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Montenegro and Serbia between NATO and Russia

In December last year, NATO officially invited Montenegro to become the 29th member state of the most powerful military organisation of our times, if not, in fact, of all time. That the invitation will have flattered the already over-inflated ego of country’s Prime Minister, Milo Djukanović, and his ruling clique, there is, of course, little […]

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Russia in Crisis: the Agonies of the Oil Empire

(translated from Russian by Emma Clair Foley) Everyone understands that the coming year will see Russia immersed in an economic crisis, one which will almost inevitably entail a social and political crisis. It was already over a year ago that Vladimir Putin, while taking part in his favorite genre of television, “direct association with the people,” […]

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BOOK REVIEW: “Welcome to the desert of post-socialism!”

Note from the LeftEast editors: This review of Igor Stiks and Srecko Horvath’s edited volume “Welcome to the desert of post-socialism: radical politics after Yugoslavia” (Verso, 2015)  has first appeared on LeftVoice under the title Yugoslavia after Capitalist Restoration. It has been reprinted with the permission of the author. by Philippe Alcoy Released in January 2015 […]

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Struggling for Public Water Services in Bucharest

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. The original publication can be found here. In September 2015 Romanian Anti-Corruption Prosecutors opened a criminal investigation against intermediaries acting on behalf of the private company ApaNova/Veolia, the provider of water services in Bucharest. Bucharest local councillors had allegedly […]

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The Poor Must Die!

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. The original publication in can be found here. When the newly appointed Romanian Minister of Finance told reporters in an off-the-record meeting that Romanian workers should take a cue from workers in Brazil or India who are ready to […]

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O Balkan Pioneers: Anatomy of an Escape Route

Note from the LeftEast editors: This article appeared originally on Antidote Zine and has been reprinted with the kind permission of the author. The images portray scenes in Serbia and Macedonia, December 2015, captured by unnamed photographers; please inquire before reprinting: antidote [at] riseup . net Q. 
Perhaps twenty years old, probably younger. Kabul, Afghanistan. At the […]

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VIDEO: “We are equal, not illegal!” Housing rights commemoration in Cluj-Napoca, December 2015

The commemorative action “We are equal, not illegal!” took place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania on 17/12/2015. It involved people from the marginalized ‘residential’ space of the city (called Pata Rat) and from other areas with precarious and insecure housing conditions, as well as local activists for housing justice. This public event was a moment of joint […]

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Crime or Ideology? A Critical Note on Albanian Corruption

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. The original publication in can be found here. Everything started in July 2014 after a fight in the corridors of the Albanian Parliament. Two members of parliament, Arben Ndoka and Pjerin Ndreu from the ruling Socialist Party, used their […]

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VIDEO: The World Today: Ukrainian Complexities

Tariq Ali and LeftEast editorial board member Volodymyr Ishchenko discuss the manifold ongoing crisis in Ukraine, which may have fallen out of the news of late but has not lost its importance for the peoples of the region. This video originally aired on Telesur English. Volodymyr Ishchenko is a sociologist studying social protests in Ukraine. He […]

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Why is Erdoğan Furious with Academia?

Turkey is in a state of political turmoil, which is likely to end with a full-scale civil war if clashes continue to escalate at this pace. On the one side of the conflict, there is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been riding a pragmatic coalition since the restart of the conflict between the Kurdistan Workers […]