In the light of 30 years of independence, lack of vision and investments yesterday and today, and the eternal return of Janez Janša, there is really not much to celebrate. Rather, the third Bonapartist return of Janša could be seen as a trigger point that ends the nationalist fairy tale. It can remind us yet again that it is high time to launch a political counter-offensive opened to an ecological and socialist future. Continue reading → 
LeftEast’s Mariya Ivancheva interviews Zsófia Ádám and Andrea Czerván of the Solidarity Economy Center in Budapest: "Our ultimate goal is to support the growth of a solidarity economy ecosystem, by which we mean a network of economic initiatives - with as few resources leaking out as possible and fulfilling as many needs as possible - that prioritizes the reproduction of life and the well-being of communities over profit, and operates in a socially and ecologically sustainable, democratic way." Continue reading →
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed who our society depends on for survival. It was those working in logistics, health care, trade, the post office, and other ‘essential’ industries that saved many economies from collapse and ensured the functioning of entire societies. Yet, years of living in poor conditions, working in unsafe workplaces where our lives don't mean anything, years of alienation and marginalization of workers in public sphere have left quite a mark on working class abilities for mobilization. Those who managed to organize across the workplace’s walls and borders started to build transnatio ..
I am no expert of Chinese infrastructure investments in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. I have only been systematically going through existing research on the topic lately to find, much to my disappointment, that most of academic discourse on the topic (let alone media and political narratives) is devoid of critical approaches (exceptions apply, see: Gambino, 2019; Rogelja, 2020) . We can see how easily ‘the China threat’ narrative can be racialized, and how easily in turn such racialized narrative can be utilised to construct a phantom enemy in service of existing power structures. Therefore, I want to highlight ..
Note from LeftEast editors: Millions of farmers and workers have been protesting across India against three farm laws. The protests, described by some as the biggest ever witnessed in history, have received little to no attention in mainstream media. The farmers have pointed out that the law related to the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMCs) will destroy the system of mandis which has worked reasonably for them. It will destroy the MSP (minimum support price) process and allow large agro-chains and corporations to control prices. We reprint this article by Shraddha Agarwal from the “People’s Arc ..
Note of the LeftEast editors: The present text, which we co-publish together with TSS is part of a series of publications and webinars on the topics of social reproduction, (women’s) labour and migration in East-Central Europe and beyond. The video from the first webinar Responses to Covid19 and (post)pandemic: social reproduction, migrants and women in Central/Eastern Europe and beyond, where this text was first presented can be seen here. The aim of the series is to raise awareness about struggles for labour, reproduction and migrant rights, as well as of the condition of women in society and how these h ..
Note from LeftEast editors: A shortened version of Selim Nadi’s interview with Rossen Djagalov was published in Jacobin Magazine. Could there have been a Third World without the “Second”? Certainly, there could have been — but it would have looked very different. Most histories of these geopolitical blocs and their constituent societies and cultures are written in their relation to the West. Yet the interdependence of the Second and Third Worlds is evident not only from a common nomenclature but also from their near-simultaneous disappearance around 1990. Rossen Djagalov’s book From Internationa ..
Note from LeftEast editors: we stand with this position shared by the Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational network, first published on the website of Transnational Social Strike. November 25th is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. On this day women* stand together against patriarchal violence in all its different forms and shades. On Sunday November 29th we, Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational (E.A.S.T.), invite everyone to discuss inan online public assemblyhow to connect transnationally struggles against patriarchal, racist, capitalist violence in the pandemic. ..
Part 2 of a two-part interview with Łukasz Stanek by Zoltán Ginelli. Transcribed and edited by Zoltán Ginelli. Part 1 you can read HERE. Łukasz Stanek is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the Manchester School of Architecture, The University of Manchester, UK. Stanek authoredHenri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory(2011) and edited Lefebvre’s book Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment (2014). His latest book, Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War was published by Princeton University Press in 2020. C ..
Note of the LeftEast editors: The present text, which we co-publish together with TSS is part of a series of publications and webinars on the topics of social reproduction, (women’s) labour and migration in East-Central Europe and beyond. The video from the second webinar (Post)pandemic struggles on social reproduction, where this text was first presented can be seen here. The aim of the series is to raise awareness about struggles for labour, reproduction and migrant rights, as well as of the condition of women in society and how these have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The publications and ..
The Sutjeska and Bijeljina monuments appear to stand for two profoundly divergent worlds, one symbolizing the cosmopolitan and antifascist past of socialist Yugoslavia, the other embodying the hyper-nationalist and segregationist present of post-Yugoslav states. Yet both monuments were made by the same sculptor. A ..
