Europa Wschodnia, Europa Zachodnia, Nowa Europa, czy po prostu Europa? Zmiany tożsamości w Europie po Zimnej Wojnie
Journal Title: Przegląd Wschodni - Year 2016, Vol 14, Issue 53
Abstract
During the greater part of the twentieth century, until the end of the Cold War, concepts such as “Eastern Europe” and “Western Europe” were, for the most part, self-evident. Eastern European countries were lumped together into one unit – the Eastern Bloc: the military and ideological enemy of the West, civilizationally different and rather unknown. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the peaceful revolutions in 1989–1991, culminating in the collapse of the Soviet Empire, radically altered all of Eastern Europe and put its identity into question, leading to the question: what is East and what is West in contemporary Europe? This article aims to discuss the above issues. It begins with a number of theoretical observations concerning collective identity. The author emphasises the dynamic nature of identity construction and proposes that an analysis of collective identity should also consider its two main aspects: the construction of boundaries and borders towards “significant others” and the construction of bonds, uniting a community. The author uses these concepts to structure her article. Utilizing Fernand Braudel’s concepts of different levels of history (la longue duree, les conjuctures and les événements), the author argues that the East-West division in Europe has much deeper historical roots than just the Cold War. The emergence of the division between East and West in Europe can be seen as “a tenacious mental structure”. These identities have their roots in the processes that took place at all levels of, and throughout, history: events (wars, revolutions and the political changes in Europe during the twentieth century), conjunctures (the Communist system that produced and reproduced economic, cultural and mental borders), and la longue durée (geography and geopolitics). The author demonstrates that while the division has existed for centuries, the nature of the boundaries and borders between these parts of Europe have undergone continuous changes (both modifications and redefinitions) throughout time (from late antiquity to the present day). A number of boundaries are described: religious, civilizational, mental, communicational, political, economic and military. With regard to the bonds binding Eastern Europeans, the author suggests that they are relatively weak and contested by Eastern Europeans themselves, but that, nevertheless, they do exist. The weakness of these bonds has its source in the Eastern sense of “we”, which is not built on of solidarity, trust and loyalty, but is rather based on a community feeling of a shared, common fate, full of historical suffering. Thus, the bonds that underpin this identity are mostly the result of structures (geopolitics, historical circumstances, social mechanisms of exclusion) and much less the free choices of Eastern European actors in their respective societies. What, then, are these bonds made up of? Firstly, there is some commonality of geographical territory and geopolitical position. For centuries, Eastern Europe has been in a peripheral position in relation to large parts of Western Europe that have played a leading role in European cultural and economic development. Secondly, Eastern and Central Europe are to some extent united by shared past experiences and the entangled, if not always common, memories of them. Eastern European societies have been marked by specific historical experiences and processes that caused them to develop differently from Western European societies. First and foremost, these are: belated modernization, specific processes of nation-building, not to mention the interference and persecution experienced under two authoritarian regimes: the Nazis and the Soviets. The historical experiences shared by people in Eastern Europe have resulted in a number of common cultural and mental features (which also create a bond of sorts). One of the most important is an inferiority complex towards the West. Another is the socialist, or Homo Sovieticus, mentality. The latter includes cultural rules and attitudes that were created as an effect of living under the Communist system. The author describes the main features of Homo Sovieticus and points to how this mentality is alien to the democratic, capitalistic and market-orientated cultural discourse which dominates in the West. While the first part of the article deals with history prior to 1989, the second part focuses on contemporary history. The author emphasises the gradual process of Eastern European identity dissolution. The author also demonstrates how several of the borders and boundaries, mentioned above, progressively disappeared. The new Eastern European members of the EU began to be referred to as East Central Europe (ECE) while the concept of Eastern Europe seemed to be moved further to the east. Countries such as Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and the countries situated in the Caucasus and a significant part of the Balkans became the “new East”. The author refers to economic, social and cultural indicators that argue for the existence of a new Eastern Europe, East of the Schengen border. It is still too early to describe the present relations between East and West in Europe in terms of a reshuffling of territorial and political borders and the creation of a new East and a larger West. Even if the physical borders between Western and Eastern European EU members have all but disappeared, mental and cultural borders remain, and thus the idea of the former East simply becoming a new West remains unrealized. Furthermore, what we observe in Europe today is the continued stereotyping of Eastern Europe as less developed, more nationalistic and less civilized – a clear reminder of the civilizational border that the West once drew between itself and Eastern Europe. The author concludes, nevertheless, that the enlarged EU is no longer viewed as “Western Europe plus former parts of Eastern Europe”. Several years after its expansion, the EU is beginning to see itself differently; as a kind of new unit, a truly “New Europe”. This does not mean that dissent and problems are absent, but they do not always follow the traditional East-West divisions of the Cold War period. A process of identity change can be observed – a continuous de-bordering and re-bordering. It is still unknown what these developments will bring. Additionally, the war in Ukraine and the EU-Russia relations crisis have created new dynamics; raising new questions about what is East and what is West in Europe and what Russia’s place is in all of it.
Authors and Affiliations
Barbara Törnquist-Plewa
Keywords
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