Here's a funny thing about the words "Eastern Europe".
It's a geographical region. It is by no means a cultural entity.
This does not stop so many people from making this confusion. I, for one, have been making this confusion for a long time, but I can only blame how history has been taught to me. It's always taken as a single region with a single place in history. My ninth grade history textbooks would talk about it as a single region ruled once by Ottomans, by Viennese monarchs, by Russians, briefly by Germans, and by the Soviets. When I was preparing for the SAT II (on which I even got 800/800), the standard international prep books also talked about it as a singular region.
But it is wrong and oversimplified. There is about as much common between the various nations of Eastern Europe as there is between all the nations of the Equator; there is about as much common between the cultural groups in the entire region as there is between all the ethnicities in sub-Saharan Africa. There is very little common between Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine, Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Montenegro, and Serbia.
Belarus and Ukraine would have more in common with central European nations like Hungary and Poland, than the rest of the bunch. Estonia has more in common with Finland and Nordic Europe. Macedonia and Albania are curiously included in Eastern Europe while Greece is not. If proximity to Russian region and culture are the criteria, one wonders why Georgia and Azerbaijan are not included. Problem is that all these places are lumped together on the general criteria of their Byzantine, Orthodox Church, and later Soviet connection.
Funny thing is that the same applies to India. India is just a geographical region. There is very little common between northeastern India (which is closer to East Asian culture), southern India (which is closer to South East Asian culture), or the northern and western parts of it. Except, unlike Eastern Europe, India actually is constituted as one country.
And it makes me realize: nation-states are theoretically formed on the basis of common ethnicities and languages, but in practice, they manage to exist against the very existence of those things. Eastern Europe has historically been a bunch of territories that have been ruled over by other nation-states, and the result of that may have been that it has led to this part of the world being less apparent on the map. While a few nations there progress towards economic freedom and non-intervention, the attention to that by international businesses of the world is little, because they have not been marked on the map for them. Where you had different cultures and groups who have the ability to be intelligent and productive, those cultures have been historically marginalized by larger more homogenizing nation-states, which must dictate policies from bureaucratic establishments thousands of miles away from people who have nothing in common with them. Same is true for India, where statist policies are established by groups in the capital region, who plan out industrial and agricultural schemes for disparate regions, instead of local people and local groups who understand their own culture and region better. Instead of allowing the local cottage industries of various regions to flourish, the India government has historically nationalised banking industry and heavily regulated all possible industries, just in order that their own plan for development succeeds, rather than the simple small businesses of locals.
Much the same way nobody recognizes the significant aspects of a single eastern European nation, thanks to historical nature of the polity there, nobody recognizes a single Indian region or culture, which has potential for being a useful place to invest in to start a business; and even if one did, the federal government of India would intervene in any foreign investment, and demand they take permission from them first.
Are you asking what we think of ethnic nationalism as a geo-political question or a cultural one?
A hot debate is going on about this subject in France. What is the French National Identity?
Just imagine one moment. People is gathering in Public building to express their view about what should be the French National Identity.
This is something quite weird. Is the French National Identity from its christian roots and its high cathedrals? Is it from the French revolution and the human rights (and the jacobin terror and the napoleonic wars)? Is it from the Third Republic? Is it Edith Piaf , the chesse and the bread? Is it the Social Security (and its soaring debt)? Is it the National Education (and is quasi-monopolistic stance)?
In fact, the mere reason of this subject, is the Muslim population is growing in a steady pace. It is seriously challenging the French Republican model.
But what surprises me the most is the mere fact to debate about such a subject. Whatever the kind of identity, the French one, the German one or the Klingon one. The only identity that really means and exists is the Individual One. In fact, speaking about a national identity is just a collectivist view of things.
And what would be the outcome of such a debate? Would the government edit a Typical French Identity traits? Then, when the debate would be over and the French National Identity set in stone forever, those who would not follow it, or worse, contest it, would be merely outlawed? This is quite stupid.
We can, as a good historian or ethnologist, speaking about a collective identity, but only in a retrospective manner. Someone, for example, can collect data of a given population in area and in a period of time and compare them to those of another given population in another area for the same period of time. Then the difference between those two cohorts could express an identity for each population. Such a method is highly refutable, but can give us a view about the difference between ethnie.
But a national identity is, as Hayek would have said, a spontaneous process. The result of the interaction of thousands of thousands of person with real Identity, that no one can planify or organise. Of course there are similiraties in the habit of people of the same culture, which explains why they tend to live together, but they are not determined by it, influenced in their decision, probably yes, but not determined like inorganic matter in the field of physic.
National Idenity is just a retrospective idea like the market, it is not a living entity.
Trying to debate about it is quite absurd and incoherent. We can, all of them, debate about what is ti to be French or to be German, express our opinion following our own criteria, but through the Government coercitive power it is, i think, dangerous. and very stupid. Its like to planify the identity of a people entirely and the outcome could be very disappointing.