Do ostriches live in Central Europe?: Normalizing the Russian attack on Ukraine in the Visegrád Four

Abstract

The study surveys instances of discursive normalization of the Russian attack on Ukraine across the Visegrád Four (V4) countries, examining political discourses in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Following February 24, 2022, the strategies that expressed an open backing of Russia were mostly marginalized becoming morally all but impossible and thus politically too costly. However, other and more indirect ways of showing "understanding" if not support for Moscow's actions soon (re)emerged. These included presenting the war in "realist-geopolitical" terms, as a proxy for the (allegedly inevitable) competition between great powers and a "neutralist-pacifist" discourse that criticized the Western military aid to Ukraine. In a broader sense, both discourses can be viewed as anchored in collective memories of the tragic Central European past that have traditionally infused the national identities in the V4 with a sense of vulnerability. The grim "realist" image of the world also rhymes well with the regional rise of the populist political style that hinges on the stated need to protect the "underdog" people and replaces the imperatives of solidarity with those of "self-help."