TODAY'S CENTRAL EUROPE - A 'COMMONWEALTH OF FOUR NATIONS'?

The article focuses on certain socio-political developments across Poland's eastern border (among others - the so-called orange revolution in Ukraine or Russia's policy towards its western neighbours), which occasion another - to all likelihood not the last - debate on the character of Central Europe. The Commonwealth of Four Nations which appears in the title, is conceived of in highly abstract and symbolic terms, and has the function of a 'keystone' for a similar situation or similar problems faced by Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, which does not mean that this 'construct' is free from social tensions. The central European context includes also the issue of different visions of history among the old and new members of the European Union. In connection with a lack of clear stance on the part of the EU on cultural issues this significantly complicates the creation on purely social grounds of a common plane for the prospective European identity.