Constructing “the East” in Times of War: Czech and Slovak Discursive Identity-Making After 2022

Despite the shared historical contexts and geographic proximity, zooming in on specific European countries reveals that the political-elite discursive responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 differ greatly. This is especially striking in the case of countries that share a large part of their cultures, history, borders, and more. This paper zooms in on two cases—Czechia and Slovakia—and their political elite discursive responses to the invasion. The paper argues that the elite discourses differ significantly in ways that go far beyond the mere factors of political positioning. An important element in this differentiation is the varied perception and active use of the “East–West” continuum, a crucial block of the countries' identity construction. This paper therefore focuses on how political elites in Czechia and Slovakia post-2022 invoked geographic, historical, and cultural signifiers vis-à-vis the “East–West” delimitation to produce particular self-images and interpretations of the conflict. This encompasses links to NATO and EU membership, discussions on pan-Slavism, Cold War legacies, narratives of victimhood, pragmatic neutrality, and more. Part of the paper will also delve into tracking the relationality between these identities. The relevance of this paper lies in its real-time tracking of knowledge production, as the “East” and “West” dimensions are themselves factors in knowledge production, actively reproduced and/or contested in political discourse. Moreover, the paper contributes to the existing literature and advances understanding of the epistemic act of constructing and naming a region in the context of Central and Eastern Europe, an issue that has been examined by a range of scholars, including Čanji et al. (2023), Aliaksei Kazharski et al. (2023), Lintner et al. (2023), and Ušiak et al. (2024), among others. This paper works with a primary body of collected statements (about 300) from Czech and Slovak political elites (representatives of both politicians in power and in opposition) in the period between February 2022 and December 2024. It employs qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis. Conceptually, the paper stems from constructivist logic and utilizes the conceptual framework of ontological (in)security. This enables better traction of the social construction of knowledge as well as a better understanding of how knowledge and its production are shaped by context and values.