PLATZFORMA

Starting from mid-September, France has seen a wave of youth-led protests, driven mostly by high school students. Initially French students were protesting over poor school conditions, a shortage of teachers in the educational system, demands for smaller class sizes, increased funding for education. 

Later the protests were joined by other movements: labor unions, university students, teachers, the Yellow Vests protesters, farmers etc. 

Every week hundreds of thousands of people are protesting in big cities: Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseilles.  

For today, November 5, a general strike was announced. 

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Bernard Dréano is our guest and our discussion will be centered on the ongoing protests in France, but also on the prospect of peace in Europe. 

Bernard is a peace activist, labor union organizer, participant in anarchist, anticolonial and communist movements and has been politically active since the 60s.

In this episode I will be talking about the ongoing rebellion in Albania to Ariela Zeneli, a social activist from Tirana. We will be touching upon topics such as the demands of the protests, the repertoire of tactics, the organization of the protests, the relationship with other social and political forces in the country and the Albania of the future that the protesters are fighting for.

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For more than 100 days, everyday, Albanians have been gathering in the center of Tirana, in front of the Prime Minister's Office building and have been protesting against Edi Rama, the incumbent prime minister of Albania. It began as a revolt against construction projects of luxury resorts in protected natural areas like Zvërnec and the Narta Lagoon, backed by the Trump family, and it was named ”The Flamingo Revolution” because these natural areas are home to flamingos and pelicans. But it was and is now more than just about the flamingos: it has gradually evolved into a rebellion against government corruption, political authoritarianism, rising costs of living, lack of perspectives etc. Ariela Zeneli has a background in political science and political theory from the University of Tirana. She has been actively involved in student and social movements advocating for youth rights, education, social justice, and democratic participation.Since 2022, she has worked in the non-profit sector, coordinating projects focused on education, youth empowerment, environmental issues, food security, and climate change. She has also contributed to research on garment supply chains in Albania and co-authored a study on youth housing challenges in Tirana and the working conditions in the construction sector.

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În această ediție vorbesc cu scriitoarea Lilia Calancea, despre cea mai recentă carte a ei, Hora Înfometaților, care a apărut de curînd la editura Polirom, și care urmează să fie lansată la Chișinău în luna mai. 

Cartea are drept temă Foametea din anii 1946-1947. 

Discuția a avut loc on-line. 

In this episode I will be talking to Mariya Ivancheva.Maryia teaches at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland). She is a sociologist and anthropologist of higher education and labour. Her research focuses on the precarisation, digitalisation and outsourcing of academic work, and the role of university communities in large-scale processes of political and social change. She is the author of the monograph The Alternative University, lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela(Stanford UP 2023) as well as articles about Venezuelan higher education reform, left-wing students and intellectual movements, housing provision, and migration to Argentina.Mariya Ivancheva has been involved in left-wing and feminist initiatives and publications in East Central Europe like LeftEast, Levfem and the East European Left Media Outlet (ELMO).

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In early January, the world woke up to what may become one of the most controversial geopolitical episodes of the decade.On January 3rd, a wave of reports, leaks, and official statements began circulating about a U.S. special-forces operation in Caracas, Venezuela, that allegedly resulted in the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Later, president Donald Trump confirmed that indeed, the operation took place and justified it by describing it as a ”lawful enforcement action connected to long-standing criminal indictments”.Officials in Caracas denounced the operation as an illegal kidnapping and an act of war.In the days that followed, U.S. officials confirmed that Maduro was being held on American soil, facing charges related to drug trafficking and terrorism issued by an American court — charges he has always rejected as politically motivated.President Donald Trump went even further, declaring that the United States of America intended to “run Venezuela” during what he called a transitional period.This statement sent shockwaves through Latin America and beyond.Internationally, reactions are divided: some governments frame the events as a decisive blow against authoritarianism, others as a dangerous precedent that undermines international law.As Maduro’s legal fate unfolds in the United States, Venezuela itself stands at a crossroads — caught between external power, internal fracture, and an unknown political future.In this episode we will be talking about the recent history of Venezuela - the heritage of Hugo Chavez, who brought the United Socialist Party of Venezuela to power, the political, social and economic policies of Chavismo, the current situation in Venezuela, the future of Latin America, the attitude of the Left towards the events in Venezuela…Although the attention has shifted now to other topics - Greenland, the ongoing protests in Iran, the Davos economic forum - we think that the events in Venezuela continue to be very relevant for our discussions about US foreign policy, the fate of leftist governments in a capitalist context, about imperialism and the future of progressive politics. Our podcast was recorded via Zoom.

