Publications
“I have no shame or conscience, therefore my conscience doesn`t bother me”
Zygmunt Bauman has developed the theory of the adiaphorization of consciousness. During times of upheaval and at critical historical junctures or intense social change, people lose some of their sensitivity and refuse to apply the ethical perspective to other people. They simply eliminate the ethical relationship with others. (Continue...)
Yet Another Russia: On Andrei Piontkovsky
An analyst who tries to win back our threatened sense of self-confidence and sober-mindedness. Very few political analysts and commentators possess the gift of the metaphor coupled with the incisiveness and accuracy of analysis. Either they fail a method or they fail a story, as Umberto Eco would have it. And yet there is a political analyst and writer who reconciles both the analytic skills and the powers of a graceful metaphor. (Continue...)
The Industry of Fear
Let’s imagine Lithuania has a stock exchange where different types of journalist can be bought and sold.If we were to look at the shares of pessimistic commentators and analysts over the last year or so, their market value would unquestionably be flying high. (Continue...)
The Genius of Ukrainian Cinema
When somebody mentions Ukrainian cinema, I immediately find myself thinking about two major film directors - Sergei Parajanov and Kira Muratove. These artists are as distant from one another as two people of genius can be. Parajanov’s masterpiece Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965), based on the story by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky revealing and portraying the unique Ukrainian Hutsul culture, was nothing short ofa miracle, yet it was a meaningful episode in Parajanov’s work otherwise more related to Armenian, Georgian, and Azeri cultures. Kira Muratova appears as a more specific Ukrainian phenomenon. (Continue...)
The Second Birth of Europe
The year 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Therefore, it invites a closer look at postwar Europe and its brief assessment. What happened to Europe then? Historically and politically speaking, Europe changed beyond recognition. For centuries, war was as unavoidable in the old continent as clashes over faith and (dis)loyalty to the king or the queen. After WWII, it became obvious that peace came as a new political identity of Europe.This was the second birth of Europe. Needless to say, this applied for a long time exclusively for Western Europe.(Continue...)
Twentieth Century Revisited
The Latvian film director Davis Simanis’ quasi-documentary Escaping Riga (2014) allows a standpoint from which to deal with the intrinsic logic of the twentieth century. Modelled after what we may well call the “mockumentary” (in terms of cinematographic language, it bears family resemblance to Woody Allen’s masterpiece Zelig), this film deals with two people of genius. (Continue...)
The Dilemmas of Freedom
Zygmunt Bauman once wrote about human beings and their lives being rendered useless – reduced to throwaways by globalisation. No one needs or misses them; and when they disappear, the statistics, including various economic and security indicators, take a turn for the better. (Continue...)
Russia’s Unholy War Against Its Best People
On 27 February 2015, the noted Russian politician and spokesman on human rights and civil liberties Boris Nemtsov was assassinated in the city center of Moscow, in the Kremlin’s vicinity. Was the red line crossed this time by those who orchestrated and committed this cynical murder (provided there is any in this surrealist and diabolical political game)? Who was behind the crime that left Russia and the world in shock and dismay? And who was afraid of Boris Nemtsov?(Continue...)
How did a Political Prisoner Turn into a Politician?
Mikhail Khodorkovsky hardly needs an introduction. No aspect of his biography and activity would exhaust his personality. A tycoon in Russia at the time when it was still regarded if not as a friend, then at least as a reliable partner, a person of difficult choices, and a living promise of yet another Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky has become an emblematic figure in present Russia when he was accused of tax evasion (a standard case in an authoritarian state practicing political persecution and selective justice both masquerading as the struggle against corruption) and confined to prison for ten years. (Continue...)
War and Peace Eastern Europe: the Ukrainian Lessons
This paper is based on the presentation made at the Fifth international conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania A piece of culture, a culture of peace, re-imaging European communities in the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Black Sea regions, hosted by the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies and Valahia University of Târgovişte, August 17-19, 2014. (Continue...)
The Misery of Putinism
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...)
