Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia w „Zderzeniu cywilizacji…” Samuela P. Huntingtona. Komentarze z perspektywy ćwierćwiecza

The article attempts to relate one of the theses of Samuel P. Huntington’s famous The Clash of Civilizations to the socio-political reality of contemporary East Central Europe. The question is to what extent the so-called civilizational fault line – the line separating the zones of western and eastern Christianity – explains the socio-political processes taking place in this part of the continent, on either side of the line. Citing a number of conditions – in Lithuania in the north to Greece in the south – the author argues that Huntington’s metaphor has limited explanatory value. He draws particular attention to the shifts that have occurred in the course of the fault line since the mid-1990s (when Huntington’s book was published), the heterogeneity of socio-political relations on either side, and the civilizational borderland created around it.