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.
An earthquake preceded Erdoğan’s rise and another may have inaugurated his fall. In its January issue, Varlık reflects on perspectives for the Turkish left before the scheduled elections: how can the Labour and Freedom Alliance overcome historical dislocation and appeal to a socially conservative electorate?
What it means to be a good ancestor; why intelligence is more-than-human; and how the Huxleys combined agnosticism with transcendence.
On the documentary poetry of Jonas Mekas; multi-voiced personalism as literary genre; and the history of the Fens as ecological morality tale.