LeftEast is a place where various voices, efforts and groups from around the region, broadly understood, come together in a sustained analytical and political effort. This is a platform where our common struggles and political commitments come together beyond the national borders or the straightjacket of national languages. Therefore, this platform is a political act. Ideologically, it is explicitly left-wing in orientation, that is, left of the classical social democracy. Nonetheless, it aims to remain largely inclusive and open, accommodating enough strands of the contemporary left without losing the critical edge and while maintaining a dynamic environment for intellectual conversations.
This is not an academic platform. Neither is it simply a news agency for the lefties about the region. It seeks to offer a mixture of theoretically – and analytically – informed contributions about current matters, local but not parochial, seeking to engage audiences beyond the national publics and beyond the academic circles. It aims to inform, illuminate and mobilize.
The aim is to constitute an alternative to the way we see the region but also to the type of intellectual production historically associated to this part of the world. Therefore, the platform seeks to publish not only regular analytical productions, but also interviews, reportages, conference reports, travelogues, cultural commentaries, videos and so on. Ideally these contributions should be originals as much as possible, but of course there is no limit to texts already published elsewhere as long as those who propose the texts manage to secure proper approval. Most of the texts published elsewhere first appear under the Insert section.
Largely, LeftEast has primarily a technical function: gathering of quality texts, providing the necessary editorial support, making them available to the public. We do not claim the role of a politically directive organ. Nevertheless, authors should self-consciously adhere to the minimal and implicit set of rules of the website (ideological consistency, quality of writing, informed theoretical contributions and commentary, meaningfulness and anti-parochialism among the most important). We reserve the right to decline texts that don’t conform to them. Alternatively, if there are issues to be addressed, the LeftEast editorial collective will raise the matter with the author(s) of the texts or with the people who suggested them. In either case, however, the final decision for publication rests entirely with LeftEast.
Texts or queries can be sent to one (or both) of the following email addresses: lefteasteditors@gmail.com.
For guidelines on submission preferences please consult the LeftEast style sheet for contributors.
The LeftEast editorial board