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Kosovo: a historic turning point

First published in Viento Sur. Translated from the original French by International Viewpoint. After its overwhelming victory in the early parliamentary elections held on 13 February 2021 in Kosovo (1.8 million inhabitants, 90% Albanian), the Vetëvendosje (VV) party – the name means “Self-determination” – completed the consolidation of its institutional powers on Sunday 4 April 2021. Winning […]

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Serbia and Kosovo go to Jerusalem: Passing Trump circus, or profound geopolitical shake-up?

A bizarre Trumpist ceremony in the White House on September 4 saw the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo signing two separate documents with the United States involving American-funded economic agreements between the two estranged countries. Especially bizarre is Trump’s claim to have ended “hundreds of years” of “mass killings” between Serbia and Kosovo; apart from […]

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The Serbia-Kosovo Treaty: a Servile Acquiescence to US Imperialism

This article was originally published in Serbo-Croatian on the website of the revolutionary socialist organization Marks 21 on September 5, the day after Serbia and Kosovo signed a treaty that international media have labeled “historic.” The “historic” treaty recently signed by Serbia and Kosovo under the auspices of the US president, will prove very useful […]

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The “Pronto” scandal: Wire-tapping senior officials in Kosovo

This article is published in collaboration with the regional portal Bilten. It’s been a month since one of the main portals in Kosovo, “Insajderi”, began publishing a series of tapped telephone conversations among senior political officials in Kosovo. This was the biggest scandal of its kind since the liberation of the country and the reaction […]

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The rural-urban divide in Kosovo

Note from the editors: The following piece was originally published in Croatian on the online platform Bilten A general analysis We can freely say that a key characteristic of Kosovo’s history is that it has had no cities – in the literal sense of the word that was used in medieval Europe. A characteristic of […]

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Kosovo: Spring of the great loneliness

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croat web portal Bilten.Org What was predicted to be “The Kosovar Spring” in fact turned out to be opposition’s “Spring of the great loneliness”, if we can raise an analogy with one of the masterpieces of the Albanian novelist, Ismail Kadare, […]

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Between institutional and non-institutional forms of democratic organizing: Towards revolutionary change

  This is the fourth and final instalment of contributions from the working groups that were set up by the Balkan Forum. The democratisation and participation working group consists of: Arlind Qori, Gal Kirn, Tadej Kurepa, Agon Hamza, Iva Ivšić and Suzana Kunac (coordinator). Introduction We build upon the conclusions of The First Balkan Forum […]

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The association that dissociates: on the Kosovo-Serbia Agreement

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article was originally published by the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. On August 25th, in Brussels, Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Isa Mustafa and his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vucic, signed the Agreement on the Association of Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo. This was the flash point and most disputable event of the three year negotiation […]

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“Rise Above!”: Students of Kosovo fearless in defence of higher education reforms

LeftEast Editor’s note: For a couple of weeks now hundreds of citizens of Kosovo- have been rallying in support of greater autonomy for the University of Pristina. Gathered under the slogan ‘For University’ they joined in support of the Rector’s proposed reforms for improving the quality of higher education. Yesterday’s dismissal of the Rector by […]

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On the mass migration of the population of Kosovo

This article was originally published on the Serbian online platform Masina: proizvodnja drustva kritike. The recent wave of mass migration from Kosovo has, in the local media, been primarily reported through a nationalist matrix. So far, little to no attention has been paid to the structural and economic causes which, in the vast majority of […]