The western world harbours a stereotype of the countries of central and eastern Europe; for example, the tendency to characterise all countries in this area as belonging to the ‘East bloc countries’. This distortion might be explained by the fact that this part of the world was part of the former Soviet bloc for over forty years. However, at the start of the twenty-first century, ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, national characteristics often continue to be ignored in news about the eastern part of the European continent.

This chapter is an attempt to clarify this situation from a particular point of view, that of teaching and learning foreign languages. Convergences as well as divergences are noted, including variations in national culture, history and current legislation of the countries under review, namely: Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (formerly Czechoslovakia), Romania, and Bulgaria. A focus on these countries is especially interesting since the situation of the major languages of international communication in central and eastern Europe changed considerably in the 1990s, following the politico-economic upheavals of 1989.

Historical overview of the situation of foreign languages in central and eastern Europe

For centuries, knowledge of foreign languages was a constituent of the general culture of educated eastern Europeans. Before the Second World War, learning of one or two living foreign languages (in addition to Latin) was widespread in the area.