Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius, a specialist in art history and visual culture, attempts to demonstrate the construction process of the image of “eastern Europe” that used to be perceived as a “single bloc” during the Cold War, which is backward, unstable, and submissive, and to guide readers to rethink or reimagine its regional concept by scrutinizing numerous iconographical materials, including maps, travel reports, cartoons, and book covers. The author underscores the independence of the visual image from the text, analyzing its own logic of representation. Inspired by Larry Wolff and postcolonial theories, uncovering the othering gaze toward Europe's east, the author also carefully grasps multiple imprecations in the images depending on the time and the context. In this analysis process, the current researcher also sheds light on the angle of self-representation and the connotation of resistance that lies therein. Rather than fact-finding research or a comprehensive survey in a particular field, the writing is more in the nature of a cultural and political critique, in which materials for analysis are selectively chosen according to the plot. The universal validity of the conclusion remains debatable because the author's long-term investigation of biased eyes from “West” to “East” is primarily based on samples from the English-speaking world and, in the case of observing self-representation, mainly through Polish examples. Nevertheless, vivid visualization of the distortion inherent in the gaze on eastern Europe and the struggle against it by shifting its meaning contributes to further consideration of unbalanced interregional power relations.
According to the author, the concept of eastern Europe as a region emerged at Versailles when the New Europe was formed as a cluster of “small states” on the site of old empires. But even before this period, representation as a distinct region was created. The second and third chapters, which deal with cartography and travelogue, constitute the core part of this monograph, using a wealth of iconography to reveal the genealogy of east European imagery. The analysis of maps, from Sarmatia Europea to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, shows that, while Europe's east was recognized as the Other, its location was not clearly specified, the range was variable, and boundaries indeterminate. On the contrary, travel writing developed static and permanent visions of eastern Europe's cultural identity, embodied and aestheticized by folk costumes, quaint villages, and impassable mountains. These representations continued to be reproduced even as modernization in the region was recognized, while they sometimes functioned as the epitome of the national Self.
This long-term cliché of eastern Europe formulated political portraits of the region after Versailles. Punch's cartoonists conceptualized the region as a bunch of unruly children in ethnic costumes in a classroom or a playground, suggesting due to the immaturity and submissiveness, the region needs a teacher or a protector, sometimes in the shape of Dame Europe, sometimes Adolf Hitler. During the Cold War, this leader was replaced by Stalin, and the east European group type composed of “satellites” was confined and veiled by the “Iron Curtain.”
These stereotypical images of eastern Europe, the author indicates, are currently disappearing, and their representations are becoming more diverse, as seen on the dust jackets of academic books after the end of the Cold War. The new images displayed in the final chapter are intriguing, yet scattered and do not necessarily lead to a clear new vision of eastern Europe, leaving the conclusion open for future research.
The more critical aspect that the book discovers is the form of resistance hidden in eastern European self-representation. Along with images of explicit political demonstrations, such as protesting crowds and toppled statues, the author detects subtle nuances of opposition to established tropes. The self-representation of Europe's east, while internalizing the external depictions, slightly converts their meanings. For example, it occurs by the improper black shoes seemingly acquired in a town in a photo from National Geographic of two young Polish women in traditional ethnic dress, or the irony and deception as well as blurring of the boundary between the Self/Other in the Polish political satire during the Cold War. These expressions destabilize the entrenched values and displace the narrative in the image. The two young women in ethnic dress on the cover of this book, putting the balaclava masks on their faces, which “queers” traditional images, is the clearest example of this kind of resistance, showing a disguised artistic struggle against the image from the Other and the Self.
