by Mate Kapović One of the most positive developments in the Bosnian protests has been the birth of direct democratic assemblies — but some major challenges remain. It’s been two weeks since the start of the Bosnian rebellion. A recent poll has shown that 88% of the people in the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina […]
Dear Comrades, We write to express our solidarity with you in these trying times. Your country is burying a hundred or so dead, demonstrators and policemen, and hundreds more wounded are still in its hospitals. The specter of a civil war has not yet left Ukraine. While not the defeated party, most of you cannot […]
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Blood and Soil or Communal Power?
The dead of Kiev’s Maidan are not only Ukraine’s dead; they are the dead of “post-communist” Eastern Europe. It hurts everywhere, but differently. An open wound cannot be closed with words, yet one can shout in solidarity that this may be the other end of the post-communist transition, the so-called bad side of the “successful” […]
by Catherine Samary Spring is in advance of the prevailing cold. Nobody knows how far the social and democratic explosion will go. But now, already, we know that it will leave deep scars and that it could spread like wildfire: the peoples of the region are beginning to see “what makes the system tick” in […]
“Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.” –Amilcar Cabral Reading the news tonight (Feb 14), you could perhaps glean […]
Source Ukraine has been suffering a profound internal schism for some time now, one that is threatening to become one of those ugly civil wars that are occurring in more and more countries. The boundaries of present-day Ukraine include an east-west cleavage that is linguistic, religious, economic, and cultural, each side being close to 50% […]
An interview of James Robertson with Tetiana Bezryk. 1.In the past few weeks we’ve seen the government make significant concessions to the protests – the repeal of the anti-protest laws and the resignation of Prime Minister Azarov. Why has the government decided to make these compromises? Does this have anything to do with the recent […]
by Igor Štiks … [T]here is one big difference with the riots seen in other European cities, and this is where Bosnia speaks directly to Europe’s current predicament: this is not a rebellion of discriminated and ghettoised groups, territorially contained on the outskirts of big cities. It is a rebellion of the whole population that […]
by Georgi Medarov The Bulgarian 2013 was marked by the largest protests since the 1990s. In February they were against austerity and high-electricity bills, toppling the center-right government praised by the EU for outstanding “stability”. It was a movement of hopelessness, triggered by the sheer impossibility to cover basic living costs. Initially protesters called for […]
A note from the editors of LeftEast: This is the third article on Turkey we have published over the last two weeks. With this series, we wish to introduce our readers to the dynamics of Turkish society beyond the Gezi protests and to expand our traditional geographical coverage to other zones of peripheral capitalism. To […]