Episodul de azi va fi dedicat chestiunii creării Fondului Cinematografiei în Moldova. 

Discuția despre Fondul Cinematografiei este una mai veche și durează, cel puțin din cîte țin minte eu personal, încă de la adoptarea Legii Cinematografiei în 2014. 

Periodic această temă revine în atenție și, deși toată lumea agreează asupra necesității creării acestui Fond, el nu doar că încă nu a fost creat ci, se pare, nu va fi creat în curînd. 

În luna februarie un grup de cineaști și cineaste tinere au lansat o petiție prin care cereau ca pachetul de modificări legislative privind crearea Fondului Cinematografiei să fie pus de urgență pe agenda parlamentară. Semnatarii și semnatarele petiției mai cereau: revitalizarea Cinematografului Odeon, creșterea plafonului de finanțare pentru filme de scurt metraj până la 80% din bugetul total al proiectului și cerem racordarea studiilor de film la standarde internaționale.Petiția a adunat peste 1300 semnături și a animat, încă o dată discuția. Dar lucrurile nu s-au schimbat prea mult. Comunitatea cineaștilor a anunțat pentru miercuri, 4 iunie, un protest în fața Guvernului.

Despre Fondul Cinematografiei, despre petiție, despre situația cinematografiei în Moldova vorbesc astăzi cu Lucia Lupu, regizoare, și Călin Laur, regizor. 

On May 18, 2025, Poland held the first round of presidential elections. A total of 13 candidates were present on the ballot.

The elections were conducted in a highly polarized environment and the topics of migration, Europe, security were central to the debates in the country, along with other topics such as social policy, economic policies…The campaign was also accompanied by scandals of corruption, connections of certain candidates with the criminal underworld, hypocrisy etc. 

Two candidates that collected most of the votes are Rafał Trzaskowski, the Mayor of Warsaw, with 31 % of the votes, and the conservative Karol Nawrocki, with 29 %.Trzaskowski was supported by the current government of Donald Tusk and the Civic Coalition political party (Koalicja Obywatelska) while Nawrocki got the support of the Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) and the incumbent president Andrzej Duda.

To many observers and commentators, the results of these elections represent yet another example of one of the biggest problems of the Polish political system: the so called duopol, the dominance, for more than 20 years, of the political sphere, by two big parties: the Civic Coalition and the Law and Justice parties, who are managing to somehow not only to attract most of the votes, but also to maintain and keep,  over two decades already, a stable core of voters who ensure their predominance in Polish politics. 

To other observers, while this general picture is true overall, it also hides the fact that the elections also gave prominence to several other smaller political forces, both from the Right and the Left. Much of the competition between the two main political forces took place - in terms of policies and rhetoric - on the right wing of the political spectrum.Both main parties, PIS and Civic Platform, are engaged in a contest on who is pleasing more the voters on the right. In terms of migration policies, for example, the so-called “liberal” Civic Coalition proved to be more to the right, more xenophobic even, than PiS, especially when passed a series of anti immigrant laws, among which the most outrageous was the law on the suspension of asylum procedures.The youth showed in record numbers to the voting station, which could mean, on the one hand, that they want to dismantle the duopol of the two big parties. On the other hand, however,  the youth were are casting, in these elections, a protest vote, aimed to punish both parties, but mostly KO, for not keeping their promises from the 2023 parliamentary elections on the legalization of abortion, on the accessibility of housing, on climate change, on Palestine and on other policies. A surprise in these elections is the emergence of a new Left, which, although small and fragile for now, has nevertheless the potential to grow into something bigger some day. 

For this episode, I sat down with three comrades that live and work in Poland, to comment on the results of the first round of the presidential elections.

Agnieszka Wiśniewska, Former Editor-in-chief of ⁦KrytykaPolityczna.pl⁩, Activist, feminist, journalist and political comentator.

Claudia Ciobanu, a Polish correspondent for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN)

Teodor Ajder, editor and contributor for the migrant journal ”Mămăliga de Varșovia” (Mamalyga Warszawska).

