Ripka includes the following countries in "East Central Europe": Poland, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Albania. Ripka also claims that Greece and Turkey can be included, but often are considered members of the "Mediterranean area" instead of "East Europe".[1] (p. 1)
The countries located between Germany and Russia felt united by a common cause of acting both as a barrier against Bolshevik ideology and German expansion.[1] (p. 2)
The strong nationalism of the small nation-states of Eastern Europe prevented them from unifying or federating.[1] (p. 3-4)
Excluding the Scandinavian country Finland and the Mediterranean countries Greece and Turkey, Eastern Europe in 1950 had an estimated Slavic population of roughly 60 million people compared to an estimated non-Slavic population of roughly 40 million people.[1] (p. 4)
There was an alliance between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia which was not based on the common Slavic populations but was based on an agreement called the Little Entente, which also included Rumania, which did not have a large Slavic population.[1] (p. 5)
The Little Entente was a partial regional block united in 1920-21 to protect the region from the return of the Habsburg empire and from the return of the pre-WWI Kingdom of Hungary.[1] (p. 6)
After the collapse of the Little Entente, more than 100,000 Yugoslavians still offered to help Czechoslovakia with its defence against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.[1] (p. 6)
In the 1930s, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Greece, and Turkey formed the "Balkan Pact" against Bulgaria.[1] (p. 6)
In the middle of the 1930s, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania formed a "Baltic Pact".[1] (p. 6)
Vilno had been annexed by Poland in 1920.[1] (p. 7)
The relations between Poland and Czechoslovakia fell apart after territorial disputes and the Polish−German Pact of 1934.[1] (p.7)
The first message to the Czechoslovakian Parliament in 1918 by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk called for a new coalition of the small nations of Central Europe. (p. 7)
In October 1918, when Masaryk was chairman of a congress in Philadelpha, United States, he read a declaration recommending an economic federation to encourage unity. (p. 7-8)
The global economic crisis of the 1930s caused great difficulties for the Eastern European countries because the fall in agricultural prices was aggravated by rural overpopulation and a lack of industrialisation. (p. 9)
Agriculture made up approximately four-fifths of the economies of Rumania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, but approximately only one quarter to one third of the more diversified economies of Czechoslovakia and Austria. (p. 10)
The Agrarian leader of Bulgaria, Stambolijsky, was overthrown and murdered in 1923. (p. 11)
Czechoslovakia was the most educated country in Eastern Europe. (p.11)
More than 10,000 books were published in Czechoslovakia each year. (p. 12)
By the end of World War I, French and German culture were the dominant Western influences in Eastern Europe but after World War II, the United States and Britain had become more influential, owing to the political reasons of bucking Communist Russian expansion. (p. 13)
Religious differences appeared to be less of a source of disagreement than nationalism. (p. 14-15)
Catholicism unified the Polish against the Greek Orthodox Russians and Ukrainians and the Protestant Germans. (p. 15)
Approximately a million Czechs left the Roman Catholic church of the former Austrian empire and either joined the new Czechoslovak Church or did not identify with a denomination. (p. 15)
^ abcdefghijkRipka, Hubert (1961). "The Heterogeneous Character of East Central Europe". Eastern Europe in the Post-War World. London, United Kingdom: Methuen. ASINB00CZ6KE62.