Let’s Recall Orwell to Expose Chiesa
Giulietto Chiesa. Who is the man? An Italian journalist, a former member of the Italian Communist Party, a former correspondent of L’Unita and La Stampa in Moscow, and a former Member of the European Parliament (2004-2009), Chiesa contrived to become, in 2009, a candidate to the European Parliament on behalf of Latvia’s left-wing alliance “For Human Rights in United Latvia.” Happily, he failed. Previously, I wrote about Chiesa’s sister-in-arms, Tatyana Zhdanok (Tatjana Ždanoka), a former MEP from Latvia (2009-2014) who became an emblematic person in my eyes for her poorly disguised disdain and hatred for her country (provided she considers Latvia to be one). (Read more...)
Ukraine’s Historical-Political Time Zone
The Ukrainian-American political scientist Alexander J. Motyl and the Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin noted that a new Ukraine was born and that we have had a unique opportunity to witness the emergence of a new political nation.This statement, however accurate, is incomplete, though. (Continue...)
Neither Friend nor Enemy: Israel in the EU
This summer I finished a five-year term as a member of the European Parliament (EP), so I was not as shocked as I might have been when, in July, Italian celebrity philosopher and fellow Member of Parliament Gianni Vattimo said that he “would like to shoot those bastard Zionists” and suggested that we Europeans ought to raise money “to buy more rockets for Hamas.” This was extreme even by the standards of the European political and academic elites. (Continue...)
An Imagined Dialogue on Several Clichés
In the wake of the Russian-Ukrainian war disguised as an internal conflict in Eastern Ukraine, several clichés and misperceptions of reality widespread in the West have reappeared. In this light, the following questions could and should quite legitimately be raised. I will try to formulate them in such a way so the reader can feel a trajectory of thought. Everything is based on my own fairly recent interviews and discussions on Ukraine and Europe. (Continue...)
A Flashback of a Memoir: Witnessing High Treason
In the wake of the Russian-Ukrainian war disguised as an internal conflict in Donbass, the surge of ethnic minority political parties in the Baltic States calls for attention. That Russia has repeatedly launched a massive media and psychological attack against the Baltic States obvious to anyone not devoid of the sense of reality. (Read more...)
Wag the Dog. Russian Style
The extreme power of manipulation, in terms of public opinion and imagology, and its political and moral implications are well revealed by one film that has contributed to the critique of today’s controlling political structures. This is Barry Levinson’s film Wag the Dog. The film tells us the story of Hollywood producer Stanley Motss and Washington’s spin doctor Conrad Brean, who are supposed to save the White House due to the President’s scandalous romance. (Read more...)
Moral Blindness and Ukrainian Lessons
In 2013, I have written conjointly a book with Zygmunt Bauman, one of the greatest thinkers of our times. It is a book of an intense philosophical dialogue on the loss of sensitivity. The title of our book, Moral Blindness, was Bauman’s idea, and it came out as an allusion to the metaphor of blindness masterfully developed in the Portuguese writer José Saramago’s novel Ensaio sobre a cegueira (Essay on Blindness). Yet the subtitle of the book, The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity, came out from my own theoretical vocabulary, albeit with Bauman’s touch – his books would be unthinkable without the adjective “liquid,” be it liquid modernity or liquid fear or liquid love. Much to my delight, this book will have a second life in the Ukrainian language and culture. (Continue...)
And Then There Was a Team
Sitting in downtown Wrocław and raising a glass of wine, my friend, cultural attaché of Lithuania in Poland, and I both found ourselves absorbed by an exciting chat about Polish football. All of a sudden, a sharp historical association crossed my mind. Exactly forty years ago, in 1974, the then seemingly unbeatable Brazil was defeated twice – first by Holland and then by Poland. 1974 was not the time of Brazil. It signified the arrival of a different epoch. (Continue...) (Read more...)
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A Unique Parliament
14 July 2009 appears to have been an historic date that indicated two hundred and twenty years from the beginning of the French Revolution. One would have expected a celebration of the date trying to embrace the new reality of Europe, first and foremost, its unique and historically unprecedented solidarity. (Read more...)
