<<Eastern Europe is a bottomless pit of swirling madness. So many groups have oppressed, murdered, raped, pillaged, so many other groups you need a PHD in it's history to even begin to see behind the dark curtain that surrounds it.>>
You're starting to catch on. There's a lotta history there, none of it any good. Communism put a lid on the pogroms and other ethnic violence for about 70 years, but now it's gone. Still, since most of the ass-holes want to be in NATO and/or the EU now, I think they've got some motivation to hold back the violence at least for the time being. Barring a major depression or some other kind of catastrophe, they've still got a chance to pull themselves out of their own shit.