The essay attempts to reconstruct the Western European optics as a necessary precondition for demystifying and removing the delusion and stereotypes about Central-Eastern Europe. Starting from the genesis of dominant stereotypes which represent other than West European cultures as 'barbaric', 'anti-democratic' and 'artificial', the author deals with some theories of nationalism which claim that the opposition between 'civil' and 'cultural' nationalisms is a proper instrument to define the modern construct of ethnicity in Europe.