Memories about Kuron

The idea to organize a day in memory of Jacek Kuron in Lviv was an initiative of Iryna Dobrohorska and Oleh Hrynchuk, Ukrainian Catholic University students. It was inspired by the annual festival organized by Krytyka Polityczna. This year the guests of the festival included public figures, politicians, and academics such as Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, Radoslaw Sikorski, Yaroslav Hrytsak and Anne Applebaum.

Our understanding of "remembering" means to look at Jacek Kuron’s work in today’s context and to analyze his experience, which can be characterized as "from utopia to utopia".

The questions that Jacek Kuron raised during his life are current challenges: What social changes and what sort of democracy do we want today? Utopia, capitalism, democracy, political projects, the left, education, social movements, values, open society alter-globalism – in his texts Jacek Kuron tries to touch on all these topics, offering his own plan to address social crises.

This year June 17 marks 10 years since Jacek Kuron’s death.

During the discussion we talked about:

- "The Global Movement and Global Education – Jacek Kuron’s Last Dream" - Andrij Pavlyšyn, Oleg Hrynchuk.

- "The Return After the Break: Attempts to Find the Ethos of the Ukrainian Left Using the Example of Roman Rozdolsky’s Intellectual Biography" - Iryna Dobrohorska. Introductory word – Oleksandr Zaytsev.

- "Lviv’s Grassroots Social Activism" – Yaryna Voloshyn.