Eastern Europe?

[fidobsa]

I  think of Croatia as being part of Eastern Europe, although I realise this is a political designation rather than a geographical one and dates back to cold war times. 

I just read this in a profile on Couchsurfing:

"Croatia is NOT Eastern Europe, never was and never will be, it is Southern Europe. Even during the Cold War before the Berlin Wall Fall when there were three divided Europes (the Western Nato Alliance, the Eastern Warsaw Block and the central and neutral Yugoslavia) we had a completely different economy and political system than both the East and West. Jugoslavia in translation was what it's name says, a union of famous/litterate southern people (jug - south, slava/slovo - fame/litteracy) which consisted of 6 states, some with differening languages and writing systems. If you'll have time to look at the map, note that Vienna is more to the East than Zagreb, and I spend my summer in Croatia more to the west than the German capital, Berlin. So please, if you are Austrian or German don't make a fool of yourself in calling us 'Eastern Europe', you might be laughed at."

I then did a Google search for Eastern Europe And this was one of the many results:

www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Eastern_Europe

Do you think the average Croatian would take offence if you refer to his country as part of Eastern Europe?

[dugodude]

I believe you will find Prague is also west of Vienna. Plzen is, for certain. But tere is no doubt that pre-1989 that most peoples of western and communist Europe thought Prague in the east, and Vienna in the west.

The problem is cloudy, because, of course, former Yugoslavia was not part of the Warsaw Pact. Tito had no intention of kow-towing to Stalin in 1948-50, and Stalin made him an enemy of the people.

Yugoslavia also had a 'different' form of communism/som (though it was hardly 'liberal') and (I'm not quite sure from which date) but certainly by 1960, Yugoslavs were free to cross their borders and visit, work or even emigrate to the west.

This all led to a much higher standard of living for Yugo by the 70s.

Nontheless, people in Mannheim, Manchester and Minnesota want simple explanations. Yugoslavia was communist, and that was enough to lump it into "Eastern Europe" for the tabloid explanation of things.

Even Churchill, in his famous speech, said: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

Tieste, of course, was - just - part of Italy - or had been awarded to Italy - and not Yugoslavia, which almost surrounded it.

And Churchill actually knew Yugoslavia - he'd helped Tito and the Partizans to drive out the Nazis. DD

[Carol]

South East Europe? I thought that's where everybody thought/ thinks it is.