LefteastJames Robertson recounts the history of Kosovo, before and after the breakup of the ex-Yugoslavia, and assesses the accuracy of Russia’s comparisons to Crimea. published in Socialist Worker, March 27, 2014 THE EVENTS in Crimea over the past few weeks, culminating in the territory–a peninsula on the Black Sea off southern Ukraine–being annexed to Russia […]
I think it’s worth pausing, and reflecting on the fact that the EU has applied sanctions. Well. Don’t make the EU angry. You wouldn’t like them when they get angry. Raaaahhhrr! EU SMASH! And yet – and yet – Russia continues to ‘defy the international community’. Such rare valour. Such nose-thumbery. Such bare-faced insouciance. I […]
Imagine a country that once was considered the last stronghold of Stalinist socialism. A country that after the velvet revolution quickly became the apt pupil of the IMF, was one of the first to implement neoliberal reforms, and was also considered in the early nineties by none other than the IMF to be the ideal […]
We have heard terrifying stories from the revolution in Ukraine: anarchists participating in anti-government street-fighting behind nationalist banners, anarchist slogans and historical figures appropriated by fascists, a dystopia in which familiar movements and strategies reappear with our enemies at the helm. This text is a clumsy first attempt to identify the important questions for anarchists […]
by Jennifer J. Carroll Outside the sphere of Russian propaganda, the Kremlin’s assertion that the Ukrainian crisis is fueled by radical nationalists and fascist provocateurs is widely understood as fabricated. Putin’s claims that radicals and extremists control Ukraine’s parliament and that Russian nationals face physical threats are categorically false, and even the US Department of […]
Note from the editorial board of LeftEast: an earlier version was published on the All the Russias’ Blog of NYU’s Jordan Center: http://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/dangerous-liaisons-ukraine-western-slavists/ Writing in the middle of a crisis is always dangerous. Analysis, predictions, recommendations can be proven dramatically wrong within a matter of days. I write these lines as the main author of […]
Note from LeftEast editors: The following interview was originally published in the Slovenian journal Pogledi. It is translated and published here with kind permission from both interviewer (Bostjan Tadel) and interviewee (Anej Korsika). The Initiative for Democratic Socialism (IDS) is a Leftist organization initially conceived following the mass protests that shook Slovenia in the winter […]
Author: Dave Ball In a statement issued on 1 March, the Russian Socialist Movement denounced Putin’s invasion of Crimea. “War has begun. With the aim of protecting and increasing the assets of the oligarchs in Russia and in Yanukovich’s coterie, Russia’s leadership has undertaken an invasion of Ukraine… “It goes without saying that the peoples […]
Early this morning in Montréal, signals from around the world were flooding in about Ali Mustafa’s violent death in Syria. A principled internationalist, thoughtful revolutionary and independent media maker, Ali’s beautiful spirit certainly lives on. Illustrated so beautifully by Palestinian artist Nidal El-Khairy above. On the ground in Aleppo, Ali died during an attack by […]
Mariya Ivancheva interviewed Tamás Gerőcs and Tibor Meszmann about the post-colonialism film club of the Public Sociology Working Group ‘Helyzet’ on 18 February 2014, in Budapest. We are now at the Gólya Community Centre in Budapest. I would start with a question about how these three things, namely the Gólya (Stork) centre, the Helyzet (Position […]