Lefteast
Note from LeftEast editors: In the spring of 2017 small towns across Macedonia turned into hubs of grassroots struggles against international mining projects in the country.[1] These citizen initiatives shared the same fear: that concessions for exploitation granted as part of a wider policy for attracting FDIs will bring devastating environmental and social consequences with […]
For the past few weeks, protests for fair elections in upcoming municipal polls have become weekly in Moscow and St. Petersburg as thousands have defied authorities to attend unsanctioned rallies. The police crackdown has been particularly harsh in Moscow. Protests on July 27 and August 3 resulted in over 2000 detentions. Images of police in […]
In the Russian capital, administrative wrangling by the Moscow authorities has provoked mobilisation from below – capitalising on long-held discontent by city residents. Thanks to Open Democracy-Russia, LeftEast is able to share the following interview with Alexander Zamyatin, municipal deputy in Zyuzino, Moscow. He is chief editor of Mirror. In defiance of expectations, this year’s […]
A report from Stoyo Tetevenski For some time now, the discord on major social issues between the progressive Social Democratic and Socialist parties in Europe, on the one hand, and the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), on the other, has deepened. The BSP has been repeatedly criticized by the socialist family for its positions on migration, […]
“I hope that politicians will pay greater attention to the people who work as unlicensed labour – the thousands of caregivers, help personnel, child caregivers. The relations between foreign workers and bosses are unequal and demands for labour contracts will never be fulfilled without political will. It is necessary both for the legalisation of our work and for accessible services for the ill and children.”
What PD and LSI leaders hope is that by withdrawing momentously from political privileges, such as the MP salary, they will be accepted by the popular classes as their genuine political representatives. In addition, they have tried to imitate some of the slogans, the gestures, and ideas of the student movement. They promise an uncompromising war against the oligarchs, and organized crime, tuition-free universities, the implementation of other important social rights, while maintaining, in a characteristic right-populist agenda, neoliberal economic policies like a 9% flat tax, and other pro-business mantra. Secretly, they hope that by withdrawing from the system, history will repeat itself.
Many of the pieces in the latest Fordulat issue argue, climate change is the result of very specific and not at all inevitable historical developments closely tied to the unfolding of capitalism between the 16th and 18th centuries.
LeftEast shares this podcast with the permission of its producers from Contrasens. “Contrasens” is a podcast which explores current themes in the field of the social sciences. The project aims to bring to the forefront and make as accessible as possible research conducted by sociologists, anthropologists and other specialists from related fields. Content hosts and […]
In this article originally written for OpenDemocracy-Russia, you will learn of the warning strikes taking place this summer at Estonian universities. Recent academic strikes in Tartu and Tallinn show that staff in Estonian universities have the determination to fight for a long overdue increase in funding. The strikes at Estonia’s two centres of higher education and research […]
Romania’s main political battles for this year, or at least its most violent and its most consequential, will unfold in what will apparently be dry technical discussion about interbank rates, just as seemingly neutral actors like the Central Bank will play an essential role in this year’s elections.