Month: April 2014

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Maidan or anti-Maidan? The Ukraine situation requires more nuance

Post author By Volodymyr Ishchenko
Post date April 15, 2014
5 Comments on Maidan or anti-Maidan? The Ukraine situation requires more nuance

I have little doubt that Russian security services were in some way involved in the recent escalation of violence in several towns in eastern Ukraine.

The seizures of administrative buildings on 12 April were well co-ordinated between different towns, the armed men were well equipped and showed high levels of military training. This does not necessarily mean that Russian special operations units are directly taking part; those men could be former Ukrainian riot police officers, many of whom fled to Crimea and Russia to escape punishment from the new government.

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What is to be done with the bad bank?

Post author By Saso Furlan
Post date April 15, 2014

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the new Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. Original publication in Serbo-Croatian is to be found here.

When the great recession hit the global capitalist system, the Slovenian economy witnessed a devastating decline in economic growth. In 2009 GDP per capita shrunk by 7.9%, the sharpest decline in the European Union (EU) after the Baltic states. The downturn was initiated by a sharp decline in domestic demand and export performance: exports decreased by 16.1% in 2009.

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Early elections in Serbia: Progressive win is a warning to the working class (part 2)

Post author By admin
Post date April 13, 2014

Note from the LeftEast editors: this is the second part of the text of Vladimir Unkovski-Korica on the early election in Serbia. The first part could be read here.

The collapse of opposition and the crisis of representation

To understand the rise of the Progressives, it is necessary to also explain the demise of all opposition. Certainly, that the Progressives managed to become so palatable to the West so quickly helped the Progressives, but what did it do to the others?

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Euronational Border Patrol

by Tsvetelina Hristova and Raya Apostolova

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the new Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. Original publication in Serbo-Croatian is to be found here.

When in 2012 Greece began the erection of a wall along its border with Turkey, nationalist formations in Bulgaria voiced the same demand for the country’s southern border. Back then this demand seemed comic at best and was ridiculed throughout the entire political spectrum.

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Political mobilization and the world system: the case of Ukraine and Russia. An interview with Don Kalb.

Post author By Volodymyr Ishchenko
Post date April 10, 2014

In an interview for Ukrainian journal “Commons” and Eurozine (original here), conducted before Euromaidan commenced, Don Kalb discusses the future of capitalism in eastern Europe. Given the rise of China and India, and economic stagnation in the West, Kalb emphasizes the importance of political mobilization in both Ukraine and Russia.

Volodymyr Ishchenko: How would you analyse eastern Europe from the perspective of the global system? Or which paradigm should we apply in order to analyse eastern Europe?

Tags EU, geopolitics, periphery, Russia, semi-periphery, Ukraine, US, world system

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Working the global art market: labour, galleries, and activism in the Gulf. An interview with Haig Aivaizian.

Post author By Konstantin Kilibarda
Post date April 9, 2014

LeftEast’s Konstantin Kilibarda interviews Haig Aivaizian of the Gulf Labour working group about the ’52 Weeks of Gulf Labour’ campaign. The campaign uses artistic interventions to shine a light on the labour practices underpinning recent projects like the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

LE: What motivated you to start the ’52 Weeks of Gulf Labour’ project?

HA: ‘52 Weeks of Gulf Labour’ was launched at the last Venice Biennial in 2013. It is a broad network of collaborations meant to unfold over a year.

Tags art, exploitation, Gulf, Labour, reistance, Unions

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Early elections in Serbia: Progressive win is a warning to the working class (part 1)

Post author By Vladimir Unkovski-Korica
Post date April 8, 2014
3 Comments on Early elections in Serbia: Progressive win is a warning to the working class (part 1)

Serbia held early parliamentary elections on 16 March 2014. The results were an apparently spectacular victory for the outgoing ruling coalition, and the Serbian Progressive Party above all, which secured 48.35 percent of votes cast, or 158 out of 250 seats. The Progressives’ erstwhile allies, the Socialist Party of Serbia, won 13.49 percent or 44 seats. Only two other major parties crossed the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament. The Democratic Party gained just over 6 percent and 19 seats, while a breakaway faction from the Democratic Party, calling itself the New Democratic Party, was just shy of that result, claiming 5.7 percent or 18 seats.

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Macedonia: From the banality of elections to a new political situation

Post author By Artan Sadiku
Post date April 2, 2014
2 Comments on Macedonia: From the banality of elections to a new political situation

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the new Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. Original publication in Serbo-Croatian is to be found here.

With approaching parliamentary and presidential elections in Macedonia this April a ‘new political situation’ is emerging. After almost nine years of total dominance by the current governing coalition – characterized by twin Macedonian and Albanian ethno-nationalisms – most of those interested in politics here naively hoped that this sort of rhetoric would fade away.