East European ethnicity - top countries
East European ethnicity is common in the following countries, according to MyHeritage DNA users' data.
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People of Eastern European descent trace their roots to Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, and neighboring countries. The early Common Era saw the region largely populated by Slavic and Baltic tribes with later Roman, Mongol, and Ottoman invasions. Bridging Europe to Asia, the region has been the epicenter of rich cultural diffusion; arts and sciences have flourished there despite the often inhospitable climate and political upheavals over the last couple of centuries. Eastern Europe has long been considered an important center for major trends in the performing arts, as the birthplace of the Russian ballet and of modern acting. Russians were responsible for feats of engineering such as the construction of the world’s longest railroad line a hundred years ago — the Trans-Siberian Railway — and scientific breakthroughs including being first to send a human into outer space in 1961. With the advent of Soviet nationalism, Eastern Europe has experienced significant internal emigration. Following the fall of communism in the early 1990s significant East European diasporas are now present across Europe and in North America.