ABSTRACT
Until around the time of their EU accession, there was a rather widespread assumption that Central and East European countries (CEECs) were relatively homogeneous in their attitudes towards Russia. Two scholars wrote quite recently that many CEE states ‘tend to be anti-Soviet, thus often also anti-Russia, as a result of their recent historical memory’ (Bozhilova and Hashimoto 2010: 628). In the context of greater, albeit even today not extensive, scrutiny of all EU members states’ bilateral relations with Russia since the 2004/7 enlargements, CEECs have actually been shown to be rather diverse when it comes to relations with Russia (as during the Soviet era). Latter-day differences have been portrayed in various ways, including a broad-based split into ‘Russia-friendly’ and ‘Russia-hostile’ camps and more specific categorizations (Leonard and Popescu 2007; Kratochvíl 2007). This chapter focuses on the Visegrad Group (VG) states, whose relations with Russia are undoubtedly distinct due to specific shared Soviet-era experiences and the early history of the VG itself. While VG states have this common context and connections with Russia follow similar patterns in many important respects, their bilateral relations nevertheless have specific characteristics. As one significant cleavage is undoubtedly between the ‘small’ VG states on the one hand and Poland on the other, this particular chapter concentrates on the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia (and for Poland see Cichocki's chapter in this volume).
