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Articles published in Eurozine
Unreal estate
Freemarket disregard for the elementary moral truths of debt and obligation is to blame for the current crisis, says Roger Scruton. But the call for a return to economic morality is no endorsement of the financial fictions of the social democratic state. [Romanian version added] [more]
War in Europe? Not so impossible
The dark warnings of the Polish finance minister about the prospect of war in Europe if the crisis deepens were met with scepticism. But there is no call for complacency about where current, nationalist tendencies might lead, writes the editor of "Adevarul Europa". [Danish version added] [more]
Democratic, can travel
The Russian regime's abandonment of the ideology of public interest prevents it being measured against its own standards, while its policy of open borders diffuses protest from a dissatisfied middle class. Ivan Krastev on reasons for authoritarianism's tenacity.[Romanian version added] [more]
The politics of no alternatives or How power works in Russia
An interview with Gleb Pavlovsky
In interview with "Transit", former dissident turned "political technologist" Gleb Pavlovsky talks about the workings of political power in the former Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia. [Polish version added] [more]
The literal metaphors of a terrorist
Is there something extreme in Norwegian society? asks Remi Nilsen, editor of the Norwegian edition of "Le Monde diplomatique" after the tragedy in Oslo. Anders Behring Breivik's writings are not the wild fabulations of a madman. We have heard it all before. [more]
More debate, not less
"More debate" and "more democracy" has been the quiet call of defiance after the terror attacks in Norway. A good idea, says Knut Olav Ĺmĺs, culture and op-ed editor at "Aftenposten" -- but one that also brings discomfort. Conflicts in society must remain visible. [more]
The tragic ironies of Breivik's terror
The irony is not just that Breivik's hatred of Islam should lead to a horror that many took to be Islamic, but also that nothing so resembles Breivik's mindset as that of an Islamist jihadist, writes Kenan Malik. Both use the language of the "clash of civilizations" to justify their atrocities. [more]
Markets and society
When high finance cripples the economy and corrodes democracy
The current financial crisis is not confined to economies, writes former Romanian finance minister Daniel Daianu. The erosion of the middle class, the spread of extremism and the threat to democracy are some of the more obvious social effects demanding attention. [Danish version added] [more]
Who created Ratko Mladic?
What remains after a war criminal has been sent to The Hague
When Ratko Mladic asks who it was who voted for Milosevic, he has a point, comments Slavenka Drakulic. Will trading off Mladic for the EU allow Serbs to avoid the question of collective responsibility? [Norwegian and Romanian versions added] [more]
When personal integrity is not enough
Herta Müller and Gabriel Liiceanu discuss language and dissidence
Talking to the philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu in Bucharest in October 2010, the novelist Herta Müller defended her often unpopular view that the preservation of personal intellectual integrity alone was inadequate as a form of political resistance during communism. [more]
The logic of accusation has no end
Adam Michnik and Andrei Plesu discuss "resistance through culture"
For Adam Michnik, resistance to communism took many forms: reproaching another for their lack of heroism is impossible. Talking to Andrei Plesu in Bucharest in February 2011, he called for an end to the logic of accusation and warned against instrumentalizing the quarrel with communism. [more]
Whispering on paper
Email, text messaging and social networks have revolutionized the way we communicate. Yet as the magic of instantaneity fades, George Blecher begins to miss some good old-fashioned penmanship. [more]
Algeria: A country in search of its movement
A brief account of the Years of Fire
In Algeria, the uprising is being kept down by political propaganda and police brutality. Ghania Mouffok describes the deep anger of a population that has been living under a state of emergency since 1992, asking whether the street can join with the liberal elite to depose the corrupt and complacent government. [Turkish version added] [more]
What kind of capitalism for eastern Europe?
Deficits are the result of unsustainable processes, says political economist Zoltán Pogátsa in interview. Merely cutting expenditure leads to general decline: eastern European countries instead need to review the functioning of the state and its subsystems. [more]
The crisis and the end of liberalism in central Europe
Even as the state took over large portions of the private banking sector in the US and UK, politicians in central Europe were singing the praises of Anglo-Saxon market liberalism. They are the last orphans of Bush and Cheney, writes Jacques Rupnik. [Estonian version added] [more]
On France, Gobineau, colonialism and the Roma
Attempts by successive French governments to deal with Roma migrants smacks of colonial racism, argues Valeriu Nicolae. Deportation will not solve anything; the problems that exist in Roma settlements are the result of decades of indifference. [more]
The Roma: A new political weapon?
The notion that cultural difference is to blame for the marginalization of the Roma is a myth, writes Olivier Peyroux. Lack of public awareness of successful Roma integration compounds their permanent pariah status. [more]
The digital Pharmakon
What is the difference between voluntary and involuntary self-revelation online? Is the regulation of Internet privacy a matter for the state, or must the web community negotiate its own privacy norms and strategies? A conversation between a connoisseur and a neophyte. [more]
The metaseminar
Theses on education and the experience of critical thought
The Bologna reforms embody a narrowly utilitarian turn in higher education policy and are more a cause for concern than for celebration. A critique of the pragmatic reduction of knowledge and plea for the university as "locus of the unconditionally political". [Romanian version added] [more]
"The most important thing here is self-discipline..."
