What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase “East meets West”? A Tibetan monk who drives a Volkswagen? A Chinese teenager who flaunts the latest iPhone? Or an Indian politician with a Swiss bank account? Well, none of that concern this article. What you find here stay exclusively within the confines of Europe.
Is Eastern Europe – the communist ruled land of heinous villains and evil but love-struck blondes of Hollywood movies – catching up with Western Europe, which had practically controlled the world up until the first half of the previous century?
Origin of East-West divide
The divide has been there since the world invented stereotypes. It became more pronounced when the World Wars ended and the Cold War started. We live in an age in which the Marxism of the previous century increasingly resembles an Aesop fable. It could go like this.
Once upon a time, there lived two kinds of people: haves and have-nots. Some gentlemen – Messrs Marx, Lenin, Stalin, et al. – wanted to make everybody equal. They succeeded, brutally succeeded. They made half the continent have-nots. And that continent is Eastern Europe.
East vs West in Europe
The West still remains richer and more powerful in world politics. The divide is more of a cultural and political one than a geographical one. For an outsider, the entire Europe appears as a single country with nearly a single currency. A closer look would reveal the differences between East Europe and West Europe.
You may have heard about the West and the East stereotypes. Western Europeans are more efficient, cool, better organized and more disciplined in civic sense. They come out at birth better-packaged like the kind of smart phones that come with all the apps you need factory-installed. On the other hand, Eastern Europeans are a bit laid back, temperamental and not disciplined at all in civic matters. They are installed with an Operating System whose user manual was destroyed in the Communist era.
These are convenient classifications, but unfortunately not true. The only thing true in such stereotypes is perhaps this one: People trust their governments in the West, but in the East, people trust anything but their governments.
Goodbye, Lenin
One historical event should have heralded the beginning of the end of the East-West divide in Europe: the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Many thought it did. It did mark the end of Soviet-presided communist rule in Eastern Europe. However, hindsight tells us that nothing much has changed for the people of the former Communist bloc. You ask any Eastern European youngster in any big Western European city; say Amsterdam, Berlin or London. They would tell you of the subtle and not-so-subtle racist discrimination prevalent in these cities towards them.
Still, the first rays of a fresh dawn of hope have filtered into this region. No. Messrs Marx, Lenin and Stalin have nothing to do with it. Instead, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and countless other digital revolutionaries have played, and are playing, a part in the ongoing process of bringing about a digital equality. It could change East Europe too and bring it to the fore and on par with West Europe.
Changing life, changing society
Now, the Eastern European societies and economies are in the process of covering the lost ground. Some countries may succeed, some may not.
The region still retains some inherent advantages. The cost of living is less in East Europe than in the West. What you earn is lower here, but what you have to spend is lower too. Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia are ranked the lowest in a cost of living index.
The Eastern European countries have an advantage in tourism sector too. These countries are less explored and less exploited, and most of the naturally beautiful scenery is intact. Perhaps, it is time tourists started flowing into these parts.
East meets West?
East Europe is changing: culturally, politically and economically. They would have liked a faster economic growth. Traditional industries are still going strong in the West, but not so in the East. The situation is different in the case of new-age digital businesses, where the East has made a strong head start.
East Europe is still not able to look West Europe in the eye. The economic and cultural difference is too steep a hill to climb in a couple of decades. Nevertheless, they are climbing that steep hill – albeit with the crushing weight of a burdensome history on their back.
Someday, the East will have to meet the West. History, after all, has no favourites in geography.
