Viktor Yushchenko has just won election as president of the Ukraine. He has openly expressed his desire to connect the Ukraine to its western neighbors in the European Union. The line between East and West in Europe appears to have jumped eastwards toward the Russian border. Will East and West no longer have meaning in the Europe of the future?

For 40 years, eastern and western Europe were separated by the fortified border between Cold War enemies. On either side, people, and especially governments, looked away from each other toward the two centers of superpower, the United States and the Soviet Union. Not only different forms of government but also different economic systems, living styles, consumer products and television programs separated the two halves of Europe.

This separation did not begin with the fighting in World War II. Fundamental differences between eastern and western Europe have been present since the Middle Ages. Eastern Orthodox Christianity separated from western Catholicism in the 11th century. The Renaissance and Reformation transformed church and state, culture and private life in the West, but had little influence in czarist Russia.

What has shifted over the centuries has been the border between Europe’s two halves. The people in the broad swath of territory between Germany and Russia, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Balkan peninsula in the south, have sometimes faced west and sometimes east.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, for example, the Czechs developed an advanced industrial society, and Prague was a half-German city. Polish Catholics found their spiritual leaders in Rome, not Moscow. Then two world wars started by Germans and Austrians resulted in Russian domination of Czechoslovakia, Poland and the three small Baltic countries, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

As late as the 1980s, this particular division of West and East appeared to be permanent, hardened into the military alliances of NATO and Warsaw Pact, and the competing economic unions of the Common Market and Comecon.

In 1989, the fortified border disappeared, and since then the border between West and East has been moving steadily eastward. In 2004, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania all joined the expanded European Union. Bulgaria and Romania are slated to enter in 2007. How far east can the East-West border move?

The presidential election in the Ukraine has suddenly brought this question into worldwide prominence. Because the two candidates appear to represent different geographical orientations, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich the Russian-influenced eastern Ukraine and Yushchenko the European-oriented western Ukraine, some commentators have argued that the election will determine the direction in which the future Ukraine will face. I think this is a simplistic view.

East and West in Europe represent more than political allegiance and alliance systems. On my trips into Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia this fall, I saw very different economies and societies. While the people in Gdnsk and Prague have significantly smaller incomes than the rich societies to their west, these cities felt familiar for a western traveler. Signs in English, French or German and western-style architecture, both Renaissance (Gdnsk) and modern (Prague), were outward signs of western orientation. More fundamental is the relative ease with which both countries have adopted democratic politics and market economies, where criticism and competition are accepted and expected.

In Russia, the ubiquitous police, the suspicion and segregation of foreigners, and the ever watchful presence of the state indicated a different set of fundamental values. Recent headlines out of Moscow about the strengthening of President Putin’s centralizing powers and his government’s blatant interference in the economy show Russia moving in a different direction. More fundamental is the apparent sense among Russians themselves that a strong leader is more important than democratic methods. In neighboring Belarus, the authoritarian government of Alexander Lukashenko has twisted the constitution to allow him unlimited consecutive terms, threatened, silenced and perhaps murdered independent journalists, and taken over nearly all television stations.

Until the unprecedented massive public protests over the fraudulent runoff election in November, conditions in the Ukraine seemed similar. The poisoning of Yushchenko and the lack of television reporting about the first days of protests appeared to show an equally authoritarian system. The persistence and social depth of the protests against the government of Leonid Kuchma demonstrate that such black-and-white judgments about East and West are insufficient.

But I would not simply put the Ukraine in the “western” camp because Yushchenko has won the election. Democratic institutions, an open civil society and a market economy are just beginning to penetrate into Ukrainian consciousness.

Per capita income is only half of the level of the poorest EU states. The border between East and West has moved slowly in the past, and continues to be fluid rather than sharp. All the countries which appear to have moved from East to West over the past 15 years still struggle with this decision. The major powers of western Europe are now in an uproar about the possibility of extending the borders of the European Union across Turkey, with even less familiar historical traditions. The Ukrainian election has been one difficult step in discovering what Europe has become and what it will be.

Steve Hochstadt lives in Lewiston and teaches history at Bates College. He is temporarily teaching in Germany and can be reached at [email protected].