Why is Europe divided into Eastern and Western Europe?

For 44 years, the continent of Europe was divided by an Iron Curtain between a capitalist West and communist East. Contact between the two halves was severely limited, and a huge divergence in living standards emerged. read more

However, since the end of WW2 and the rise of the Iron Curtain, Eastern Europe languished for 40 years under an incompetent and inhuman regime that did incalculable damage to the progress and development of Eastern Europe, before collapsing and leaving them for dead. They WERE divided because of the Iron Curtain. read more

Europe stayed a divided continent and split into two ideological worlds throughout the Cold War, until the late 1980s when Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev radically reformed the Soviet system and allowed the Eastern European states to break free from Soviet influence. read more