Statement on the adoption of an anti-LGBTI+ law in Bulgaria by Levfem, a socialist feminist organization based in Bulgaria Conservative and far-right forces scored a huge victory on Wednesday, 7 August. In Bulgaria, MPs from all political parties voted in favor of banning the “propaganda” of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Few MPs […]
Ever since the fall of socialism, Serbia has had virtually no left-wing parties. The legacy of the workers’ struggle and radical politics, reaching to the 1870s, had been up to that point upheld by the League of Communists of Serbia, a national branch of the ruling party of Yugoslavia. In 1990 the League became the […]
August 2nd is known in a number of European countries as Roma Holocaust Memorial Day. It is a significant day in history because 80 years ago on the night of August 2nd, 1944 the Nazis killed the more than 4,200 Roma and Sinti incarcerated in the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp in gas chambers, effectively liquidating […]
Editorial note: In late May, at the same time as violent police crackdowns on protests around the elections and the high cost of living in Kenya, hundreds of Kenyan police officers landed in Haiti to ostensibly quell gang violence and restore order. The authors of this dialogue paint a complex picture of the situation beyond […]
Editorial note: Following 25 years of Islam Karimov’s rule, on December 14, 2016, Shavkat Mirziyoyev became the second President of post-Soviet Uzbekistan. Though Mirziyoyev had been Karimov’s prime minister for thirteen years, his ascent to the presidency marked a sharp turn in the Uzbekistan’s political economy, away from the statism of the Karimov era, when […]
Who Chooses Wars for Us?
Who chooses wars for us? What does it mean that somewhere is peace and somewhere is war? Is this still peace? What kind of peace? Whose peace? Is there really peace until there are wars? So what if wars no longer exist? How can we reach worlds without wars? Can we get there? We have to. Once upon a time there was a world of wars. There was.
How is the system of social redistribution related to trajectories of individual life? What can it mean to be a socialist today? How does race cognition work? What are the conceptual starting points for the idea of an entirely new political community? József Böröcz—Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University—answered questions by András Borbély. The […]
Note from LeftEast Editors: Originally published by Second Cold War Observatory on May 6, 2024. Hungary’s current cycle of industrialization within electric vehicle (EV) and battery production chains may be seen as a typical case for third-country attempts to “hedge” geoeconomic competition (Camba and Epstein, 2023). Attempting to capitalize on its position at the Eastern periphery […]
Note from LeftEast Editors: Originally published by Second Cold War Observatory on May 2, 2024. Perhaps more than any other material, lithium has, in recent years, been increasingly presented as the silver bullet for the so-called twin transition—the digital and the green transitions. Lithium is essential to most conventional batteries used in diverse technologies, from phones […]
Note from LeftEast Editors: This article was originally published at The Second Cold War Observatory (SCWO) on April 25, 2024. In the wake of the Soviet collapse, investment in mega infrastructure has been pitched as the solution to Georgia’s development. Already in the 1990s, in the face of rapid deindustrialization and armed conflicts in the […]