Welcome to the History Extra Podcast, fascinating historical conversations from BBC History Magazine

and BBC History revealed.

Across the centuries, Eastern Europe has been the setting for some of history's most climactic

events.

Yet barely 30 years since the collapse of communism heralded the so-called end of history.

Are we now witnessing the region's disappearance?

In his new book, Goodby Eastern Europe, Jacob Mikanowski presents a world that once bristled

with cultural diversity, whose community traditions and ideologies endured throughout

the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union.

Danny Bird caught up with Jacob to find out more.

To start us off, what inspired you to write this book?

I began writing this book after a prolonged period of teaching and writing about Eastern

Europe.

It was in a PhD program for Russian and Eastern European history.

This is about 2013, 2014, it was 2013 before the Russian invasion of Crimea.

It felt like the interest in Eastern Europe was in an all-time low.

Eastern Europe tends to amount of attention and gifts is proportional to how disturbed

it is, how much conflict there is.

This is a really peaceful moment in Eastern European history.

Russia had not invaded.

The EU had expanded and expansion was going very well.

It was very hard to get people interested in Eastern European literature and stories about

...