What is Central Europe?

In this video, I talk about the controversial dilemma of the regional demarcation of Central and Eastern Europe. Where does Central Europe begin, and where does it end? Is it a cultural or geographic term? And where do Europe and Western civilization end? I analyze these questions from historical, societal, economic, and civilizational points of view.

- timestamps -

00:00 - Introduction
06:19 - Where does Europe end?
13:14 - The two inter-European division lines
21:59 - What really defines Western civilization?
30:52 - Conclusions

Photos used in the video and for the thumbnail:

Some of the information sources for this video:
Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment
From peoples Into nations.

[ivanbrezina]

When Czech foreign ministr Karel Schwarzenberg spoke at some conference about the region he used the term "Central Europe". Sergei Lavrov who also attended let him finish, and them "corrected" him saying: "No you are not Central Europe, you are Eastern Europe".
Then he reminded everybody that the term "Eastern Europe" was officially coined by UN in 1948 on Stallins request to determine USSR's "sphere of influence".
So when people use the term "Central Europe" they might express the fact that: Stalin is dead, USSR collapsed more than 30 years ago, and contemporary Russia does not have sphere of influence (except for Belarus).

[eggsistentialdread]

Maybe the real Western Civilization was the friends we made along the way :D

[DrainedPunk]

One correction, you mentioned that western areas from contemporary Poland were repopulated by the people from Kresy after WW2. This is correct, and it’s true that for the rural population that was a huge change of environment. However most of the urban Poles from Kresy came from cities like Lwow/Lviv, which were never in the Russian partition. It was a typical old city established on Magdenburg laws, with the majority of population being Polish, with the urban design very much resembling Breslau. It’s not like people who came to Wroclaw found themselves in an alien environment, it was more like someone moving from Zurich to Vienna nowadays.

[Menape]

As a swede, i honestly always seen poland as center in europe.
Its weird to call it eastern europe when i live more east than poland as a northern swede living at the swedish/finnish border.

[xander]

I'm Dutch but I get offended when people look down on the east. That happens a lot here and it disgusts me, I genuinely get angry. Why look down on other EU countries, when we are supposed to be one union? That's even more important in these times then ever before. I love visiting countries that were once under Soviet influence, I was in Bulgaria a year ago and I loved it. Every country is worth visiting IMO, just leave out the damn past and politics for once. We in Western Europe must stop thinking that we are the center of the universe. The data at 3:19 says a lot. Besides Bulgaria, all other European countries I visited are less criminal than my own, so I won't hesitate to show grandma this next time she tries to convince me that I shouldn't visit Latvia, but Italy instead (for the 50th time lmao)😂 (Also, the Bulgarians I met were even nicer than my average fellow Dutchmen, so I will take the Bulgarian rates with a grain of salt as well)

[kaiserbauch]

At 12:50, I talk about the famous Czech novelist Milan Kundera, and I mistakenly say, Miloš Kundera. I am ashamed since he is one of the most celebrated modern Czech writers. Sorry for that! Sometimes I make stupid mistakes like that.

[richardlapin]

As a Slovak, I don't really care what the rest of the world thinks. On the contrary, I see benefits to the popular/normie underestimation of the region (which is probably even more true for Slovakia than the rest of the V4). Bratislava, a city with a Western European standard of living (HDI on par with Norway and one of the highest GDP per capita stats in the EU), has not been ruined by mass tourism and immigration thanks to the lack of a positive brand name.

[WikDroid]

Poland was also being industrialised during the Industrial Revolution. Prussia incentivised many industrial projects within its lands and two most industrialised regions in the German Empire were the Ruhr and Upper Silesia. In it worth noting that Greater Poland remained rural, because of the policies of Germany that wanted to make it its breadbasket. Apart from Upper Silesia the most industrialised region in today’s Poland in the XIX century was ironically the Russian partition (only the Kingdom of Poland - land west of Bug river, which is also Polish eastern border). I perceive it being a good argument of Poland being Central European, because it was considerably wealthier than the rest of Russia like Finland and had higher literacy rates. The matter was that way on the account of these lands being closer to the western markets. Also worth noticing is the fact the customs between Russia and Poland were only disbanded in 1855 and Polish textiles flooded Russian markets and the textile production was enormous in Poland even until 1989. Łódź is being often called the Manchester of Poland quite reasonably and it is not the only industrialised city in that era, Warsaw was the richest city of the Russian Empire, hence it was called “Paris of the north”. Unfortunately is was obliterated during II World War and now you can only see the elements of former stunning bourgeois edifices of XIX and XX centuries

[argeutlandssvensken]

I have lived in Sweden, Norway, Latvia and now Estonia. I feel much safer in the Baltics than in Scandinavia.

