Glänta translates selected articles from Colta.ru 2010–2022: including false predictions on the eve of Putin’s third term; despair after annexation; observations on the cult of victory; and attempts to think Russia’s future now.
On inequality and the Left: why coalition politics favours social democratic solutions; how a left revival hinges on inclusive growth; and whether the root problem may not be inequality but the weak state.
The rewilding controversy: challenging the restorative myth without ignoring agriculture’s environmental record. Also: history and sex education in the new Welsh school syllabus.
Beyond spheres of influence: Cold War histories across four continents, including the bloc confrontation’s origins in Iran and the persistence of anti-communism in Brazil. Also: future scenarios for the Sino-American conflict.
An invasion in the making: why Russia’s intentions were apparent back in 1991. Also: the Kremlin’s military and political miscalculations – why bigger is not better; and resistance in Kherson – how the city survived despite everything.
Changing attitudes to suicide in Norway: how suicide was redefined by the media as a matter of public interest; why lowering the taboo is saving men’s lives; and a brief history of the ethics of suicide, from Plato to feminism.
Turkish writers address questions, aesthetic and political, raised by the catastrophe: Is art appropriate amidst the suffering – or even possible? Did some think the patriarch would protect them? Will lessons be learned for Istanbul, likely site of the next apocalypse?
How individuals and communities can become autonomous co-creators of their lives: on practices of participatory economics, from cooperative housing to agricultural and credit cooperatives and joint musical creation.
The transformation of the conditions to which borders are a response: on the case for abolition. Also: Why alter-politics has a future, and democratizing Germany’s corporatist public service model.
German policy on colonial genocide: legal responsibility via a collective right of memory? Also: colonial currencies and relationships of debt, and the problem with the Federal Constitutional Court’s doctrine of neutrality.
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?
On translation as politicized practice: domestication versus foreignization; degendering and resistance; and the risks of translating feminist sociology back into Farsi.
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.
Sexual violence as a Russian weapon of war: exceptional brutality and widespread use as means of terrorising the Ukrainian population. Also: ambivalent attitudes to home among Ukrainian refugees; and women’s voices on the reconstruction debate.
German–Polish relations in focus: how PiS instrumentalises reparations in the run-up to the Sejm elections; and why the post-war asymmetry between the countries serves the interests of Poland’s nationalists.
What the war in Ukraine has taught us about solidarity; why European democrats must insist on fair play; and Moldovan democracy under hybrid attack.