This text analyzes the emergence and development of youth subcultures in Bulgaria in the 1970s and 1980s. It tries to put the problem in a broader context, including various aspects of the attitude of the communist regime towards youth in general, the role of the Komsomol in the process, and the attempts to control the protest potency among Bulgarian youth. Along with this, it tries to trace the process on the other side of the Iron Curtain – the evolution of old and new countercultures which were copied, borrowed, but also enriched and domesticated by their followers in Bulgaria. In this sense, the social nature of youth subcultures in Bulgaria remained dualistically divided between imitation and authenticity. Despite this, however, these subcultures embodied the authentic rebellion of young people in Bulgaria against the conformism of their parents’ generation, against the oppressive system and the inertness of life. The article draws parallels with the emergence of major subcultural movements in the West – hippies, bikers, heavy metal fans, punks, and New Wave fans – and the subsequent birth of their counterparts in Bulgaria. The approach is historical-anthropological, based both on archival materials and the author’s fieldwork in the form of interviews, surveys, external observations. The article ends by tracing the attempts of the regime in the years of Gorbachev’s perestroika to look for ways of peaceful coexistence with youth subcultures, but also of their domestication and re-education.

Keywords: youth subculture, counterculture, communist youth organization, Komsomol

This article examines the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi (2005-2012) – the hitherto largest youth organization since the Soviet-era Komsomol – in order to elucidate the background of changes that have appeared in the Kremlin’s symbolic politics since 2012. Nashi’s disappearance from Russia’s political scene by the summer of 2012 can be seen as an elementary part of the crisis that the Kremlin faced with the largescale protests that shook Russia’s major cities in the winter of 2011/2012. However, Nashi’s negative image did not first appear in Russia with Putin’s decreased popularity and the beginning of the large-scale protests; rather, such a negative image has been manifested throughout the existence of pro-Kremlin youth formations supporting Putin’s political leadership, before and after Nashi. Rather than demonstrating a wellplanned and calculated insistence on patriotism and moral conservatism, the history of the whole pro-Putin youth movement indicates that it has continuously struggled with its public image ever since its idol, President Putin, appeared in Russia’s political arena. By focusing on Nashi’s online writings as its major voice, the author exemplifies the basic and unsolved dilemma of governmental mobilization – the tension between didactics and stimulation – that is crystallized in the movement’s political communication. After that, in a short excursion on Nashi’s successor, the project Set’, the author’s aim is to pinpoint how the ‘exit’ from Nashi’s communicative dilemma, in line with the Kremlin’s symbolic politics since 2012, appears as a proliferation of Putin’s personality.

Keywords: Russia, youth movements, Putin, discourse, Nashi, Set’

The Soviet Army Monument in Sofia has been the subject of a variety of public debates and controversies for decades. While some focus on its meaning and location in the city centre, arguing about its potential removal, new generations use the place, ascribing it new meanings and interpretations. Confronting the power discourse, civic initiatives such as gay pride parades, marijuana decriminalization events, and techno parades, use the symbolic meaning of the place to demand respect of human rights and freedom of expression. On the other hand, it has evolved as a medium for street art’s social criticism and contemporary art actions focused on broader issues such as the conscious use of public space by citizens, thereby provoking public debates on the contemporary way of living in the city. Meanwhile, young citizens have been transforming the space in a more casual way through everyday practices like hanging out, practicing urban sports, and partying. All these appropriations reinterpret the monument and the surrounding park, converting it into a place of freedom, alternative lifestyles, and anti-consumerism. The uses of public space as an act of resistance reconcile social and political consciousness and leisure in a bottom-up search for ‘humane’ places created by people for people.

