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/
By Leonidas Donskis
Twenty years ago Lithuania paid the heavy price for having become the first rebellious and breakaway republic in the former Soviet Union. The kiss of death to the dying empire, the real coup de grâce dealt by a small country to the last colonial empire in Europe, albeit disguised as a legitimate heir to the ideals of the Enlightenment and also as a trailblazer to the Left in the world, signified the arrival of the new epoch.(Tęsti...)
By Leonidas Donskis
Once I became witness to a stunning dialogue between a celebrity jazz musician and the audience. It happened on October 22, 2006 during the show of Arturo Sandoval, a Cuban-born American jazz trumpeter, in the Kaunas Jazz festival, Lithuania. A most revealing dialogue occurred after a couple of opening pieces which proved Sandoval one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of our time.(Tęsti...)
By Leonidas Donskis
Human rights and multiculturalism are no longer values in the world today. They have turned into words opening the door to politics. While Western human rights activists and politicians engaged in defending human rights actively strive to make human rights a core aspect of foreign policies, the founding fathers of the Russian human rights movement, Andrei Sakharov and Sergei Kovalev, denied Realpolitik from the bottom of their hearts, trying to replace it with an alternative value-and-idea-system which they described as a new universal, non-ideological ideology. (Read more...)