[pustelnicaa]

Like most polish people, I prefer Poland being called "central europe". When I think of eastern europe, I think of cyrillic alphabet or orthodox church, cultures closer do Russia. Obviously no Pole wants to be under russian influence and many of us want to be more like west, both culturally and economically.

I don't think that everything on east of Vienna or Germany is eastern Europe. It's not west or east, black or white. If we're in the middle, we're in the middle. There's no need to generalize.

[tomorrowneverdies]

Metternich: the west starts at Vienna.
Adenauer: the west starts on the Elbe.
De Gaule/the french: the west starts on the Rhine.
Churchill/the british: the west starts at Dover.
Observe a pattern? 😂

[slawomirzawojski]

I emigrated from Poland in 2006 it was quite astonishing how many times I had to explain to English people that we do have toilets inside 😂

[Kretek]

Im Polish and I completely agree with you on that. If someone is calling me an Eastern European I really dont care. I dont see it as an insult at all.

[catalinsima]

Fun fact Timisoara which is in Transilvania was the first city in Europe that had public lightning, this was in 1884

[ekszentrik]

This is honestly one of the best unintentionally funny (I know it's semi-intentionally intended to be humorous, but not laugh-out funny) videos.
I burst out laughing when you said Far Westerners only really use "Central European" to refer to Poles etc. when they are being polite around them.

[katarzynalpzmarajko-nenow]

Thanks for such a great material. Well done 🎉
About 20 years ago Western Europe was like the center of civilization for me. I was dreaming about moving there, at least for some time. The dream came true and I was living several years in Norway. It was wonderful time but on the other hand it has shown me thar indeed "Grass is always greener..." From the inside you're able to see many disadvantages of living there, especially as the imigrant from Eastern Europe. So, after some time there, I went back and today I'm living happily in Poland among "down to earth" people with decent dose of common sense, where I walk quite safely in the middle of the night and I can speak my mind freely without too much thinking about political corectness.

[damian]

The name "Central Europe" makes sense only in the cultural context - not geographical. Why?
Because countries of Central Europe used to be like the countries of Western Europe in medieval ages, then countries of Central Europe were under Russian/Soviet influence, the influence that the Western Europe has never felt. So if we agree that we are not like Russia (Eastern Europe) despite having something in common with them (Slavic language, communist period) and we agree that we are not like Western Europe despite having something in common with them (Latin alphabet, Catholic faith) we can come to an agreement that we are somewhere in the "center" since we have experienced both influences over the last thousand of years.

[TheArctofireHD]

Yes, another video from one of my favorite YouTubers! Something to distract me from the uni work I'm supposed to be doing :D

[Stefanism]

As a Romanian, I think that our nation has the worst issue when it comes to which part of Europe should we consider to be part of. We learn in school that we are geographically part of Central Europe, though only half of Romania, the former territories ruled by the Habsburgs (Transylvania, Banat, Bukovina) are considered by westerners to be really a part of Central Europe. Some say we are a part of Southeastern Europe, due to the centuries long Ottoman suzerainty over our lands, and because of this reason, some even define us as „Balkan”, even though only the small region of Dobruja fits the criteria to what is considered to be the Balkans. Others still say that we are an Eastern European country, mostly because of our orthodox faith and the communist past when the country was under Soviet sphere of influence, the millions of Romanians currently living in the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine being also included here. In the mean time we are speaking a Latin language and we are the only descendants of the Roman Empire that managed to not forget or change the name of our ancestors but kept it and still using it for the way we call ourselves. I guess we have always been this Eastern Romance speaking island at the crossroad of empires and geographical divisions of Europe…

[domiiinik]

People are looking at Europe like it ends at Belarus and Ukraine in the East and they don't consider Russia to be a European country, and that's why there are mistakes like calling Poland or Czechia eastern european
They are central european, along with Slovakia, Hungary, Austria etc.