Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
Milan Kundera, who died this month, became known as a staunchly individualist critic of one-party Communist rule. Yet his work was also steeped in the rich earlier traditions of left-wing Czech literature, which grappled with the meaning of human freedom.
The death of Milan Kundera this (...)
The war in Ukraine is a political earthquake. It has divided the left internationally. I am one of those who believes that the defeat of Russian imperialism by the people of Ukraine is vital for the future of humanity. Either the far-right and authoritarian governments are going to be (...)
The novelist, who died last week, posed questions on identity that resonate to this day
The novelist, Milan Kundera once observed to fellow-writer Philip Roth, “teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question”. He feared that in a world in which people “prefer to judge rather than (...)
This is perhaps the worst book I’ve ever read. It has little narrative flow, doesn’t consist of a full review of the work undertaken by the Zionist movement against the Nazis, offers little to nothing in the way of context for the actions described by the author and is filled with (...)
THe TV series Volha (Volga) relies on our weariness with pop culture’s idealization of ’normalization’ (the conformist period after the Soviet-led invasion of 1968). Unfortunately, it only offers a counterpoint to cute retro comedies in which everyone is terrible. Even its simplification (...)
Andreu Nin, leader of the POUM, was murdered by agents of Stalin during the Spanish Civil War. Nin’s legacy speaks to issues still relevant today, from Catalonia’s right to self-determination to the danger of the far right.
Andreu Nin was the leader of the Partido Obrero de Unificación (...)
As fresh 2023 Irish state investigations continue into the death of a Tralee baby in 1984, we are not hearing the story of Joanne Hayes. Many readers must be wondering – Why?
A huge reason is that three police officers got the book of Joanne Hayes – “My Story” – destroyed. These Gardaí (...)
Ninety years ago today, a fire engulfed the Reichstag in Berlin. The arsonist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was hoping to inspire resistance to fascism, but the Nazis used the fire as a pretext to impose a regime of violent terror against the German left.
Ninety years ago today, on February 27, (...)
Catalonia is a major international tourist destination with enticing options for almost all tastes and most pockets, so it’s likely that quite a few people on the left will have been there already or may go there in the future. If you are one of these, then this book is certain to enrich your (...)
For the international left, Putin’s war against Ukraine started like the First World War and it is possible that it will end like it. Indeed, from the very first day, both wars have caused the splintering of the international left and its division into two increasingly divergent, opposing and (...)
’68 wasn’t just in Prague, but the whole world, in Paris, West Berlin, Berkeley and Chicago, Mexico and everywhere. The fact that today, fifty-three years later it’s still being discussed is only proof of how remarkable it was. – Hungarian philosopher G. M. Tamás in conversation.
András (...)
This new documentary series proves that the personal is indeed political. In eight short episodes, sociologist Kateřina Lišková guides us through topics that we often tend to perceive as something purely intimate.
The Chronicle of Orgasm is an eight-part documentary series produced by (...)
At least during the interwar period, when there was a confrontation between the left and the fascists, it was always the fascists who won. And unfortunately, most of the time without meeting a real resistance. However, there has been one important exception. That of the Italian revolutionary (...)
The background for writing this review was that of Larry Wolff’s book, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilizations on the Mind of the Enlightenment, which was published in autumn 2020 in a Polish translation, more than 25 years after its first English edition. This review attempts to (...)
What can we learn from a short-lived political newspaper meant to be distributed to the employees of a handful of factories?
Solidaritatea: Journal of the Workingmen and Workingwomen of the Tobacco Manufactories and Matches Factories was a four-page, A4 format, bilingual (Romanian and (...)
In his latest project, director Max Lemcke is giving back a voice to the victims of “Billy the Kid,” one of the dictatorship’s most notorious police officer
Speaking to the camera, each victim remembers the torture they were subjected to in the cells of the General Security police (...)
As problematic monuments are being brought down in recent anti-racist protests around the world, Hungary, in contrast, saw the completion of a deeply flawed and tone-deaf memorial.
Built for the centennial of the Trianon Peace Treaty, the ““Memorial of National Unity”” in front of the (...)
Seventy-five years ago Auschwitz was liberated– the first to enter the camp was a battalion led by the Major Anatoliy Shapiro, a Jewish Ukrainian of the Red Army’s, First Ukrainian Front. To mark the Anniversary we republish the memoir of the respected scholar Roman Rosdolsky first published (...)
In 1930s Europe, Hendrik de Man’s bid to replace class struggle with state planning led to a deadly embrace with fascism. His attempt to graft nationalism onto socialism offers a terrible lesson for social democrats today who adapt their politics to far-right ideas.
Hendrik de Man didn’t (...)
A historian has located more than 500 images taken by the Hungarian photographer Kati Horna between 1937 and 1938, when she was working for the CNT anarchist labor union
The forgotten legacy of the Hungarian photographer Kati Horna has been unearthed by a Spanish researcher from the archives (...)
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