Lefteast
This is the first part of a two-part series on anti-lithium mining protests that have erupted in Serbia over the last several months, and the broader environmental movement around it. Last September, the outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel made her farewell tour to the Balkans. In Belgrade, she was welcomed by Aleksandar Vučić, the Serbian president […]
On the night of 19 December 2021, in front of tens of thousands of supporters, Gabriel Boric, the presidential candidate of a left and centre-left parties’ coalition, gave his victory speech after defeating the far-right candidate José Antonio Kast in the run-off. In his address, he pledged to guard the country’s ongoing constituent process and […]
Note from LeftEast editors: This article originally appeared in Romanian in The Political Art Gazette and we publish it as part of the collaboration in the ELMO – Eastern European Left Media Outlet network. On March 8th, 2022, responding to the invitation of Meduza Kolektiv and Rhythms of Resistance Cluj, the radical housing justice movement […]
While the recent protests in Serbia have focused on environmental protection specifically and the increasingly authoritarian nature of the ruling party more generally, the catalyst for the protests is land. They started in reaction to a planned lithium mining project by the infamous Rio Tinto company and corresponding legislation that would have made land expropriation […]
After a long winter of the covid-19 pandemic, the first glimpses of a coming spring offer a vision of new bloodshed. We have now witnessed more than a week of Russian invasion and war on Ukraine, a stretch of time that will be seen as an undeniable rupture in international relations. Things are moving at […]
This article was originally published by Diversia. It was translated into English and a version updated by the author is republished here as part of a cooperation between Eastern European leftist media platforms in ELMO (Eastern European Left Media Outlet). As the reactions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have shown, Bulgaria is not ready for a new anti-war movement, […]
The Czech Rohlík company, which specializes in the delivery of fresh baked goods, is expanding to Austria and Germany, where it is making massive investments. Nevertheless, they are tough on workers at home. [This piece was originally published by A2larm.cz and was translated by Ian Mikyska. The article is part of the regional collaborative publishing […]
Oksana Dutchak is a researcher based in Ukraine and an activist of E.A.S.T. – Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational. She tells about the current ever-changing situation in Ukraine and local attempts of self-organization to cope with the war. The question of how to create a transnational politics of peace has no easy answer. Continuing to mobilize […]
Cihan Tuğal on the implications of US and Russian wars of aggression since the end of the Cold War, and their meaning for the rights of nations to self-determination.
The inter-imperialist conflicts we see between NATO and Russia (or the US and China, as well as many smaller conflicts) are ultimately rooted in national economic competition, which itself is an outgrowth of the competition inherent to capitalism. To finally wipe out the drive to war means ending capitalism altogether. But that is no excuse for an abstract position that the only thing we can do now is call for revolution, as some on the far left are doing. War enflames national divisions and is most damaging to working people. It needs to be resisted and ended immediately. It is the end of wars, especially when opposed from below, that can open space for continued class conflict and the further struggle for socialism in Ukraine and beyond.