LefteastIlya Budraitskis(1981) is a historian, cultural and political activist. Since 2009
he is Ph.D. student at the Institute for World History, Russian Academy of
Science, Moscow. In 2001-2004 he organized Russian activists in
mobilizations against the G8, in European and World Social Forums. Since
2011 he has been an activist and spokesperson for Russian Socialist
Movement.
Member of Editorial board of "Moscow Art Magazine". Regular contributor to
the number of political and cultural websites.
Note from the editors: The following piece is scheduled to appear in the edited collection The Art of Civil Action, edited by Philipp Dietachmair and Pascal Gielen and published through Valiz in November 2017. Today, it is common to contrast the statism of today’s Russia with the Western neoliberal order, which is based on the […]
This interview was originally published in Russian on www.yuga.ru and translated for LeftEast by Adam Leeds. How would you describe the ideology of the ruling regime in contemporary Russia? On what values rests that which some call “Putinism”? What is behind the facade of all this speech about ‘spiritual bonds’ and ‘our glorious past’? The conventional idea […]
Note from the LeftEast editors: The rallies that took place in Russia on June 12 under the slogan “We Demand Answers” are the first political event of the summer of 2017. Translated kindly from the original Russian on OpenLeft.ru by Emma Claire Foley. Anti-corruption protests took place in Moscow, Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Kaliningrad, Lipetsk, Tula, Vladivostok, […]
Ilya Budraitskis’s essay is the first in a series entitled Ways of Seeing the New Russian Colonialisms: Writing on and from Post-Soviet Territories, curated by Nikolay Oleynikov for ArtsEverywhere. It is accompanied by Vladan Jeremić’s artwork in the different graphic series (2015-2017) ——————————————————————————————————— At the last Munich Security Conference[1], one of the most important forums for the European political elite, a […]
The main result from this weekend’s NATO summit in Warsaw was the official proclamation of a “containment” strategy toward Russia. So far, the practical consequence of this declaration is modest in military terms—a total of 3,000 foreign troops will be deployed to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Far more important are the politics of this […]
How do the upcoming Duma elections threaten the regime? Today, it would seem that the upcoming September elections to the State Duma are a cause of growing concern only in the Kremlin. While polls continue to record a low level of public interest in the event, and the tiny number of parties allowed to run in the election wanly […]
translated by Maria Brock To be published in Russian in the April issue of the Сеанс magazine. A few days ago came the 16th anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s rule, which is traditionally celebrated by endless fantasies on the theme of ‘Russia after Putin’. This intellectual exercise, which is constantly reproduced by the liberal opposition media, has […]
from e-flux.com The dramatic events in Russia and Ukraine over the past two years have begun a new phase in the struggle over the legacy of communism in the post-Soviet space. As the concrete features of “real socialism” become blurred and vanish, those necessary for the production of ideology become ever more sharply defined. It’s often […]
(translated from Russian by Emma Clair Foley) Everyone understands that the coming year will see Russia immersed in an economic crisis, one which will almost inevitably entail a social and political crisis. It was already over a year ago that Vladimir Putin, while taking part in his favorite genre of television, “direct association with the people,” […]
On our trip to Moscow in June 2015, we met with Ilya Budraitskis, who spoke to us about the crisis facing Russia today and its effects on art and culture. Budraitskis’ argument is presented here alongside drawings by Sveta Shuvaeva, whom we also met while in Moscow. These works were made over the last two years […]