ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The main theme at the centre of our inquiry in this book has been the human experience of political transition and identity formation. The book demonstrates the applicability, function and importance of political images to political identity formation and real politics in the broader post-Soviet region. It compares four different images of persons in four culturally and historically different cases Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Russia. The book provides examples for three modalities of liminal condition: the temporal, the formal and the spatial. The book employs Rene Girard's theory of sacrificial mechanisms and scapegoating to explain the logics of violence and victimisation embedded in the post-Soviet political culture. It argues that Central and Eastern Europe has historically been stuck in between the East and the West, which structures its political reality and identity formation.
