Eastern Europe is not real

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The real eastern Europe was the friends we made along the way

Hello from Czechia, please don't rob me of the opportunity to explain to you how we're Central Europe and not Eastern Europe, it's all we have.

As a Pole, I have never even thought about Euro 2012 being turning point for perception of ex-communist block nation for rest of europe, thats intresting observation

Coming from Scandinavia and having lived in Poland and Czechia for 7 years I have noticed that Easter Europe is a derogatory term and more often than making the Poles and Czechs angry, it makes them sad and hopeless that after hundreds of years of wars, colonisation and genocides they need to put up with this. It is simply humiliating to call them by a term coined for the degrading reasons mentioned in the video. The fact that the Soviets have pushed it through in the UN is also horrible because it forever nailed a certain picture of those countries in the minds of us Westerners, namely that they have some connection to the Russians when in fact they were colonised by them and even during the Cold War they were forcibly exploited by Russia. Never in those countries history were they willingly in line with Russia. It always happened through Russian invasions. For me they are Central, Baltic, Finno-Ugric ect. Let them define themself for the first time in their history. Love from Stockholm ❤

Imagine cracking the "I only eat Russians" joke in front of a judge in a real life werewolf-ism trial 💀

"The French being French" is a perfectly good explanation for everything that happens in France.

As a Romanian, I never really thought about baggage of the term "eastern European" until now. I am debating with myself whether I still want to use it or not to describe myself. As a millennial, I do find that there is a shared childhood experience with most of the countries under Soviet influence. And I do find thst westerners still have weird Russian fetishes that they still hold on to, even to this day. Perhaps the biggest thing that brings us together today is a hatred of Russia.

Pre WW2 Lithuania was very similar to Denmark in terms of population and economy. The staggering difference in 1991 showed just how much damage the soviet rule did to the region.

There is a joke among slavic countries which is that Eastern Europe starts to the east of their own country, as no one wants to be seen as eastern european.

Rip to all Eastern Europeans who realized they aren't real.

Finland is the Eastern European country that got away... And Czechs are the one that did not get away.

As someone from Latvia, the term Eastern Europe is straight up derogatory and we absolutely hate it.

As a Pole, that's fine. I'm ok with living in fairytale, or even not existing at all. As long as I don't have to live in Russki Mir

I'm from Eastern Europe from Ukraine, I'm fine with whatever geographic term people are calling me and my nation as long as they don't call me russian

as a very patriotic Czech, I clicked on this video because I saw Czech flag in the thumbnail, and I am glad I did

I think, as a west European, I have taken much more of a look at the East of Europe because I think the recent war has reminded me more and more how much all of our lives are dependent on eachother for our peace and stability, and how much we should stand shoulder to shoulder with all our European brothers and sisters to defend the things we care about and that many countries fought so hard to achieve especially those neighboring Russia. Self-determination and human freedom. Shedding the idea of eastern Europe as a monolithic cultural group let me see so many distinct and unique peoples and cultures, with their own unique histories. I think everyone in Europe owes it to eachother to get to know eachother and find what we have in common. Especially now. We should have listened to Russia's neighbours when they told us over and over again that Russia is a threat, they knew because they have had to suffer an imperial and expansionist russia for most of recent history. We we're stupid to ignore them. And I think that ignorance is fueled by this idea that our brothers and sister in the east are somehow less than us. They fought hard to take control of their own destinies, and work hard for their freedom and prosperity, they deserve nothing but our respect for it.

I'm Portuguese. My girlfriend is Italian. When, in the summer of 2022, I told my 84yo granny that I was visiting my girlfriend's parents in northern Italy, she begged me not to go because of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. When I told her that Ukraine was pretty far from Italy she told me: "all those eastern countries are the same to me". So in some sense, what you call eastern, center, western, is also a matter of your POV.

What I learned from this video is that I TOTALLY want to be a 16th century Polish vampire.

As a Finn the term Eastern Europe has intuitively been always sort of weird to me. We consider ourselves Nordic and Western, but if you check the map there's only like parts of Ukraine and Belarussia that are more to the East than Finland before we hit the Mother Russia. It's a political term as much as Finlandization was a political phenomenon driven by our huge neighbour.