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Today’s Uzbekistan and the Left: an Interview with three Uzbek Comrades

Editorial note: Following 25 years of Islam Karimov’s rule, on December 14, 2016, Shavkat Mirziyoyev became the second President of post-Soviet Uzbekistan. Though Mirziyoyev had been Karimov’s prime minister for thirteen years, his ascent to the presidency marked a sharp turn in the Uzbekistan’s political economy, away from the statism of the Karimov era, when […]

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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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A letter from a Georgian student – Georgian youth deserve better

The recent period in Tbilisi saw the streets being swept up in waves of demonstrations against the law on “transparency of foreign influence”. The oppositional media constantly regurgitates the idea that the youth of Georgia, Gen Z, unequivocally upholds protests. I have seen claims that this is a “Children’s revolution”, and that the demonstrations have […]

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The Road will be Mastered by the Walking: an Interview with KYRGSOC

Many of us at LeftEast became aware of the leftist Kyrgyz organization KyrgSoc from its webpage, where you post original content as well as repost pieces by others. What is KyrgSoc?  What do you do? Who was it founded by and when? The idea of creating KYRGSOC matured with us in 2018/2019. The name of […]

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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 […]

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Ukraine in the vicious circle of the post-Soviet crisis of hegemony

Note from LeftEast editors: This is a slightly edited version of an earlier published text in German: Ishchenko, V. (October 15, 2021). Die Ukraine im Teufelkreis der post-sowjetischen Hegemonie-Krise. Ukraine-Analysen, 256, 8-10. After the 30 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine may give a unique perspective on the post-Soviet condition in general […]

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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 […]

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Belarusian activists: Freedom or Prison – It’s All the Same

How ‘Freedom Day’ went in Belarus, and what to expect next: comments from Belarusian activists On 25 May 2017, demonstrations marking Freedom Day took place in cities across Belarus (Freedom Day is the anniversary of the announcement of the self-proclaimed Belarusian People’s Republic on 25 March 1918; it is celebrated mainly by Belarusian nationalists). The […]

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Alexandra Elbakyan: ‘The Fight Against Copyright Cannot Be Apolitical’

Many LeftEast readers–especially among the scientists; students of the humanities are more familiar with LibGen–have no doubt come across or used Sci-hub. It is a project that saves many scientists and students from the domination of corporations owning the property rights of scientific literature. It provides easy and free access to tens of millions of […]