As I write these lines today, on 6 June 2013, a disgraceful trial begins in Moscow. The so-called Bolotnaya case is all about twelve Russian citizens accused of attacking the police at the Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. On 6 May 2012, 70 000 protesters were authorized to have a rally against election fraud in Russia’s presidential elections. What happened next was that the police started provoking people, beating them up, and then arresting those who resisted the violence against peaceful civilians. (Continue...)

As I contemplate How The Light Gets In 2013 which will be held 1–2 June 2013 in Hay-on-Wye, Great Britain, I cannot help but recall everything I have written about the end of the world. Yes, there is no slip of the pen here, as I am going to talk in the festival about the touch of evil, the devil in politics, and the end of the university. The question arises — how can we imagine modern life without such things as hope, faith, and education? Is it possible to live here and now without books? Mapping the way in which I think and feel now about those things allows a glimpse of the contemporary world. (Continue...)

The American political theorist Mark Lilla once wrote a perceptive review essay on the New Right in France, which he entitled “The Strange Birth of Liberal France” (The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 1994). This title, if slightly paraphrased, would be tailor-made to draw attention to the adventures of liberalism in Central Europe. (Read more...)

Ukraine`s joining the EU would dramatically and irreversibly change the political landscape of Europe, end the division of Europe and close the saga of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War. (Continue...)

Accepted and vilified, celebrated and rebuked by all, as François Villon would have had it, Machiavelli became a litmus test case for nearly every epoch in European history. Much remains to be done to reject numerous clichés and senseless accusations to fully understand and appreciate his legacy as a humanist, historian, political thinker, and a prophet of modern politics. (Continue...)

A quarter of a century has passed since 1988 which marked the beginning of the end of the former Soviet Union. The national rebirth movement of Lithuania, Sajudis, came into existence blazing the trail for Lithuania and other Soviet republics to freedom and independence. Gaining the momentum, consolidating symbolic power and authority, and making people believe that the time has come to change history and world politics restoring justice – all these magnificent things would have been beyond the reach if the Lithuanian media had not changed the public domain almost overnight. (Read more...)

The brain drain process is a painful challenge to Lithuania, as the country is losing the best of its young people, would-be scholars, artists, business people, probably – even public figures, policy makers and statesmen as well. (Continue...)