The Occident Within--Or the Drive for Exceptionalism and Modernity (Reaction‪)‬

If we are to understand what (state) socialism was about, grasping the images, perceptions, and mentalities upon which this social order rested is crucial. (1) A possible approach to such entities leads through the study of mental mapping. Symbolic geographies reveal how human agents, in particular historical and cultural contexts, define themselves by locating themselves spatially as well as temporally, drawing the boundaries of social spaces where they are within, and relating themselves and their spaces to others and to what lies, in their discursively constructed spatial-temporal order, without, behind, and ahead. What makes these socially and historically situated processes really important is their intimate relationship to the formation of identities and, indeed, to identity politics (including the regular attempts in all kinds of political regimes at the deliberate management of identities through the projection of images about themselves and others). State socialism, the social order established by the communist regimes in Russia and in East Central Europe during the first half of the last century, is no exception in this regard. Barbara Walker's perceptive essay on the relationship between Soviet dissidents and Western journalists reporting from the USSR stands out from this set in that it alone focuses on the micro-dynamics of East-West encounters and interaction. Emphasizing the role of Soviet isolation in general and the constant stress to which the regime exposed dissidents, Walker shows clearly the role of the insider-outsider distinction played in this interaction as well as the high demands against the Western journalist if s/he wanted to establish a workable rapport with dissidents (and the high expectations of involvement and shared values one had to face if accepted and identified as an insider). Rewarded with an excellent analysis of the culture of dissidence and the dynamics of group formation along the boundary between insiders and outsiders, the reader is eager to see future reports from Walker's research discussing in greater detail issues pertinent to the questions what it meant for the dissidents to be Soviet, how they related to the socialist social order, and how all this affected their relations to Westerners (and Western journalists).