Categories
All posts

Uprooting Injustice: Exposing Georgia’s Housing Crisis and Predatory Lending

Interview with Vako Natsvlishvili from the political movement “Khma”. In this insightful interview, Vako, a member of the “Khma” movement, sheds light on the housing crisis in Georgia and the challenges faced by anti-eviction activists in the country. The recent incident involving the eviction of a family has sparked public outrage, leading to the arrest […]

Categories
All posts

Movements of Labor: A Report on the LeftEast-Solidarity Network Convergence

Since 2011 and as part of the organization of LeftEast as a media platform, members of the LeftEast collective have organized summer schools in Budapest, Sofia, Kaunas, Istanbul and Skopje. Their aim has always been always twofold – or as we wrote once, dialectical – working with movements on the ground to connect regionally but […]

Categories
All posts

Ruins and Ruined, the Victory of Capitalism in Georgia

I went to Georgia to take part in the annual meeting organized by LeftEast, and this gave me the opportunity to visit the small town of Tskaltubo for a few days with some comrades. Here I share a few thoughts, feelings, impressions and a photo essay of what I observed there. We arrive in front […]

Categories
All posts

Sovereignty, foreign influence, and the search for the Georgian dream

In an effort to regulate foreign influence in Georgia, the Georgian parliament, People’s Power, as it is called, introduced two bills in late February, “On the registration of foreign agents” and “On the transparency of foreign influence.” People’s Power broke away from the ruling party, Georgian Dream (GD) so it could be more open about […]

Categories
Protests

Struggle for the Rioni Valley in between Political and Civil Society terrains

The introduction of Lela Rekhviashvili’s book Struggle for the Rioni Valley in between Political and Civil Society Terrains: Contested Infrastructures and Development Politics, published in Georgian by Heinrich Böll Foundation. Who can resist capitalism today and how? Who can resist capitalism in Georgia or in other peripheral countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, where the […]

Categories
All posts Interviews

Privatization of Healthcare in Georgia and Its Disastrous Social Consequences: Interview with Beka Natsvlishvili

Note from LeftEast editors. We reached out to one of the authors of a recent and timely study “Social Consequences of Privatization of Healthcare” written by Beka Natsvlishvili, Nodar Kapanadze, and Sopo Japaridze (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Tbilisi Office, October 2022). Another coauthor of the study and LeftEast editorial board member Sopo Japaridze translated the text from Georgian. […]

Categories
All posts

“Women and children are left to wait in line as men are sent to walk to get across the border as quickly as possible.” An eye-witness report from the Russian-Georgian border.

LeftEast: What is your situation? How do you feel? Anna: I have been living in Tbilisi for several years, but had to return to Russia for family reasons. Of course, I was anxious and scared about what would happen next, whether I would be able to return to Tbilisi and what the situation would be […]

Categories
All posts Protests Solidarity Call

Public Health in Collapse: Healthcare Workers Report on Fragile Healthcare Systems

During the past year, healthcare workers all around the world have shouldered an incredible burden. Although both people and policy makers have applauded their contribution to the COVID-19 response, little has been done in practice to actually protect and support workers on the frontline. It is difficult to disregard the fact that thousands of nurses, […]

Categories
All posts FeminEasts

(Post)Pandemic Struggles in Social Reproduction: Lessons from the Therapist Union in Georgia

Note of the LeftEast editors: The present text 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 first webinar, where this text was first presented can be seen here. The aim of the series is to raise […]

Categories
All posts

After Years of Neoliberalism, Georgian Workers Have Forgotten What It Means to Win

LeftEast publishes Volodya Vagner’s interview with Georgian unionists in collaboration with OpenDemocracy-Russia. Georgia has recently seen a wave of strikes by newly established unions. In summer 2018, the Ertoba2013 union, which organises Tbilisi’s metro workers, shut down the Georgian capital for several days, before the city municipality eventually met its demands. Earlier this year, a new […]