East-Central Europe (or Middle Europe, Median Europe, fr. Europe médiane) – a term defining the countries located between German-speaking countries and Russia. Those lands are described as situated “between two”: between two worlds, between two stages, between two futures. In the geopolitical sense, East-Central Europe may be opposed to the Western and Eastern Europe, as one of the “Three Europes”.
Differing from ideas of Central and Eastern Europe, the concept is based on different criteria of distinction and has different geographical spread. In addition, countries of Central and Eastern Europe belong to two different cultural and economic circles.
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“In everyone’s youthful dreams, philosophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and with singular truth, associated with the East, nor do after years discover its local habitation in the Western world. In comparison with the philosophers of the East, we may say that modern Europe has yet given birth to none.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)