Keywords: Soviet Army Monument, use of urban space, transformation of public space, social resistance, creative resistance, street art, right to the city, everyday practices

This article explores the role of students as actors during protests in Ukraine. It focuses primarily on the 2013-2014 Euromaidan revolution, but uses a broader historical context and comparison with the so-called Revolution on Granite in 1990 and the Orange Revolution in 2004. While it demonstrates that students were on the forefront of all three major upheavals, the article underlines the key differences between the three ‘revolutions’. The Euromaidan protests and the ensuing Revolution of Dignity are chronicled and subsequently analysed from the point of view of students’ actions. The article examines why students were not able to leave their mark, even though they had in fact spearheaded the protests. It points to the absence of a clear set of demands, the ambiguous role played by new social media, and the lack of organizational structures within the student movement. More so, the article concludes that though there were certainly similarities between Euromaidan and the other protest movements in the so-called global protest wave since 2008, it was foremost the experience of previous maidans that framed the protests in Ukraine.

Keywords: Ukraine, student movements, Maidan, Revolution on Granite, Orange Revolution, Euromaidan, Revolution of Dignity

This article aims to analyze the Bulgarian student occupations in 2013 in terms of two different rationalities – instrumental rationality and value rationality – which were referred to respectively by the opponents and the supporters of the protests in order to justify their account of them. The analysis elaborates a typology of the anti-protest rhetoric, distinguishing three main types: the first insisted on the opposition between ‘moral’ and ‘social’, and criticized the protests as being based on an ‘abstract’ and ‘hazy’ moralism; the second treated the protests as a direct or indirect expression of private interests; the third claimed the protests were just a means to a particular end, be it that of the oligarchy or of the protesters themselves. The final part of the article argues against these instrumentalist approaches to the protests of Bulgarian students and introduces another perspective, suggested by Albert Hirschman in his analysis of the meaning of collective public action. According to Hirschman, public action should not be evaluated on the basis of its immediate results, because its value consists in the very act of protesting which educates and constitutes citizens as a critical civic community.

Keywords: student occupations, instrumental rationality, value rationality, civic protests, public action

For several months in 2013-2014, thousands of Ukrainians and Bulgarians participated in anti-government protests. However, the outcomes could not be more different. The Bulgarian government politically survived #DANSwithme, while Euromaidan precipitated President Yanukovych’s flight from Ukraine in late February 2014. Why did #DANSwithme gradually dissipate, while Euromaidan escalated into the worst episode of political violence since Ukraine’s independence? We know that medium levels of repression applied inconsistently during protests can lead to radicalization and violence. But we do not know whether the judiciary’s behaviour before and during the protests could affect the likelihood of an escalation towards violence. This article proposes a complementary explanation of protest radicalization, which posits that recent, unambiguous, and effective use of a pliable judiciary by political incumbents to punish and undermine the opposition raises the odds that both sides will engage in violence. Politicized selective justice raises the stakes of victory both for the government and for the protesters, and reduces the possibility of a compromise. In Bulgaria, where the judiciary, albeit politicized, has not been effectively used to undermine political opponents, protesters perceived the government’s attempts to engage in legal persecution as a hassle and the chances of imprisonment as remote. Neither should the Oresharski government have expected to be prosecuted in the event of losing office. In Ukraine, by contrast, the judiciary had a clear recent track record of politicized selective justice both against protest participants and high-level politicians. Former PM Yuliya Tymoshenko and another Orange Revolution main actor and former minister of interior, Yuriy Lutsenko, served lengthy prison sentences. Consequently, both the leaders of the opposition and Yanukovych and his coterie probably expected that imprisonment would be inevitable if they did not come out as winners of the Euromaidan standoff.

Keywords: anti-government protests, politicized justice, protest radicalization, prosecution of corruption, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Euromaidan

#DANSwithme is the longest-lasting anti-government protest in the history of Bulgaria. Acting as a temporary intervention into the urban fabric of Sofia, the protest was a battle for the access to truth in the public sphere. Through this battle, a particular discursive critique and practical critical ethos were developed, which were aimed at uncovering the overarching relations of power and dominant systems of truth hidden behind the regime of a façade democracy in Bulgaria. It is argued in this paper that #DANSwithme functioned as a specific kind of diagnosis of the present because it generated distinct battles for the access to truth both about the present through the past and
about the present through the future.

