Talking about the Baltic States, it is worth remembering that prior to World War II, Finland was also considered to be a Baltic State. That is to say, there were four Baltic States in prewar Europe. The fact that only three entered the 21st century is an irony of recent history. Yet some similarities and affinities between the Baltic States are too obvious to require emphasis. All three nations stood at the same historic crossroads after the WWI. All were linked to the fate of Russia in terms of (in)dependence and emancipation. All three existed as independent states from 1918 until 1940. (Reado more...)

By Leonidas Donskis

That Russia is not the Soviet Union seems obvious to anyone more or less familiar with history and not devoid of a sense of reality. Yet what happened over the past months was much more than a sheer repetition of history or an echo of the Arab Spring, as we are inclined to think sometimes. (Read more...)

Leonidas Donskis

Dystopian literature depicted the nightmares of the twentieth century. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (albeit the latter qualifies for the club of the novels of warning to a lesser extent) anticipated those simulations of reality, or fabrications of consciousness, that were, and continue to be, deeply and strikingly characteristic of the modern mass-media world. (Read more...)

By Leonidas Donskis

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. (Read more...)

Leonidas Donskis

The term “soft totalitarianism” is on the lips of many commentators. They imply that the European Union is not a democracy, but, instead, is a technocracy which walks in disguise as a democracy. (Read more...)

The political matrix of Central and Eastern Europe opening up the political space for a bipartisan system with no authentic niche left for the liberals, allowed some catch-it-all or pocket parties set up by the new tycoons and those seeking political revenge to pass for liberal forces — and this was the real tragedy. (Read more...)