Vilnius school to be renamed after Leonidas Donskis

Vilnius Taikos Lower Secondary School will be renamed Leonidas Donskis Lower Secondary School after the Vilnius municipal council approved the change on Wednesday, LRT reported.

The school itself proposed the name after consulting its community and choosing a person to honour.

Almantas Stankūnas, a representative of the National Union on the Vilnius City Council, questioned whether a broader discussion should have preceded the decision. He said Donskis was well known and respected in the cultural field but had also operated in an ideological sphere, meaning his legacy could be assessed in different ways.

Stankūnas suggested that the school could instead have been named after Alfonsas Svarinskas. He said students would be encouraged to learn about the person their school commemorated and why that person had been honoured, contributing to their patriotic education and commitment to Lithuania.

Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas urged council members to trust the school community, saying the initiative had come from the people who work, study and interact there and had been broadly supported.

Social Democrat Povilas Pinelis questioned whether the capital should adopt a consistent policy for naming educational institutions. Benkunskas rejected the idea, saying Vilnius schools had been named with numbers in the recent past and that the city should not return to such a system.

The name change will take effect on December 1, 2026.