Eastern Europe Vibrational Learning

Eastern Europe is the region of the European continent between Western Europe and Asia. There is no consistent definition of the precise area it covers, partly because the term has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic connotations. According to the Center for Educational Technologies at Wheeling Jesuit University, there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region".  A related United Nations paper adds that "every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct".

 

One definition describes Eastern Europe as a cultural entity: the region lying in Europe with the main characteristics consisting of Slavic, Greek, Byzantine, Eastern Orthodox, and some Ottoman cultural influences. Another definition was created during the Cold War and used more or less synonymously with the term Eastern Bloc. A similar definition names the formerly communist European states outside the Soviet Union as Eastern Europe. Such definitions are often seen as outdated, but they are still sometimes used for statistical purposes.

 

While the eastern geographical boundaries of Europe are well defined, the boundary between Eastern and Western Europe is not geographical but historical, religious and cultural and is harder to designate.

 

The Ural Mountains, Ural River, and the Caucasus Mountains are the geographical land border of the eastern edge of Europe. E.g. Kazakhstan, which is mainly located in Central Asia with the most western parts of it located west of the Ural River also shares a part of Eastern Europe.

 

In the west, however, the historical and cultural boundaries of "Eastern Europe" are subject to some overlap and, most importantly, have undergone historical fluctuations, which makes a precise definition of the western geographic boundaries of Eastern Europe and the geographical midpoint of Europe somewhat difficult.