US-plaining is not enough. To the Western left, on your and our mistakes
Here in the post-Soviet world, we learned a lot from you. By ‘we’ I mean atomized or loosely organized communist, democratic socialist, left anarchist, feminist scholars, and activists from Kyiv, Lviv, Minsk, Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, and other places that are plunging into the horrors of war and police violence. After our own Marxist tradition underwent sclerotization, […]
We need an international campaign for UN peacekeepers to enter Ukraine
In the future, historians will write books about what really happened during the current escalation. The archives will open, sources will talk. And the books will address what was discussed at diplomatic negotiations, what the Kremlin actually wanted as it made its unfulfillable demands, and why sources in the Western media ramped up the threat […]
Moscow and Washington should not determine Ukraine’s future
When the U.S. media began writing again in the fall of 2021 about the threat of a Russian invasion in Ukraine, the first reaction of many Ukrainians was a surprise. Until mid-December, it seemed that the Western media paid more attention to the issue and took it more seriously than the Ukrainian ones. Especially since […]
Armed Blackmail Will Never Bring Peace to Eastern Ukraine
Last month, Russia began to amass troops close to its border with Ukraine. Kremlin top brass’s media interventions seeking to explain the buildup of around one hundred thousand troops were ambiguous: from reassurances that these were simple military exercises to effective threats of a full-fledged war if Ukraine should join NATO. The demonstrative character of these actions […]
The time of displacement
We left with mom for three months, or maybe a month. We did not take our things because we thought it’s just, well, a small mess, something that will pass soon. We could not wrap our minds around the idea that something like this could happen in a civilised country. If we are already going […]
Zelensky team’s passing chance to end the war in Donbas
After the election of the sixth President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, a “window of opportunity” opened for speeding up the peace process in the East of the country. Zelensky often called himself “the president of peace”, promised to end the conflict in Donbas during his tenure, and emphasized the need for dialogue with all parties. […]
Squeezed between Iran and the US: the future of the protests in the Middle East
The US and Iran teetered on the brink of war as Iranian missiles hit the American bases in Iraq in response to the killing of the Quds Corps commander Qasem Soleimani. In this interview, Marxist scholar Jakob Rigi discusses these events in the context of the Iranian domestic politics and the social tensions in the […]
Organising for peace in Ukraine: an interview with Nina Potarska
The war in eastern Ukraine is now in its sixth year. As the war has entered a “slower”, but no less deadly phase, attention, particularly in the west, has dropped off. Contributors to openDemocracy have sought to draw attention to a range of issues which tend to go unreported – activists trying to bridge the divide […]
Marko Bojcun: “We Moved From Ukrainian Nationalism To Radical Socialism, And Some Of Us To Trotskyism”
Maksym Kazakov: Marko, in Ukraine you were known as an excellent analyst of contemporary Ukrainian affairs—politics and socio-economic development. Now people have also come to know you as a historian and a researcher of the working class and the national question. But today I would like to ask you about your life and work as […]
Totalitarian tendencies in post-Maidan Ukraine
Volodymyr Chemerys Under Ukraine’s pre-Maidan criminal regime, any pressure on journalists used to provoke a wave of indignation. This indignation, which came from journalists, human rights defenders and civic activists themselves, even became a precursor to the first Maidan in independent Ukraine — the protests under the banner of “Ukraine without Kuchma”. Information about temnyky, […]
