Since September 11, 2001, there has been much talk regarding the potential clash between Christian and Islamic civilizations. But Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, the popularizer of the clash theory, focused as much attention on the potential divide between Orthodox and Western Christians. In his 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington tied Orthodoxy to Islam and against the Catholic and Protestant countries of Western Europe and the United States. “Where does Europe end?” he asked, answering, “Europe ends where Western Christianity ends and Islam and Orthodoxy begin.”

Of course, the different religious traditions that developed out of the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity do not create hard borders like that of Communism’s Berlin Wall. Orthodox Christian Greece is a member of NATO and the European Union, while Catholic Croatia is not—yet. But as the former Soviet satellites of Central and Eastern Europe join major Western institutions while Russia and the other former Soviet republics do not, a new dividing line is being drawn in Europe, separating a unified Europe from its eastern neighbors. The resulting political geography looks a lot like a map from Huntington’s book. All the new EU members are Protestant or Catholic, while all the former Soviet republics to the east are Orthodox or Muslim.

Historical Divide

Obviously, religion is only one of the factors that divide New Europe from its Western neighbors; geography and history are just as significant. In the less than 15 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, “New Europe,” namely the non-Soviet states and the Baltics, have diverged dramatically from the former Soviet Union. Economically, the 15 new European nations have largely recovered from the depression that followed the end of central planning and are on track to lead growth in Europe over the coming decade. All democratic states, they are almost entirely at peace. Ten are already in NATO, and the rest could conceivably join in the next decade. Eight have joined the European Union, two more are targeted to join in 2007, and the rest have real possibilities to join in the future. Most will be using the euro as currency within a decade.

In contrast, most of the former Soviet states have not yet recovered from the economic and political collapses following the end of the communist regime. From Chechnya to Tajikistan, difficult conflicts remain. By last year, even with strong economic growth since 1999, Russia had recovered only 71 percent of its 1990 output. Belarus, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are still dictatorial states. None are on the road to the European Union. That last point is a big one, both as a cause and as an effect. All of the countries of New Europe are either EU members already or can expect to join, if they meet EU standards. Non-members like Croatia and Albania have a clear road map to Western integration; Ukraine and Armenia do not.

Less than 15 years ago, the Soviet Union and its Central and Eastern European satellites seemed to be locked in a tight military, political, and economic embrace. The Soviet army occupied most of them, they were military allies, their societies were organized around communist ideology, most of their trade was with each other, and most importantly, their governments were propped up by Soviet power. There was an Iron Curtain. What is now New Europe was on the other side of it, along with the Soviet Union. When the curtain fell, there was an understandable inclination in the West to see the countries’ strengths and weaknesses through the same lens. These were all countries going through a “post-communist transition.”

Past Politics

But their experiences were actually quite different. The economic declines were much deeper, and the recoveries much slower, in the former Soviet countries than in Central and Eastern Europe. The gross domestic product (GDP) of New Europe declined by an average of 23 percent over a little less than four years. The Russian and the other former Soviet economies dropped more than twice as much—50 percent over six and a half years. By 2003, most of New Europe had recovered all of its lost ground and more, while the GDP in the former Soviet nations was still 30 percent lower than at the end of communism. Several countries were in much worse shape. Ukraine’s GDP was 53 percent lower and Georgia’s 62 percent lower than in 1989.

History is one reason for this economic disparity. During the communist years, the Soviet Union carried the overwhelming burden, in fact 84 percent, of the Warsaw Pact’s defense. In 1988, the Eastern European satellites were spending from 1.2 to 4.4 percent of GDP on the military—more or less in line with EU shares. The Soviet Union was spending at least 16 percent, perhaps as much as one fourth, of its output on the military. Whatever their security or political value, these costs distorted the former Soviet economies, while sparing New Europe.

The difference in the longevity of communist rule had an impact that is generally underestimated. Russia and the non-Baltic republics had been communist for 70 years, while New Europe, had only been communist for 45 years. This 25-year difference is huge. In the Soviet space, the institutions of communism—from the secret police and the court system to the collective farms and “secret” military cities—have deeper and stronger roots than in New Europe. More importantly, the extra 25 years of communism means that virtually no one alive there today remembers life before communism. Only those over 100 years old were even teenagers when the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. In contrast, throughout new Europe, tens of millions of people remember freedom, democracy, and a market economy. Everyone in their seventies today was in their twenties when the communists took over Eastern Europe in the late 1940s.

Another reason for the disparity in economic progress has been the different paces of transformation. By 1999, only 50 percent of the economic activity in the former Soviet countries was in the private sector while 68 percent was in New Europe. In Hungary and the Czech Republic, it was 80 percent; in Albania, 70 percent. In 1998, the contribution of small businesses to the economy was three to four times as large in Lithuania, Czech Republic, and Hungary as it was in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Russia still does not have a real banking system, while most banking assets in New Europe are now owned by Western institutions.