Articles

In the run up to the Duma elections, the Kremlin has introduced laws stepping up the repression of civil society. But the public mood is changing and screw-tightening could lead to a broader mobilisation of regime opponents.

Controversies around waste disposal in Russia express popular discontent with Putin’s power vertical. Far from ending protests against landfills, the Kremlin’s top-down ‘garbage revolution’ has only deepened citizens’ sense of injustice.

One year in and the pandemic has hit women particularly hard: decades’ of advancement in the workplace and academia are under threat; domestic violence has skyrocketed. And yet, in institutional politics, women seem to be growing in numbers and influence. This year’s International Women’s Day ‘challenge’ is one of recovery.

Growing up in North Wales after the War as the child of a merchant navy sea captain was to be aware of a world beyond one’s cultural horizons. But though a source of fascination, cosmopolitanism came at a cost to both family and father. The story of one man’s life in a once proud national industry.

Ever been had? Led to believe a lie, an untruth? Realized the con too late? It can happen to anyone. Deception is rife. But so too is delusion. ‘Tangents’, a new Eurozine editorial feature, takes a critical look at the duplicitous pair.

Gaby Zipfel, the former editor of the journal ‘Mittelweg 36’, was for three decades one of the driving forces behind the Eurozine network. Her vision, intellectual energy and unmatched capacity for critique will be sorely missed.

The rush to find a COVID-19 vaccine has resulted in myriad products rather than medical strategies. In the West, mostly private labs are behind what has become a precious commodity. How did public health and money become contractually tied to privately owned medicine?

Russia’s penal system has not been reformed since the late-Stalinist period and is essentially managed by the FSB. Alexei Navalny will be sent to one of the many correction colonies that serve as prisons. Conditions in these deeply backward institutions are atrocious, says Olga Romanova, founder of the NGO Russia Behind Bars.

Carnival is a time of cultural exuberance. In the Low Countries, however, the masquerade has become a refuge for dominant groups to caricature the heritage and bodies of others. Where does this propensity come from? And can it be changed?

Belarus and its people are currently navigating complex processes of democratization. From clashes on the streets to intellectual discourse on political rhetoric and media representation, the official line on Belarusian identity comes under scrutiny.

Despite real and immediate environmental catastrophes, Australia’s climate change policies are the most backward in the world. To be pro-environment is to be seen as un-Australian; coal mining in particular is a source of national pride.

Germany was quick to claim the German-Turkish vaccine developers of Pfizer/BioNTech as proof of its open society. But their success is more an exception than a rule. Rather than congratulate itself, Germany needs to confront how it abandoned the migrants it once invited.

When does political pressure reach its breaking point? As censorship methods get subtler, eastern European journalists rely on the popular support for independent journalism to stand their ground against rampant Orbánization.

Yet another independent outlet is slain in Hungary: Klubrádió just lost its broadcast license, resuming a decade-long campaign to silence the channel. Journalists march on, hoping for a lengthy legal battle to do them justice in the end. They have accommodated pressure, but their defiance comes at a high price.

Radical Islamism benefits from the silence of moderate Muslims who see no reason why their faith implies a responsibility to condemn its violence. But Islamism also stands to gain from the blurring of boundaries between genuine Islamophobia and criticism of Islam where it departs from democratic norms.

What causes the stark generational difference in people’s understanding of Soviet times? Is it only personal nostalgia, or maybe another set of expectations? Why didn’t the lifting of the Iron Curtain bring down the wall between East and West? Kinga Anna Gajda examines the perspectives offered in the Eurozine anthology ‘The Legacy of Division. East and West after 1989’.