Eastern Europe is less economically developed than Western Europe. From the time of the enlightenment, East Europeans have struggled to release themselves from a legacy of underdevelopment and dependence. Today most of Eastern Europe remains relatively backward, undercapitalized, under productive and under employed because politics in Eastern Europe also replicates the religion’s relative economic backwardness and more traditional social structure. Eastern Europe had not been greatly affected by the ideas of enlightenment of the eighteenth century nor did the liberal revolutions of the nineteenth century take root in the mostly rural societies of Eastern Europe.