Eastern Europe is not real 

Slayyy

Bro really did Slovenia dirty with those cat ears lmao

Cool

​@@Arrow14100Slovenes are femboys

​@@JohnGeometresMaximosNo?

Real

Like 30+ friends

True 😂 ✌️✌️

And the experiences we've made, that will help us to prevent future mistakes

if you get offended by being called Eastern European, you are Eastern European.

Czechia, the only country who is remembered internationally as the joke country who “is obsessed with their geography”, even though having an insane amount of history and culture that could easily rival Vienna and Paris.

Honestly, czechia is quite firmly a western nation. Us Slovaks on the other hand, yikes.

To be fair I have never seen a definition of "central Europe" that wasn't missing a few countries or had a few too many

Терпи, лимитроф

You also have one kind of beer that you pour different ways

As a Pole, I think of Lithuania and Latvia as a family. People of the entire Europe I treat as my friends. I was treated very well in every European country I visited. Belarus included. And I love each of those countries. I visited the USSR when I was a small kid. I have never been to Russia. ps. As of now, I don't find myself visiting Russia anytime soon.

⁠@@HanSolo__ I'd say our family ties are quite complicated, but in the 21st century Poland is definitely family as is Latvia. let's hope one day Belarus as a country can be part of that family too...

@@benas_st I'm another Pole and I feel closer to Czechia and Slovakia. Lithuania and especially Latvia and Estonia are too different countries from Poland.

@@benas_st Well, we (Poles) did accidentally f****-up that relationship we had with Czechs and Slovaks, Lithuanians and Ukrainians. But here's hoping it will mend in time.

corrupt prime ministers and such becoming the lapdogs of russia dont help either, decades of suffering under soviet rule are thrown away at the chance to turn unreasonably rich at the cost of their country eroding away as it becomes a russia friendly dump, which they can just ignore from their perfectly reasonably extragavant palaces and supercars

This is how I always used it myself. Not as "ah some shit-tier nations" but as nations who are former USSR states and have a shared trauma from that, and some shared interests given that Russia still clearly sees them as its rightful property. ESPECIALLY in light of the war in Ukraine. But if there _are_ people using it in a derogatory fashion, fuck them and fuck that.

I think there was some rejuvenation of this feeling that you describe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I certainly never felt closer in my life to you Balts, Poles, Ukrainians than since Feb 2022. I live in London now and while people here are generally sympathetic to Ukraine, there is a certain level of understanding that I can really only achieve with other “Eastern Europeans”. It was most pronounced during the first month of the invasion: I felt a profound valley between us and west europeans. For them, what was happening in Ukraine was horrible but not personal. They were worried but mostly about Russia’s nuclear threats to them (I know people who left London because they were afraid of nuclear attack). They wanted to help Ukraine in principle but nothing that would affect their well-being (like banning Russian fossil fuels or witdrawing businesses). And they certainly wouldn’t be in favoir of sending any significant weapons. They also didn’t really have this need to constantly talk about it. They didn’t see it as their fight, as attack on them. The victims could be ignored, it was news, horrible news, but it wasn’t felt personally. Whereas with almost any random “East European”, I instantly had this connection. So that’s how I realised that Eastern Europe is in some aspect real, as a space where people understand the reality of being under an empire, especially the Russian/Soviet one. How I would define it beoadly: it’s the space betweem empires - Russian, German, Austrian, Ottoman; and it matters for subdivisions which empire you were subjugated by. But as with all imagined communities, it’s not really about the past but about the future. So what I think defines Eastern Europe in this sense that it’s the areas that don’t want to be subjugated by an empire anymore, that’s their shared dream. According to this logic, the term only makes sense if Russia isn’t included. (And it breaks for people in the two countries that desire an imperial expansion for themselves, Hungary and Serbia. I feel like other Eastern European states don’t feel that sense of belonging with the people in these states who dream of Greater Hungary and Greater Serbia.) I’d be quite happy to use it in this way now. But of course, that also gives you the limitation: it’s not a cultural term. Culturally, there is very little that Latvia, Czechia and Bulgaria would have in common.

Yep. This actually happened.

@@Kraut_the_Parrot I thought you were doing a deadpan joke for the video! That was real?!!

@@rkt7414 Yes. I'll give you some more information if you are interested. The werewolf trial happened during a protestant witchcraze in the Latvia town of Jaunpils in 1621. The accused was an 80 year old man who claimed to be a werewolf and "a man of the hound god". He claimed to protect the village crops by turning into a werewolf and hunting those who would steal the town crops. He also performed religious rituals for the "hound god". One of his defenses during his trial was "I only eat Russians". If you want to learn more you can read "Night Battles - Witchcraft and Agrarian cults in the 16th and 17th century" by Carlo Ginzberg.

​@Kraut_the_Parrot This was literally the 17th century equivalent of Japanese Officer going "we only killed 102" or paraphrasing.

We need him on the front lines ASAP

To the east is Mordor.

Or east of your region 😂 "Od Konina Azja się zaczyna" - east of Konin (town) is all Asia

@@LMB222 Funny :) I'm Polish and didn't know this one!

