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[Podcast] Neda Deneva: Being taken care of. The case of medicalizing birth-giving.

Note from LeftEast editors: We share 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 […]

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Sick Leave: the Hidden Class Wars in Bulgaria

Note from LeftEast editors: We republish this from the Croatian portal Bilten, where it originally appeared. Bulgaria has some of the lowest wages and lowest productivity rates in Europe, and, not surprisingly, some of the highest rates of out-migration. Employees and employers agree on that, but on little else. Yet with the country’s economy growing […]

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We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism: Mariya Ivancheva

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organize? What was at stake with this project was in equal measure painfully distant and painfully close to the contexts I am immersed in, and to an extent represent. In […]

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All posts Interviews

Let Jock Palfreeman Speak! Part I of a Two-Part Interview

In this interview originally published in Bulgarian on dversia.net, the leader of the Bulgarian Prisoners’ Association speaks with Polina Manolova on the loss of justice, his activism, and left alternatives. Polina Manolova: On 19th of September 2019 Jock Palfreeman was granted parole after serving almost 12 years in Bulgarian prison for fatally stabbing a neo-Nazi […]

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“Eastern Europe’s extraordinary 30-year revival.” A Bulgarian immigrant’s anecdotal response

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a video of the Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov circulated by a Bulgarian Facebook group. The video began with an excerpt of a speech by the Prime Minister delivered to his party at the beginning of the year. In it, pondering the falling popularity of his government, he […]

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I, the caregiver – stories from “the grey zone”

“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.”

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All posts Solidarity Call

Call for Sоlidarity: Help Us Save “Baricada”, the Main Left-wing Website in Bulgaria

Dark times have fallen upon the media in Bulgaria. Meaningful journalism has been squashed. Public access to reliable progressive information is barely possible. In just a decade since its 2007 EU accession, Bulgaria has fallen on the media freedom scale from the 36th to the 111th place. There is no diversity in media ownership. Almost […]

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She Is with Us: Independently-Running Trade Unionist Vanya Grigorova Shakes Up the Bulgarian Campaign for the European Parliament

For the first time the workers and the disabled have a genuine representative while people on the Left who normally avoid elections for lack of real choice have someone worth their vote.

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All posts Eveniment Protests

Anti-Roma Riots in the Heart of Bulgaria: Racists against Inequality?

We are publishing this article in cooperation with the Serbo-Croatian web portal Bilten. In the “Offenders in Gabrovo!” Facebook group, natives of the eponymous Central Bulgarian town comment upon all sorts of irregularities: they lambaste the owner of a car parked on the wrong side of the street, mobilize to replace a broken lamp post, […]

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Notes from Hell: Inside a Bulgarian Prison

16.11.2018 This first-person account of the conditions inside the prison in Pazardjik, Bulgaria was first published on the web site of the Bulgarian Prisoners’ Association. The Pazardjik prison is a classic. I had heard a lot about it but now that I’m here, have no words to describe what I’m going through. Most people are […]