Euro-Orientalism and the Making of an "Authentic" Europe
How, when, and why was Eastern Europe cast as Europe's internal outsider—barbaric, backward, and always just behind?
I recently rewatched the acclaimed sci-fi drama Black Mirror in preparation for the release of the latest season on Netflix. Working my way through the third season while sitting in my Prague apartment, an episode called “Nosedive” caught my attention. I had seen the episode when it first aired in 2016, but this time I noticed something different.
Set in a near-future dystopia (like most episodes), “Nosedive” centers on the cut-throat world of social credit scores. Digital eye implants and smart phone swipes enable individuals to rate each other, creating an incessant need to maintain the approval of fellow citizens. Our protagonist is a woman trying to get to her childhood friend’s wedding—the friend is an elitist snob with a very high credit score and makes no secret of this—but, due to a day of altercations, her credit score has fallen below the required level to board her flight. She tries to rent a car instead but, following another argument (this time with the car rental attendant), her score drops even lower, forcing her to take the oldest and worst model the rental company had available.
As she gets in the car and presses the central control panel, the vehicle (more of an autonomous futuristic pod) comes to life. The onboard AI begins talking to our protagonist in a foreign language: “Ahoj! Řiďte opatrně (Hi! Drive carefully),” it repeats in a monotone voice. Her failure to understand the language only exacerbates her general frustration. She cycles through the incomprehensible digital menu trying to find the ignition button, accidentally turning on the onboard entertainment system, which begins playing a TV show from 1990s, dubbed in the same unknown language. She becomes increasingly agitated, impatiently fastening her seatbelt and finally getting the engine started. Sometime later, after a disappointing call with the snarky bride, the car again begins to speak in the same foreign tongue: “Baterie vybitá, nedostatek energie (Battery depleted, insufficient energy),” repeating itself over and over. “What do you want?!” she exclaims before spotting the flashing “low battery” sign and pulling over. Failing to find a charger that fits her outdated car, she ends up on the side of the highway, utterly dejected, thumbing for a ride. —End scene.
Unbeknownst to most of the show’s primary audience of Western (and specifically Anglo-American) viewers, the language of the onboard AI was in fact Czech. This is not important for the episode’s storyline but cleverly guides us toward subconscious feelings of discomfort and confusion, mimicking the feelings of our protagonist. To a Western audience, the use of Czech creates feelings of something that is both known and unknown. What is “known” is that Czech sounds Slavic (or Russian to the untrained ear), and this subconsciously unearths negative Eastern European tropes: bleak, backward, and basic, much like the retrograde car rental. Presumably “unknown,” however, is that Czech is not Russian (far from it in fact). But what are the odds a Western viewer can successfully differentiate one from the other? These subconscious sensations enable the viewer to experience the protagonist’s feelings of isolation and inferiority through nothing more than a carefully chosen sociocultural-linguistic trigger. To be clear, the show’s writers did not choose Kazakh or Tamil or Maltese for the onboard AI—Czech was deliberate. Incidentally, the dubbed TV show that was playing in the background was the 1990s American sitcom Home Improvement, starring Tim Allen as “Tim the Toolman Taylor,” serving to situate the Western viewer in their own past by amplifying the feeling of outdatedness.
Surprisingly—or perhaps not so—the only article I could find on this was a short piece written on the Prague-based website Expats.cz: “And to emphasize just how shitty the car is, it happens to speak Czech,” writes the local American journalist Dave Park. No further analysis was given. What we can say, however, is that the effectiveness with which Black Mirror utilizes this trigger is nothing new. Propelled by essentialized Western propaganda about the adversarial East during the Cold War, blockbuster films and shows have been saturated with orientalized stimuli and “common enemy” tropes for decades. What caught my attention was that it still works. But why?
