ABSTRACT
When the table is joined by members using Slav languages the word used is often similar to the Czech word krajina. This is found, for example, in the name Ukraine. There is quite a powerful overtone of ‘territory’ in this word: ‘our’ place which must be defended and its boundaries conserved. The main Russian journal devoted to landscape is called Territoria. A casual glance at a map of the Balkans, at least prior to 1990, appears to show large nation states similar in scale to those of western Europe, but this is largely a myth imposed on the ground by the victorious Allies after World War I, and especially by President Woodrow Wilson. In fact the patchwork of local languages and ethnicities is much more detailed – as we saw only too clearly in the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Even as far north and west as Moravia it is common to find that the next village speaks a different language (Magyar and German in Romania for example) and may have a different religion (a mix of Catholic, Orthodox and Islamic); and inevitably all of these little territories tend to be considered landscapes, at least by their inhabitants. In many cases their ‘pays’ remain much more culturally distinct from the nation state of which they form a part than is the case in France, Germany or Britain.
