After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, eyes have also been turned towards the Baltic states. Will Putin risk invading Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania? We speak with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia, who, during his presidency (2006-2016), faced increasing Russian cyberattacks and efforts to destabilize the region.
Twenty-four years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the restoration of independence, the Baltic states have become frontline nations between Russia and the West. How do Russia’s neighbors, who have endured years of Russian oppression, view Europe’s security challenges?
Losing democracy happens in much the same way as a character goes bankrupt in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: “gradually, and then suddenly
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, in The Economist
Photographer Claudia Heinermann will start off the programme with sharing her project Siberian Exiles. Since 2016, Heinermann has been working on a photographic triptych to bring the oppression of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union out of oblivion. In Siberian Exiles, eyewitnesses tell of the deportation of women and children to remote parts of Siberia, life in the Gulag camps, the organised resistance against the Soviet occupier, and the beginning of the Cold War. Heinermann spoke with historians and eyewitnesses and made long journeys through the former Soviet Union, following in the footsteps of the deported Balts.
About Forum on European Culture
Who’s afraid of art? Now that tyrants are on the roll and more and more people in the West seem to be falling for the autocratic alternative, the Forum on European Culture brings together international artists, writers, and thinkers to celebrate the subversive power of art and literature.
About the speakers
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia from 2006 to 2016, has been a key figure in shaping Estonia’s post-Soviet transformation and its role in Europe. Born in Sweden to Estonian refugee parents who fled Soviet occupation and mass deportation to Siberia, Ilves was deeply influenced by their experience of displacement. Before becoming president, he served as Estonia’s Ambassador to the United States and played a pivotal role in Estonia’s accession to the European Union and NATO in 2004. Durign his presidency he focused on Estonia’s digital innovation and cybersecurity and European integration.
Claudia Heinermann (born 1967 in Iserlohn, Germany) studied fine arts and documentary photography. As a freelance photographer she mainly focuses on long-term documentary projects and contemporary historical themes and the consequences of war. She has worked in countries such as Bosnia, Rwanda Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belgium and Germany. For seven years, Heinermann worked on her trilogy ‘Siberian Exiles’, which was exhibited in 2023 at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam. All three parts won the silver medal at the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis.
Speakers
June 25 – 29
Who’s afraid of art? Now that tyrants are on the roll and more and more people in the West seem to be falling for the autocratic alternative, the Forum on European Culture, created by De Balie, brings together more then 40 international artists, writers, and thinkers to celebrate the subversive power of art and literature.
How are the tech oligarchs shaping our democracies? In conversation with former EU-parliament member Marietje Schaake and journalist Ece Temelkuran.
Historian, journalist, and Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum dissects modern dictatorship. What threat do the growing autocracies pose?
