Do you think Greece and Finland are culturally more eastern european countries?

[RussiaPrussia]

i think yes and let me explain it why. In my opnion the whole idea of splitting eastern europe apart and putting it into middle europe, northern and southern europe was always silly for me. Because eastern europe is and will always be a term thats fits the post communist countries. Of course you can categorize them on geographics but culturally eastern european countries will always be eastern eruopean because of their communist background. All the countries share the same situation.

But it goes even further before communism, since over 200 years or longer western slavs were not independent to actually define what they really are. Western Salvs were always colonialized by either the west or russia. Poland was split between german, austrians and russians. Czech rep. and slovakia was austrian. All Balkans and greece were split up between Turks, Austrian and sometimes italian rule. And of ource finland was always ruled by either swedes or russians.



Of course the austrian empire and prussia could be argued as eastern eruopean because they owned these territories. In particular prussia is very eastern eruopean in comparison to all other western states. But they still had their historical background in the west especially austria. Prussia was bit different because they started in the east, renamed their Brandenburg kingdom in prussia which was called after a Baltic tribe at the time but they were still germans which in the context of a united germany of today could be viewed more western in these days perspective.

So you can see Russia was the only independent eastern eruopean country at some point in time, of course the Lithuania and polish commonwealth existed also for a long time but since the turks came in you can pretty much say eastern europe distinguished after time and time, first in the south. And later northwards in western slavic territory as austria grew by defending itself from turks resulting into an arms race with the other germany and russia.

So if you think about it greece and finland they are not much different in history, greece is an orthodox country like serbia or russia, with an own language family like albania. And just like the balkans it was colonized by turks until it got Independent.

And for Finland its the same too, finland is an uralic country the same language family estonians and huangarians and many other ethnics in russia speak. And just like these 2 countries which were ruled by russia# and austrians finland was a colony too by either swedes or russians.

#(baltics were also ruled by german knights and Scandinavians prior, in fact there were never independent in their whole history before russian empire collapsed)



And russia in general has many uralic people in it, while also being very close to uralic people genetically.




You also can see that Scandinavia was always viewed only for germanic countries not uralic ones.


I mean think about it? same countries, same past, maybe same culture but didnt chose communism this is the only difference for greece, cypruss and finland. And now its all forgotten?

So on the west we have roman and germanic language families and on the east we have either Orthodox christians or slavic, uralic, baltic and other language families. And all of them share the same past of being colonialized except for russia.

So if you look at this way, my map of eastern europes makes much more sense not only geographically but also culturally.

[alfieb]

Yes and no.

In the case of Greece, it is Eastern in as much as it is Orthodox and in the Balkans.
In the case of Finland, it is Eastern in as much as it is geographically and linguistically isolated from most of Western Europe and has long ties to Russia

I think it would be more fair to call Finland Northeastern European and call Greece Southeastern European, as they aren't exclusively Eastern, or Northern/Southern.

[Sikeliot]

Greece yes, Finland no.

Greece is very culturally akin to other Balkan countries, and the Balkans is generally considered part of Eastern Europe. Additionally Greeks are Eastern Orthodox and live in the same circles as other Eastern Europeans abroad, like Serbs and Russians.

But Finland is more like an outlier in Northern Europe, rather than being particularly close to Eastern Europe.

[Eliades]

They're at least more Eastern than Western for sure.

[The Ripper]

Finland has been Western since 1155, nigga.

[Mortimer]

i voted yes. greece is birthplace of much of eastern european cultural influence (eastern rome/byzantine), orthodox Religion etc. they were also Long under Ottoman rule. finland yes because of Long influence from russia. both are eastern european. well finland and greece werent communist so some will doubt it because of that.

[Sikeliot]

Although Greece is said to be the birthplace of Western civilization, today's Greece has more in common culturally and religiously with Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, etc. than anywhere else.

[RussiaPrussia]

Finland has been Western since 1155, nigga.

dude finland was never an indepdent country in my whole books of historic i cant find any finish kingdom, it was always ruled by either russians or scandinavians.



Instead being proud of your forced scandinavisation you should rather be proud to be finish.

[riverman]

Eastern Europe, though not so much culturally as geographically, however there is plenty of ethnic overlap between these countries and all the 'Slavic' countries which in itself it sort of a misnomer because Russians for instance can be similar to say Ukrainians but often they're not, same goes for Poland etc.
We're left with geography here, as the 'religion east/west divide doesn't make sense either, and anyways people are of different denominations in these places anyway, so, eastern Europe.

[Sikeliot]

Also I will add that, although this is really not any indicator of culture, when Greeks speak English, their accent does sound generally "Eastern European" at least to American ears. We have a lot of Greeks in my town from Thessaly and Macedonia and many of them are rather light-pigmented, and when they used to come into where I worked, people would call them "Russian".. obviously I would know they were not Russian, but people in my town call all people they perceive as Eastern European "Russian".