LefteastOn Wednesday, 20th of February 2013, the Bulgarian government headed by Boyko Borissov has deposited its resignation. What happened? What comes next?
Over the last week, Bulgarians in most big cities have been out in the streets, protesting against the increased electricity and heating bills. While the increase has happened gradually throughout 2012, the bills that were delivered to the post-boxes of the population in January 2013 were often times bigger than they would normally get.
News release issued on 9th of November, 2011: during the 3rd quarter, Petrom registered record profit of EUR 275 million, having all chances to exceed 1 billion of profit for the entire year.
Why have you never protested in front of the central OMV-Petrom headquarters?, I asked, at a reunion, some young trade unionists gathered from all corners of the country to get trained. A few of them got it. There’s more politics and needs of protest in one litre of gas than in a whole demonstration inVictoria Square.
Twenty years ago, in March 1992, NSF (National Salvation Front) split into two factions: the DNSF (Democratic National Salvation Front) – led by Ion Iliescu – which later became PSDR (Party of Social Democracy in Romania) and then SDP (Social Democratic Party), and DP (Democratic Party), the subsequent name taken by the NSF faction led by Petre Roman. The impeachment of president Băsescu by the Romanian Parliament represents the culmination of that original split and, at the same time, the exhaustion of its effects after two decades.
In a paper already famous – “Time for Outrage” – Stéphane Hessel urges his readers to get outraged, claiming that the basic ground for resistance is outrage. Hessel was often rebuked that outrage is not enough, that collective action meant to bring about change entails more than that. Still, Hessel tells us that it is only when we are outraged with something that we turn assertive, determined and committed. This means, of course, that outrage is a needed ingredient for civic commitment, but is it also sufficient?
de Vlad Bolocan
Pretty much so, yet in a robinhoodish way. It appears spontaneously, shocks and disappears. When, in 1969, Noroc sells 2,5 million copies of a four-tracks single, everyone starts searching for Moldova on the map – the guys in Siberia and the ones in Berlin. De ce plîng chitarele (Why are the Guitars Crying) reaches the 6th place in a Western German chart; Gondolan Brothers (Czechoslovakia) do a cover version of Noroc’ Cîntă un artist (An Artist is Singing) and in less than a year the band is eliminated by the Soviet Moldova’ Ministry of Culture.
Identity and Cultural Conflicts
One of the main tasks attributed to Soviet Moldovan writers and “creative intellectuals”, from the creation of the first literary organization of the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) up until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was to create a system of cultural values (around an allegedly distinct literary language and the invention of a local cultural heritage) which would legitimate the existence of a Moldovan “socialist nation”.
