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Exporting Georgia’s Anti-Corruption reforms to Ukraine; What makes them worth replicating?

“Georgians to the Rescue in Ukraine” “Georgians play key roles in pushing Ukraine’s reforms” “Ukraine’s New Cabinet Lineup Offers Broad Competence for Reforms” – these are just a few of the headlines telling us that Georgia’s post-revolutionary reformers have come to Ukraine to help out with reforms and that commentators are very optimistic about the […]

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Staff and students join in struggle against financialization of higher education in the Netherlands

At first, it did not seem that the student protests at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) looked very different from the wave of movements against financialization of higher education that have swept over Europe in recent years. What makes the Maagdenhuis occupation different, and possibly more challenging, however, is the fact that students have been […]

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On the mass migration of the population of Kosovo

This article was originally published on the Serbian online platform Masina: proizvodnja drustva kritike. The recent wave of mass migration from Kosovo has, in the local media, been primarily reported through a nationalist matrix. So far, little to no attention has been paid to the structural and economic causes which, in the vast majority of […]

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STOP the International Russian Conservative Forum

The close ties between the Kremlin and many European far-right parties are not a secret. The current Russian government’s warm friendship with Marine le Pen has neither precluded official statements of “concern over the growth of neo-nazism” in Ukraine or the Baltic States, nor prevented some European leftists from voicing support, not only for Vladimir […]

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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 […]