Culture

The Monument to Italians Fallen in Africa at Syracuse (Sicily) was an initiative of Mussolini to celebrate fascist colonial ventures. It is emblematic of Italy’s and Europe’s unresolved relationship with its colonial past, an issue thrown back into the spotlight after the wave of Black Lives Matter protests in the United States. According to Somali-Italian writer Igiaba Scego, it is a wound that needs to be healed, starting with its symbols.

When long-missed Lithuanian émigrés returned home during the Corona crisis they were no longer welcome. Like everything foreign they were treated as a threat. Marius Ivaškevičius diagnoses a split corona personality, torn between mourning the openness lost and enjoying the new sedentary isolation.

Russians have been living in a regimen of political self-isolation for a long time, writes Sergei Lebedev. He sees how the coronavirus connects today’s fundamental lack of trust with the crimes of the Soviet past. But will the Covid-19 crisis really have an impact on Putin’s rating and image?