PURPOSE

The major purpose of the Andrei Sakharov Research Centre for Democratic Development is to unite state-of-the-art academic research developments in Eastern Europe and the former USSR with existing multi-disciplinary expert knowledge at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) of past and current political and social developments in the region.

The Centre intends to stimulate multi-disciplinary and multi-national cooperation between VMU and its partners in other countries and will allow researchers to make use of its extensive archival holdings of materials on political freedom, repression and the opposition in the region in order to gain a better understanding of the processes that are likely to have an impact on the current situation.

The Research Centre will inform and educate both the academic and the non-academic community, while maintaining a special interest in reaching out to younger generations which lack sufficient knowledge of the past to understand the present situation and its likely impact on, and implications for, the future.