Articles

Belarusian and Ukrainian intellectuals have been applying postcolonial theory to Russia since the 1990s. But they have largely been ignored in the West. Now it is time to listen to those voices from the ‘borderlands’.

The exodus of 150k Belarusians since 2020 is the latest in a series of emigration waves to the West beginning in the 19th century. Each new wave has politicized the diaspora and plays a vital role in communicating the democratic demands of the Belarusian people.

Germany just pressured the Kremlin-backed Serbian minority leaders to momentarily withdraw some of their separatist ambitions by threatening to cancel funding. But the federal state’s constitution codifies political segregation, and leaves minorities without representation, a structural problem whose solution Republika Srpska is actively sabotaging.

The global trade in fossil-fuels is proving to be far from simple business. In Norway, which almost entirely generates its internal electricity supply from renewable sources, oil has become dirty laundry. But what can turn national embarrassment into real change? Can art as comment apply just the right amount of social pressure?

War polarizes debate. And the sympathies of post-Soviet migrants living in Central Europe have come under extra scrutiny since war broke out in Ukraine. A closer look at the immigrant demographic in Germany reveals a more complicated picture of suspected Russophilia.

Speaking out about capitalism’s ‘accumulation by dispossession’ – the desperate need to stop the industrial-sized devastation of rainforests, directly affecting Brazilian indigenous people, indirectly affecting everyone.

For Ukrainians, this uneven battle is about the survival of their nation. However, it is also about the future of democracy in Europe as a whole. The unprecedented act of collective solidarity at the EU border proves the resilience of civil society in the face of Putin’s challenge.

With the first round of French elections fast approaching, opinion polls suggest a close contest at the top. So how has Le Pen managed to overcome the impact of new far-right contender Zemmour? And what might this mean for Macron’s centrist politics and the future of the Left, including the Greens?

It would have taken a miracle for Viktor Orbán to lose the election. Hungary is a fortified kleptocracy where the ruling party has captured the state and controls 80% of the media. It certainly didn’t help that the opposition’s campaign failed to deliver a post-illiberal vision.

In true Stalinist manner, Russian culture is being weaponized in the war against Ukraine. But instead of cancelling Russian writers, should we read them with a critical eye – just like other European classics?

Whether in pandemic or war, the most vulnerable are the first to besidelined. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, authorities haven’t made adequate provision for disabled people, though many are more at risk of contagion in institutions.

Just after the Russian invasion, the novelist Victoria Amelina wrote an essay warning that Ukraine’s cultural community faced the same fate as the Executed Renaissance in the 1930s. On 1 July, Amelina herself died of injuries sustained in Russia’s missile attack on a restaurant in Kramatorsk.

When all of culture is forced into quarantine, alternative movements become the subject of fantasy. We reminisce about a time when there was freedom of expression or dream about an emancipating experience never lived. And if music’s counterculture can still arouse our interest, perhaps it indicates that such fantasies are still needed.

Eurozine supports the campaign for an Eastern European Independent Journalist Fund. The fund will pay for stories produced by Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian journalists who are reporting the truth on the war despite the enormous risks. This important initiative will only be funded if it reaches its goal by Sat 2 April.

After pushing back Middle Eastern refugees into the forests on its northern border with Belarus, Poland is now welcoming an unprecedented number of displaced Ukrainians. Deep racial and gender stereotypes are at play in this double standard, and an idea of heroic patriotism that doesn’t understand the people who don’t have a state to fight for.

Russia’s war on Ukraine is clearly an attack on the whole of Europe, but domestic responses are still stuck with the narrative of patriarchal solidarity and the concern for consumer comfort on the home front. Philipp Ther argues for active solidarity, and with it, to prepare for the end of the convenience Europe has known: it may hurt, but without it, the long-term losses to freedom and welfare are likely to be higher.