ABSTRACT
The subject was 'Citizenship, East and West', and, predictably, we did both more and less. More, because we spoke not only of citizenship, but also of nationality and identity, political life, voting behaviours and specific events of national cultures. We also had an interesting discussion about the unique and peaceful split of Czecho-Slovakia. Less, because although we are all both from the West and the East, the subject of the country studies was East and not West. We did not have papers on France, Germany, the United States and others; rather, we had four papers which correspond to the four Visegard countries, to Central Europe. This does, of course, raise questions, since our discussion has been either very universal, at the level of political philosophy, or particular to these four countries, with occasional comparisons to others, either Yugoslavia or Western countries. The preliminary question, which we could not have discussed but which has to be raised is: to what extent do these countries and the differences between them represent a subject by themselves? Some comparisons have emerged, but, of course, we did not undertake a systematic comparison, except on lustration and on a few aspects of nationality laws. Also, we touched very lightly on the classic subject of what distinguishes Central from Eastern Europe or from the Balkans.
