Lefteast

Socialist Yugoslavia and the Antinomies of the Non-Aligned Movement

This is a revised version of a talk given by the author at the Workshop ‘Dialoguing Between the Posts 2.0: (im)possible dialogue between the progressive forces of the ‘posts’’, Belgrade, Serbia 15 June 2019. He expresses his gratitude to workshop participants for their comments, and to Čarna Brković, Konstantin Kilibarda and Christian Axboe Neilsen for their helpful feedback on an earlier draft. INTRODUCTION Two moments from the archive serve to illustrate some of the points I want to make here, focusing on socialist Yugoslavia’s role in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) between 1961 and 1979. In the fir ..

[Podcast] Workers’ Solidarity and Changing Ideology in Belarus

LeftEast shares this podcast with the permission of its producers from Contrasens. What is precarity? And how does it adapt to the Eastern European context? In the 11th episode of Contrasens’ podcast, we take a closer look at work and workers. Together with our guest, Volodya Artyukh, who is a Ph.D researcher at C.E.U., we talk about labor aspects in the Eastern European space, specifically in Belarus. Our focus is on workers’ solidarity and protests in the context of ideological change in an ex-soviet country. By thinking through the historical context we show you a glimpse of the economical and politica ..

The Only Way is Back: Romanian Social-Democrats after Liviu Dragnea

This article is published in cooperation with Bilten: Regional Portal. 1. Failing against all odds Just as the polls were announcing a crushing defeat for the Romanian Social-Democrats at the European elections, their party leader, Liviu Dragnea, was slowly being escorted to prison, putting what is probably an end to his political career: a three and a half year sentence had been handed in to him, a blast from his past as a local official in one of the poorest of Romania’s counties. It wasn’t the first time a high-ranking Social-Democrat had been sent jailed: in 2012, former prime-minister and former presiden ..

Austerity Economics Russian Style: “The state never asked you to be born”

Translated by Joseph Livesey For two decades steadily rising living standards and high rates of economic growth have served as the standard explanations for Vladimir Putin’s overwhelming support among Russian voters while a key theme of Russian state propaganda has been the championing of Putin-style “stability” (as opposed to the chaos and poverty of the 1990s) and the unfettered consumption that has been made possible in Russia today. The effectiveness of such propaganda never really depended on the extent to which its depictions of reality were true, as much as it did on confidence in its promise for the ..

Chase those crazy baldheads out of town: Resisting the rise of authoritarianism in occupied Haiti

Editorial Statement: As protesters prepare for another manifestation on Sunday, June 9, LeftEast publishes this piece on the current events in Haiti by the Anakawona Collective in cooperation with Commune. “To change things, we need to be outraged./ If we are outraged, we will organize./ If we are organized, we will become stronger./ If we are stronger, we will rise.” —Endiye, Fè l an Kreyòl,[1] Guerchang Bastia On February 7, 2019,[2] thousands of Haitians took to the streets of Port-au-Prince and other major cities such as Cap-Haitien, Gonaives, and Jacmel to demand the prosecution of governmental offic ..

European Progressive Future? Neither Yesterday’s Tsipras nor Today’s Greens

Note from the LeftEast editors: this text was first published on the website SocialistProject.Ca. It has been reprinted by LeftEast with the permission of the author. One cannot and should not turn away from the disastrous results of the recent European Parliament elections, especially considering that Leftist parties across the European Union (EU) expected to gain 38 Members of the European Parliament (MEP), achieving around 5% ofthe vote. The leadership and organizers of European Left needs to think thoroughly over its failure to mobilize and address working people. Even if failure is specific to the concrete c ..

To the Friends of the Lukács Archive – An appeal of the Lukács Archive International Foundation

Because of the threatening attacks on the LAK and on academic freedom – and even on the MTA – we have to work on urging and supporting the research of Lukács without the traditional institutional background. Therefore, we would like to kindly ask the friends of LANA, those organisations and people – who besides expressing their solidarity, are intending to support our work financially – to contribute towards the expenses of LANA and to the realisation of our plans. Continue reading →

The Left Group GUE/NGL Will Not Split: MEP Helmut Scholz on Elections in the EU and Ukraine

This interview with Helmut Scholz was conducted by editors of the Ukrainian Left magazine СПIЛЬНЕ/ COMMONS. In previous materials we’ve already generally informed our readers about how the European Parliament functions and which parliamentary groups are represented in it. In our interview with you we would like first of all to focus on the radical left in the European Parliament and their group GUE/NGL. What do the radical left parties of the group aim to achieve in the EP in comparison to their goals in the national parliaments? Our core common values on the left is our fight for social justice, democrac ..

She Is with Us: Independently-Running Trade Unionist Vanya Grigorova Shakes Up the Bulgarian Campaign for the European Parliament

For the first time the workers and the disabled have a genuine representative while people on the Left who normally avoid elections for lack of real choice have someone worth their vote. Continue reading →

Searching for Alternatives in Eastern Europe

"...History, rather, is an alternative process in which socialism has a great chance because there are no other real alternatives to capitalism. This is the reason why Marx is so reviled in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, in the absence of a socialist perspective, humankind might face total self-destruction. This is also a realistic alternative." Continue reading →