ABSTRACT
For centuries Central Europe has been influenced by the aspirations and territorial acquisitions of powers located outside its limits as here defined. The greatest influence has come from Germany and Austria to the west, from Russia to the east and from Turkey to the south, combining to produce pressures on the peoples of the region. Now that Germany has united and few Germans remain in Central Europe, most languages spoken in the region are Slavonic rather than Germanic. Hungary and Romania, however, have distinct languages, while Estonia has a language close to Finnish, and Latvian and Lithuanian are distinguished as Baltic. No less than fourteen different languages,
each with over a million speakers, are used by a total population of about 130 million. Religious diversity is no less striking. Three branches of Christianity, together with
Islam, share the religious affiliations of almost all of the religiously committed population. The Greek and Russian Orthodox faith predominates in Romania, Bulgaria and most of the former Yugoslavia, whereas Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia and much of Hungary are predominantly Roman Catholic. Protestants are the majority in Estonia, Latvia and parts of Hungary and Romania. Finally, a considerable number of Muslims in Bosnia and Albania form the main legacy of Turkish occupation of the Balkans. With the end of socialism and concomitant atheism, the new governments of the 1990s are coming to terms with a revival of religious feeling in Central Europe as well as the obligation, if acceptance by and assistance from Western Europe are to be obtained, to ensure human rights and to install democratic institutions.
