Political Critique Archive

Political Critique’s weekly selection from the Eastern European press.

Tom Strohschneider is a close observer of German politics and former chief editor of the socialist newspaper Neues Deutschland. In this interview with Mosaik, he explains how the grand Coalition between CDU, CSU and SPD could still fail, what challenges the SPD faces and why the left needs to return to dialectical thinking. Half a […]

In 2011, a seven-month-long strike in a Kazakh oil town came to tragic end. Six months after I reported on the Zhanaozen massacre, I returned to a city where silence had won.

Eastern European populism differs from that in the West in important ways, owing to the region’s weak liberal tradition, which translates into ineffective checks and balances on government and shallow support for institutions such as freedom of expression and independent courts. Sławomir Sierakowski, the founder of the Krytyka Polityczna movement, explains.

From Jaurès Métro station, looking down from where the trains run high above street level, you can see the line of tents stretching along the Canal Saint-Martin. This is where the tenth arrondissement meets the nineteenth, well inside the Paris péripherique ringroad, and not far from the centre. Here, camped out in the cold, more than 400 migrants are living. […]

For people held in immigration detention, life can quickly turn into despair.

Two years after some European governments decided to shut their borders in the face of people fleeing war and persecution, over sixty thousand are still stuck in Greece. The country, which is dealing with a severe economic crisis, has little to offer, therefore grassroots initiatives and small organizations come with help.

Romaphobia is one of the last acceptable forms of racism. It is acceptable in as much as it is palatable or understandable given the overwhelmingly negative attitudes towards Roma across Europe. Recent research by the World Bank explored social exclusion and attitudes towards certain groups in society with Roma communities across Europe, even generating negative […]

Only in Europe’s post-communist east do populists routinely beat traditional parties in elections. Of 15 Eastern European countries, populist parties currently hold power in seven, belong to the ruling coalition in two more, and are the main opposition force in three.

Tarana Burke, an American civil rights activist, was the first to use the phrase ‘Me Too’ in 2006 in order to “raise awareness of the pervasiveness of sexual abuse and assault in society.” In 2017 the actress Alyssa Milano started using the hashtag in response to accusations of sexual harassment against Harvey Weinstein and other […]