Culture
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Symbiotic culture and repression | Eurozine
Vladimir Putin’s favourite exhibition, laconically called ‘Russia’, took centre stage in Moscow’s cultural scene from November 2023 to July 2024. Located in VDNKh, a 325-hectare exhibition and recreation complex built in 1939 during the Stalin era to showcase Soviet economic, industrial, and agricultural achievements, the exhibition megalomaniacally praised Putin and his reign. Each of the 89 regions of Russia, plus…
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Displacement is an extra limb that I carry
During the horrifying, long stretch of the genocidal war on Gaza, we did not have the privilege or the time to sit with our feelings. Surviving was a priority over processing our emotions. During the few weeks of the ceasefire in January, I slowly began to navigate my feelings, attempting to crawl out of the shell cupping my heart. It…
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„Gównodziennikarstwo”: Władza patrzy na ręce dziennikarzom
W efekcie w jednym rogu ringu stoją ci, którzy są dobrze wyedukowani, raczej zamożni i samodzielni, a w drugim – mniej uprzywilejowani, a więc nienadążający za rozwojem i potrzebujący opieki państwa zarówno w obszarze ekonomicznym, jak i tożsamościowym. Oczywiście, że widać tu napięcie klasowe. Jak to wpływa na stan mediów? Otóż przytłaczająca ich większość, jak również reklamodawcy, reprezentuje w Polsce…
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Everyday amulets | Eurozine
House keys are prosaic objects that carry extraordinary significance as symbols of home, security, place. Think for a moment: what do your house keys unlock? Do you always carry your house keys with you when you leave the house, or is your door usually unlocked? Do you, like me, sometimes check for the keys in your pocket or your bag…
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The double-edged sword | Eurozine
One of the most important stories of the last decade is the influence of identity politics on the Western world. This form of politics exists at the theoretical level, as well as in public policy, but also less subtly in popular culture. The popular, or populist, expression of some of these ideas is often referred to as ‘woke’. In fact,…
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Setting the stage for genocide
Over the past few weeks, Israel marked twenty years since the “Gaza Disengagement”: the 2005 operation that uprooted 8,500 settlers and pulled out its troops. Presented as a way to ease Israel’s military burden and redraw its borders, the move bypassed the Palestinian Authority and left Israel in control of Gaza’s borders, airspace, and resources. Abroad, however, the withdrawal was…
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No reason to panic | Eurozine
Writer, journalist and trained sociologist Marcin Ogdowski speaks from in-depth experience as a war correspondent to Michał Sutowski from Krytyka Polityczna on the Polish perspective to Russian aggression. Michał Sutowski: In the morning, after the drones entered Poland, the prime minister said, ‘There is no reason to panic; life will go on as normal’. Was he right? Marcin Ogdowski: After…
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Russia is not the sea
‘Will the Slavic streams flow into the Russian sea? Or will it dry out? This is the question,’ wrote Alexander Pushkin in 1831. The line is from ‘To the Slanderers of Russia’, a triumphal ‘ode’ to Russia’s crushing of the Polish uprising of 1830–1831. The poem is a defiant statement of a tenet of Russian geopolitical thinking that continues to…
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A political class gasping for breath
In June 2024, after European elections that were a clear rejection of his party Renaissance, French president Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly in an act that only cemented his defeat. The centrist coalition Ensemble, in which Renaissance is the biggest party, had previously formed the largest faction with 250 seats; now it had only 166. The leftwing coalition New…
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My testament | Eurozine
Growing up as a naive schoolboy in the 1990s, I was surrounded by the Belarusian language and Belarusian culture. My generation had been saturated by a wave of hasty Belarusification, and like many I saw this as something quite normal. We read in our history textbooks and were told in literature lessons about how the Belarusian people had lived and…
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