What is the steretypical Eastern Europe and who has promoted such image?

Eastern Europeans are generally seen as uncivilized, sadistic, tourist murderers, looters, and backward in relation to Western Europeans.
Has this image been promoted by Hollywood? Hostel comes to mind.

Sounds to me like the locals are worried about the competition

Borat comes to mind...but he is south west Asia.

Borat.

That might be your stereotype but it's not mine.

The East German woman power lifter on steroid names Helga.
East Germany didn't help this by massive abuse of steroids during earlier olympics.
But I can say my East German (now US citizen) wife is petite, good looking, sweet and can COOK like a mo-fo!

thats not the sterotype, where are you from?

Probably more people associate them with rather uncommunicative but none-the-less capable & eager fillers of manual trades. Standing around drinking outdoors in the cold in also a favourite, as is cropped hair, brow beaten wives & peddle pusher trousers.

Eastern gangsters are another matter, being a ruthless lot & involved in particularly pernicious activities such as people traffic which people in the West view, being relatively unknown to their organised crime scene, as beyond the pale.

I think the stereotype is that Eastern Europe is mostly extremely poor, formerly communist people, who listen to MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice.

Most stereotypes date back to the Cold War era and were based on people's perception of Russians. Unfortunately, people in the West thought that the same image applied to all the Warsaw Pact countries. I am a British ex-pat living in Poland and I can tell you that the Polish take great exception to being put in the same basket as the Russians.They also take exception to Western perceptions of them being behind the times and unintelligent, which is certainly not true. There is still poverty, although this has greatly improved, particularly in the new members of the EU. The infrastructure was in pretty poor shape but a lot of work has been done, especially on the roads and things are much better. I have visited Slovakia and I can tell you that they were very upset by the Image portrayed in the "Hostel" films,

From my experience, I can tell you that the Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians and Poles are warm friendly people. Their hospitality is second to none and yes, the girls are gorgeous, but also very strong-willed, I know. I married one of them!

So, don't believe the stereotypes, Come and see for yourselves