Category Archives: Insert

March 13, 2020

How “love what you do” went wrong in an ‘academic sweatshop’ in Siberia

by Natalia Savelyeva  

LeftEast reprints Natalia Savelyeva’s article with the permission of OpenDemocracy-Russia. We’re told that we should “do what we love” when it comes to our jobs. But what if loving what you do leads – slowly, imperceptibly – to abuse? In social sciences, a lot of work is dedicated to why people become committed to organisations. The classics, like Erving Goffman or Lewis Coser, claim that organisations can separate an individual – partly or totally, socially and sometimes physically – from her everyday environment and provide her with a new life-world and identity. Other resear ..

January 18, 2020

To remember is to fight: the legacy of Russian activist lawyer Stanislav Markelov

by Thomas Rowley and Giuliano Vivaldi  

LeftEast is publishing this commemorate piece in collaboration with OpenDemocracy-Russia, who have been keeping Markelov’s memory alive in the English public sphere by translating his articles and getting others to write about him. Eleven years ago, this anti-fascist lawyer was murdered on the streets of Moscow. Stanislav Markelov’s legacy remains important to this day. Here we present a selection of his articles and interviews in English. Stanislav Markelov in his words and others’: Introduction: To remember is to fightGiuliano Vivaldi, Thomas RowleyRussia’s trade union movement, 1990s-2000sAlexa ..

January 2, 2020

We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism: Adela Gjorgjioska

by Adela Gjorgjioska  

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organize? By 2015, when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, I had already moved out of the UK after living there for 10 years. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I wasforced out by a series of expensive, exhausting and emotionally draining visa extension processes. So, as a non-EU migrant, I had already experienced institutional xenophobia long before the Brexit saga brought it into the mainstream. Residence status strongly affects one’s relationship ..

December 30, 2019

We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism – Matan Kaminer

by Matan Kaminer  

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organize? The consistent left in Israel is mostly made up of Palestinian citizens, organized in the Communist Party and its front group Hadash/al-Jabhah, the liberal-nationalist Balad/Tajama’u (who both form part of the Joint List parliamentary formation) and smaller extra-parliamentary formations like Abnaa’ el-Balad. These have generally been sympathetic to Corbyn due to his support for the Palestinian cause, but I don’t get the impression that they have been following ..

December 30, 2019

We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism: Sorin Gog

by Sorin Gog  

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organise? In the Central and Eastern European region, Romania stands out as one of the countries that has adopted some of the most radical neo-liberal reforms in the past three decades of post-socialist transformation. Starting with the shock therapies, economic restructurings and privatizations of the mid-90’s and ending with the structural reforms and austerity policies adopted after the 2008 financial crisis, Romania has become deeply entrenched in neo-liberal reforms ..

December 29, 2019

We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism: Mariya Ivancheva

by Mariya Ivancheva  

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organize? What was at stake with this project was in equal measure painfully distant and painfully close to the contexts I am immersed in, and to an extent represent. In both the UK and in Bulgaria, I would be quite similar to the part of the UK Left that has been eating humble pie about the electoral loss: urban, university-educated, cosmopolitan left-wing voters. In both cases, this is a new Left with two further shared characteristics. First, we are fighting with ghosts fro ..

December 29, 2019

We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism: Rossen Djagalov

by Rossen Djagalov  

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organize? I never thought of myself as a Corbynist/ Corbynista and found the early hype about him vaguely troubling. Don’t get me wrong: I very much like the man and his politics and certainly there is little reason to think he would ever “betray” the cause: he has stood on the right side of history for more decades than I have lived. But, granted I call myself a Marxist, I find it hard to think of a single person—rather than a set of principles—as my political lodes ..

December 29, 2019

We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism: Tomislav Medak

by Tomislav Medak  

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organise? My political milieu is largely defined by anti-enclosures struggles and a group of progressive and radical left political initiatives in Croatia, which have emerged out of the university occupations and Right to the City movement and have recently started to contest elections. The attraction of the Corbyn project for that milieu would be primarily in the attempt to bootstrap a transformative political project built on a mass political mobilisation under the historica ..

October 7, 2019

“A Shakespearean Act of Betrayal”: Trump Agrees to Let Turkey Invade Kurdish-Controlled Syrian Area

by Democracy Now  

U.S. troops have begun withdrawing from northeast Syria as Turkey prepares to invade Kurdish-controlled areas of the country. For years, the Kurds have been close allies to the United States in the fight against ISIS. On Sunday, however, the White House released a statement that surprised many in the region, announcing that Turkey would be “moving forward with its long-planned operation in Northern Syria,” following a phone call between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in that operation, and the United States forces, ..

May 10, 2019

Talking About Revolution in Africa

by Tin Hinane El Kadi et al.  

The article we have excerpted here was originally published by the Review of African Political Economy. To see the full article, click here. To discuss the extraordinary events in Sudan and Algeria that have shaken these countries – and the continent – to the core in recent months, roape.net has asked some of our contributors to debate the significance and meaning of these revolutions. Both countries are confronted by a challenge: are the movements pacified in the interests of the local and global ruling classes or do the revolutionary movements successfully take-on and overturn these deep-rooted and brutal s ..