ABSTRACT
In Hanson’s quoted article, there was an easy but fundamental question posed: “What is in an area?” (Hanson 2009, 165). Hanson stressed the somehow arbitrary nature of regional borderlines. The whole discussion may be attributed to
the simple question of whether the borderlines of certain areas like Eastern Europe are simply “arbitrary” or rather not. This article has already pointed to
Larry Wolff and the invention of Eastern Europe in the enlightenment. There is still more evidence of the possible dependence of regional characteristics on
mental maps. One of them is the debate on the interpretations of the “Balkans” by Maria Todorova (1997). Another one is the well-known discussion on “Central
Europe” in the second half of the 1980s that was conducted by intellectuals from the East Central European countries (Segert 2002, chap. 1.2).
