East Central Europe

East-Central Europe is the region between German, West Slavic and Hungarian speaking Europe and the Eastern Slavic lands of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Those lands are described as situated “between two”: "between two worlds, between two stages, between two futures". In the geopolitical sense, East-Central Europe can be considered alongside Western and Eastern Europe, as one of the “Three Europes”.

The concept differs from that of Central and Eastern Europe in that it is based on criteria whereby the states of Central and Eastern Europe belong to two different cultural and economic circles.

Oskar Halecki, who distinguished four regions in Europe (Western, West Central, East Central and Eastern Europe) defined East-Central Europe as a region from Finland to Greece,the eastern part of Central Europe, between Sweden, Germany, and Italy, on the one hand, and Turkey and Russia on the other. According to Halecki, in the course of European history, a great variety of peoples in this region created their own independent states, sometimes quite large and powerful; in connection with Western Europe they developed their individual national cultures and contributed to the general progress of European civilization.

Paul Robert Magocsi described this region in this work Historical Atlas of East Central Europe. He distinguished 3 main zones:

United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) was set up to consider the technical problems of domestic standardization of geographical names. The Group is composed of experts from various linguistic/geographical divisions that have been established at the UN Conferences on the Standardization of Geographical Names.

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