Not even only Slavic, here in Netherlands we say that Eastern Europe starts at the Ruhr and in France (from the Romans) they say that Eastern Europe starts at the Rhine

This is literally Žižek's "official geographical limit" video

nicely put! I think you understand what is going on, hi from the Czech republic

thanks my viking friend

Thanks for the words of logic. Especially since in my browser, your comment appears right below the comment of a famous Serb (LivingIronicallyinEurope), who records "funny" and "ronical", "black humor" films about the Balkans and Eastern Europe. He said that Eastern Europeans should reclaim the slogan Eastern Europe as if it were a common good. At a time when most people do not want to restore this word but emphasize their own different identity. You noticed well that the most important thing is identification and if someone wants to be different, it means that they are different. It is very easy. If someone wants to be Baltic or Central, that's how it is. Similarly, I hope that no one doubts that Ukrainians are not Russians, but to check it you need to ask Ukrainians and that's it. Just like asking Croats, Bosnians, Slovenians whether they are Serbs/Yugoslavs. If they deny it, it is what it is. Greetings from Poland

Thank you from Lithuania! You expressed it perfectly!

I mean, whatever. At some point it doesn't matter, we earned our place. I know we are different that 'West' we also different then far East. I live in East Poland and East of EU, it is what it is ;)

Thank you so much for writing this!

French people ☕

Nobody knows what it means, but it's provocative. It gets the people going.

Honestly, I didn't understand this sentence 🤔

I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.

​@@amelie1287I take it, you are not french?

The rapture came early to them

"Mr Kraut, I don't feel so good..." *proceeds to turn into ash*

Literally nobody self-identifies as "Eastern Europeans". So yes, they aren't real.

iam currently disolving. help

all 0 of them. Because like Kraut says, people here don't consider themselves "eastern european".

same! :D it's just what now caught my attention that the term 'patriotic' is associated with fathers and fatherland, while czech word 'vlastenecký' is associated with the homeland as great mother and belonging to her. Should be more responsible relationship than too many Czechs actually shows up.

As a patriotic Pole I also feelt the same when seeing a Polish flag

@@Neoniq41 do you know that Czech and Polish flag are quite similar? (czech is more red while polish is a bit pinky). also Warsaw and Prague has the same flag. It's just a random info, I know. But I love to learn how different and yet similar our countries are :)

@@ondrejlukas4727 Yeh

@@Neoniq41 YEH jakože víte, nebo YEH jakože 'klidně si polibte prdel'? :)

Reasonable

A Russian in other words....

You want to get my wife pregnant? Fair enough 😂

No, you want, you would be stuck on the earth until Doomsday and become demon exhausted by too long existence.

😂​@@SirAntoniousBlock

As a Hungarian who supports Ukraine I absolutely agree.

As an American I think Poland is a kick ass country. Winged Hussars are basass.

@@jalex4251 As a amrican :) the good dudes

Good luck with that

Amen from Romania, brother!

Yes, and the base concepts are loose enough that they can be applied to many folkloric myths - there's plenty of wolves turning into men and vice versa in the british isles, and the word lycan comes from a greek story. It's like dragons, you can't pin the origin down from a single culture.

Grandmothers are so pure 💓💓

I heard a similar response where a man told his grandmother he was marrying someone from South America and he was told “aren’t they all PROTESTANT down there?”

Se para a tua avó o norte da Itália é ligada com o conceito de europa de leste, então Portugal é a Ásia Central 😂😂😂

@@eskipoI Portugal é Bálcãs xD

Haha that's hilarious, I'm dying! 🤣 But I though the same about perspective; north, south, east and west are so unspecific terms to name a region.

Hello my ruskay friend.

@@Hk7762Tube *rusgay

Hello my Russian friend

Russians are basically Polish vampires then.

Amen. Being a Russian is rather a medical issue than nationality thing aniway

THANK YOU! I immidiatly picked up on this too. This guy has no idea how to discern facts, apparantly. It's ironic that he's doing the exact fremdbestimmung that he argues "western europe" has done to "eastern europe", by crying ripoff and blatantly overlooking that every country that has wolves has a rich folklore about werewolves, thus denying them the opportunity to define themselves!

Exactly!​@@christianpetersen163 I thought of this video to be an amazing one....until he said that about vampires and werewolves and ruined everything.

The name is however taken from a Slavic language that preserved nasals - cmp ukr. "upyr"

The name is. There's only so far you can get into details in one video.

imagine being butthurt over wampire lore origins...

I share some of these feelings as Macedonian. I left a similar comment about how the term feels conflicting

@@heyons2808 I feel the same as a Serb.

Why don't you guys... I don't know... change it??

@@noodleppoodle change it?? Are you aware that if you want to obsolete for example form C12, this requires form A39, printed in triplicate, then scanned into a PDF then hand-signed by your superiors who then need to upload it to three different government agencies who will each have a 50% likelyhood to DENY the request!

​@@Enyavar1form A39?! Wasn't it form A38? Did I miss something important or did the official "office of bureaucratic nonsense" forget to update us on changes AGAIN?!

@@noodleppoodle Any changes to the bureaucracy would require it going through the bureaucracy first.

It is a great description of France too.

This - I feel that since the 90s it has most often been used to describe the one thing they have in common: being post soviet and thus being economically devastated - which coloured the term until it always carried this slight sence of soviet-caused-decay with it even when not explicitly stated and even now when it does not apply at all to many of them anymore

​@@Dommifax well still, we are very underdeveloped compared to western europe. there's a reason me and a lot of my countrymen live in the west, it has to do with economic opportunity. yes it's not as bad as it was but it's also not good enough to go home.

Tbh, I wonder if the collective zeitgeist thinks the "Baltics" are the same as the "Balkans"

I once met a Slovenian tourist in my shop. His tire was flat. He is surprised I don't overcharge him. 😂😂😂

@@Dommifaxpersonally I, having been born in 1997, always considered the post-communism to be more about post-Sovjet politics & a still lingering political culture of corruption, which caused the economic difference. With the fading of that corruption in many states comes an equality of economy. If I’d had to guess I would say it would take about 30 years (a generation) of dedicated labor to fix that culture. And for most countries (outside at a guess: Russia Belarusia Serbia Romania Hungary Bulgaria and Ukraine) that is roughly correct.

we became apart of it in the 1940s

@@lilnunu1553 how come? sudeten land und protektorat was central europe :D

@@krystofcisar469 1948 mostly.

A most lithuanian exercise alltogether

You *do* exist. You *are* valid. ....wait.....why are you disappearing? Noooooooo!

Well when are inbewteen sweden and Russia, their a lot things you question

A lot of Lithuanians seem to do that

Same, Latvian bralukai here xd

Wait until you see the Czechs.

Oh yes, I'm Polish, I can confirm. To this day I remember article from 2015, where they called CD Projekt (developers of Witcher series) "eastern European studio".

No. Im proud.

You can see clear difference in Poland betwean polish old german lands (western civilisation) and polish old russian lands (eastern)

Yes, I also saw this in a gaming community 😂

As someone from Eastern Europe, I can confirm that you don't exist.

My condolences.

Hahahaha classic Eastern European humor

same lmao

😂

With, dare I say it, kick ass vampires.

Finland would be Eastern Europe then. And bulgaria wouldn't. For the Balkans you must replace Soviet trauma with Ottoman

​​@@appa609the Balkans terrorized themselves quite well long after the ottoman empire was no longer a factor, and that's 100+years And Finland is in northern Europe. East West is not the only axis you can divide Europe in.

@@Whatshisname346The vampires are in Romania, not Poland. (If there are any Polish ones as well, please let me know) Later edit: I only now got to that part of the video. I’ve learned something new.

@@DoriZuzadidn’t you watch this video?

He did mention Slovenia and Croatia though

You're right

Many people are still prejudiced agains balkans. But the same is not true for Estonia, or Latvia which are often seen as "poor part of scandinavia". It shows how poeople slowly stops thinking about these countries as eastern europe, and new borders are drawn. But hey there is no guarantee that new categorizations will be better.

So Croatia suddenly stopped being a Balkan nation?

Where is Croatia mentioned in the video?

I am from Germany. And it is true.

@@Yora21 Seconded!

I am from Poland, and while some of my friends are or have been working in Germany, all of them spoke of unspeakable horrors one has to endure to buy a can of coke

INK FOR THE INK THRONE!

​@@Viruseek1337when you walk into a shop or a cafe, invariably you will see either a sign "no cards, cash only" or "no cash, cards only" and you have no way if knowing beforehand which one it is.

Kraut is not really correct here. "Upiór", the creature he described, is directly translated as "wraith" into english. Inspiration for modern vampires absolutely came from the Balkans.

To be fair, there are vampires in polish folklore, they are even called "Wąpierz", and they did in fact pray on humans. There are just so many creatures created by improper burial or other practices, that sometimes it can be hard to find the creature you're looking foor among them.

​@@Hargrovius as far as I know scholars believe that words wąpierz and upiór HAVE same root and relate to the same creature, those words were used just in different regions. You are thinking about modern meaning of Upiór (probably because of the translation of "Phantom of the opera" to "Upiór w operze") but if you read about the accounts in mythology they used to be essentially vampires.

Nie no ale polskie upiory z folkloru nie są wampirami z popkultury. Upiór był kimś pomiędzy szamanem, wiedźminem (czyli żywym upiorem zwalczającym niebezpieczne martwe upiory) i chuliganem robiącym zadymę na wsi. Ale to wszystko jest na tyle płynne i zależne od regionu i czasów, że ciężko tak jednoznacznie określić kim jest upiór

Romania is divided between eastern (Moldova), central (Transylvania) and Balkan (Vallachia) Europe

Isn't "wąpierz" an original Polish word for a vampire?

@@Hadar1991 Kinda, an alternative term/synonym.

In English it's borrowed from the Serbian word vampir

@@Artur_M. zawsze udaje mi się ciebie gdzieś w głębi komentarzy znaleźć, z ciekawymi informacjami - jest pan wszędzie xD

I would like a participation trophy for hungary, as the leader of draco knights, dracula was also an inspiration for the first western vampire (and not vlad the impaler, who didnt kill traitors at night, didnt have a castle in transylvania, etc)

That's why I'll defend Erasmus to death, even though I'm very aware that "Erasmus Orgasmus" is a thing.

I live in an apartment with 3 rooms that often get rented out to Erasmus students. It's been one of the most enriching experiences in my live and I've made a lot of friends through it.

That's what Erasmus is all about.

That's what Erasmus is all about.

Czechia and Poland are the most advanced countries in the area.

I had that idea but I visited.. ahem.. central Europe.. in 2019 and was swiftly corrected. Also the Polish, *looks it up* Zloty is roughly equivalent to the Australian dollar, its not even cheap.

Because Poland was in eastern Europe. But Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia didn't. Czechia and Slovenia were part of western Europe for most of history. Hungary and Slovakia were in their own part of Europe. Once western, once eastern. The rest was Balkans and real eastern Europe only.

It is not a kraut video, if it doesn't have you in comment section 😂

I wish to here your Franco-Mexican voice.

Well to me even as a American leftist (more on the center left), I see the lenin and Stalin statues the same way as Confederate statues, it better they don't exist and should as best be put in a museum as reminded of the bad past.

As he says, it is a “fremdbestimmung”

@@starmaker75 ya know? Honestly since the BLM protests, I've been rethinking the use of statues as a whole. I'm a lover of art, but it's weird to glorify someone in statue from for one or two good things the public perceives they did, and in spite of a career of what are now, or were already then, misdeeds. Like statues of Juan de Oñate in the Southwest. He "founded" New Mexico, but committed a slew of atrocities to the Native population.

Portugal and south Italy are Eastern Europe

@@TastyChicker1L17 it's a shame we're Europe at all, really

@@TastyChicker1L17 Please we are way more organised in the actual "Eastern Europe" and it is safe here, although we envy the climate

It's a globe after all.

Bros in French Guyana are laughing at you

Eastern Europe is a politically apathetic term used by Westerners.

When exactly Putin said that?

@@Gala-yp8nx bro never looked at a map

Summon the werewolves!!😅

@@HelixTarot

As a Pole, I support this comment wholeheartedly.

Smutna prawda

>more stable place >literally plagued by wars and genocides since the 90s.

@@ForOne814 Europe plagued by wars and genocides?

@@MiSt3300 Eastern Europe.

There was a joke in Finland in the 80s "Come to Estonia, your car is already here"

now the car thief, pickpocket, gangster, and prostitute strereotypes all are for romanians. Its like all of europe shoved all its negative streotypes onto romania for some reason

I lived in Poland in the 90s. Confirmed.

You can tell when someone has not lived a certain time.

​@@arturodiazcoca7408 Is this directed at me? Because I clearly remember my dads Polonez getting stolen from outside of Smyk in Warsaw while we were shopping for christmas gifts in the 90's, so I'm not sure from where your comment comes from :)

Maybe you left a window open and there is a draft?

Wdym

In the last few years, there were several graves found in Poland where supposed vampires were buried, shackled , staked and with stones, or irons on their chest and cut legs/arms so as to not dig out.

But it some sense it survived to modern day. While nobody believes in vampires, the idea of having ashes of your deceased relative at home in a urn is just bonkers, furthermore it is a criminal offence for which you can go to prison. Regardless if the body is burned or not (and Catholic Church do not like burning the corpses) you have to bury ALL of the remains in a cemetery. You are not allowed to scatter any amount of the ashes or keep them as part of them in your house. And for me, as a Pole, it is just completely bonkers what Western Europeans thinks is acceptable to do with somebody's remains. ;P

​@@Hadar1991 Well that comes from us I believe, hindu tradition demands a proper cremation and scattering the ashes in the ocean or a river. That's proper burial for us, can't imagine taking up space forever on a burial ground till eternity and then keep having to discomfort the alive folks with taking care of the burial grounds - the setting most horror films have to visit atleast once. Case in point there are very few myths about beings returning from the dead in Hindu tradition because of that.

@@aravindpallippara1577 You can bury multiple people in one place. In Polish law it I think that 20 years must past. Tombstone is some sense is optional - if cemetery lacks free space, then abandoned graves will be given to recently deceased.

@@Hadar1991 Yes. You don't even buy the space in the cemmetery. You rent it. The rent is over, they remove whatever is there and prepare the ground for a new tennant.

easternmost european? what about Kazakhstan?

Well there is an elephant in the room as to why their cities are much safer

There's a reason many Eastern European cities are so safe compared to Western European cities and i think we all know it

@@quuirrel19_-sz9pj Kazakhstan may have what are now considered culturally European minorities such as Russians and the Volga Germans, but in terms of both historical geopolitics and literal geological position it and its surrounding region is and has always been Northwestern Asia. It is east of not only the Anatolian ranges, but the Caucasian and Ural ranges, which means that tectonically speaking it is firmly on the Asian half of the Afro-Eurasian superplate. It is also East of the Caspian Sea, meaning that it is already well past the cutoff point for the the furthest east stretch of Nortwestern Asia, both in terms of historical record and geology once again. The areas once recognized as part of Europe in central Eurasia only stretch as far as Samarkand, and the habitable parts of Kazakhstan are on the opposite side of said historical polity. Thusly, Kazkhstan is firmly an Asian nation. After all, if having a Eurocentric culture or minority was all that qualified a nation to be European geopolitically, nations like Australia or Tunisia or Lebanon would be considered one as well, and at that point the geopositional classification of European becomes meaningless. To be clear this isn't me disparaging Kazakhstan, because I find its history fascinating, but if Siberia isn't considered geopositionally European even though most Uralic peoples within Europe including Sami, Magyars and Finns come from there, than neither can Kazakhstan.

@@quuirrel19_-sz9pj I assume you're trolling. Right?

All of Europe has crossover in between nations. This goes for Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Americas as well. Nothing worthy of note tbh

You have travelled. That is *the* difference. Do you want to know the %% of French and Germans who never left their region, and perhaps have never even met an "Eastern European"?

The concept of Eastern Europe is not dependent on you, as an individual, liking or accepting it. The term (obviously) existed long before you arrived on the planet and will, in all likelihood exist after you have left it. It is your prerogative not to use the term if you so choose, but you are certainly not in a position to wish it away.

Weird point to make. I mean we still call Western European countries Western European, despite the fact that they're also very different from each other.

Eastern Europe starts in the Rhine and Southern Europe starts in the Seine. Asia starts in the Elbe and Africa in the Pyrenees.

as a east German, I agree

@@machitoons as a polish, I say that's where central europe starts

How does that matter at any rate now? Half of you are Turks and Negros now and many more are on the way.

@@deadlyknights1119 whar so entiriety of central europe is a fraction of germany?

As a Pole, I also feel closer to Germans (more to Austrians tbh but I'm from Krakow so maybe that's why?) than to, let's say, Lithuanians, Romanians or Dutch.

Our peoples are joined by the Salzgurke

imo the main qualifier of “central europe” is for a nation to have been at ruled by germans for a significant period of time.

@@cosmosyn2514 so, like, Namibia is central europe?

Saxony "sasíci" is a very special case, You guys were pretty much always our (Bohemian) allies for hundreds and hundreds of years. Before Prussia pretty much forced the union there were even talks about joining the two countries, at the time we had more in common than you did with the rest of the germans. For me as a western czech i feel much more closer to Saxony/Austria than even the Slovaks, We share a hell of a lot of history with Germany and we were pretty much one country for like 400 years with Austria, Slovakia on the other hand? like 70 during Great Moravia and then it was just hungary for pretty much a 1000, also one of the reasons Czechoslovakia was doomed to fail from the start and we should have stayed with austria instead, apart from language we have barely anything in common.

Boo!

There is one very real way it will continue to exist, the divide between the Western (Latin) Christians (Catholic and Protestant) vs the Eastern (Greek) Christians (Eastern Orthodoxy). Even among non believers the cultural influence of the church in both regions affects the cultures to this day. In the West Modern Atheists basicly took Christian morals and ethics and tried to logic god out of the system (It wont work because the entire thing relies on God's judgement). In the East its the tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy that still defines alot of it.

@@avroarchitect1793 You're redefining Eastern Europe to not have Poland, nor the Baltics in it, nor Hungary. You just shrunk Eastern Europe in about half.

@@roadent217 I agree Poland is largely Western and always has been. The Russians and their various attempts of imperial occupation have devistated the whole region. The latter countries are effectively the exclaves of the Latin church. As for redefinition yeah I am, the continent is changing. Everything east of the iron curtain is finally catching up to the rest of the continent, and I am so very happy for them. Now all we need to do is deal with the Russian imperial perogative and we may actually see a longer term peace on the continent.

He he he :D

@@EuroMaidanWasAnInsurrection because the SS doesn't end and wants them speaking russian

But they would eat Ukranians too.

@@BuckNut-ck1sl Why would they? Remember the video, they are _protecting their community_ that means not harming it. But really, nobody should start a werewolf resistance movement in Ukraine. Guess what the Nazis called their "resistance fighters" when Allied troops reached homeland territories in 1943 and began occupying them? Yes, Werewolves. Once a term has been sullied by Nazis, you must throw it away. Work shall never set anyone free again; blood and soil is just bad and nobody can gain power through joy, ever.

I feel you on the different nation in a sea of slavs point, although i hate that many hungarians are very racist towards you. Please give tips how to throw out a xenophobic christofascist dictator.

​@@fulopmeszaros5330racist isnt the right word, because romanians and hungarians are the same race. They are simply diffiernt ethnicites

I see that the language is a strong cultural influence. It bonds people together. But "We do not have as much in common with our neighbouring countries. We have a saying that "We are an island of Latins in a sea of Slavs"" is very strange to me. Do you have more in common with Brazilians, Mexicans and Haitians - they speak Portuguese, Spanish and French then Hungarians, Ukrainians and Bulgarians? Aren't the Dacians not related to Thracians - a people group who the Slavic Bulgarians and Bulgars mixed. Haven't been the territory of Romania not part of the first Bulgarian empire? Don't you share Ortodoxy and the first written text in Romanian was in the cyrillic alphabet: the Neacșu's letter? And as you said - there was a lot of history together: fighting of Russians, Turks and Germans. But not only. And I am sure climate, food also leave their traces in the common culture. So I am really confused about this "Island in an Sea" proverb. I know everybody wants to be special - but feels also quite condescending.

@@captainchaoscow It is very true that there are several similarities brought on due to proximity. Ranging from food to language to climate and history. I cannot deny that Ukranian borsh is a key ingredient in most Romanian soups or the similarities in the Hora dances with other neighbors. To analyze this, one can look at the Cyrillic alphabet used in old Romanian and on the most famous of Romanian churches. These are just some of the characteristics borrowed from our Slavic neighbors. Throughout the 19th century, however, Romanians have been distancing themselves away from the east and once closer to the Western Latin countries. We used to be a lot closer to the sea of Slavs, but we decided we want to be a lot closer to the sea of Latins on the other side of the continent. Our accents and words have been drifting towards Italian. Our constitution, monuments, new words and philosophies, even our flag is a near copy to that of the French. So, in response to one of your questions, I would imagine we may have at least common philosophies and ideals in common with the Haitians. With the Slavs, we have a lot in common, but we wish we did not, and sometimes even change our language in order to draw that line.

@@radubaninca7533 Borsul ca ingredient e ceva romanesc. Borshtul ucrainean e un tip de ciorba...

There is a better word for that specifically though: Eastern Block

That's mainly true but there's a few exceptions of communist countries we're still not aligned with the Soviet union. Tito thought Stalin went too far and made Yugoslavia neutral bridge between east and west. Albania's leader decided he didn't go far enough and sided with Mao. While romania's dictator to make enemies of basically everyone with predictable results.

That's because the Warshaw Pact was modelled on the Imperial concept of Eastern Europe...

Yeah, I agree. As a Serbian, sure, geographically, I may actually be a balkan danubian southern eastern indo European, but I definitely identify with Eastern Europe rather than anything else. Sure, there are the Balkans, which I also identify with, but it's the same with Western Europe and its Benelux. If we are going by a strict East and West divide, the Cold War devide serves the best. It is the most recent and impactful part of the entire Eastern part of the continent, and for that, it can be grouped together. That's why many don't consider Greece to be really Eastern Europe. Besides that, Greeks are very different to almost all other people's in Eastern Europe they also have far greater cultural influence to the West. So I don't really understand what the point of this video, yes it does have arguments over how we use some terms and what their implications are but generally, everyone knows what us West and what is East Europe. Even if you asked a Czech and Pole to define what part of Europe he is, ignoring Central Europe, just based of West and East, they may not like to be called Eastern Europe but they would definitely be reluctant to call themselves really Western Europe.

I agree with this - though my perspective is different. I'm an American that lived in Bulgaria (& speak the language) when I was ages 9-16 and go back to the region frequently to visit family. My dad moved us there for work, and in seven years he never learnt the language beyond curses and ordering alcohol whereas I did and I noticed a very different level of respect between him and I. He always viewed Bulgaria as somewhere "exotic" and liked to party & make a show out of being American and I hated that. I went to Croatia for the first time last year and found that I could have a broken but functional conversation with the locals (though thankfully most speak English and we could switch to that if there were blocks). I have dark hair & eyes, and was told a few times they wouldn't have guessed I wasn't "Eastern European" but couldn't quite place the accent when I spoke Bulgarian. They could have meant differently, but it struck me as a term of endearment & a compliment; I don't think they get many Americans visiting to experience the culture rather than view from the outside. I've mostly spent time with Slovenians, Croatians, Romanians, Bulgarians and haven't met many who aren't proud of where they're from (albeit largely angry with the politics of the latter 3). I think ultimately the usage of the term comes from the context and intention. An American who "wants to visit Eastern Europe" is very different than one who "Is visiting Croatia but is amazed at the shared culture and heritage of Eastern Europe." There are deeply ingrained biases from the breakup of Czechoslovakia that still linger, but the shared history (which yes, Russian oppression is part of this) is largely something that brings people together, at least from what I've seen from younger Europeans.

Very good point. As someone living in one of the countries considered Eastern European I think the term changed meaning in the last decade from a somewhat derogatory term describing a less developed region formerly belonging to the former Soviet sphere of influence to something used to distance ourselves from Western Europe and their dominant progressive political and cultural ideology.

Yeah when i see the term eastern Europe as the same as Western Europe. Just a term for a board sense Europe geography.

Great point, it felt almost patronizing listening a British man speak on why the only thing that makes us different from the west is being anti-Russia (which is mostly un true at least in Bulgaria, not to mention they directly are to thank for our independence from the Osman). Culture alone unifies us, while also having many other factors that help.

How did you wrote that ?

@@user-iz2tq3dx5d Just google how to do weird characters in youtube comments or smth

** dies in Mongolian **

@@user-iz2tq3dx5dDon’t worry you can translate to English thanks to google.

Vietnamese lookin ahh accents

Supported.

Hey. Since I have you here, I'd like to pick your brain a little more. I know that Bosnians get really upset when people ask them about their ethnicity, because for some reason some people are unwilling to accept that Bosnians are Slavs who just happened to convert to Islam a few centuries agao. So you are subject to this entire awful thing of being framed as "Even less than Eastern Europe" in a way. I'd like to ask you if you do not mind, what do you have to say about the misconceptions that others have about you? And how would you define and see yourself as a Bosnian in releation to your neighbors and Europe at large?

​@@Kraut_the_ParrotYou're mixing up Bosnians and Bosniaks.

​@@Kraut_the_ParrotNot a Bosnian but, Boskians (Muslim Bosnians) are basically Croats and Serbs that converted to Islam and or mixed with Turks. Their country is very divided (despite the population being very similar) and has three main ethnic groups, those being Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. Basically the whole thing is mostly kept alive by the Dayton agreement. There are definitely plenty of bad stereotypes about us South Slavs and people from the Former Yugoslavia (although it's much less of an issue here in Croatia, however it's still prevalent).

@@Kraut_the_Parrot I'd say we are very much Slavic still, especially those of us in the borderlands and smaller communities. Bosniaks (as in the Bosnians who converted to Islam when the Ottomans came) used to be heretical Christians believing in a dualistic version of Christianity, where the good God Jesus was creator of the spiritual world and the bad God Satan created all material. They were quite austere, had simple churches and you can still find some of their stone monuments, mostly in the south (stećci). They almost had a crusade called on them by one of the Hungarian kings ('don't remember which one anymore, long time since i had this in school lol) if they did not convert to proper catholicism, so a treaty was signed at Bilino Polje to convert the Bosniaks under Ban Kulin. They mostly resisted through the middle ages because the opulence of both east and west did not suit them. So, once the Ottomans came with this religion that preached and mostly practiced humbleness and prayer and many other similarities to the old heresy, the people accepted it in order to avoid even more persecution. So yes, we are heretical Christian Slavs, converted to Islam, who have had a lot of that Islam washed out by time, distance and communism, who are being made invisible by our neighbours who claim we are Serbs or Croats or some weird mix of the two so they might split our lands and subsume our culture. We have been under the Turks for 400 years, the Austro-Hungarians for 40, under our neighbours for 80 and under the thumb of the Americans for 30 now. We are a colonized people as much as our neighbours themselves are, whether its the ones closes to us, our brethren we share our mother tongues with, or our extended neighbourhood, of the Balkans and our farther Slavic cousins. There are many things wrong with my home country, I cannot even list them all, I have left it and moved to Germany like so many others and it pains me. But I had no future there. My father, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents and their siblings, they stayed there during the war, they fought and died so that I could grow up and live in a country that was finally, after more than 500 years our own once more. But the system is so messed up that in 2021, 26 years after the end of the war, my father and mother drove me out to the bus station with as much home as I could carry in a suitcase and said goodbye to me, because they knew I would never be able to live a good life in the lands they spilled blood, sweat and tears for. So I hate it, and I hate the politicians, and I hate the prejudice against us, and I hate everyone who lays a claim on us. But I also love it, I love the people, and the land, and the memories I have of it, I love my neighbours who are so fundamentally messed up in their own rights, I love the world who gave us a chance to govern ourselves, and took the bastards who harmed us at least partially to court. I wish there could be a future for us, that my grandfather, and my uncle and my 2 great-uncles did not die in vain. That my aunt did not take the shrapnel in her arm to her grave. That my father could sleep at night. That my cousins had a father during the hardest years of their lives. That the messed up kids in my elementary school class had parents who could stay sober enough to see past the pain and to love them. That my great grandfather did not have to be separated from the land and the house he loved, only to die of a broken heart before the war ended. The past is the past is the past and the future is bleak and there is no one left to fight for it. Only old, bitter men, with broken hearts and broken minds who cannot let go of their grudges for long enough to see that a new millennium has dawned upon us and that life goes on and that we can forgive and still not forget. And at the bottom of the box, there is only left hope. That I could ever be seen by my peers in Germany as anything more than a civilised savage, an accentless curio, a model of what kind of enlightened western citizen can be shaped out of the eastern gutter trash. That my parents will live out their years in the home my great-grandfather built, my grandfather built up, my father renovated. That I could return some day to the lands I've inherited as last of my line and work those lands the same as my ancestors and find peace.

sorry for going off all poetic and shit at the end there, it's almost midnight and I am a bit homesick so I just kinda let the words flow out of me 😅

Not eastern Europe but Balkans. Balkans should be considered different from eastern Europe due to very unique history.

Slavoj Žižek is Slovenian tho

Slavoj Žižek is a communist. So hardly to say he's even a human. But anyway, it makes him Russian/Chinese.

