To have a democracy, you need to struggle for it...
... like the Russian anti-war activists or those who voted for Lula in Brazil. Cross-Border Talks follows these struggles.
Many people are asking ‘Why don't Russians stand up against Putin?!’. Perhaps one of the answers would be: because expressing disagreement with the official policy on Ukraine and the ‘Special Military Operation’ can only put you into trouble. Serious trouble.
Since the end of February, hundreds of anti-war activists, left-wing people and trade unionists have been punished for their positions and protests. Others have left Russia. Before 19 January, which was a protest day for Russian antifascists in the time when street protests were possible in Moscow, we republished a solidarity appeal of the Russian Socialist Movement, which mentions some of the repressed activists.
Russian antifascists marching in 2016 in Mo
scow. In 2023, this is not possible any more.
We also recommend our Cross-Border Talk with Felix Levin, activist of Russian Socialist Movement, who explained, among others, why official polls conducted in Russia cannot be really trusted and what are other factors that hinder (or, on the contrary, encourage) an open revolt in Russia.
On 8 January, the whole world watched events in Brazil - Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters’ last (?) attempt to win back power for the far right. While the attempt looked like a very poor re-enactment of the Trumpists’ botched coup of 2021, most serious questions arise in the aftermath. How secure is Lula’s power, in the end? Would the moderate right in Brazil’s parliament accept his invitations to work together, or does it only wait to find a weaker point? And would we see more far-right riots in the world, wherever the alt-right is forced to hand in power to someone else? Listen to two comments - by Cross-Border Talks’ Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat and by Romanian political scientist Sergiu Miscoiu, a friend of the project.
For those who have not followed the whole saga about Twitter files, there is a sum up by Wojciech Albert Łobodziński. In his opinion, the best and the most scandalous of the files was not what attracted the most attention. Conclusions? Not very optimistic:
“The forces that are using Twitter for their purposes, are going to use it. Twitter still is going to be a power playground as it did, now just with a more friendly approach towards right-wingers”.
Cross-Border Talks aims to discover less known cross-border connections as well. Angel Orbetsov’s book on Bulgarian-Iranian contacts is fully devoted to such connection between two nations which, even if living far away from each other, ‘have a positive emotion between each other’. Vladimir Mitev’s interview with Mr Orbetsov touches many aspects of this relation: from the story of an Isfahan-born entrepreneur who popularized Iranian carpets in Bulgaria, to co-operation between Bulgarian Communist Party and the repression-stricken Tudeh Party, or Iranian People’s Party.