes and Italians.

Michael Foucher

Michael Foucher defined Middle Europe as an intermediate geopolitical space between the West and Russia, a space of historical transitions between these two organizational poles; political and territorial heirs imposed from the East, i.e. Kremlin; nowadays streamlining process imposed by the West.. According to this author, the following sub-regions form Median (Middle) Europe:

• in the North – Central Europe stricto sensu (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia)
• in the South – Romania, Bulgaria, Republic of Macedonia, Albania, the region “overflows towards Ukraine and Belarus”
• Greece is cited as not being a part of Median Europe but playing an important role there

United Nations

United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) was set up to consider the technical problems of domestic standardization of geographical names. The Group is composed of experts from various linguistic/geographical divisions that have been established at the UN Conferences on the Standardization of Geographical Names.

• Eastern Europe, Northern and Central Asia Division: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russian Federation, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
• East Central and South-East Europe Division: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic,Greece, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine.
• Romano-Hellenic Division: Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Greece, Holy See, Italy, Luxembourg, Moldova, Monaco, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey.
• Baltic Division: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania