Editing Eastern Europe

The countries that make up Eastern Europe could easily be a matter of interpretation.  The United Nations, for the purpose of statistical data, considers Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine to be Eastern Europe.  Eastern Europe differs from Western Europe culturally due to the influences from the Soviet Union, Ottoman Empire and Byzantine Empire.

==Speech Relevance ==
In '[[Encroaching Control]]', Reagan (mis-)quotes [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]]:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''[[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], in 1923, said, "We will take Eastern Europe, we will organize the hordes of Asia and we won't have to take the United States. We will surround it and that last bastion of capitalism will fall into our outstretched hand like overripe fruit."  Well, they've taken Eastern Europe.  They are organizing the hordes of Asia around the red colossus of [[China]] and today I'm sure many of us suspect we are being prepared for the bitter cup of capitulation in [[Laos]] that will be watered down only slightly by a few face-saving devices.  [[Cuba]] is a Russian beach head 90 miles off our Florida coast and more telling that even that, 250,000 [[communism|communist]] professional organizers are scattered up and down the length and breadth of [[Latin America]]''</BLOCKQUOTE>
The second reference to Eastern Europe is a reference to countries behind the [[Iron Curtain]] operating as satellite states to the [[Soviet Union]].  These countries would include the [[Soviet Union]] (which included Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Armenia and several now Asian countries), East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania.

==Source Links ==
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Europe Eastern Europe ''(Wikipedia)'']

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain Iron Curtain ''(Wikipedia)'']