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Bulgarian youth in the maelstrom of political struggles

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. The publication in Serbo-Croatian is to be found here. In Bulgaria there is a (neo)liberal hegemony over student politics that hasn’t been challenged up until last year’s university occupation. This process, however, is not that clear cut, the […]

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Reclaiming the True Meaning of ‘Student’ on the Streets of Skopje

On Monday, the 17th of November, around three thousand students demonstrated on the streets of Skopje. Size-wise, this may appear relatively insignificant. On the same day, 700 km southwards, over 20,000 demonstrators joined a rally in Athens to mark the 41st anniversary of a student uprising against the country’s former dictatorship. The news story on […]

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If the Left Movements Don’t Unite, Only the Far-Right Will Benefit From the Social Anger. An interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko.

By Maxime Benatouil – 04 Mar 14 Interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko, Deputy Director of the Center for Society Research in Kiev (28 February) What root causes explain that such large parts of the population joined the protests, on Maidan and elsewhere? Volodymyr Ishchenko: First, let me tell you that the protests weren’t exclusively initiated by […]

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Are Bulgarian Media Up-to-Date? The Students’ “March for Justice” on the 10th of November, 2013 and its Representation in the Bulgarian Press and Television.

On the 10th of November of 2013, the movement of the Early Rising Students embarked on a “March for Justice” in the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia. Since the 24th of October the students of Sofia University occupied first the main auditorium and gradually the entire school. A few days before November 10th, they decided that […]

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Unpacking the “Bulgarian Spring”

Mary N. Taylor I’ve just come back to New York from Sofia, Bulgaria, where there have been daily protests gatherings and marches, punctuated by chants of “step down” and, less frequently, yet consistently, “red garbage” and “mafia out of parliament”, accompanied by the sound of a three whistle march step. A general assembly has met […]

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“This Generation Has a Flash of Realization in the Middle of a Crisis”: A Discussion on the Student demonstrations in Hungary

In December 2012 students started a series of demonstrations against recent government reforms of higher education. In Budapest and many other towns the students set up discussion forums, organized strikes, and occupied streets, squares and bridges. Besides the slowly reacting official national and local Student Union (HÖK, HÖOK), the newly organized Student Network (SN, HaHa) […]