The Union after the Euro-crisis and in Ukraine Crisis

In the Kremlin’s world view there is no such thing as genuine political philosophy, there is only “political technology,” a very post-Soviet term which defines all political language as mere means

An Interview with Emmanuel Todd by Maciej NowickiThe supernova shines with an extremely bright light, but a moment later it falls apart. Today’s EU is a supernova — says Emmanuel Todd in an interview with Maciej Nowicki

The case of Ukraine and the European reaction on it proved once again a general truth about the enlargement. Without this most effective soft power weapon in the EU’s arsenal, the European project remains helpless towards the external world.

The EU needs to look again at its relationship with Russia. A relationship is unavoidable; but it should be treated exactly like that: an unavoidable necessity, to be handled witha certain coolness.

The specter of post-totalitarianism is again hanging over Central Europe. This term was coined years ago by Václav Havel. The author of The Power of the Powerless (1978) realized that the system prevailing in his country was a completely new socio-political phenomenon, the essence of which was a combination of dictatorship and consumer society. The…

As our plane began its descent into Siem Reap, Cambodia, Larisa, a twelfth grader from the American International School of Hong Kong, one of my 24 students on our group’s weeklong community service trip, called out to her friends in the seat in front of us: “Is that flooding down there?” I leaned over towards…

Writing about Dubravka Ugrešić in the context of the East European Literature created in exile, Borbala Zsuzsana Török points that she “went into voluntary exile in 1993 after a violent media attack on her and other women colleagues during the Croatian war and independence. The main accusation against Ugrešić and her peers was their refusal…

Henry Kissinger, O Chinach, Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec 2014. [Henry Kissinger, On China, Penguin Press, 2011]

Timothy Snyder, Krvavé země. Evropa mezi Hitlerem a Stalinem, Paseka-Prostor 2013 [Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books 2012]

The Gulag in its harsh Soviet form has no longer a chance in our part of the world. It may, however, come back in a new guise, in a global “soft” version, in which terrorists have replaced the class enemy and the focus on freedom of consumption have replaced the ideals of communism.

At 2:01 p.m. on 3 February 2014 Poland’s public debt as a share of its gross domestic product was reduced by nine percent. Thanks to a radical overhaul of privately-managed pension funds and the transfer of the accumulated savings into ZUS, the state-run pension system, Poland’s state economy escaped the threat of automatic cuts required…

Do company managers and owners want to live in a post- apocalyptic dystopia where they would have to enclose themselves in gated communities fenced with barbed wire? Such a reality emerges from the scenario dictated by neoliberal economic theory.

Shale gas exploration frenzy in Poland has nearly all been rhetoric and very little action. How it did not work?

The fact that immigrants’ benefits are vastly outweighed by the benefits of migration appears to matter little to Britain’s politicians. The public may vote to leave the EU, with serious consequences for Britain’s economy and foreign policy.

It has been twenty-five years of political changes in Poland and a decade of the country’s membership in the European Union has passed. Such a time-span encourages us to venture some generalizations concerning the model of capitalism, which emerged after the collapse of the communist system.

Europeans should not fear one-time measures that may spur inflation and weaken the euro

Apeculiar incident took place here last January (2014): a train was derailed near Sofia as a result of stolen rail screws. The transportation minister was quick to decry “a terrorist act,” although the reality was far more banal—an ever growing trade with recyclables targets any available metallic objects left unsecured. The usual culprits are the…