Articles

There is little hope for the release of Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia during the World Cup. However, Oleg Sentsov’s hunger strike will not have been in vain if it causes people to question the platitude that ‘sport is above politics’.

In May, fifty years on from the events of 1968, the ‘The Kyiv International – ’68 NOW’ project reflected on the political and cultural heritage of the revolt and struggle of that year. In particular, the project’s curator and the head of Kyiv’s Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) Vasyl Cherepanyn asks, where is the idea of internationalism today?

The international order has never been tidy or complete, always having had lands with contested sovereignty. The breakdown of empires is the most common catalyst for producing new aspirant states. The post-Soviet space is especially rich in these territories, as Thomas de Waal explains.

In 2008, Belgian journal ‘La Revue Nouvelle’ published an interview with Arkady Babchenko, in which he explained why his experience of serving in the Russian army in Chechnya had motivated him to become a war reporter. In light of Babchenko’s recent staged murder, in order to foil a genuine assassination plot, the interview makes for chilling reading.

Much of the language used in corporations is meaningless. What’s more, it is meaningless by design. Bullshit can be profoundly dangerous and make people despair – but it can also help them make their way in the world, reports André Spicer.

David Reich’s pioneering study of ancient DNA might have caused some ructions among social scientists – but it’s set to revolutionise our ideas about human migration and identity, reports Peter Forbes.

The events of 1968 are intimately connected to the student and worker protests in France in May of that year. But the 1968 movement had greater long-term impact elsewhere, notably in Italy and the United States, argues Sidney Tarrow.

May 2018 marks thirty years since an event of central importance to Lithuanian culture: the National Youth Theatre’s month-long American tour. Taking place as Lithuania began to shake loose of Soviet control, it was the first commercial tour of the USA by any group of professional artists from Lithuania – and further reinforced the legend of the theatre’s enigmatic star, director Eimuntas Nekrošius.

Magazines played an important role in German feminist discussion of the 1970s and ’80s. Among them, ‘Die Schwarze Botin’ stood out for its formal radicalism and intellectual originality. Critical of apolitical and affirmative tendencies in the women’s movement, it saw itself as a site both of theoretical reflection and of aesthetic experimentation. Katharina Lux on a forgotten document of New Left feminism.

In 2014 Ukraine suddenly became a major focus of the western radical Left. The subsequent degree of overlap between radical-left and far-right interpretations and activities of the events in Ukraine has been striking. How to explain this? A good place to start, argues Kyrylo Tkachenko, is Germany.

Prominent advocates of life-hacking – self-optimization through the lessons of computer programming – have started promoting Bitcoin. Noam Cohen, author of Silicon Valley exposé ‘The Know-It-Alls’, explains why: ‘Bitcoin is the ultimate financial-hack, an individualistic short-cut through the intrusions of government we call regulation and taxation.’

What have been consequences of the events of 1968? What were the counter-reactions? And beyond Europe, how did they play out in the United States? Håkan Thörn, as guest editor of ‘Ord&Bild’, put these questions to Left researchers Jordan T. Camp, Margit Mayer and Don Mitchell for their global – and personal – perspectives.

Central Europe is filled with cities and countries with multiple historical identities. Vilnius in Lithuania is one of the prime examples. Andrea Pipino revisits the city after a 25-year break, and asks why Lithuania has not succumbed to the siren song of central European nationalism.

There can be no doubting the historical influence of literary-intellectual magazines, but we still know little about how they were led and managed. Looking at some of the outstanding magazine editors of twentieth-century Europe, Matthew Philpotts argues that the key to success lies not just in individual talent and charisma, but also in strong editorial collectivity and social conditions favourable to publishing.

Franco Moretti’s seminal collection ‘Distant Reading’ set out his famous quantitative approach to literary criticism and was a key contribution to the emergent field of digital humanities. Moretti’s interest in the ‘big questions’ of literary evolution, literary form and narrative universals was shared and significantly influenced by early twentieth-century Russian Formalism, writes Jessica Merrill.

Six months after the election, the Czech Republic is still without a confirmed prime minister. And more than two months after the murder of a journalist and his partner in Slovakia, there is no reported progress in the investigation – but politics there remains in turmoil. Zuzana Hudáková surveys the scene.