Lefteast
This text is a conversation between Iuliia Gataulina and Mina Shahmoradi, respectively members of Russian and Iranian political activist groups in Tampere, Finland. We see value in this conversation because it does not usually happen: in today’s increasingly polarized world, we have been witnessing how the political opposition usually acts along the same lines as […]
The outsized role that foreign-funded NGOs play in Georgia’s politics, policy-making, and public services has led the country into a chronic crisis of its democracy. There is a massive problem at the heart of Georgia’s peculiar political economy. It goes back a quarter of a century, predating the 2003 Rose Revolution. The late president Edvard […]
In this interview, Tim Joye discusses the importance of shifting from private pharmaceutical production to public ownership, emphasizing the need to regain control over medicines’ development and production, while also boosting the need for local production. Highlighting examples and challenges, it underscores the necessity for public alternatives to address pricing, shortages, and innovation in crucial […]
We share the video of a talk by Enikő Vincze, housing justice activist at Căși sociale ACUM!/Social housing NOW! and professor at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania, given as part of the seminar series organized by the Torino-based Beyond Inhabitation Lab. The talk presented results of the academic research “Class formation and re-urbanization through real […]
Since the beginning of March, there has been an unprecedented campaign of violence against refugees and foreigners in Sofia. Polarising and racist statements by politicians and uncritical, sensationalist media coverage have unleashed a wave of attacks. The Bulgarian capital, which is where most institutions and facilities dealing with migrants are located and where most economic […]
On the 24th April, (North) Macedonia will hold the first round of the presidential elections. The country is home to the fastest growing left-wing movement in Europe: the Levica (Left) party, whose popularity has risen in recent years, contributing to significant electoral results in the 2020 parliamentary and the 2021 local elections. In early 2024 […]
The first part of this essay explored the historical background for Germany’s fiercely enforced solidarity with Israel. In the decades after the war, support for Israel was cultivated by West German elites as a geopolitical investment and project of Westernization. Meanwhile the left struggled to force the country to take historical responsibility for its crimes […]
Note from LeftEast editors. Our readers are probably familiar with the story of Boris Kagarlitsky, the best-known post-Soviet Marxist, a leftist dissident under Brezhnev and occasional political prisoner under Yeltsin and Putin, who was arrested in July 2023 on charges of “justifying terrorism,” aka opposing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on his leftist media platform […]
All around Bosnia-Herzegovina, ordinary citizens are mobilizing to fight industrial developments threatening to damage, or have already destroyed, parts of the environment where they live. There are the stirrings of a widespread movement to protect the environment in numerous local situations around the country. Environmental resistance has the potential to create what could become the […]
Note from LeftEast editors: Our member Sonja Dragović interviewed Dr. Lea Horvat about her work on the architectural and cultural history of socialist Yugoslavia, which has recently produced a book “Hard Currency Concrete: A Cultural History of Mass Housing Construction in Socialist Yugoslavia and its Successor States” (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, 2024; English translation […]