The Khodorkovsky-Ulitskaya correspondence
"Looking for loopholes in the law and exploiting them - this was the most that we allowed ourselves. And we got our kicks from showing the government the mistakes it had made in legislation." Mikhail Khodorkovsky confides in novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya. [Romanian version added] [more]
Dilemma '89: My father was a communist
Two sons of well-known persecuted communists discuss the still unanswered questions surrounding the involvement of their fathers' generation in post-war communism, and the failings of today's debate about the past in the former communist countries. [Hungarian version added] [more]
How to become a real Muslim
The media has colluded with self-promoting but marginal Muslim clerics to create a cycle of self-reinforcing myths around the Mohammed cartoons. The fear of causing offence undermines progressive trends in Islam and strengthens the hand of religious bigots. [more]
Romania: Bologna versus entrenched interests
Critique of Bologna in Romania is a pretext for academic complacency and professional self-preservation, writes Corneliu Balan. The problem is not the Bologna system as such but the subordination of education to political interests and the privatization of the universities. [more]
European university reform
Ten propositions in search of an answer
What in the US has been a tradition of collaboration between universities and prosperous private business, in Europe risks turning into an acceptance of the dictates of the economy. On the "entrepreneurial university" and other myths of Bologna. [Lithuanian version added] [more]
Why I have not returned to Belgrade
Is it to spare her emotions that Slavenka Drakulic has not returned to Belgrade since the wars? She doesn't think so. Instead, her reasons have to do with the silence and denial of so much of Serbian society, and with a youth that is failing to ask the right questions. [Romanian version added] [more]
Tito between legend and thriller
A museum to Tito at his one-time summer residence glorifying the Yugoslav dictator is in stark contrast to a damning new biography, finds Slavenka Drakulic. Yet between the two extremes is an absence of objective history-writing in the former Yugoslavia. [more]
The dissident generation, the European idea and transatlantic divergence
In the former satellite states, the legacy of '89 includes a hawkish Atlanticism that endures to the present, writes Christian Lequesne. The recent open letter to President Obama signed by Walesa, Havel and other luminaries speaks of a fading relationship. [more]
In God's name
A new UN proposal condemning "defamation of religion" cements oppressive governments' control of free speech while still sounding compatible with the advanced multiculturalism of liberal democracies, writes Miklós Haraszti. [more]
Still not free
Why post-'89 history must go beyond self-diagnosis
The dissident generation of the 1970s and 1980s produced a body of work unprecedented in Czech history, says Martin Simecka. Yet it is precisely the monumentality of this generation's legacy that prevents the interpretation of the communist past going beyond self-diagnosis. [Swedish version added] [more]
Twenty years on
"When in opposition, they do not comport themselves as the opposition to a democratically elected government. When they become the governing party, they pursue the same paternalistic, populist political game." Agnes Heller's indictment of Hungarian politicians twenty years after 1989. [more]
Holocaust: The ignored reality
Auschwitz and the Gulag are generally taken to be adequate or even final symbols of the evil of mass slaughter. But they are only the beginning of knowledge, a hint of the true reckoning with the past still to come, writes Timothy Snyder. [more]
The Left treading on the Right
"The Left is impudent, cheeky," writes Romanian philosopher Andrei Plesu in "Dilema veche". "It hides the Gulag behind a veil of 'historical necessity'." A provocative statement that has prompted a response from the Hungarian political scientist G.M. Tamás. [more]
A response to Andrei Plesu
"Undoubtedly, leftwingers exist who can find excuses for the Soviet penal universe. But I don't regularly discuss matters with them". G.M. Tamás responds to Andrei Plesu's assertion that "The Left [...] hides the Gulag behind a veil of 'historical necessity'." [more]
Some comments to G.M. Tamás
"Undoubtedly, leftwingers exist who can find excuses for the Soviet penal universe. But I don't regularly discuss matters with them". Thus responded G.M. Tamás to Andrei Plesu's assertion that "The Left [...] hides the Gulag behind a veil of 'historical necessity'." Plesu adds a concluding comment. [more]
For a return to common sense
The Romanian MEP criticizes neoliberal development policies divorced from "concrete local conditions" and instead pleads for market reforms that, while stimulating growth in poorer countries, are implemented "pragmatically". [more]
Dinner with Darwin
On the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of "The Origin of Species", "New Humanist" editor Caspar Melville asks a selection of scientific commentators what they'd like to say to Darwin around the supper table. [more]
Hey Jude
Media self-regulation in Romania
Media self-regulation has many advantages over the more intrusive forms of state legislation, argues Ioana Avadani. Not only would it help raise professional standards in Romania, it might create greater responsibility towards the public that now trust journalists so implicitly. [more]
Romania: The quality of the press and the quality press
The more that the Romanian press professionalizes, the more it is discovering the conflict between editorial content and market demands, writes "Dilema Veche" editor Mircea Vasilescu. [more]
Fragile new Europe
Despite talk of a "unified European plan" to combat recession, the motto among EU member states seems to be "each to his own". The financial crisis is reimposing the divide between eastern and western Europe, writes Mircea Vasilescu. [more]
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