Angela Merkel’s statement “We will manage!” is the wrong answer to a question she never asked: “How will we manage?”

The migration crisis triggered a mass wave of irrational Islamophobia in the countries of the Visegrad Group. Unfortunately, it has shown that the countries of Central Europe uphold the principle of “not in my backyard,” and may have a great problem with globalizing their foreign policy.

An interview with Francis Fukuyama by Tomáš KlvaňaWe ought to revive NATO as a serious military alliance. That would be the appropriate response to all the stuff that the Russians are doing—says Francis Fukuyama in an interview with Tomáš Klvaňa

We see around us a fracturing of Europe, and perhaps more broadly even of liberal democracy. We are figuratively as well as literally building new walls where we should be enjoying the freedom so many people fought for so long to achieve instead.

Bloody milestones are hard to gauge. Nine eleven was the largest, indeed the first foreign attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. It had completely changed the American perception of security, and brought about the war on terrorism, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, Gitmo, and the Department of Homeland Security. The attacks in Europe…

An interview with Peter Pomerantsev by Tomasz StawiszyńskiRussia is the avant-garde of the era of globalization. It is an extreme version of modernity, rather than its radical opposite—says Peter Pomerantsev in an interview with Tomasz Stawiszyński

The European Capital of Culture as a European project with 30 years of experience has gained a role of a catalyst of change in a city with new incentives for cultural development.

It feels like “creative incubator” is a buzz term everybody is using these days. In the past few years, all around Europe, many of them have been opened. It is also the case in Central Eastern Europe—mainly thanks to injection from European structural funds.

Many cities around the world, large and small, target creative industries for economic development. Visual, sound, writing and expressive skills propel innovation and job growth in motion pictures and television, sound recording, broadcasting, publishing, performing and visual arts, and tourism, and employ high shares of artists in their workforce (Markusen, Wassall et al, 2008). These…

An interview with John Howkins by Maciej NowickiCreativity is the most difficult kind of economic activity. Failure is inherent in our action more than in other sectors of the economy—says John Howkins in an interview with Maciej Nowicki

In the mid-sixteenth century, when the Spanish public opinion was shaken by the first truthful reports on the fate of the Indians in the New World, Juan Gines de Sepulveda came up with four famous arguments in defense of the Spanish government’s policy. First, the Indians were barbarians, unable to learn anything, and therefore they…

In response to: Revisionism and Resurrection from 4/2013 issue

Thomas Kizny, “Gulag”, with Dominique Roynette, introduction: Norman Davies, Sergei Kovalev, and Nicolas Werth, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Fudacja Picture Doc, Warsaw 2015

Walter Mischel, Test Marshmallow. O pożytkach płynących z samokontroli, trans. Agnieszka Nowak, Smak Słowa, Sopot 2015

In Central Europe, every realism must be to some extent surrealist. This is why surrealism in its most interesting embodiments was a language in which artists struggled with the traumatic history of the region.

Lawrence Wright, Droga do wyzwolenia. Scjentologia, Hollywood i pułapki wiary, Czarne 2015

Aviezer Tucker, The Legacies of Totalitarianism: A Theoretical Framework, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Milan Kundera, The Festival of Insignificance. Translated by Linda Asher, Harper 2015.