Rossen Djagalov is a LeftEast editor. There is little new in the debate taking place within the Russian left and around it whether to participate in the protests called by Navalny and his team. One has been hearing a version of it since last August on Belarusian material. A few years earlier, the issue was […]
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Liza Smirnova is a journalist and left-wing activist In the events of January we have seen a new type of street protest in Russia. Now it is not only the Muscovite middle class, as in the previous wave of mobilization from 2011-2013. This new wave of protests has covered the provinces as well. Actions proceeded […]
Georgiy Komarov, member of the executive committeeof Marxist Union (Russia) The Russian Left should definitely try to adapt to new reality and not to stay aside from the protest. However, the devil is in the details. Alas, the rallies of January 23 were nowhere near a mass revolutionary movement. The rallies boast only tens of […]
Ilya Budraitskis, Moscow-based historian, political writer, and co-author of the Political Diary podcast Alexei Navalny’s arrest at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on January 17, minutes after his return to Russia, was not only the expected, but also the only possible reaction of the Russian authorities. At the beginning of this year, after the summer Constitutional amendments opened […]
Kirill Medvedev, activist of the Russian Socialist Movement, musician from the Arkady Kots Band, editor of Zanovo-media With his return, Navalny has taken an important step towards a new understanding of politics in Russia and a new round of politicization. Previously, there had been a fairly clear “division of labor” in protest: activists take risks motivated […]
Sean Guillory provides critical commentary on Russia’s past and present on his blog, Sean’s Russia Blog (https://srbpodcast.org/) No one is surprised, least of all Navalny himself, that the Kremlin finally decided to jail him (give him “real time,” in the Russian parlance). Killing him didn’t work, so physically removing him by other means was the […]
Katya Kazbek, writer & translator, editor-in-chief of Supamodu.com Alexei Navalny is an indispensable investigative journalist, who has done a lot of fascinating and useful work to uncover corruption in business and personal lives of those who are connected to Vladimir Putin’s government. However, I find the centering of him as the opposition leader to be unnecessary […]
Note from LeftEast editors: We reprint this article by Vaibhav Walunj from the Indie Journal where it was originally published on February 4th. How did the farmers’ protest start and gain momentum before reaching Delhi borders? The organisational skills and development of farmers’ protest is a tale of inspiration and school of education for people’s […]
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Antifascism Is Not a Monument
The Sutjeska and Bijeljina monuments appear to stand for two profoundly divergent worlds, one symbolizing the cosmopolitan and antifascist past of socialist Yugoslavia, the other embodying the hyper-nationalist and segregationist present of post-Yugoslav states. Yet both monuments were made by the same sculptor. As I walked away, my stomach still churning, my first thought was not “How could this be?”, but “Oh no, not again.”
Note from LeftEast editors: The recent rise of far-right populisms and the general mood of crisis has triggered reflections among those who’ve experienced the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s on the lessons to be learnt from that conflict. The Disorder of Things blog is featuring a series of ‘Yugosplaining’ interventions, in which activists, artists, and […]