Articles

While classical melancholy was defined by isolation and introspection, today’s tristesse plays out amidst busy social media interactions. Geert Lovink on ‘technological sadness’ – the default mental state of the online billions.

Poland regained its independence after the First World War. Despite developing multiple ambitious visions, it failed to recreate its former state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and to reconstruct the map of western Eurasia.

The Great War brought the end of some empires, while others expanded on the ruins of those that lost. Viewing WWI as the end of imperialism is too Europe-centric a concept and needs to be amended.

What could have happened had a local war for Lviv not drawn forces away from the Ukrainian revolution in 1918? Experimenting with counterfactual history allows us to reconsider simple questions and search for more precise answers.

For Czechs and Slovaks, the years 1918, 1938, 1948 and 1968 carry deeply mixed memories – an ambivalence reflecting anxieties about the past and the future of the two nations. Historian Jacques Rupnik reads the Czechoslovak ‘eights’ as a seismograph of the European predicament at crucial junctures during the twentieth century.

It is true that the Stalinist state treated clerics militantly. Communists, however, were never unified in their approaches to religion or its institutions. Some of them promoted patience and persuasion, others even allied with believers, sometimes despite the fierce rejection of the Catholic church.

Five years after the revolution at Maidan, Ukraine faces a very limited choice: either giving in to Russian aggression or tolerating domestic corruption. Martial law was recently imposed after Russia blocked the Azov Sea, yet official reasons for the state of emergency seem to disguise political power play.

The gilets jaunes belong to an integrated but invisible middle class whose grievances are centred on the increasing unaffordability of their commuter lifestyle. The protests highlight Emmanuel Macron’s failure to form a consensus, but by rejecting engagement with the political system the gilets jaunes themselves fail to offer a way out of the democratic crisis.

Did the two World Wars really trigger fundamental changes in the gender order and contribute to the emancipation of women, as is often claimed? Feminist literary critic and historian Margaret R. Higonnet tells Christa Hämmerle about the ‘double helix effect’ in gender relations during and after the First World War.

The nascent internet played a key role in defeating the military coup in Russia in 1991, writes Andrei Soldatov. However, the democratic promise of the web was never fulfilled. In the 2000s, it became a means of escape for a disaffected middle class closed out of the political process. The failed protest wave of 2011–2012 bore the mark of this ‘lost decade’. Meanwhile, in the era of political trolling, online participation has come to mean something very different.

Accusations of Russian interference have become the primary route through which to undermine Donald Trump. In order to sustain public outrage, media and political elites provide a constant flow of leaks, rumours and conspiracy theories. Failing liberal self-confidence is to blame for the return of Cold War rhetoric, argues Andrei P. Tsygankov.

In Britain today, a burgeoning Churchill industry promotes an idea of the nation as a place of purpose and moral certainty. But Churchill’s historical record is not what conservatives would have it to be, argues Gerry Hassan. In the post-war era, ‘Churchillism’ showed an ability to adapt that is beyond the current political leadership – not only on the right.

Peter Lodenius, the former editor-in-chief of Finland-Swedish Eurozine partner Ny Tid, has passed away. Carl Henrik Fredriksson remembers an outstandingly clearsighted journalist and editor able to make sense of European events for a Scandinavian readership in a way that was unique. Peter Lodenius played an important part in the Eurozine network, where he will be greatly missed.

The term ‘hybrid war’ has become synonymous with Russian aggression. It denotes a style of warfare that combines the political, economic, social and kinetic, in a kind of conflict that recognizes no boundaries between covert and overt war. However, this definition fails to recognize crucial distinctions in Russian strategy, writes Mark Galeotti.

Despite Democrat gains in the mid-terms, the party is no closer to winning back the ‘silent majority’ that was once its core support. In the public sphere, divisions are becoming ever more entrenched. As things stand, Trump’s position remains secure, according to George Blecher.

The absence in liberal democracies of an agonistic confrontation between different political projects has led to a crisis of representation, argues Chantal Mouffe. Demonization of the ‘enemies’ of the bipartisan consensus might be morally comforting, but it is politically disempowering. We need a progressive populism that can mobilize common affects towards a defence of equality and social justice.