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"E Europe faux pas". Cold war vs modern European geography

Posted by I_am_California on 12 Aug 2013 at 15:53 GMT

I am writing to you in order to suggest something.

In your article you have used phrases that many Europeans consider not only to be obsolete.

The term "Eastern Europe" is a very loaded term in modern Europe, especially in the context of strong Central European identity of Poland, the Czech Republic and so on. Relegating them to (Central and) Eastern Europe (which is confused with the Eastern Bloc) is an embarrassing faux pas from the point of view of the readers, especially if their geographic location is west of Europe's geographical midpoint (in Lithuania) and, in fact the term Eastern Europe is very vague, similarly, Western Europe (confused with the Western Bloc during the Cold War two decades ago). Now it is rather controversial and divisive, while not adding any value.

Culturally and geographically, Poland (for example) is in western Europe. It just happens to be poorer and suffered 45 years of communism than the average of the countries of the former Western Bloc.

I hope that helps. Perhaps the better idea is to consider Europe as a whole, or by its economic blocks, like the EU, including a whole spectrum, rather than dividing Europe without a clear necessity (the Cold War is over over two decades ago).

I hope you will find this video inspiring as well as explaining why
regionalising Europe, which is small already, is a bad idea:
http://www.economist.com/...

I hope this feedback will help you to improve the quality of your publications.

Competing interests declared: Modern Europe