Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
The costly and long road to a modern state
The revolutionary political changes in the Eastern Bloc at the beginning of the 1990s brought about a threefold transformation in the Republic of Slovakia: 1. From a totalitarian regime to a liberal democratic regime; 2. From a state within a (...)
East and West Germany reunified on October 3, 1990. But for most workers, the hopes of that day were dashed.
Today is a national holiday in Germany, commemorating twenty-five years of reunification. A “Festival of Unity” has been organized — in Frankfurt-am-Main and nationwide — under the motto (...)
Throughout the history of the German Democratic Republic, its leaders faced opposition from dissenters who believed that a socialist system needed to have democratic rights. The arguments they made — often at great personal cost — still resonate today.
Rather little is known about intellectual (...)
After the Berlin Wall’s fall, the introduction of the West German currency was widely presented as the East’s path to prosperity. But the result was a fire sale of East German industry to Western businesses — a massive destruction of jobs and public property whose harmful effects are still felt 30 (...)
In the last years before the Berlin Wall’s fall, most opposition movements in East Germany sought a reformed, more democratic socialism. But the effect of reunification on October 3, 1990 was a wave of neoliberal triumphalism in both East and West — undermining the principles of social solidarity (...)
Thirty years since German reunification, the “new states” from the former East still suffer the effects of mass deindustrialization and emigration. But if reunification hasn’t delivered the promises of 1990, socialists should recognize why most East Germans didn’t defend the old system — and why (...)
Polish economists like Oskar Lange and Michał Kalecki produced highly creative models of how a socialist system could work, balancing equality and efficiency. But Poland’s Communist government neglected their ideas, sowing the seeds of its eventual demise.
The fortieth anniversary of the (...)
Poland’s Solidarity trade union was one of the most impressive workers’ movements in postwar Europe. It rocked the foundations of an autocratic regime, but it took a wrong turn as the Eastern Bloc started to crumble.
Forty years ago this week, Poland’s independent trade union movement, (...)
A brief moment of cooperation amid the Soviet collapse reminds us of the need for international solidarity.
Thirty years ago this month, Russian students, researchers, representatives of a newly formed independent mineworkers’ trade union and political activists gathered in Moscow for a seminar (...)
One of the received ideas that became a ‘truth’ after the fall of the Berlin Wall was that the Soviet bloc’s populations cursed communism, yet obeyed it slavishly. In fact, many social movements within the Eastern bloc had long aspired to genuine socialism.
The collapse of the Soviet bloc in (...)
Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the former East Germany remembers the deliberate, immediate destruction of industry and jobs for the profit of West German firms and money-makers. East Germans still want to know how this was allowed to happen.
The story of 9 November 1989 is (...)
Eric Toussaint was interviewed by Wilder Pérez Varona (scientific deputy director of the Institute of Philosophy of Havana) during the international conference on Leon Trotsky that took place during three days (6 - 8 May 2019) in the capital city of Cuba.
Papers were presented by forty or so (...)
Five podcasts about austerity, using the example of ‘socialist’ Romania in the 1980s
In recent years, most of us have become used to hearing about austerity. Following the 2007 financial crisis, it was said that austerity was the only viable cure. Today, more than 10 years later, the ghost of (...)
This contribution “Revisiting 1989’s ambiguous revolutions” is a chapter of the book “From Perestroika to Rainbow Revolution”, Vicken Cheterian, Ed., C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 2013. Twenty years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Timothy Garton Ash wrote that « in 1989, Europeans proposed a (...)
Interview with Boris Kagarlitsky, Director of the Institute of Globalisation Studies and Social Movements in Moscow. THE predominant mood amongst most of the people in India as 2010 came to an end and the new year began was one of despondency, hopelessness and cynicism. It was clear that the (...)
The “great capitalist transformation” in the East was characterized by general forced “privatisations” in a very opaque and unprecedented context. It had to radically transform the role of money and markets in the whole economy to permit capital accumulation while getting rid of the existing forms (...)
The figures for September show that 44.4 million Russians are living below the poverty line. Twice as many as this time last year. Meanwhile the wheat harvest, at 50 to 60 million tonnes, has barely reached second world war levels. It will cover only a small amount of the country’s requirements. (...)
Twitter
Facebook