On November 1, 2024, at the main railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia (the second largest city in the country), the concrete canopy of the building collapsed suddenly, killing 16 people and injuring another person. Students from various Serbian universities started to organize protests, demanding for accountability from authorities regarding the incident. 

Their anger was further fueled by the fact that the railway building was recently renovated as part of a Serbian-Chinese project. On November 22, last year, a protest by students from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at the University of Belgrade gathered to honour the Novi Sad victims, was attacked by a group that included high-ranking members of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. Several days after this, as a response, the students started a blockade of the faculty, an action that was replicated by other faculties and universities across Serbia. Later the protests were joined by other groups: teachers, workers, activist groups from other parts of Serbia. 

On March 15 this year, half million Serbs came to Begrade and staged the biggest protest in the history of the country. 

With my guests, Iskra Krstić, journalist and researcher and Juhász András , journalist, both of them from the Serbian left-wing news website Masina I will try to discuss questions such as: 
What is the constituency of the protests (social forces, classes etc)? 
What is the structure of the protest: leaders, organization, messages? 
To what extent these protests are a case of ”politics as usual” (such as protests against corruption, against ”bad capitalism” that end up being coopted by the establishment) or a case of really transformational political practices that are changing, at a deep and structural level, the way politics is being done in Serbia?

În ediția de azi vorbesc cu Marius Turda, pe marginea cărții sale, ”În căutarea românului perfect. Specific național, degenerare rasială și selecție socială în România modernă”, care a apărut la Polirom în 2024. Tirajul primei ediții a fost epuizat și o a doua ediție este în pregătire. 

Cartea a fost nominalizată la Premiile Observator cultural, ediția a XIX-a, pentru anul 2025, la categoria Eseu/Publicistică.

Marius TURDA este profesor de istoria biomedicinei la Universitatea Oxford Brookes din Marea Britanie şi membru al Societăţii Regale Britanice a Istoricilor. Domeniile lui de cercetare sunt istoria eugenismului, rasismului şi ideologiile naţionaliste din Europa Centrală şi de Sud-Est.

În această ediție vorbesc cu Emanuel Copilaș, conferențiar și coordonator de doctorate în științe politice la Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara. 

Emanuel Copilaș a publicat cărți și capitole de carte la diferite edituri din țară și străinătate (România, Austria, Serbia), articole științifice în reviste naționale și internaționale (România, Anglia, Statele Unite ale Americii, Australia, Republica Moldova), respectiv a participat la conferințe și manifestări științifice naționale și internaționale (România, Mexic, Argentina, Brazilia, Peru, Ungaria, Polonia). 

Este activ de asemenea în presa culturală din România. Începând cu 2020, redactor-șef al revistelor Political Studies Forum și Sfera publică. Revista studenților, masteranzilor și doctoranzilor în științe politice. Domenii majore de interes: ideologii politice, economie politică, sociologie politică, istorie politică, radicalism politic, teoria relațiilor internaționale. 

În cadrul acestui podcast am vorbit despre cartea sa, Integrarea României în sfera de influență sovietică (1944–1947). Perspective internaționale și locale, apărută în 2023 la Editura Corint. 

Lucrarea încearcă să explice un paradox: cum a fost posibil, ca în România, un stat care avea cel mai mici partid comunist din regiune înainte de 1945, să se ajungă, în câțiva ani, la o dominație de factură sovietică?

În cadrul podcastului vorbim despre România Mare ca proiect anti-comunist, stânga românească/moldovenească în interbelic, participarea României la Al doilea Război Mondial, conjunctura în ajunul zilei de 23 august 1944, procesul de sovietizare, naționalismul ceaușist și desovietizarea relativă a României sub Nicolae Ceaușescu. 

On Saturday, october 26th, parliamentary elections were held in Georgia. The ruling party, the Georgian Dream, has won the elections, accumulating around 53 -54 % of the vote.  The opposition claims that there has been massive fraud of the vote, both before the elections and on the Election day. 
Tens of thousands of Georgians gathered outside the parliament on Monday night, demanding the annulment of the parliamentary election, which, according to the president of the country was rigged with the help of Russia.

Here to talk about the situation in Georgia is Sopo Japaridze. 
Sopo is a researcher and the Chair of Solidarity Network, an independent care workers union in Georgia. 
She has been a labour organiser for over a decade and researches and studies labour and social relations. She also writes for various publications and is also part of the collective that does the ”Reimagining Soviet Georgia” podcast.