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 […]
Ilya Matveev, a researcher and lecturer in political economy based in St. Petersburg and co-author of the Political Diary podcast At first, Navalny’s decision to return to Russia was bewildering. What did he expect to happen? The state had clearly decided to put him behind bars, disregarding international pressure (in any case, after the highly […]
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: This interview was originally published in Mérce, a left-wing news site in Hungary. It was conducted via e-mail and published on the occasion of Merkel’s departure from power, and to provide context for Hungary’s and Poland’s initial veto on the EU COVID19 recovery package. NL: For many Hungarians Germany is a […]
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 […]
Note of the LeftEast editors: The present text, which we co-publish together with TSS is part of a series of publications and webinars on the topics of social reproduction, (women’s) labour and migration in East-Central Europe and beyond. The video from the second webinar (Post)pandemic struggles on social reproduction, where this text was first presented can be seen […]
Note from LeftEast editors: Between June and December 2020 the Hungarian Portal Mérce published a series on “Victimhood and Decolonization”. The following text is an English-language summary on the series, written by one of its co-editors. Despite notable early post-war attempts and several more in recent years, Eastern European discussions have surprisingly rarely interpreted the […]
The background for writing this review was Larry Wolff’s book, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilizations on the Mind of the Enlightenment, which was published in autumn 2020 in a Polish translation, more than 25 years after its first English edition. This review attempts to see how the book can be read today. This […]