Tag Archives: war

October 29, 2020

The crushing of Chechnya’s aspirations for independence: An interview with Tony Wood

by Philippe Alcoy  

The murder of French teacher Samuel Paty earlier this month by a young man of Chechen origin was the occasion for an Islamophobic and xenophobic campaign joined not only by the right but also by left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Mélenchon has since retracted his stigmatizing references to the “Chechen community,” but not his simplistic characterization of Chechen veterans as “partisans of a religious wars,” an assessment as absurd as it is in line with the official line from Moscow. To bring some nuance to this discussion, Philippe Alcoy interviewed historian Tony Wood, who has worked on Russia for m ..

October 23, 2020

Armenian leftists: We consciously choose peace

by lefteast  

Note from the editors: Three weeks ago LeftEast published an anti-war statement of the Azerbaijani left. Now we are proud to publish the response of the anti-war Armenian leftists. In the meantime, the war has continued despite two ceasefires. The numbers of killed are hard to estimate, but are in the thousands by now, military as well as civilian. When reading texts like this it is necessary to, first and foremost, take into account the fact that their real impact is insignificant, even compared to the most powerless statements of the OSCE Minsk group and other international organisations. And therefore, the tar ..

September 30, 2020

Anti-war Statement of Azerbaijani Leftist Youth

by Azerbaijani Leftist Youth  

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been with us since 1988, ever since the largely ethnic Armenian population of this province of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic demanded a union with Armenia. The ensuing war ended in 1994 with Nagorno-Karabakh and some neighboring Azerbaijani territories under Armenian control and nearly a million people as refugees. Ever since then, as Azerbaijan has tried to retrieve the lost territories and the occasional negotiations proving fruitless, there have been periodic escalations of the conflict such as the Four-Day War of 2016, but never has the fighting reached the magnitu ..

October 14, 2019

The road to the East. Ukrainian workers in Russia after 2014

by Aleksandra Renoire Alekseeva  

As a 45-year-old woman scoops up another spoonful of cereal for the three year old child she has professionally taken care of during the past couple of years, she tells me: ‘I’m not a migrant, I’m a gastarbaiter [a derogatory word for a guest worker]. And so I’m underground (podpolnij).’. Ljuba first came to Russia a long time ago – before her place of birth in the Donbass became a ‘non-controlled territory’. Her story, like many others, is fairly standard: she couldn’t sustain herself economically or help other relatives that she had to look after at home. And so, she packed her belongings and ..

January 30, 2019

Internationalised Power Struggle in Venezuela

by Joachim Becker  

On January 10th, Nicolás Maduro commenced his third term as Venezuelan President. At that time, the oppositional president of the parliament, Juan Guaidó called on the military forces to stage a coup d’etat.  A few days later, he declared himself to be the president. Within less than half an hour, he was recognised by the USA. This fits well into the classical patterns of right wing coup d’etats in Latin America. With this step, the power struggle has reached a new phase of escalation. Since 2015, a political stalemate and a form of dual power has reigned in the South American country. In the parliamentary ..

January 29, 2019

Letter to citizens of the EU from the “periphery”: Politics of the closed borders are bringing us closer to fascist rules

by lefteast  

Note from LeftEast editors: This article has been reprinted from the Medium account of Are You Syrious. We, the human rights defenders and citizens from the countries relegated to the “periphery” of the European Union (EU) and the Schengen space, want to express our deepest concern for the current situation in which we can see the rise of fascism and a deterioration in basic human rights, such as freedom of movement and the right to seek asylum. The leniency towards and acceptance of the rise of the far-right in European countries is worsening living conditions for people on the move and increasingly endanger ..

January 6, 2017

Turkey’s fragile Bonapartism

by Foti Benlisoy and Baris Yildirim  

Turkey may hold a referendum on the transition to an authoritarian presidential system as soon as late March; however, Erdoğan’s Bonapartist shift does not herald stability for the ruling class, nor a solution to the crisis of neoliberalism. The argument that the contemporary world panorama resembles that of the 1930’s has almost become a cliché. A severe economic depression unseen since that period was likewise followed by a wave of uprisings (2011-14), which, for the moment, seems to be defeated, as we witness a sharp turn towards the right among the working masses. The capitalist system’s current crisi ..

October 14, 2016

Turkey’s Attack on Rojava – A Threat to Radical Democracy in Mesopotamia

by lefteast  

Note from the LeftEast editors: we publish this statement by Rojava Solidarity NYC, a solidarity committee dedicated to supporting the revolution in Rojava, written in response to the recent Turkish operation in Syria, Euphrates Shield.  RS-NYC seeks to publicize Rojava’s ongoing struggle in the English-speaking world, to promote the revolution’s radical communalist politics, and to provide direct, humanitarian aid to the people of Rojava.  Past aid campaigns have included the provision of vital medical supplies and the collection of books for the Mesopotamian Academy. The committee has also published one ..

August 10, 2016

Neither NATO, nor Moscow (II)

by Pietro Maestri  

Note from the LeftEast editors: The July 8/9 NATO summit in Warsaw was not much more than the usual spectacular propaganda advertisement with which the Atlantic Alliance countries wanted to show the world their strength and their common commitment to “security and peace”. In fact, beyond the usual internal conflicts between members of the Alliance, the summit took no “historic” decisions, reflecting the diplomatic and military choices of these days. We have previously published an article by Ilya Budraitskis who reported on the NATO summit through the eyes of anti-war activists and oppone ..

August 7, 2016

Turkey: the coup inside out

by Saygun Gokariksel  

The Realness of the Coup “İçimiz dışımız darbe oldu.”[1] From toes to head the coup absorbed us. The coup has produced many pedestrian-experts, trying to gauge the coup’s hidden internal and external dynamics. This hermeneutics of the secret owes much of its power to a monumental failure… The failure of what could have turned out to be a horrible coup has exposed what it takes to engage in such a level of coordinated military and civic action leading to a coup. There are so many speculative theories and analyses, often bordering on conspiracy theories: rumors, unfinished scenarios, newly reveale ..