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What lies beneath Die Linke’s silence over Syriza?

Despite its continuous vocal advocacy for radical changes in the EU economic and financial policies, Die Linke has remained to a large extent passive regarding the Greek government and its initial actions, relying predominantly on open declarations of support. The formation of a Syriza-led government in Greece presents an important milestone for the efforts of […]

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Was the 8th of March cancelled in the Balkans this year?

Wrapped in a perfumed Valentine’s-meets-Mother’s-Day packaging, year after year International Women’s Day seems to become further stripped of its political flavour. What is worrying is that this occurs at a time when women face deteriorating conditions across the region, in their homes, at the work place and society at large. We asked activists, researchers and […]

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The systematic decline of women’s rights in Macedonia in recent years

This publication has been made in cooperation with the Serbo-Croatian political web portal Bilten.Org. A version of this piece was also published on the author’s website, Amateuress. In recent years Macedonia has undergone a very subtle, yet dreadfully pervasive deterioration of the situation with womens’ rights. After an initial surge of promise with the introduction of […]

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Hungary’s Brokerage Crisis: How Far Will It Reach

Note from the LeftEast editors: This text was originally published on the authors’s blog Global Social Change, dedicated to his book The European Union and Global Social Change: A Critical Geopolitical-Economic Analysis, Routledge 2009 , and is reprinted on Lefteast with the kind permission of the author. Hungary’s National Bank, in its capacity as financial […]

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A Discourse that Fuels Violence: AKP and the Culture of Permissiveness Toward Violence against Women in Turkey

Özgecan Aslan’s story was close to the heart. We have all been that girl trying to get home at night in the dark, alone. We are all too familiar with shorter breaths, raised heartbeats and sweaty palms, prompted by an instinct of being in danger. In this very instant, while everything else is tuned out, […]

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The Murder of Boris Nemtsov

Note from editors: The following editorial was published on the Russian leftist website Open Left in response to the murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on Friday 27 February 2015. We demand a transparent investigation and an immediate end to propaganda that incites hatred. It’s difficult to say just yet how the Friday-night murder of […]

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On SYRIZA and its victory in the recent general elections in Greece

Note from the LeftEast editors: The following piece was composed prior to the most recent negotiations between the SYRIZA government and the EU. We republish it here not to contribute to the current crisis, but to facilitate comradely discussion and debate on the relevant political questions that emerged since January 25. We believe that the […]

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The National Bourgeoisie vs. the State Apparatus. Reconfiguring the state in Romania

It is perhaps the first time that Romania’s ongoing corruption scandals are more than just a scandal. They offer the possibility for serious theoretical reflection about wider social transformations. However, it is not because recent events dramatically altered the situation in new ways, but the opposite: recent events, precisely by their familiarity, allow us to […]

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The illiberal democracy and the revanchist city – The spatial and political transformation of Budapest since 2010

“We need to give back public spaces to the citizens” – argued István Tarlós, the mayor of Budapest and a member of the nationalist-conservative Fidesz party when he tried to justify the city’s criminalizing of homelessness in most of its public spaces. The message here was clear: homeless people do not qualify for citizen status […]

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Syriza’s victory stirs the Left’s political imagination across Central, Eastern and South East Europe

Three weeks ago the Left celebrated Syriza’s victory. The plot has thickened since, and it will surely intensify further by the 28th of February when the EU-IMF bailout is due to expire. As the Greek drama unravels, it is those who are most supportive of Syriza that will judge it most critically. Asked by LeftEast’s […]