Why is it that west European countries are generally bigger, more stable and more ethnically homogeneous, and East European countries are less so?

Question

I am mainly thinking of UK, France, Germany, Spain as big, but all of them (with the possible exception of Ireland) could be thought of as stable, ie no wars or revolution since WW2.

In: Other

Answer 1

Your assumption is wrong.
The UK is anything but homogeneous, Scotland can’t wait to leave, the north Irish were also recently thinking of rejoining Ireland.
Spain was on the brink of separating 3 years ago.

Looking at eastern europe – Poland is pretty solid, the rest of the countries mostly have Russians peppered, partly thanks to Stalin.
But there’s also a lot to thank population movement pre nationalism (think of how Germans were spread throughout Europe and how Hitler used that).

There’s also some to thank border marking. If there is a Polish population living in a place, why is it part of Ukraine and not Poland? (Ruhr as an exampke for this in western Europe).