In+Depth+Eastern+and+Western+Europe+The+Problem+of+Boundaries

-difficult to define territory of two related civilizations in Europe because some states sat on the borders of two civilizations and shared some characteristics of each other -if civilization is divided by culture, then eastern and western Europe in the postclassical era is separated by Orthodox and Catholic territories, and use of Cyrillic and Greek or Latin alphabet - Poland, Czech, Baltic states , and Hungary  are western South Slav are mainly but not entirely Orthodox, considered border line
 * Russia and Ukraine  are eastern

-politically, borders are more complicated -economically, Polish and Hungarian societies shared more features with Russia then with western Europe -BORDER CAN CHANGE
 * Mongol invasions


 * since 1989, many eastern European countries gained independence from Russia