Lefteast
Russia’s political capitalists waged war in order to survive as a class, to continue accumulating wealth through the exploitation of the state – says Volodymyr Ishchenko, a research associate at the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. – However, this war, depending on what happens on the battlefield, may equally bring about a fall or a radical transformation of the whole post-Soviet order. Interview by Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat.
Volodymyr Artiukh presented this text at the conference ‘New Times? Confronting the Escalating Crises of Capitalism’ in Budapest 26-27 May, organized by the Karl Polanyi Research Center for Global Social Studies and the Commission of Global Transformations and Marxian Anthropology-IUAES in cooperation with the Working Group for Public Sociology ‘Helyzet’, ‘Capitalism Nature Socialism’, ‘Focaal – Journal […]
This article is part of the multilingual ELMO series CEE housing movements resisting neoliberal urban transformations and it originally appeared in English and Ukrainian on Spilne/Commons on 2nd April 2022. Translated from Ukrainian by Yuliia Kulish. “The realtor said that today there were more than 300 requests, with only 5 apartments successfully found.” “We searched all […]
The “Russian world” is one of the key elements of Putin’s official ideology, which served to justify the military invasion in Ukraine. In this article, originally published in the new anti-war web platform POSLE.MEDIA, which you should follow and support, one of its editors, the political theorist Ilya Budraitskis, analyzes the genealogy of the “Russian […]
Note from LeftEast editors: This discussion, moderated by Barnaby Raine from Salvage journal, was organised took place on the platform of Salvage and Haymarket Books. It started from the premise that one of the main lines of argument on the Left and among social scientists today has been about the causes of the war. Why […]
This discussion is a collaboration between LeftEast, Dis:orient, and the Bildungswerk der Heinrich-Böll-Foundation. As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its fourth month, its impact on West Asia and North Africa (WANA) remains only sporadically analyzed. This, despite the multitude of political, military, and economic ties both Russia and Ukraine hold with WANA. This virtual talk […]
Note from LeftEast editors. This interview was originally published on May 12, 2022 at Midnight Sun. We reprint it with the permission of the original publication. Anastasia Vosstavshaya and Marie are members of the Russian Socialist Movement (RSM), a revolutionary socialist organization active in the Russian state. Midnight Sun spoke to them about what life is like for anti-war organizers […]
We repost this video and its original introductory text with the permission of the organizers. On May 10, Internationalism from Below teamed up with Haymarket Books, the Ukrainian leftist journal Спільне / Commons and New Politics magazine in convening How Can Feminist Solidarity Help Ukraine? — a discussion with Yuliya Yurchenko, Oksana Dutchak, Sasha Talaver, […]
The following report back from Finland by Kyle Bailey looks at a nascent protest movement against the sudden shift in Finnish public opinion when it comes to NATO membership. The Russian military’s recent aggression against Ukraine has effectively upended a key mainstay of Finland’s post-WWII diplomacy, which was built around official neutrality. In the space of a few months, this consensus has been shattered and a new consensus seems to be emerging instead around accelerated NATO membership. This short piece gives insight into the narrowing space of public debate in Finland on these issues, and highlights how a small coalition of progressive groups are attempting to challenge the militarization such a decision is surely to bring in its wake.
Russian propaganda and the prohibition of humanism Being a Russian living in Europe means having a mind filled with possibilities inadequate for the Russian context and cherishing an imperishable, naïve hope in resistance for a better future. People in the EU are calling on Russians to protest. However, the current conditions changed the meaning of […]