Ezekial Adamovsky’s notion of “Euro-Orientalism” will help us answer that and the following three questions:
1. When did the concept of a so-called Eastern Europe emerge?
2. How did this concept lead to a “Euro-Orientalist” discursive system?
3. To what extent is “Eastern Europe” still conceptually relevant?
Euro-Orientalism and the Invention of Eastern Europe
Edward Said’s influential opus, Orientalism, deftly explains how Western colonial discourse creates an exoticized, essentialized, and totalized “Other” that stands as a deliberate counterpoint to the modern, rational, and civilized Western “Self.” Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, Said argues that with the projection of power from the core of hegemonic societies comes the means to produce knowledge—including knowledge of the “Other” and “Self”—which may in turn be used to justify power. This basic idea will help situate our concern about Eastern Europe.
Euro-orientalism is a type of Eurocentrism, but it is not to be understood as a mere duplicate of the orientalized discourse present during the colonization, subjugation, and scientific racism of nineteenth-century European imperialism. What is comparable, however, is the emergence of a discursive system in academic and civic circles that normalized ideas surrounding the conceptualization of an Eastern Europe which was barbarous rather than civilized, traditional rather than modern, totalitarian rather than free, and homogenous rather than diverse.1 Divisive dichotomies are inherent in civilizational discourse, and as Piotr Twardzisz argues, “[t]he primary division into Western and Eastern Europe would not be possible at all if the latter were not ascribed the quality of ‘otherness’.”2
For much of its history, Eastern Europe has been viewed by its neighbors as a “land of absence.”3 Like most “imaginative geographies,”4 it remains largely ambiguous, or, in the words of Twardzisz, “subconsciously indeterminate.”5 Whether categorized geographically (as a hinterland to warring empires), ideologically (due to the influence of Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, and communism), or ethnoculturally (as the home of the Slavs), there is no overriding consensus on what Eastern Europe was or is. Yet feelings about its “otherness” endure, often in socioeconomic and political terms.
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, in their influential book Why Nations Fail, argue that the first notable West/East divisions of Europe were socioeconomic, becoming visible in the aftermath of the Black Death during the middle of the fourteenth century. In Britain, the deadly plague—killing fifty percent of those it infected—led to the Peasants Revolt in the late fourteenth century and the beginning of the end of serfdom. This, in turn, led to a more inclusive labor market, greater commerce, and urbanization. In Eastern Europe, however, it caused the expansion of landlord controls, the prolongation of the feudalist system, and an increasing reliance on Western European demand for grain—a period known as the Second Serfdom.6 As Acemoglu and Robinson tell us, within a relatively short time, socioeconomic fortunes had dramatically changed across the continent: “Though in 1346 there were few differences between Western and Eastern Europe in terms of political and economic institutions, by 1600 they were worlds apart.”7
It was not until the “long nineteenth century” in France, however, that derogatory constructions of Russia and Eastern Europe—often viewed synonymously—gained greater currency within public discourse. Though Ezekial Adamovsky admits that German and Nordic cultures referred to an Eastern Europe earlier than the French, the influence of the Napoleonic era cannot be overstated.8 The French philosopher and political theorist Germaine de Staël, for example, picked up on the idea of the “inauthenticity of Russian civilization,” first popularized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and further extended her critique to Eastern Europe in general.9 A recurring theme in Saidian orientalist discourse is that what the East lacks (rather than what it possesses) is what defines it. Adamovsky suggests these “missing elements” of civilization in Russia included: an independent nobility, intermediate bodies, urban development, a large bourgeoise, and an independent civil society.10 For Staël, though she felt the Slavs would one day become influential, it was Latin Europe’s classical legacy and Germanic Europe’s feudal institutions that made the continent what it was—“[the] ‘Slavonic civilization’ was still too recent, and for the moment […] had [only] produced cultural “imitations” […] and nothing ‘original’.”11
As nationalism grew in mid-nineteenth century Western Europe, so too did Russophobia. This led to a reactionary Russian nationalism as a countermeasure to Prussian and French nationalism. As such, the Russians created their own derogatory tropes about what they thought constituted a typical Prussian or Frenchman, while welcoming romanticized ideas of what it meant to be Russian. This is apparent, for example, in the concept of the “Russian soul.” Initially coined by Nikolai Gogol and Vissarion Belinsky as a critique of Russian feudalism, it later morphed into a new brand of Russian exceptionalism through writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky.12
The “Slavic Soul” was another similar and recurring theme, perhaps best captured by the Czech secessionist painter, Alfonse Mucha, in the pieces comprising his Slav Epic—a cycle of twenty unique canvases completed in 1928. Though produced after the pan-Slavism movement had subsided, Mucha’s canvases are an excellent example of the marrying of Slavic culture, history, and ethno-nationalism to create an embellished sense of Slavic destiny.13
Simply, pan-Slavic counter-nationalism was a response to Western European chauvinism. In Prague in 1848, Bohemian-Czech revolutionaries—keen to break away from Austro-Hungarian rule—hosted the first pan-Slav Congress. The movement sought to distance Slavs from their non-Slavic rulers and, like all pan-nationalist movements, to establish a common thread that unified the Slavs as a collective national body. It was during this period that usage of the term Europe Orientale became especially popular among Western Europeans who were “concerned” about the growth of Slavic national consciousness.
