Born into a cosmopolitan Jewish family, Ferenc Fejtő lived a turbulent youth as a Marxist and social democrat in Horthy’s Hungary. Having fled just before the fascist rise to power, he led a more comfortable life as a journalist and historian of eastern Europe in Paris, remaining within the left even after his disillusionment with communism.
Articles
Bulgaria will go to the polls on 2 April for the fifth time in two years, without there being any prospects of a resolution to the stalemate between liberal and pro-Russian forces. Caught in permanent election mode, the country is becoming increasingly isolated from Europe, while authoritarian influences gain ground.
People power?
A reply to James Miller
A reductionist definition of democracy as ‘people power’ fails to grasp democracy’s political evolution as guarantee against tyranny. Giving a voice to the biosphere extends this principle and is not to negate democracy’s own conditions.
North Macedonia’s choice to support Ukraine has exposed it to intensified hybrid attacks. But internal divisions and festering disputes with neighbouring Bulgaria create a fertile ground for Russian interference, feeding existing resentment and a sense of encirclement.
Recommended topics
Held hostage to the Russian veto, the UN has gradually abandoned the Syrian population. Russia’s war in Ukraine worsens the situation still, but also offers hope for democratic forces in Syria that their tormentors will one day be brought to justice.
Ode to a dying village
Old age and loneliness in the Romanian countryside
In a rural village in northwestern Romania, church bells ring ever more rarely and memories are the only refuge from loneliness. The few inhabitants are the last witnesses of a dying way of life, but their stories and experience reveal something universal.
The war crimes charges brought by the ICC against Putin are a breakthrough. But built-in safeguards of national interest, combined with an incomplete patchwork of mechanisms and jurisdictions, mean a long way ahead before Russia is prosecuted under international law for the crime of aggression.
Sexual violence is being used systematically by the Russian military in Ukraine to achieve the political goals of the Russian leadership, and is not just the result of ‘indiscipline’ or abuse of power.
Eurozine review
Progressives and reactionaries
Fronesis 76-77 (2022)
Reconsidering the authoritarian personality: Are progressives really on the right side of history? Can Reich’s theory of sexuality explain today’s far-right? And is the manosphere more than a reactionary self-help forum?
Translators of the world, unite!
La Revue Nouvelle 1/2023
On translation as politicized practice: domestication versus foreignization; degendering and resistance; and the risks of translating feminist sociology back into Farsi.
‘The end of the big lie’
Internazionale Storia 5 (2023)
Stalin through the journalism of his time: H.R. Knickerbocker’s interview with Ekaterina Geladze; Gareth Jones’s exposé of the Holodomor; W.E.B. Du Bois’s homage to a freedom fighter; and Raymond Aron’s optimism in 1956.
Focal points
The ‘great democratic revolution’ of modern times, as Tocqueville once called it, appears to be spluttering to a halt. Some observers, recalling the disasters of the 1920s and 30s, are suggesting that an anti-democratic counterrevolution on a global scale has begun. But is the writing really on the wall? Or does declinism prevent us from recognizing moments of democratic renewal?
Eurozine looks into the political, social and cultural factors that define the war on Ukraine, from Russia’s neo-imperialist aspirations and the concept of culpability to artists at the forefront of Ukrainian resistance. This focal point is supported by the C.H.Beck Verlag.
Post-revolutionary Ukrainian society displays a unique mix of hope, enthusiasm, social creativity, collective trauma of war, radicalism and disillusionment. With the Maidan becoming history, the focal point ‘Ukraine in European Dialogue’ explores the new challenges facing the young democracy, its place in Europe, and the lessons it might offer for the future of the European project.
The focal point presents the findings of the project ‘Eurasia in Global Dialogue’ being carried out at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna (IWM). The focal point is an extension of the earlier focal point, ‘Russia in Global Dialogue’ that ran in Eurozine and at the IWM from 2012–2018.
Eurozine Network
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.