Categories
All posts

Hungary’s Brokerage Crisis: How Far Will It Reach

Note from the LeftEast editors: This text was originally published on the authors’s blog Global Social Change, dedicated to his book The European Union and Global Social Change: A Critical Geopolitical-Economic Analysis, Routledge 2009 , and is reprinted on Lefteast with the kind permission of the author. Hungary’s National Bank, in its capacity as financial […]

Categories
All posts Interviews We Asked

Syriza’s victory stirs the Left’s political imagination across Central, Eastern and South East Europe

Three weeks ago the Left celebrated Syriza’s victory. The plot has thickened since, and it will surely intensify further by the 28th of February when the EU-IMF bailout is due to expire. As the Greek drama unravels, it is those who are most supportive of Syriza that will judge it most critically. Asked by LeftEast’s […]

Categories
All posts

Two weeks of a “radical” leftist experience. A rift or EU integration ahead?

Note from the LeftEast editors: We publish this article criticizing SYRIZA from the left because we believe in the possibility and necessity of such a critique, which can strengthen this movement’s resolve in the face of such formidable pressure from the outside. But it’s also important to remember “that men make history but in circumstances […]

Categories
All posts

Presidential Elections in Croatia. An interview with Tomislav Orešković & Marko Milošević of the Workers’ Front.

  Vladimir Unkovski-Korica: Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović narrowly defeated incumbent Ivo Josipović to become the new president of Croatia. She is the first member of the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union to become president since the death of the country’s first president after independence, Franjo Tudjman. Why did she win and what did she campaign for? Milošević: Her […]

Categories
All posts

A government of the Left in Greece: the coalition of SYRIZA with ANEL and what lies ahead

After January 25th, with the landslide victory of the radical-left SYRIZA over the right-wing New Democracy, we have in Greece the first (and only) left-wing government ever elected in a European Union member state. This alone is already a major development, not only for Greece and its crisis-ridden society, but also for a Europe struggling […]

Categories
Insert

Eastern Europe against TTIP Trojan Horse

Posted by Eco-Ruralis on Tuesday, December 9, 2014 Wir Haben Es Satt demo 2014 (click for 2015 demo) Written by Derek Freitas: Food Sovereignty Campaign Coordinator forEco Ruralis The proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is meeting increased resistance in Eastern Europe. The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) “STOP TTIP!” is having some success with activating people living in […]

Categories
All posts Interviews

“Bulgaria has still not reached the bottom”. An interview with Mariya Ivancheva.

This interview was taken by Ioanna Drosou from the Greek newspaper Epohi and the original version in Greek is available here. How would you comment on the result of the elections? The results of the election are no big surprise for anyone. As some political commentators, myself included, predicted already in February 2013, when Boyko Borissov […]

Categories
All posts

How a Bulgarian teacher made the news… for all the wrong reasons

This article is published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croatian online web portal Bilten.Org  On the 15th of September 2014, the first day of school in Bulgaria, a photograph of a third grade Bulgarian teacher, Silviya Zubeva, taken by a parent, was leaked through 9gag[i], with versions appearing later in Bulgarian, English, and German. The picture, […]

Categories
All posts

How healthcare kills: lessons from neoliberal Bulgaria

    Nоte from the LeftEast editors: Тhis article has been published in collaboration with the new Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. The publication in Serbo-Croatian is to be found here.  In the last days of March 2014, a Bulgarian woman, Dobrinka Krumova, aged 26, died because neither private, nor public hospitals in Dupnitsa in South Bulgaria accepted her for […]

Categories
Insert Interviews

Political mobilization and the world system: the case of Ukraine and Russia. An interview with Don Kalb.

In an interview for Ukrainian journal “Commons” and Eurozine (original here), conducted before Euromaidan commenced, Don Kalb discusses the future of capitalism in eastern Europe. Given the rise of China and India, and economic stagnation in the West, Kalb emphasizes the importance of political mobilization in both Ukraine and Russia. Volodymyr Ishchenko: How would you […]