Science fiction is a genre that aspires to predict the human future through the lens of expected technological progress. Few realize that it emerged from the tragic experience of Poland-Lithuania’s Jewish community during the dark 20th century.

The Velvet Revolution is now celebrating its 35th anniversary. This creative article commemorates the date of December 10, 1989, when the first non-communist government in Czechoslovakia since 1948 took office. It is more important than ever to remember the lessons from this time of national euphoria. This is especially true with regards to the freedoms that peoples both in and outside of Eastern Europe enjoy and often take for granted. The piece is a collage of different memories and hopes of Czech citizens from that time of new liberty--drawn from both interviews and the author's imagination.

A new documentary directed by Ado Hasanović called My Father’s Diaries brings a new perspective to the Bosnian War and the Srebrenica massacre. The film includes original footage captured during the war, as well as the reciting of passages from the diary of Hasanović’s father. It sheds new light on the extremely difficult times faced by those trying to survive the brutality of war.

Ado Hasanović does not remember every detail of the Bosnian War (1992-95). But certain memories he cannot forget. Watching his family home burning. Leaving Srebrenica. It was 1993. He was seven years old. On a UN food truck, with his mother, brother and sister, Hasanović travelled 100 kilometres north, to the city of Tuzla. “The war in Bosnia was really terrible,” the 38-year-old Bosnian filmmaker explained from central Sarajevo. “Once we escaped, we became refugees. But my father remained in Srebrenica until [July] 1995.”

In the shadow of Cold War tensions, covert diplomatic talks took place in Warsaw from 1958 to 1970 between the United States and the People's Republic of China. These talks, today largely forgotten, laid the foundation for a rapprochement that would change the course of global politics in the 1970s.

The 1950s were an immensely complex decade for global geopolitics. Numerous African and Asian nations started to regain their independence, redefining the old colonial world order and thus weakening past colonial superpowers, such as the United Kingdom or France. Above all, however, the new world order was emerging, dominated by the duopoly of the United States and Soviet Union and a visible division of spheres of influence between them.

The January Uprising of 1863 was the last common struggle for the ideals of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Today, when no existential disputes exist between the independent nations of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus, the memory of 1863 should be a stepping stone to teaching the history of the Commonwealth as a common legacy.

Earlier this year, the presidents of Poland and Lithuania, accompanied by the leader of the Belarusian democratic opposition in exile, celebrated together in Vilnius the 161st anniversary of the January Uprising. This event was fought by the nobility and intelligentsia of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the years 1863-64 against Russian imperial rule.

Oleksandr Muzychko was a brigadier general of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, a personal bodyguard of its President Dzhokhar Dudayev and, above all, a Ukrainian. He went to more than one conflict zone across the post-Soviet states. Claiming that he had already “looked death in the eyes”, he was not afraid to go against the state system that had been built in Ukraine in the 20 years following independence. Murdered ten years ago, he remains in the memory of many.

This past winter Ukraine and the world commemorated the events that took place a decade ago. This was namely when Ukrainians rose up in peaceful protest in support of the country’s European integration. In November 2013, the EU and Ukraine were meant to sign an association agreement at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius. However, at the very last minute, Ukraine’s then president, Viktor Yanukovych, announced that he would not sign the document. Yanukovych’s decision was met with outrage and frustration in Ukrainian society, which saw European integration as a vision for a better future. If not for them, then at least for their children and grandchildren.

The second half of the 1930s saw a rise of antisemitic attitudes in Poland. This was caused by several factors among which was the unstable economic situation in the country and the aggressive antisemitism that began to dominate in neighbouring Nazi Germany. Violent events also took place in Poland. One of them was in Grodno in 1935.

March 25th, the date of the proclamation of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in 1918, has become a national holiday for all the Belarusians that still dream about a fully free and independent country. Not many know that the history of the republic is not just connected to the lands of today’s Belarus and Lithuania, but also Poland. The people, whom this history concerned, were often forced to forget it.

Colonel Konstanty Drucki-Lubecki was an aristocrat and an experiencend, talented soldier that defended Poland again in 1939. “It is a strange coincidence that I fought against the Germans and ended up in Soviet captivity”, he wrote in the POW camp. He was later murdered in the Katyń massacre.

The short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic remains a key example of the spread of communism after the Russian Revolution. Its leading figure was Béla Kun, a man whose complex identity would influence his politics throughout his life.

One of the least studied aspects of the north-eastern voivodships during the Second People’s Republic is the activity of scammers. Their actions were often on hand for the people living in the Wilno, Nowogródek and Polesie voivodships of inter-war Poland.

On January 4th 1946 an emergency session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus was held in Minsk. The head of the Byelorussian Communist Party Panteleimon Ponomarenko, the head of the NKGB Lavrentiy Tsanava and the NKVD People’s Commissary Sargiei Belchanka were joined by 13 other party members to discuss the fire in the capital’s state security building the previous day.