I CO TO JEST " SMALL COUNTRY IN THE CENTRAL EUROPE" - PODCZAS WIZYTY
JANA PAWLA II,
PRZEZ  GLOWNE DONIESIENIE TV

/Safire tez 'skoczyl' w dol./

PODAJE TEZ ARTYKOL, Z PUBLIC DOMAIN, ZA DARMO, ABY POMOC W NIE
TRACENIU CZASU KIEDY MANIPULACJA GDZIE LEZY "SMALL COUNTRY IN CENTRAL
EUROPE" ( PODCZAS WIZYTY JANA PAWLA II W NY)
UTRUDNIA PRZEGLAD ARCHIW. SAFIRE BYL AUTORYTETEM W WEWRBALNYCH
ROZGRYWKACH.

"March 12, 1995
ON LANGUAGE
ON LANGUAGE; Hello, Central
By William Safire
IF YOU WANT TO GET with it in terms of nomenclature," Richard
Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian
Affairs, told me a few months ago, "you're going to have to stop
referring to the nations of Eastern Europe as being in Eastern Europe.
They think of themselves as being Central Europeans."

Was I being subtly manipulated in some sort of bureaucratic power
play? Rather than rushing out to the cutting edge of current
diplomatic usage -- possibly contributing unwittingly to the
perpetration of a policy nuance -- I waited for this major geo-
semantic shift to work its way upward.

Sure enough, when the White House held a meeting to promote trade with
what I used to call countries behind the Iron Curtain, or captive
nations or Warsaw Pact nations, the designation chosen was not Eastern
Europe, but a tentative, transitional, all-inclusive "White House
Conference on Trade and Investment in Central and Eastern Europe."

But in addressing that group in Cleveland, President Clinton threw out
the Eastern and gutsily used the Holbrooke formulation: "Look at what
is happening in Central Europe. . . . Just six years ago, the
countries of Central Europe were still captive nations."

CLEVELAND MA TERAZ JAKAS SLOWACKA ORGANIZACJE W SEKCJI 'WARSZAWA' I
WYDAJE SIE NIE MIEC JUZ POLKICH ORGANIZACJI TAM. JESLI WYWOLA SIE JE -
WYSKOCZY JEDEN Z ROOSEVELTOW.

W CLEVELAND WYLADOWALO OK. 3.5 MILLION POLAKOW.

 ( CO Z NIMI ZROBIONO? SPRAWDZAM CZY MOZE ZOSTALI UWIEZIENI ALBO
STARCENI JAKO ' INDENTURED; OR ENDENTURED' SEVANTS" - NIEWOLNICY;

POSZE TO JAK NAJBARDZIEJ POWAZNIE.

W CLEVELAND JEST PIEKNY POLSKI PARK ( PEWNIE W TEJ STAREJ  WARSAW
DISTRICT), W KTORYM RZEZBY ZAMARLY W POLOWIE I NIKT ICH NIE ODNOWIL OD
LAT 70 -TYCH. CO SIE STALO?)

It's all very well for diplomats to issue diktats and for Presidents
to get on usage ukases, but nothing changes until it changes in The
New York Times, which does not treat geographic designations or names
of countries lightly, especially when political implications impinge.
(Took me years to get us to change the old spelling of Rumania to the
Romania that Romanians prefer.)

"For my language column," I queried Allan M. Siegal, assistant
managing editor and overall stylistic czar, "do we capitalize Eastern
Europe and Western Europe?" That was an easy one, for openers; then
the zinger, put offhandedly: "Where is Central Europe?"

Al Siegal solicited an opinion from Bernard Gwertzman, foreign editor,
who replied, "Safire's question comes at a time when the foreign desk
has been discussing using new terms for the geography of Europe."

In formulating his recommendation, Gwertzman queried Craig R. Whitney
in Paris, The Times's European diplomatic correspondent: "Craig, the
question is asked here, shouldn't we drop terms like 'countries of
Eastern Europe' when we really mean, largely, countries of Central
Europe? I know this is a semantic difference with all sorts of
political implications, i.e., if Poland is part of Central Europe,
shouldn't it be allowed in NATO sooner than if in Eastern Europe. What
do you think?"

Whitney in Paris to Gwertzman in New York: "When you think that until
50 years ago, Kaliningrad and half of present-day Poland were actually
part of Germany, then for Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia
the situation is clear: they always were considered Central Europe and
consider themselves that now. Romania and Bulgaria are another story.
As for the Balkans: most people this side of the Atlantic refer to
them as southwest Europe, or the Balkans. Historically, Eastern Europe
is actually Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia. The Baltics fit into
this scenario as 'the Baltics,' since they are no more Eastern
European than Sweden and Finland are. Cheers, Whitney."

Gwertzman to Siegal: "We will use common-sense geographic designations
for parts of Europe. Clearly, there is a western Europe, a central
Europe and an eastern Europe. The cold war had brought about a
political division of Europe into East and West, with Berlin the
implicit dividing line. The establishment of two alliances, NATO and
the Warsaw Pact, allowed us to say 'Western Europe vs. Eastern
Europe.' That meant that the classic center of Europe was more or less
omitted."

With the cold war over, and with the countries of the old Warsaw Pact
no longer tied to the Soviet "East," Gwertzman recommended: "The time
has come to 'restore' the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, eastern
Germany and Slovakia to Central Europe. I would say that European
Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, former Yugoslavia and Romania
probably belong in eastern Europe but not as a political
designation."

I have shared these ultra-secret internal Times documents with readers
not only to show how this institution sweats the details of style and
denotation, but also to give readers a chance to holler as diplomats
and editors linguistically carve up the world.

At the State Department, nomenclature is an expression of foreign
policy. "There must be an Eastern Europe somewhere," says a spokesman,
Aric Schwan, "but where exactly that line falls became a matter of hot
dispute." Does it take in the Baltic States -- Latvia, Lithuania and
Estonia -- the forced annexation of which into the Soviet Union was
never recognized by the U.S.? Because the Baltics want no part of
being thought of as "Eastern," State's designation of them with that
word has been dropped, and that area is now part of the "Nordic/Baltic
desk."

But what of the area covering Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the other
former Soviet republics? Wouldn't they like to be thought of as
Central if it helps them get out of the Russian orbit? "As of now,"
admits the Foggy Bottom spokesman, "we have no real name for the other
bureau. Jim Collins is the Ambassador at Large for what's being called
New Independent States, but it's also referred to as the East
European, Caucasus and Eurasian Bureau."

Five years ago, in "The Bloc That Failed," Charles Gati saw the
political meaning in Europe's loss of the word central: "Take 'Eastern
Europe.' Before 1945 geographers had seldom identified such a
region. . . . The map provides ample justification for questioning
Eastern Europe as a geographic entity." Prague, capital of then-
Czechoslovakia, part of the "East," is northwest of Vienna, capital of
Austria, considered part of the "West."

The use of eastern, Mr. Gati posited, was part of a Soviet pretense of
political commonality with the six states of Central and Southeastern
Europe. The word central once suggested they were greatly influenced
by Germany; the word eastern asserted the domination of Russia.

In the immediate future, when anybody asks for your position on the
enlargement of NATO to include the nations of Eastern, or Central,
Europe, play it semantically safe: demand to know what specific
countries the questioner has in mind.

But here's my own mooring, updated and consistent: capitalize the
noun, not the adjective. It's eastern Europe, central Europe and
western Europe. (And whatever became of northern and southern
Europe?)

Drawing "