The Wild Fields: The Struggle for Borders in Eastern Europe

This article explains how the eastern limits of modern and contemporary Europe have evolved since the constitution of the great Eastern empires. These, the Russian, the Ottoman and the Per - sian, blocked the routes to central and eastern Asia. With the Ottoman Empire, a stable military border was achieved towards the end of the 18th century. The founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, neutral during the Second World War, consolidated this situation, which was consolidated with its inclusion in NATO, as early as 1952. Meanwhile, the enormity of the Russian Empire generated reactions of rejection towards its inclusion as another member of Europe. This had to do with a whole series of "disengagement crusades" between the 19th and 21st centuries. Just in those moments in which some power, or group of them, sought to take the reins of continental hegemony.