Fot me you are just Est's ;)

Did not expect to find you here, however you wonderfully explained why this video reflecra kraut's usual brainrot to prove his very biased political points, stemming from historical analysis rather than political ones.

All my life I never associated Eastern Europe with Russia, except as enduring the Russian occupation. Now, to me, "Eastern Europe" evokes the defence of civilisation against the same threat risen like the undead to bring grief and violence and ignorance, as before.

"Shared experience" is an excellent description and far more important than geography or ethnicity IMO.

I can add one experience of mine that defines my eastern european-ness (I'm a Hungarian): When I lived in London I've learnt the concept of 100y lease: you lease a building or property for 100 years and then you can renew. This defined to me Eastern Europe as a place in Europe where you CANNOT define a contract like that as the ruling government will be overtaken 2 times over 100y contracts will be nulled.

W Janos comment

This is pretty funny. From my poor research (and by that I mean I read a wikipedia article) I didn't find any claims that vampire is specifically a Polish folk tale

@@antonidziuba2109 Neither did I. The explanation can also be found in Romanian folklore as "Strigoi" instead of vampires

Vampires per se are from Serbian folklore. What Kraut was referring to is striga in Polish mythology, which is itself derived from the strigoi of Romanian mythology. The term itself is from a striga/strigare, which literally means to scream in Romanian. It's a cognate of Italian strega, which means witch, and of the French blood-sucking bird woman stryge so the word probably had some sort of bad mythological connotations for a very long time.

@@jach99 Agreed, there is so much cultural crossbreeding for these concepts that _whatever_ someone claims to be true, they are automatically wrong. All celtic, germanic, slavic etc folklore got so heavily warped during Christianization with no one chronicling the original myths, that the origins are lost forever* (* and yes, I am someone who claims stuff, so I'm inherently wrong here, too)

Te wszystkie mitologiczne stwory są znane już od czasu przybycia Praindoeuropejczyków. Tu nie ma specyfiki "typowo" słowiańskiej a już na pewno polskiej. Z tego głównego mitu sprzed tysięcy lat wyewoluowały ich lokalne odmiany

Everyone knows that vampires are just Hungarians on a normal Tuesday.

As an uneducated American, isn’t ‘vampyr’ originally Bosnian?

@@HouseOfKung No, the word vampire came to English from the Serbian language, as for the original term for vampire, it probably already existed in Old Slavic. I believe the reconstructed Old Slavic word is "upir" which is the closest to old/middle Polish "upiór".

W Polsce takie istoty nazwywaliśmy upiorami. Upiór=phantom. Jeszcze za takie upioro-wampiry byli uważani ludzie, którzy urodzili się z zębami czy włosami. Albo miał włosy na klatce piersiowej ale nie pod pachami. Albo to że mówił do siebie to też miałabyć oznaka bycia upiorem ale w rozumieniu szamana, bo miał dwie dusze i one się ze sobą dogadywały. I tak dalej. Generalnie polski upiór był bardziej takim szamanem, który wiedział o wiele więcej o świecie niż zwykli śmiertelnicy i z reguły był postacią pozytywną czy neutralną. Ale w XIX wieki na obecnym pograniczu polsko-ukraińskim wybuchały epidemie i zdarzały się przypadki odkopywania grobów i ćwiartowania zwłok by te upiory nie straszyły i nie sprowadzały katastrof na okolicę.

@@kamilszadkowski8864 There's also a case of the word "wąpierz" being wrongly considered an early version of the word "wampir" (vampire). It actually meant a pillow filling made of feathers.

And if we look at Hetmanate, the entire administration was elected, from lowest town levels to a regiment commander, second in rank after Hetman himself. So authoritarianism in Eastern Europe (excluding russians) is weird arguement.

Werewolf, werebear, weretiger. Were this shit show of a zoo.

whywolf?

I'm pretty sure in Australia you aren't even taught world geography, and I'm certain that I've never had a lesson on Eastern Europe (that's part of the optional Modern History classes). And definitely minimal mention on slavery (a footnote as part of the conquistadors). i kid you not, we have politicans who thought gaza and palestine were different conflicts (granted they were only politicana for the city level, not federal or state level) thank goodness we have people explaining the nuance of europe

tbh there isnt really a reason why american highschool students should really learn anything about eastern europe besides mabey russian history. History class primarily is there to educate you about your own countries history and the most relevent events that happened around the world, not to teach you about random polish history in the 16t century. I live in Europe and the only thing we learn about other countries is either about north america or if you have the time china/japan because as harsh as it sounds those where hisotricaly the more impactful countries

krauts politics are essentially indistinguishable from madleine albrights, nulands, or the neocons in general. it would be fun if he could make a video explaining how his worldview is in any substantial way different from that of dick cheney.

In this case I think ignorance is better than trash kraut is spewing.

Unlike us We are the "Eastern most part of Middle Europe"

As a German, I think you're right. And the reason why non-slavic nations (Hungary, Estonia, etc) were included in that is because Westerners never gave a fuck about differentiating between them

@@paratame105 *because they are heavily influenced by slavs. romanians literally say da for yes