On September 21, 2023, at Vaidilos Theatre (Vilnius) the sixth Leonidas Donskis Conference will be held, organized by The Andrei Sakharov Research Centre at VDU. The conference will bring together a select group of experts to discuss Russia topic based on learned lessons from the past, putting them in a contemporary context and suggesting what steps should be taken to facilitate the above-mentioned processes. The conference will be followed by a concert in memory of Leonidas Donskis. More information and registration here.
Viktorija Voidogaitė, an educator and nun, was elected the Tolerance Man of the Year 2021 by the decision of the board of the Sugihara Foundation “Diplomats for Life”. The annual Leonidas Donskis Prize is awarded to writer, journalist and translator Rimantas Vanagas.
In honor of Leonidas Donskis, a professor at Vytautas Magnus University (Vytautas Magnus University), one of the most outstanding European thinkers, the third conference dedicated to the memory of the philosopher “Mind the Gap. Emotional Well-being and Social Solidarity during COVID-19“. Information and registration: https://www.sakharovcenter-vdu.eu/events/third-leonidas-donskis-memorial-conference/
Was the God s on the side of the poor and innocent, or did he side with evil due to being totally neutral and impartial to all of his creations? This was the central theological and philosophical issue for the Nobel Prize winning Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991) – a major Eastern/Central European author who passed away twenty-five years ago. (Continue...)
Working on my new book of an interpretive vocabulary of politics – a blend of political humor, satire, and my own experience in European politics – I revisited many Soviet clichés, pearls of propaganda, and poisonous darts of demagoguery (all of them alive and well in present Russia). Some of them lead us straight back to the root of the matter. For instance, one of famous Vladimir Lenin’s revolutionary slogans reads: “Communism is Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country!” (Continue...)
When as a student I heard Arsenal, the jazz rock band of the Kaliningrad Philharmonic, I was dumbfounded: in Soviet times Russian musicians were playing music that jazz lovers at once identified as being under the influence of Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tear. (Continue...)