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Workers Control in Venezuela and Beyond: An Interview with Dario Azzelini

Note from the LeftEast editors: The following interview was originally published in Serbian at Mašina.rs Dario Azzelini is a theoretician and political activist splitting time between Berlin and Caracas. He recently stayed in Belgrade to participate in the conference “Let’s bring socialism back into the game“. That gave us an opportunity to talk about different […]

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VIDEO: #TalkReal London: #Brexit Europe?

The UK’s #EUreferendum coming up on June 23 is a momentous historic occasion, not only for British citizens but for Europe itself. TalkReal discussed the international implications of #Brexit and Europe’s ‘referendum fever’ with Ulrike Guérot (founder and director of the European Democracy Lab Democracy Lab), Federico Campagna (writer, philosopher and Rights Manager at Verso […]

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Democracy and Autocracies in the “Western Balkans”

A specific type of autocracy has been gradually installed in the so-called Western Balkans, the group of countries in southeast Europe that has yet to join the European Union (EU). The rise of autocracies is noticeable after the failure of the relatively short experiment with pluralism, which for some time carried the mask of democracy, […]

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Textile Factories City: Gender Violence and Housewifization in the Small City of Shtip in The Republic of Macedonia

After the Second World War, the textile industry in Macedonia greatly expanded, eventually reaching a point where it represented over 30% of the country’s total manufacturing. The largest portion of this industry was situated within Shtip, a small city located in Eastern Macedonia. Today, the city has a population of less than 50,000 people, the […]

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We Demand Removal of the Fence on the Macedonian-Greek Border!

Note from LeftEast editors: We publish here a demand for removal of the fence on the Macedonian-Greek border as requested by a list of Macedonian grassroots movements and NGOs. At the beginning of March 2016, Slovenia announced the re-establishing of the Schengen zone and the visa regime- only people with valid documents and visas were allowed entry on […]

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The forgotten workers’ control movement of Prague Spring

Note from LeftEast editors: This article originally appeared at Systemic Disorder on 9 March, 2016. At the time of the [August 1968] Soviet invasion [of Czechoslovakia], two months after the first workers’ councils were formed, there were perhaps fewer than two dozen of them, although these were concentrated in the largest enterprises and therefore represented […]

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Putin: First as Farce …

translated by Maria Brock To be published in Russian in the April issue of the Сеанс magazine. A few days ago came the 16th anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s rule, which is traditionally celebrated by endless fantasies on the theme of ‘Russia after Putin’. This intellectual exercise, which is constantly reproduced by the liberal opposition media, has […]

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A Nation of Masters?: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Bulgarian Memory Wars

We are grateful to Bilten, where this article will appear in BCS. — “Common sites of memory are not sites of common memory”, prof. Lilyana Deyanova (Obektiv, October 2012) — A few years ago, the Bulgarian sociologist Andrei Raitchev observed that with the establishment of a broad consensus among all parties on the necessity for liberal pro-market […]

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Refugees & Volunteering: Beyond the Culture of Giving

Having returned from my volunteering activities in the Balkans, I started reflecting on certain aspects of refugee aid in a number of schools, universities, and in my interviews. After my talk, some of my listeners would come and say: ok, you’ve kind of discouraged us from helping them. However, their reaction stemmed from a misunderstanding, […]

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“And We Go Willingly, Like a Lamb to the Slaughter”: Migrant Labor in the EU (an Interview with Romanian Construction Worker Bogdan Droma)

Bogdan Droma has worked in Berlin for three months, between August and October 2014, at building the famous Mall of Berlin. As a result of weeks of work going unpaid, as well as of various forms of abusive treatment, he protested together with other workers between November 2014 and February 2015 on an almost daily […]