Liminal Lands: Geographies of Eastern and Central Europe
For much of its history, the region encompassing Central and Eastern Europe was a land occupied and strategized over by multiple regional powers, including but not limited to the Hapsburg Monarchy, the Prussian Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. The disadvantageous geography of the Eastern European plains and lowlands meant much of the region’s geopolitical experience was defined by conquest. This was perhaps best understood in modern times through the German concept of Lebensraum (living space)—an idea thought up by the Prussian geographer Friedrick Ratzel in the early days of the Second Reich, but put into brutal effect by German eastward expansionism in both world wars.
In the words of Alan Palmer, “[t]he lands which separate Germany and Italy from Russia lack natural frontiers; they are organisms with vertebrae and arteries but no external shell.”14 The ultimate division of these vulnerable lands was sealed in 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, when Winston Churchill declared that “[f]rom Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” As Churchill’s words destined Europe to ideological divergence, the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe found themselves contained within a variety of communist, socialist, authoritarian, or totalitarian regimes. From this point, it was the West that would see itself progressing into a modern democratic future, while the East was to remain static, despotic, and inherently limited.
During the Cold War, the West went to great lengths to understand and document this new eastern adversary of the USSR and its satellites. Government funded research institutes, numerous university study programs, and influential texts like Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism created a West/East anxiety that centered on “the metaphysical issue of the limits between Europe and Asia.”15
Notwithstanding the caricatured portrayal of life behind the Iron Curtain in Western discourse, socioeconomic opportunities and political freedoms were, by design, considerably fewer in much of the Eastern Bloc. Though these trends are rapidly changing in a globalizing Europe, in the case of what was once the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or more commonly East Germany), there remains a visible relic boundary between it and what was once West Germany, revealing the socioeconomic fallout of a bygone era: less disposable income, higher unemployment, fewer registered companies, higher agrarianism, more right-leaning voters, and fewer young people. The impact of the communist era—combined with ineffective post-communist integration in Germany—is undeniable. Interestingly, even the city infrastructure between what was West Berlin and East Berlin is visibly different.
One people who have been keen to disregard the remnants of the Cold War and establish themselves as the most “West of the East” are the Czechs. Positioned at a cultural and geographic crossroads, where Germanic and Slavic Europe meet (and with its capital Prague located further west than Vienna), the Czech Republic (or Czechia, as the locals refuse to call it) fervently insists that it is in Central rather than Eastern Europe. The Czechs stand with Lithuania and Slovenia as the most economically prosperous post-communist nations in Europe. But despite this, they are still generally viewed by the West as Eastern Europeans.16 Once situated at the center of European culture and influence (Prague was twice the capital of the Holy Roman Empire), the Czechs have to some extent been forgotten—relegated to the periphery of Western civilization. Tourists journey in droves to see the Charles Bridge, the Prague Castle, or the fifteenth century Astronomical Clock. But it is the wonders of the museum of human history they seek, not to marvel at modernity; they come to see what was, not what is.
