Redas Dirzys
Planned illusion of happiness and welfare
Polemical notes on the guidelines for Lithuanian cultural policy. The projects prepared by the presidential office should enable qualitative changes on all possible levels – social, spiritual and economic – but instead it strives to strengthen the position of a group of cultural activists and provide privileges for them. Almost all sections of this document ignore the majority of society, and this will lead to greater social exclusion, concludes Dirzys.

Algimantas Gureckas
Could Lithuania have saved itself in 1939-1940?
Seventy years ago, Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union followed by fifty years of oppression. We are still trying to find out how all this happened and whether we could have had other developments. The USSR and Germany are most guilty, but many think that our own governments of that period are to blame. Gureckas sets out to clarify these issues and compares Lithuania's position to that of Finland.

Vasilijus Safronovas
About repatriation and the dominant attitude to old settlers of Klaipeda region
Reply to writer Astrida Petraityte who asked: What is meant by repatriation of the inhabitants of Klaipeda region?

Juozas Siksnelis
Much ado about libraries
Is anyone looking towards the future in this state? Are there any politicians who look into the future that goes beyond their own terms of office? There were attempts to modernize the libraries set forward by one of previous ministers of culture, but who cares now? asks the author, a fiction writer and librarian.

Vaidas Jauniskis
Sounds and myths of cities
Wanderers who visit cities are called tourists or romantic wanderers, and those who visit theatres might be called voyeurists of inner cultural life. Jauniskis discusses this year's event of IETM (Informal European Theatre Meeting) held in Berlin, the Slovak contemporary drama festival in Bratislava, and the festival Wiener Festwochen.

Zecharia Plavin
Chopin's faces
About the composer's historical sociology and dialogue with vanishing ideas. There comes a time when one should stop being a prisoner of the materialistic world and of status symbols and instead develop the ability to distinguish between good and evil, to find true inspiration and experience the feeling of dying love. In this fight, which takes us back to teh beginning of the Bible, Chopin sees himself as a caller to freedom.

Herkus Kuncius
Gotland's Time
Perhaps Lithuanian writers never wrote as much about Madagaskar by Kazys Pakstas or Rusne as they wrote about Gotland. The history of new times in Gotland is closely linked to Latvia and Lithuania. There is a monument in the town of Slit in the eastern part of the island commemorating both those who reached and failed to reach the island during the Soviet period. It reminds us how important this island was, and perhaps will be, forever.

Edmundas Gedgaudas
The Vilnius That Disappeared
The film club recently screened a cycle of films about Vilnius titled Time Goes Throught the City. One of the episodes in Vilnius's devastation is shown through the eyes and camera of a Red Army soldier witnessing the Apocalypse. These episodes urge one to think whether this small parch of land was cursed, writes musicologist.

Piotr Vail
In the city of Immanuel Kant
In the space between Kaliningrad and Vladivostok one is unlikely to find many people who have read Kant's Critiques. In the 1980s, there was an iniciative to rename Kaliningrad to Kantograd. But when one visits the city there is the feeling of being in an alien land taken legally by force.

Virgilijus Cepaitis
Unoffical negotiations with USSR in 1991
De Burgh human rights conference in Hague. The attempt to deal with Lithuania by force in 1991 failed. The leaders in Kremlin relied too much on sociological data and thought that the majority of Lithuanians would support Moscow. The events of January 1991 proved the opposite – the people's wish for freedom resisted the Soviet tanks. Cepaitis overviews this important episode of our way to freedom, focusing on the conference on human rights and rights of the nations.

Feliksas Jucevicius
History and myths
The priest Feliksas Jucevicius is hardly known in Lithuania. He left the country in 1944 for Rome, and in the sixties he moved to Canada. A discussion of his life and books in aesthetics.

Astrida Petraityte
Old chant books of Lithuania Minor – rarities in Lithuanian print.
Review of Guido Michelini's books "Mazosios Lietuvos giesmynu istorija: nuo Martyno Mazvydo iki XIX amziaus pabaigos" (The History of Chant Books of Lithuania Minor.

Published 2010-07-22