Lefteast
Following a wave of protests in Zharrez, Albania, Griselda Qosja spoke with activists affiliated with two of the leading leftist organizations in Albania, Organizata Politike and Thurje. From Aristotle to Hegel, the distinction between state and market has been the basis of understanding the role of civil society. In Albania, however, since the 1990s, unfortunately the […]
Written by one of the central figures of the Romanian social-democracy, for the last May Day before WW2, this is not an “analytical” text, nor does it have any extensive theoretical pretensions. As so many others, it is small chunk of the everyday textual production of interwar socialism and, as such, it is part and […]
The Slovak national anthem begins with this dramatic stanza: “That Slovakia of ours / has been asleep so far / but the thunder’s lightning / is rousing it / to come to.” And it continues in a similar spirit: “Slovakia already arises / tears off its shackles.” While the author Janko Matuška, a member of […]
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s slim victory in the referendum to eliminate Turkey’s parliamentary system is the latest in a series of elections won by xenophobic right-wing forces in conditions of economic insecurity and social upheaval that one might naively have expected to benefit the Left. Insofar as the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) clique has […]
Last Sunday, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan finally got the main item that has been driving his political agenda for the last several years: a majority (51.4%) in a popular referendum to legitimate his de facto executive presidency. Or did he? LeftEast asked Zeynep Serinkaya, Onur Bakiner, and Işık Sarıhan about how this victory was “achieved,” what its consequences will be, […]
A group of people armed with knives has attacked Stanislav Sergienko, activist of “Social Movement” and student of Kyiv-Mohyla academy on the 20th of April in Kyiv. Stanislav has been stabbed multiple times and is currently being treated in the hospital. There are strong reasons to conclude that ultra-rightists committed this crime. On the April […]
Swiftly after March 28th, when a legislative proposal backed by the FIDESZ government endangered the existence of Central European University in Hungary, events followed at an unprecedented pace. The whirlwind of bellicose statements, powerful street-protests, counter-statements, and legislative show-down have highlighted some of the political strategies and structural constraints molding the decisions of the Viktor […]
The Turkish original of this article is accessible here. Only a few days are left before Turkey’s April 16th constitutional referendum on the transition to an authoritarian presidential system. Those who thought that the referendum would be a piece of cake for the government given the countrywide state of emergency were proven wrong. Regardless […]
On Monday, 3 April, an explosion in the St. Petersburg subway caused the death of 14 persons, while more than 50 were wounded. One day after the attack, Philippe Alcoy interviewed Kirill Medvedev, an anti-capitalist militant of the Russian Socialist Movement. A direct reaction to the events, this article was first published in French at […]
Victoria Lomasko is a fixture at Moscow’s trials and protests, documenting the tumultuous processes that shape today’s Russia. Not content to limit herself to the political life of the country’s capital, Lomasko travels around the country and through the former Soviet republics, exploring the domestic, psychological, and spiritual condition of its diverse marginalized groups. Sex […]