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Land-grabbing and the Financialization of Agricultural Land

On the occasion of the publication of the report Transnational Corporations and Land speculation in Brazil by Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (Network for Social Justice and Human Rights), Mary Taylor of LeftEast spoke with  Fábio Pitta, Devlin Kuyek and Attila Szőcs about the broader implications of their findings. Mary: First, can you […]

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Introducing the Five Senses of Austerity

This podcast was originally published at podcasts.ceu.edu as part of the Sound Relations Project based at Central European University, Budapest, and is done in collaboration with the Blinken Open Society Archives. In recent years, most of us have become used to hearing about austerity. Following the 2007 financial crisis, it was said that austerity was […]

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Denial of the Obvious: the Far Right in the Maidan Protests and Their Danger Today

We are publishing this article in collaboration with Vox Ukraine. Recently the massive rallies of the far right parties, the powerful public presentation of the National Militia affiliated to Azov’s “National Corps” party, escalating attacks by extreme right groups against leftist, feminist, LGBT, human rights events brought Ukrainian radical nationalists back into the center of […]

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The Solidarity of the Business Class, or Building Anti-Environmentalist Alliances in Bulgaria

This article was published in cooperation with the Serbo-Croatian portal Bilten. The campaign to save the Bulgarian national Park Pirin has over the past several months become the major source of protest in the country and even brought the attention of international media and NGOs. Instead of embarrassingly shelving their plans for building on the […]

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A Brief History of the Turkish Left, Part 2: from the 1980 Coup to the Present

This is the second part of our interview with Foti Benlisoy on the history of the Turkish Left from its late-Ottoman beginnings to the present day. As Benlisoy explained in Part I, the era between the coup of 1960 and that of 1980 was something of a high point for the labor movement and socialist […]

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Armenia after Sargsyan: do the people really need a savior?

Although Serj Sargsyan resigned as Prime Minister, in the parliamentary vote on May 1, Nikol Pashinyan failed to secure a majority of votes, even though he was the sole candidate under consideration. After repeating mobilizations, including a vast general strike on the following day, the ruling HHK finally decided that they would vote for Pashinyan […]

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A Brief History of the Turkish Left, Part I: from the Origins to the 1980 Coup

We have interviewed prolific Turkish leftist commentator Foti Benlisoy on the history of the Turkish left, from its Ottoman beginnings on to the present day. In what follows, Benlisoy provides a historically grounded perspective on the background and prospects of today’s movements to counter the now regnant authoritarian conservatism. He also outlines the left’s recurrent […]

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“Yerevan Spring”: A New Day For Armenian Democracy?

On Tuesday, April 17, when the Republic of Armenia got its first prime minister as it transitioned from a semi-presidential to a parliamentary system, the new boss looked suspiciously like the old boss. Serge Sargsyan, who served for ten years as the country’s president and spearheaded the constitutional changes as he approached his two-term limit, […]

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Armenia: “a mass movement the country never has seen before” (an interview with Hovhannes Gevorkian)

A mass movement in Armenia pushed out the Prime Minister and former president Serj Sargsyan. Even if liberal currents are trying to channel the movement and gain electoral support, this event could also be a positive move for the oppressed youth and the working class in the country. We interviewed Hovhannes Gevorkian, an Armenian student […]

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We Asked: Geopolitics & the Left, Part II

In continuing the theme of the conflict between Russia and the West, which we discussed last week, now we turn to the broader issue of a leftist perspective on geopolitics. Even though most of the articles LeftEast publishes deal in one way or another with the transnational connectivities, we have been somewhat reticent about the […]