From Elbe to Volga. In the Labyrinth of Cultural Boundaries

Abstract

This chapter examines cultural and mental boundaries that run through the territory of Central and Eastern Europe. The study showed that cultural, linguistic, mental differences and some specific features of political regimes as well depend on three main factors. The first of them is the historical-imperial factor. It is impossible to understand the passage of modern cultural boundaries without correlating them with the boundaries of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine ecumene, Austria-Hungary, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Romanov Empire and other similar historical phenomena. No less important is the second factor – synchronic or state-political, since the actual belonging of the individual to a national state and social groups imposes certain imperatives on their cultural behavior. The third factor in the emergence of cultural boundaries is the regional and local one. Awareness of one's small homeland is no less important than identification with any particular country. The author of thischapter examines the facts of coincidence of modern cultural borders with such historical frontiers as the borders of the Roman Empire, the Curzon and Huntington lines, and the old borders of the three empires on the territory of the modern Poland.