Hi all!
UPD: thank you all for insightful answers. I am even more confused, but I find fascinating how fluctuating and alive the concept of Europe seems to be, reflecting the relationships between countries, geography, cultural context and even languages. Seems to be a valid PhD topic! Cheers!
I have an ultimately silly question for the thread, but I think it might be the best place to ask about it. I come from Russia and lived in Europe for around 6-7 years. And last weekend I realized I don’t know what do Europeans normally mean when mentioning Europe. Is it EEA? EU?
I’ve mentioned in a random convo that sometime in 2000s Moscow was one of the most expensive cities in Europe, and I was told off that I should not ever say it like that.
I was taught at school back in Russia that Europe is a continent, and the division lies between tectonic plates or something. That means, that there’s a European and Asian parts of Russia, like there are 2 sides of Istanbul sitting on two continents.
I understand, in Europe the most common understanding in Europe is not geographical, but, perhaps, political?
Is Belarus Europe? (I would say yes?) Then what about transcontinental countries? Like, Georgia is Europe and Azerbaijan is not? What about Armenia? (I’ve heard both interpretations).
Right now, my gut feeling is that all transcontinental countries kinda chose their sides? (Like, Georgia chooses European integration and Azerbaijan doesn’t). Could it be most common religion? (Doesn’t quite work tho?)
I’m only asking to clear my confusion, not to bait. I’m not suggesting anything. There’s a difference in education, and knowing how biased post-soviet education, I think I need to understand the conversation better.
Upd: typo on the subject linem
Western Russia is historically a European culture though, definitely if you scale out and look further than just a single century. I see how it is now as far-east European, (because Putin wants to distinguish himself from Eastern-Europeans), but still Europe. Not all of it though, large parts of Eastern Russia were basically colonized and the original inhabitants of those regions have very different cultures. Geographically you can argue Russia is half European, half Asian; but you could also argue both are the same continent making Russia a central Eurasian country. But then we come back to the original topic, what part of west-Eurasia is actually west-Eurasia?
Russia, at least the European core, is culturally European. Politically it is not European. And I guess that distinction is very relevant.
The Cold War removed Russia from Europe.
Yea you can dig out whatever point in history or whatever geographical definition to justify whatever you like to imagine.
Russia doesn’t want to be seen as Asian and not as European. And therefore Asian and European people see it the same way. Russia is just Russia.