- published: 09 Oct 2012
- views: 4126365
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and 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 (and econo-cultural) entity: the region lying in Europe with main characteristics consisting in Byzantine, Orthodox and minor and limited Ottoman influences.
Another definition, considered outdated by several authors, was created during the Cold War and used more or less synonymously with the term Eastern Bloc.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.
Eastern Europe, home of the bulk of world Jewry until the 1940s, is the birthplace of Hasidic Judaism, Litvak Judaism and several Orthodox churches.
You hit Eastern Europe
With a broken heart
And when you came back the town was gone
Now every little step that you take feels wrong
And I'm here acting chicken
Remember
Kissing, making love
In the rolling Black Sea
Underwater
Slipping your tongue
Through my teeth
A million years later alone in dreams
The night is howling
Listen
The sun shines down
On my whole world now
Pouring over everything
That we know
A little bit of soul
In the bottle that I drink down
Fucked up
Singing to the Heavens above
Kissing the bricks of the home I was born in
Stars all full of song
Guns in the distance
Drums in the deep
A train rolls home, the countryside sleeps
Our love is blowing, all over the streets
You can hear it howling