This is an introduction to a special issue of the Journal of International Relations and Development (edited by Maria Mälksoo). Set against the unfolding scholarly conversations on globalising, provincialising, and/or decolonising IR, this special issue makes a twofold contribution. First, it takes stock of the uses of ‘the East’ in the scholarship of politics and international relations in order to account for the relative silence about Central and Eastern Europe in the debates on ‘worlding IR’. Secondly, the special issue explores what provincialising the discipline from CEE might look like.