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larry WolFF. inventing eastern europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the enlightenment.
stanford university press, 1 .
Recently translated into Romanian 1 and Russian 2 , the Wolff’s book is an outstanding work in the field of
intellectual history, which joints to several other very famous studies, dedicated to the research of intellectual
constructions as a historical and cultural process (B.Anderson, Ed.Said, M.Todorova). In a very skillful and
impressive manner, author shows how was created one of the strongest intellectual creation existent today – the
concept of Eastern Europe.
Recognizing that many people assume that it is the “iron curtain”, which provoked the division of the Europe,
Wolff argues that the persistent alienation between Western and Eastern Europe is not only an outcome of the Cold
War, or a fact of “economic disparity”, but represents the existence of the previous “cultural prejudice” (3). The
author analyze various writings from the period of Enlightenment – classic works, memoirs, essays - produced
by Western travelers and philosophers in 18 th Century, and demonstrates that “ it was the Western Europe that
invented Eastern Europe as its complementary other half…” (4).
Applying the pattern of imaginative construction offered by Edward Said’s Orientalism, Wolff shows that
the concept of Eastern Europe was summarized as a realm “between Europe and Asia, between civilization
and barbarism, domain of fantasy and adventure” (112); as an idea which “possessed both geographical and
philosophical components” (359). Carefully dissecting and confronting numerous works of the Enlightenment era,
Wolff proves that the work of inventing Eastern Europe consisted especially from associations and comparisons,
“which drew upon both fact and fiction” and combination of “diverse domain of lands and people” (356).
In general, the mental creation of the Eastern Europe in 18 th Century strikes as a cumulative process of different
negative stereotypes about these lands: backwardness (19), despotism (58), slavery (88), and places were existed
people “to be beaten, even wanted to be beaten” (73), people “made to be subjugated” (260), “millions of cattle
in human form, who are …utterly excluded from all privileges of mankind” (338); all of these as an antipode to
West. This language is present in almost every operation of the process of discovering (or inventing): entering,
mapping, addressing or peopling Eastern Europe.
Nevertheless, many of the philosophers of the Enlightenment considered that Eastern Europe was in its
progression to civilization, so they tried to recommend special “plan of civilization”. In particular, Russia and
Poland were considered “the alternative laboratory of ideological experiment” (236), because of the receptiveness
of their monarchs to the ideas of Enlightenment. In this sense, Voltaire’s Eastern Europe appears in need for
discipline and domination (100), and he became an advocate of the idea of enlightened absolutism, as a univocal
force applicable to the backward lands and peoples. (211). Diderot also brought concrete recommendations
(three), but he as other enlighteners, had to face with bitterness the reluctance of Eastern Europe, and the argument
that some great principles “would make beautiful books and bad works” (230).
On the other hand, author emphasizes that the integration of knowledge and stereotypes, domination and
subordination by the “eighteen-century experts” of the concept of Eastern Europe, pointed to “the way to conquest
and domination” of Eastern Europe by Western Europe (8).
One attentive reader will indicate that the Wolff’s work pictures not only the object of invention, but also the
profile of the inventor. The later appears not clear enough, but still as a: curious, superficial; ready to experience
the hidden fantasies in these lands; and whose “inseparable ideals of comfort and civilization always conditioned
the confident superiority of the traveler in Eastern Europe” (123).
However, I consider that a more complex analysis could be done in revealing the role of the subject in this
particular context. The reason for elaborating this dimension is that it would help the reader to better understand
and explain why appeared this specific image and not other of the Eastern Europe? It would reinforce the
1 Larry Wolff. inventarea europei de est. Bucureşti: şti: : Humanitas, 2000.
2 Larry Wolff. izobretaja Vostočnuju evropu: Karta civilizacij v soznanii epokhi Prosveščenija. Moskva: Historia Rossica, Novoe Litera-
turnoe Obozrenie, 2003.
Analele ANTIM. Revistă de istorie, 8, 2008, p. 276-277
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