The “Orientalization” and “de-Orientalization” of East Central Europe and the Balkan Peninsula

This article first explains how Western “Orientalization” of East Central Europe, the Balkan Peninsula and the Russian Empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resulted in crude and demeaning “Western” caricatures of “East Europe(ans)”. After 1945, such stereotypes were reinforced by the Cold War East–West divide. From the 1980s to 2007, European integration brought about substantial “de-Orientalization” of most of Europe’s former communist states. Since 2008, unfortunately, further headway in these directions has been seriously jeopardized by recent “wrong turns”, crises and setbacks in the European integration process, above all by the ill-conceived Eurozone project.