Month: May 2014

by George Souvlis & Tania Toffanin

The British historian Perry Anderson in an account[1] of the trajectory of the postwar Italian Left used this title, without a question mark, in order to criticize its political presence during the “Second Republic”. The epicenter of his criticism was the inability of the Italian Left to articulate an autonomous discourse and practices that would differentiate it substantially from the Italian neoliberal right. Since March of 2009, when the article was written, though, two significant changes have occurred that have radically altered the physiognomy of the European continent.

Note from the LeftEast editors: This text is the second part of last week’s article The “refugee”: Bulgaria’s apocalypse surplus. Having explored the restrictions for migrant mobility in and out of Bulgaria, the humiliating camping conditions for refugees in Bulgaria, and the complicity of the Bulgarian state in the production of such practices, in the present text Raya Apostolova and Tsvetelina Hristova go on to address the most difficult question: what is to be done? 

On November 12, 2013 a picture of a 15 year old girl, crying and agonizing in front of a Bulgarian police officer, was carried by social media and hit the international info exchange. She quickly became the poster girl of attempts to topple the BSP-led “left” government. It was a moving image of teenage anger, landmarking the efforts then underway to mobilize high school and university students alike, spearheaded by the Sofia University occupation.

Estonia is not exactly the ideal place for anti-austerity movements these days. Its electorate overwhelmingly voted its center-right government back into power in 2011, right after three years of deep cuts, unemployment soaring from 4% to 16% and the sharpest drop in GDP in the entire European Union.

To add insult to injury, the most serious political opponents of the center-right Res Publica – Pro Patria (IRL in short, its Estonian acronym) and Reform parties, the Social Democrats happily accepted the offer to become junior partners in a new coalition government this spring, alongside the purportedly classically liberal Reform Party.

by Tsvetelina Hristova and Raya Apostolova

In the summer of 2013, as a mass of people was fleeing the escalating conflict in Syria, Bulgaria experienced its first “real” push at the border. Or at least this is how media outlets and commentators attended to the thousands who were crossing the Turkish-Bulgarian border, forgetting that the Bulgarian border in particular and the European border in general, has been for some time a space of much antagonism. The nervous response that took place to this “real” push, at both the public and institutional levels, was by no means surprising for those of us who closely follow the destiny of the thousands seeking protection in Europe.