Eastern Europe Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

It May Be the Last Time

Lithuanian art and culture resisting a takeover at the height of hybrid warfare

November 10, 2025 • by Edvardas Šumila

Recent developments in Lithuanian politics have produced a decisive, immediate, and spontaneous resistance from culture workers in various fields. The formation of a new coalition government led to the populist political project Nemuno Aušra (NA)—headed by the antisemitic politician Remigijus Žemaitaitis—being given control of the Ministry of Culture. Žemaitaitis has ...

Democracy

Is Europe’s Democracy in Crisis?

Europe’s democracy is in a good place, but technological changes are challenging it

April 10, 2023 • by Filip Kostelka

Democracy is currently not in crisis and, in fact, we live in one of its best times....

Politics

Of Fish and People

On the inevitable sinking of the “Russian World”

May 4, 2022 • by Ihar Babkou

Belarusian and Ukrainian intellectuals have been applying postcolonial theory to Russia since the 1990s. But they have largely been ignored in the West. Now it is time to listen to those voices from the ‘borderlands.’...

Uncategorized

For Want of Wild Beasts

For many in Eastern Europe, prison was the hallmark of Communism. Today, the United States is experiencing its own carceral society. What can be learnt from this comparison and can we redefine the term “political prisoner”?

February 1, 2022 • by Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Marci Shore

How do we understand both the uses and disadvantages of thinking across time and space? How do we negotiate the fact that in any biography or historical event, there are both elements that are unique, and elements that are universal? For me, these questions belonged to a larger question: namely, ...

Feature

The East in You Never Leaves

We self-censored. We followed the rules. We complied.

March 16, 2019 • by Julia Sonnevend

There is a certain type of post-Soviet anxiety that manifests itself in fear of state authorities, border controls or even doormen. The memory of 1989 may have largely faded, but the feeling of being ‘eastern’ has stayed with many – not least those who have built up lives and careers ...

Feature

#MeToo East and West

A matter of history and conditioning

February 4, 2018 • by Slavenka Drakulić

This post was originally published by Eurozine and was accompanied by three other posts that Public Seminar has reposted this week. Following the first wave of the #MeToo movement, a new phase of reflection has set in. Here, four authors and journal editors from the US and Europe assess #MeToo's achievements ...