Articles

How can it be that, in contrast to the international community, virtually no one in Russia believed that Russian-backed separatists shot down the Malaysian Airlines plane in July? Beyond press censorship, Lev Gudkov looks to Russians themselves, who increasingly hear only what they want to. His analysis draws extensively on research conducted by the Levada Center, presented here in numerous tables and graphs.

Every system has its flaws and every flaw can be exploited any time. Hence the permanent need for updates. But as Russia takes its revenge in eastern Ukraine and attacks on Ukrainian consciousness, trust and infrastructure become ever more devious, what does the future hold? Oksana Forostyna remains optimistic about the chances of modest success, at the very least.

A journey that takes one beyond the limits of human imagination: this is how Fabrizio Gatti describes his experience of a week spent undercover among immigrant labourers in Puglia in order to report on the horrors that these modern slaves endure.

With Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the military conflict in eastern Ukraine, the era of post-Soviet tolerance of blurred identities and multiple loyalties has ended. Borderlands, writes Tatiana Zhurzhenko, have once again turned into bloodlands.

The Gezi spirit continues to be seen as a remedy to the polarization of Turkish politics. But the question remains, writes Irem Inceoglu, as to how to avoid the newly blossoming politicization and the language of solidarity being squashed by party-managed politics.

Despite evidence that western companies sell surveillance software to repressive regimes like Egypt, there have been few attempts to restrict the export of such technologies. After all, the cyber surveillance industry is big business, writes Max Gallien.

The literary history of the Turk is long: from the Shakespearean Turk to Turkish humanist Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’s “dervish without the mantle”. But what exactly does it entail, to turn Turk? E. Khayyat traces an intellectual tradition that begins with the characters of Don Quixote.

As the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall rapidly approaches, Thomas Rothschild draws attention to the growing gap between rich and poor in eastern Europe, and discrimination against minorities. The renaissance of nationalism in Hungary and elsewhere also requires urgent attention.

According to Fabrizio Gatti’s estimate, at least 268 refugees drowned in the Lampedusa shipwreck on 11 October 2013. A month later, Gatti established that the tragedy could have been avoided, had the vessels in the vicinity with resources to support every victim been allowed to respond according to common sense. But they were not. Referring to laws and regulations, Italian authorities passed the buck of responsibility to Malta.

No wonder Aleksandr Dugin, founder of Neo-Eurasianism, has caught the attention of western analysts of Russian foreign policy. Anton Shekhovtsov confirms that Dugin, among other far-right intellectuals, has made headway in his struggle for cultural hegemony in Russia.

An insidious obsession with ratings and the suppression of the opposition: this is all that Vladimir Putin’s rule hinges on now, writes Boris Dubin. However, right up until his recent death, the Russian sociologist continued to combine keen insights into Russia’s rotten political culture with a plea for a new, enlightened historical consciousness.
Boris Dubin died on 20 August 2014. This is the last article he wrote.

Two-thirds of Albanians had invested in the pyramid investment funds that collapsed in 1997, causing violent social unrest. Many fled to Italy and 83 perished en route in the sinking of the “Kateri I Rades”. But the memory of all this has been suppressed, writes Alessandro Leogrande.

International instability seems to increase with every passing day of the Ukrainian crisis, ushering in a new era of international relations. Slamming Russian studies scholar Stephen Cohen for misrepresenting the crisis, Nikolay Koposov urges the West to devise a completely new way of dealing with Russia.

It will soon be 500 years since the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia and the birth of a concept that has retained its grip on the imagination ever since. Matic Majcen turns to the small village of Marinaleda in Andalusia, Spain in search of a contemporary utopian project.

A ban on the burqa in a country such as France, if applied consistently and without bias, would lead to bans on numerous practices in the majority culture, insists Martha Nussbaum. But while tolerance is essential, what liberalism really needs right now is love and compassion.