Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
New research shows that a new core of protesters have emerged in Russia - and now they want a concrete programme for change
Earlier this year, opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s return to Russia provoked a political crisis and mass unsanctioned rallies. It seemed that Russia’s protest movement (...)
Documenting this multifaceted region and its complex communities takes patience and the willingness to remove a colonial lens
When I was growing up in the 1980s, films about American Indians were very popular in the Soviet Union. A favourite was the East German film ‘Chingachgook’, set in 18th (...)
In January 2021, Russia made the headlines for once, not for the authoritarianism of its regime but for the massive mobilisations that took place all over the country following the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the publication of the scandalous video on “Putin’s Palace” (...)
Faced with protests for opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s release, the Russian left is torn over whether to join a movement which raises no general social demands. Navalny’s personalized clash with Putin highlights the present hollowness of Russian democracy.
February 14 again saw large-scale (...)
What is the Russian left to think of Alexey Navalny and his campaign against corruption? We reprint a selection of contributions collected by LeftEast.
Rossen Djagalov
Rossen Djagalov is a LeftEast editor.
There is little new in the debate taking place within the Russian left and around it (...)
WE ARE PUBLISHING Suzi Weissman’s interview with Ilya Budraitskis, conducted on February 5th (Moscow time) for Jacobin Radio. If, after you read this interview, you would like to sign the petition calling for the release of all the political prisoners, please read and sign the statement..
Suzi (...)
This urgent appeal was written in collaboration with activists and intellectuals living in Russia.
At the end of January 2021, a wave of mass protests swept through all of Russia’s major cities. The occasion for these protests was the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but the genuine (...)
On 2 February, Alexey Navalny was sent to prison for two years and eight months. Legally, the verdict makes no sense: the court replaced his suspended sentence with a real one for failing to check in with the authorities in Russia – while he was recovering from the novichok poisoning in Germany. (...)
A Central Asian perspective on a divisive Russian figure, Part 1
While Alexey Navalny has emerged as a rallying figure for a large part of the liberal Russian public and a symbol of opposition to president Vladimir Putin, his image among Central Asians – many of whom live in Russia as migrant (...)
Who is Alexei Navalny? We now hear nothing but good things said about him in the West, and the enthusiasm should probably be tempered. I personally have never been a fan of Navalny. At the same time, the guts he showed in returning to Russia when he knew he was threatened both physically and (...)
To understand Alexei Naval’nyi’s significance, one needs some idea of the nature of the political regime in the Russian Federation.
This is a ‘Bonapartist’-type regime, in which the state administration, and proximity to it, are the principal sources of accumulation. Consequently, for this (...)
Mass protests occurred in most regions of Russia on 23 and 31 January 2021. The total number of protestors throughout the country on 23 January was put by the authorities at fewer than 10,000, but by the opposition much more. The largest of the demonstrations was, as usual, in Moscow, where (...)
On 23 January, large-scale protests were held in Russia, the main unifying demand of which was the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who had been arrested a week earlier just after his return from Berlin (where he was being rehabilitated after being poisoned).
On the eve of the (...)
Translated from the Russian original on Colta.ru by Maxim Edwards. LeftEast publishes this text not by way of unreserved endorsement but rather in an effort to initiate a debate about leftist strategy. In our editorial discussion at least, it generated plenty of questions: Do we need to limit (...)
Many Desperate to Get Home Amid Covid-19
“Please tell them to send more trains!” I heard this repeated often last week while visiting a temporary migrant camp on Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, filled with Uzbek migrants desperate to be repatriated home to Uzbekistan.
People started flocking to (...)
Russian media pours scorn on Europe, but the only progressive way forward for our common continent is together
In the early 1990s Russia used to have a strong sense of belonging in Europe. This began to change: the post-Soviet shock therapy reforms were a punishing transition to a free-market (...)
Note from the editors: The problem with Russian elections is the same as the problem with elections in most advanced capitalist countries, but simply more extreme: there is nobody on the ballot to vote for. The authorities are prepared to go to great lengths–set up fake opposition parties (...)
For two decades steadily rising living standards and high rates of economic growth have served as the standard explanations for Vladimir Putin’s overwhelming support among Russian voters while a key theme of Russian state propaganda has been the championing of Putin-style “stability” (as opposed (...)
As conspiracy theories about Trump-Russian “collusion” and fatuous claims about Putin’s iron grip have dominated American headlines for the past two years, the politics of the Russian street have undergone a noticeable transformation. Despite the authorities’ best efforts, mass street protests have (...)
Portrayal of Soviet withdrawal from country distorts historical facts, claims politician
A row has broken out in Russia over a film about the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, after politicians and former servicemen criticised its unflattering depiction of Red Army soldiers as (...)
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