Authors

Aleksandra Konarzewska¹;  ¹ University of Tübingen, Germany

Discussion

The year 2022 marked a rupture in how Eastern Europe is imagined and discussed within academia and public discourse in Germany. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine not only unsettled political certainties but also exposed the epistemic assumptions underlying long-standing frameworks in history, Slavic studies, and related fields. The debates that followed revealed that knowledge about “Eastern Europe” is a social product—shaped by historical hierarchies, Cold War legacies, and the enduring patterns of “Westsplaining.” This paper explores reactions to this moment of crisis and reflections, focusing on Germanophone perspectives. By tracing discursive shifts in historiography, Slavic studies, and public intellectual debates, the paper situates these developments within broader German discussions on knowledge production, positionality, and the politics of expertise. It argues that 2022 offers both a challenge and an opportunity: to rethink how “Eastern Europe” is narrated in Germany, and to recognize that narrating the past always already implies narrating the future.