Slavic Europe is a region of Europe where Slavic languages are spoken. This area is situated in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and includes the nations of Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine . In the disputed territories of Transnistria and Kosovo, often claim by Slavophiles, the main languages in use daily by the inhabitants are Romanian and Albanian respectively.
The Baltic states also have considerable Slavic populations plus large numbers of other citizens who can speak a Slavic language, particularly Russian. Over three-quarters of the population of Latvia speaks Russian either natively or as a second language. Roughly 29% of Latvia's and Estonia's population is Slavic (mostly Russian and Ukrainian), and 14.3% of the population of Lithuania speaks a Slavic language natively (mostly Polish).
Also included are Lusatia in eastern Germany (homeland of the Sorbs); parts of Carinthia, and Burgenland in Austria and within the city of Vienna; parts of Macedonia and Thrace in northern Greece; East Thrace in Turkey (by Bulgarians and Pomaks); north-eastern Italy (Trieste and surrounding areas, and in Molise); Romania (Caraș-Severin County, Timișoara and Dobruja); Moldova (home to Bessarabian Bulgarians and a considerable Russian and Ukrainian minority); Hungary (south and west, home to Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, north home to Slovaks and Ukrainians); and Albania in regions close to the border with former Yugoslav lands. These are home to historic Slavic-speaking minorities in what are majority non-Slavic nations.
Read more about Slavic Europe: Religion and Culture, Statistics
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“In times like ours, where the growing complexity of life leaves us barely the time to read the newspapers, where the map of Europe has endured profound rearrangements and is perhaps on the brink of enduring yet others, where so many threatening and new problems appear everywhere, you will admit it may be demanded of a writer that he be more than a fine wit who makes us forget in idle and byzantine discussions on the merits of pure form ...”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)