Cold War thumb|Political spheres of influence in Europe during the Cold War; neutral countries (shaded grey or light blue) considered informally Western-oriented but not formally aligned to the West During the four decades of the Cold War, the definition of East and West was simplified by the existence of the Eastern Bloc. A number of historians and social scientists view the Cold War definition of Western and Eastern Europe as outdated or relegating."One very common, but now outdated, definition of Eastern Europe was the Soviet-dominated communist countries of Europe."http://www.cotf.edu/earthinfo/balkans/BKdef.html "Too much writing on the region has – consciously or unconsciously – clung to an outdated image of 'Eastern Europe', desperately trying to patch together political and social developments from Budapest to Bukhara or Tallinn to Tashkent without acknowledging that this Cold War frame of reference is coming apart at the seams.
Cold War thumb|Political spheres of influence in Europe during the Cold War; neutral countries (shaded grey or light blue) considered informally Western-oriented but not formally aligned to the West During the four decades of the Cold War, the .definition of East and West was simplified by the exis.tence of the Eastern Bloc. A number of historians and social scientists view the Cold War definition of Western and Eastern Europe as outdated or relegating."One very common, but now outdated, definition of Eastern Europe was the Soviet-dominated communist countries of Europe."http://wwwcotf.edu/earthinfo/balkans/BKdefhtml "Too much writing on the region has – consciously or unconsciously – clung to an outdated image of 'Eastern Europe', desperately trying to patch together political and social developments from Budapest to Bukhara or Tallinn to Tashkent without acknowledging that this Cold War frame of reference is coming apart at the seams.