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Failed Infrastructure and the Promise of Development in Georgia

Note from LeftEast Editors:  This article was originally published at The Second Cold War Observatory (SCWO) on April 25, 2024. In the wake of the Soviet collapse, investment in mega infrastructure has been pitched as the solution to Georgia’s development. Already in the 1990s, in the face of rapid deindustrialization and armed conflicts in the […]

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Notes on a City in Darkness: Odesa After the Russian Infrastructure Attacks

As the one-year mark of the Russia-Ukraine War approaches, the Western political climate increasingly polarizes public attitudes towards Russian aggression and Ukrainian suffering. The rising politicization of the war for various ideological interests occupies more space in discourse than that of the Ukrainians who endure the brutality of Russia’s terrorism against civilians. Meanwhile, American media […]

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Anatomy of a Social Murder: The Çorlu Train Massacre

This article reads like Garcia Marquez’s 1981 Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The dead this time is not Santiago Nasar but the passengers of a train that crosses Turkey’s European part and the murderer—not the Vicario twins, but the state-led liberalization of Turkish Railways, one of the crowning achievements of the AKP government. The Çorlu […]

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One modernity lost, the other out of reach – Contested post-Soviet infrastructures

Note from editors: This text is a contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s BLACK BOX EAST text series; its German translation is available here on Berliner Gazette. You can find more texts, works, and conference information on the English-language BLACK BOX EAST website. Infrastructures serve as basis for developmental discourses, preconfigure our ideas, and literally build futures because of their decades-long lifespans. Debates on […]