By Leonidas Donskis

It was with sound reason that the French philosopher Andre Glucksmann has just recently exploded with devastating criticism of the European Union for its failure to support the spirit of freedom and the craving for liberty so potently manifest in the Middle East and in the Arab world. (Read more...)

By Leonidas Donskis

One of the most prominent and perceptive experts on the former Soviet Union, the French historian, philosopher, and political scientist Alain Besançon once suggested that “failure to understand the Soviet regime is the principal cause of its successes.” (Read more...)

By Leonidas Donskis

Lithuania and Poland have many centuries of common history. From the Lublin Union in 1569 to the third partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, which was the kiss of death to both nations until the restoration of their independence after the First World War; both nations had a shared culture and a strong tradition of political liberty. Lithuanian history is inseparable from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a unique political entity that preceded the EU in more than one way. (Read more...)

By Leonidas Donskis
Twenty years ago Lithuania paid a 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 grace 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. (Read more...)

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. (Read more...)

By Leonidas Donskis

There is a fine institution situated in Visby, Gotland Island, Sweden: the Baltic Center for Writers and Translators (BCWT). I hold this Center to be the jewel of Swedish cultural policy and public diplomacy in the Baltic region. The BCWT is the Baltic region’s symbolic home, a place where Nordic and Baltic languages, literatures, and translators come together. (Read more...)

By Leonidas Donskis
During my last visit to Washington, D.C., where I participated in a timely and good conference on the historical memory and justice in Eastern Europe at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, I had a pleasant morning read of newspapers. Suddenly my attention was caught by the letter of a Russian journalist published in The Wall Street Journal (Friday, November 12, 2010). (Read more...)