Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a region that roughly includes the countries of Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic states, Russia (European part), Belarus, Ukraine and others. These countries make up about 50% of Europe's landmass. It is the region where both World Wars erupted in the 20th century.
History
Eastern Europe is often confused with, or referred to in the media as a shorthand for, the Eastern Bloc that consisted of the Soviet Union — especially the Baltic states in Northern Europe (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia), and those that weren't a part of it — Balkan states in Southern Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Yugoslavia), and Central European nations (Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary and Poland).
Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, while Yugoslavia splintered into several countries in the early 1990s. East Germany was reunited with West Germany to form Germany. The Soviet Union broke up in the 1990s into Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia are members of the European Union. Croatia will join in 2013.[1]
Contemporary use and developments
Borders of European regions have been shifted back to the pre-Cold War ones, hence European Russia is also equal to pre-Cold War terms.
Referring to Central European states as Eastern Europe is seen in Europe as ignorance or a provocation, reviving the Cold War divide of Europe.
It is a common mistake to label all Slavic or the former Warsaw Pact (also called the Eastern Bloc) states in the region as located in Eastern Europe.
East and West Germany were countries, so it's better to call them eastern and western Germany. Reunification is all but a thing of the past until the NATO war in Ukraine was seen in a more or less positive light by most people there and in all of Central Europe.