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What is fueling the fuel price protests in Bulgaria?

The price of fuel has become the focal point of anti-austerity protests and not only in France. On November 11 2018, or one day after the 29th anniversary of the mythical November 10th  1989, celebrated as the day when the Bulgarian Communist Party GenSec Todor Zhivkov filed his resignation and ushered in the disparate panoply […]

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Men in the Bulgarian Parliament stand behind violence against women

Text by left feminist group LevFem: Raia Apostolova, Kalina Drenska, Anastasia Lilieva, Lea Vajsova, Zhivka Valiavicharska, Neda Genova, Mariya Ivancheva Translation: Emanuela Yaneva The parliamentary session of the Bulgarian National Assembly, which took place on the 15th of November, and was aimed at voting legislative changes in the Criminal code concerning the criminalization of certain […]

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Lea Vajsova: There are now ruptures through which a feminist movement will start unfolding in Bulgaria

Note by the LeftEast editors: This interview with Lea Vajsova was conducted by Yuliana Metodieva for the Bulgarian website Marginalia. BG . It was translated from the Bulgarian by Dorotea Stefanova and Stoyo Tetevenski and reprinted with Lea Vajsova’s permission. Lea Vajsova, PhD is an assistant professor at the department of Sociology in Sofia University. […]

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Ankica Čakardić: We need to look for origins of fascism in capitalist crises

Note from the LeftEast editors: This interview with Ankica Čakardić was conducted by Darko Vujica and published at Prometej.Ba in BCS. It is hereby reprinted by LeftEast with the permission of Ankica Čakardić, and translated by Stevan Bozanich. Ankica Čakardić is an assistant professor and the chair of Social Philosophy and Philosophy of Gender at the Faculty […]

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[FeminEasts Podcast] Boryana Rossa on Sofia Queer Forum, Sex and Revolution, and Much More

Note: You may sample and skip between different themes in the discussion by hovering over and clicking on the various LeftEast thumbnails on the soundwave to display section labels or comments. In this first episode of the FeminEasts podcast, recorded in early 2018, we speak with Boryana Rossa about her work, the Sofia Queer Forum […]

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Romanian Agriculture and its Discontents: Its Social Importance, Its Economic Insignificance

This article has been published in collaboration with Bilten. According to the Eurostat statistics for 2016, one third of all farms in the EU can be found in Romania- roughly 3,600 thousand agricultural holdings. Similarly, the country boasts the largest share of labor force employed in agriculture in the EU, a staggering 26% of the […]

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The crisis of capital, money and state in Turkey: An attempt at demystification

‘If they have their dollars, we have our Allah’ – This is how the President of Turkey responded to the historic drop in the value of the lira in August this year before calling for boycotts of US products and discouraging the citizens from exchanging their liras into foreign currency in the name of defending […]

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A Freight-ening Tale: Bulgaria Finally Stands up to the EU

This article has been published in collaboration with Bilten. The following is an overview of a recent episode in the relentless war on social rights in Bulgaria. I will focus on the aborted reform of freight drivers’ work conditions as it presents us with a rare case of a clear internationalization of the extremely exploitative […]

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Transformations of housing provision in Romania: Organizations of subtle violence

This article is based on empirical data and is a small part of an ongoing research project on housing struggles and transformations in housing policies in Romania. We look at these transformations within the wider historical and economic context, outlining some of the links between privatization and austerity measures, individualization and privatization of housing provision, […]

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Class and minority struggles in Iran today: Interview with Kamran Matin

Following Donald Trump’s repudiation of the Iran sanctions deal and threats of war and the economic protests that brought thousands of people out to the streets against the country’s government, the Islamic Republic is now increasing its repression in the predominantly Kurdish Northwest. LeftEast’s interview with Dr. Kamran Matin of the Department of International Relations […]