Relabeling Eastern European regions in the hope of exorcising the ghosts of the past is riddled with issues. Central Europe, for example, or Mitteleuropa as it was called by the Germans, is historically linked to Germanic influence. Slovenia and Croatia—the two most affluent states in ex-Yugoslavia—are generally considered Central European due to the influence of Catholicism and the Austo-Hungarian Empire. Due to this imperial history, the Czechs have a lot more in common with Slovenes or Croats than they do with Serbs or Bulgarians, despite their collective Slavic ancestry. Yet notwithstanding their fiery political rhetoric, within the Western Balkans many people consider themselves part of a Yugoslav family, often harking back to a better time when they were unified under Josip Tito’s beloved republic.
However you slice it, the controversy around the etymology of Central and Eastern Europe is clear. East-Central Europe is now a more widely accepted term and comprises a vast transnational zone between historically German, Russian, and Ottoman-influenced Europe. Paul Robert Magocsi, in his prolific Historical Atlas of Central Europe, breaks East-Central Europe into three zones: The Northern Zone, the Alpine-Carpathian Zone, and the Balkan Zone.17 Though Magocsi admits there is no consensus on European regions, his delineations attempt to provide socio-geographic nuance by shifting focus away from historical preconceptions.
The example of Europe teaches a wider lesson about the nature of socioeconomic division and its impact on our values and perspectives. Civilizational dichotomies are nothing new in European history. In the days of antiquity, it was the civilized Greco-Roman South versus the uncivilized barbarian Germanic North. In time, the South/North binary rotated 90 degrees clockwise, leaving Paris, London, and Amsterdam as the “new Romes,” and Eastern Europe—with its Ottoman and Russian influencers—the new barbarians. Europe has always been keen to establish its periphery and its Others who sit beyond it.
The hope for a unified Europe that finds common ground with all of its composite parts has plagued the European Union for decades. Some suggest the Russian invasion of Ukraine will be the catalyst that pulls Europe together, driving Eastern European states closer to the Western core. This of course negates Russia’s own Europeaness. Though there is an inevitability about civilizational polarities and their need for largely fictionalized supporting narratives, the very notion of an Eastern Europe (or a Western Europe for that matter) derived from anything other than geography is based on abstract tropes that, when socioeconomically or politically reified, prevent Europeans from seeing each other as equals rather than counter-points to different national agendas.
Notes
Ezekial Adamovsky, “Euro-Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of Eastern Europe in France, 1810–1880,” The Journal of Modern History 77, no. 3 (2005): 591–628.
Piotr Twardzisz, Defining ‘Eastern Europe’: A Semantic Enquiry into Political Terminology (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 16.
Adamovsky, “Euro-Orientalism,” 591.
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 54.
Twardzisz, Defining ‘Eastern Europe’, 7.
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Publishing, 2012), 100.
Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 101.
Adamovsky, “Euro-Orientalism,” 600.
Ibid., 597.
Ibid., 591.
Ibid., 597.
Robert C. Williams, The Russian Soul: A Study in European Thought and Non-European Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), 574.
Despite the predominance of Slavic nations in East-Central Europe, there are several non-Slavic nations in the region: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Albania, and Greece.
Alan Warwick Palmer, The Lands Between: A History of East-Central Europe since the Congress of Vienna (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), 1.
Adamovsky, “Euro-Orientalism,” 611.
A quick Google search for “Eastern Europe” will reveal images of Prague and the southern Bohemian town of Český Krumlov, along with images of Budapest and Bran Castle in Romania.
The Northern Zone comprises what was East Germany, Poland, Latvia, Belarus, Western Ukraine up to the Dnipro River, and Moldova. The Alpine-Carpathian Zone comprises the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, South Tyrol in Northern Italy, Slovenia, Eastern Croatia without Dalmatia and Istria, Hungary, and Romania. The Balkan Zone comprises coastal Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, and European Turkey.
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Well-written, well-argued. Loved it. A thought-provoking read to end the day with.