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It is always darkest before the dawn: how Russian anarchists today struggle for revolution 

While it might seem that the neoliberal consensus has broken in some Western countries, in the post-socialist space discourses of privatization and individualization are so strong that we can hardly speak about a crisis of the neoliberal order. It is even harder to imagine some radical change in the West and almost impossible to speak […]

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Calling Fascism by Its Name: The Rise of the Radical Right and Organizing Leftist Resistance in Romania

Note from LeftEast editors: This text was originally published in Courrier des Balkans (CdB), in two parts. The interview was conducted and translated to French by Florentin Cassonnet, a CdB correspondent in Bucharest. The current text is a slightly edited version of the original interview. Courrier des Balkans: You recently organized a seminar about fascism […]

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Outsourcing Exploitation to Europe’s Periphery

This interview exploring Madlen Nikolova, Jana Tsoneva and Georgi Medarov’s recent research on subcontracting, inequality and worker resistance in Bulgaria was originally published on the website of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. Most people probably associate outsourcing and subcontracting, whereby a company pays another company (usually in a country where wages and labour standards are significantly […]

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The Only Way to Fight Fascism Is United in a Front (Interview with Onur Hamzaoglu)

As Turkey entered the new presidential system in the June 2018 elections, with sweeping new powers granted to its re-elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the repression of the opposition continued, now without the pretext of the State of Emergency that officially ended on July 18 this year. Shortly after that, I interviewed one of the […]

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‘Pure’ democracy against the extreme right?: Erdoğan’s ‘Clinton’ and ‘Trump’ moments

The marriage between capitalism and democracy was one of convenience or interest, the product of a very specific period. A temporary reconciliation between capitalism and democracy seemed possible under conditions created by a capital accumulation regime that rested on the specific balance of power between social classes following the two world wars. The “logical contradiction” […]

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Mapping Workers’ Struggles: The Position of Workers in the Post-Socialist Balkans

This is the third instalment of contributions from the Balkan Social Forum’s working groups. This week’s instalment is by the Working Group on Workers’ Struggles, which was composed of: Mersiha Beširović, Heiko Bolldorf, Maja Breznik, Stipe Ćurković, Petre Damo, Robert Fai, Marko Grdešić, Mario Iveković, Jovica Lončar, Branislav Markuš, Tibor T. Meszmann, Davor Rakić Kićo, Jasna […]

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The Women’s Front for Labour and Social Rights in Croatia. An Interview with Vedrana Bibić and Tina Tešija.

Left East’s Vladimir Unkovski-Korica spoke with Vedrana Bibić and Tina Tešija from the Women’s Front for Labour and Social Rights in Zagreb. Could you tell us about who and what gave rise to the Women’s Front for Labour and Social Rights? What does the initiative stand for? The Women’s Front for Labour and Social Rights is […]

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Post-colonial film club in Budapest. An interview with Tamás Gerőcs and Tibor Meszmann, Helyzet Group of Public Sociology.

Mariya Ivancheva interviewed Tamás Gerőcs and Tibor Meszmann about the post-colonialism film club of the Public Sociology Working Group ‘Helyzet’ on 18 February 2014, in Budapest. We are now at the Gólya Community Centre in Budapest. I would start with a question about how these three things, namely the Gólya (Stork) centre, the Helyzet (Position […]

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Ukraine’s protest movement: the far-right in focus. An interview with Tetiana Bezryk

An interview of James Robertson with Tetiana Bezryk. 1.In the past few weeks we’ve seen the government make significant concessions to the protests – the repeal of the anti-protest laws and the resignation of Prime Minister Azarov. Why has the government decided to make these compromises? Does this have anything to do with the recent […]

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“The Bolotnaya Case is an attempt to destroy the Left opposition in Russia”. An interview with Vladimir Akimenkov.

Interviewed by Aleksandra Markova – activist and journalist. Half of the people arrested in the Bolotnaya Case are leftist activists. Open Left spoke with one of them after he was freed in the recent amnesty.  I went with Vladimir Akimenkov to a self-service restaurant. He found it difficult to distinguish the food on display and […]