Keywords: #DANSwithme, power/knowledge, Foucault, Habermas, democracy, post-socialism, totalitarianism, Bulgaria, public sphere, politics, freedom, discourse

How politics was swallowed up by policies, both conceptually and as an orientation of practical social action, how policies in turn appeared to be just another name for administrative governance: Sofia’s general public had the rare chance to learn that by experience. On 14 June 2013, thousands flooded Sofia’s Nezavisimost (Independence) Square, called Lenin Square before 1989, to reclaim it from what public spaces turn into when they are dominated by the everyday mode of social being together: that is, traffic intersections. The total domination of the everyday had made traffic and garbage the main reference points in shared social living. After 14 June 2013, however, the outrageous appointment of a highly controversial public figure to a top government position subsumed the fractured role-performances of a significant number of Sofia residents under the totalizing force of their civic identification and drove them to protest against the current way of governance. This disrupted the totalization of everydayness and enabled the reappropriation of former public spaces. This ecstatic mode of reappropriation, however, cannot resist the forces of routinization for long. The everyday inevitably strikes back.

Keywords: city, public, traffic, protest, everyday life, politics/policy

This article discusses the protests of the summer of 2013 in Istanbul as a struggle for the discursive hegemony over the city’s past. In the context of developing Istanbul into a global city, the administration attempted to impose a vision of the city’s past as an Islamic imperial capital in conjunction with Ottoman imperial glory and neoliberal economics. This clashed with competing visions of the city as an Eastern Roman capital, multicultural, a resident-centred cosmopolis, a theatre of a modernist Turkish state, or a site for leftist struggle suppressed in blood. Gezi Park stood for the right to the city (Lefebvre) articulated through these historical visions.

Keywords: Istanbul, global city, urban branding, right to the city, Gezi protests

This article examines the uprisings since 2011 through a global lens. It focuses on a form that has become common to all: the continuous occupation of public space. Beginning in 2011, people from all walks of life came to the central squares of the world’s cities and formed various semi-permanent sites of protest. The article assesses the historical lineage and significance of these public occupations and discusses their impact for our understandings of revolution, democracy, and their interrelation. What happened during these uprisings, how the people who were present took part in them, offers a radically different version of democracy, in theory and practice, from the liberal representative one that has become hegemonic today. This article will underscore how this alternate vision of a democratic society is intimately tied to a new form of contentious politics, one predicated on occupation and arrest rather than movement and dispersal. To do so, it highlights how these uprisings have called into question two assumptions common to the liberal understanding of contemporary politics: the association between democracy and representative government; and the association between social struggle and the category of movement. In this context, the article challenges the continued use of the term social movement to define contentious political struggle in the 21st century and makes the case for a theory and practice of social arrest. It argues that a politics of social arrest has come to define the global occupations of public space since 2011, a politics that has turned these spaces into immanent sites of democratic self-institution.

Keywords: democracy, revolution, uprising, social movement, Occupy, Gezi, Arab Spring

This article revisits conclusions from my earlier ‘The Refugee and the City: Is the Camp Indeed a Space of Exception?’ (Critique & Humanism 42/2013). There, I analyzed Michel Agier’s perspective of the refugee camp as a space of exception (a concept, in turn, based on Giorgio Agamben’s ‘state of exception’). My discussion then was driven by my own ethnographic material on Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, as opposed to the massive refugee camps in Africa which seemed to have been the base for Agier’s conceptualization. However, in 2015, hundreds of thousands of refugees entered Europe, in what the European media and many of its governments proclaimed to be a ‘refugee crisis in Europe’. This crisis rhetoric bears resemblance with that of the ‘state of exception’, representing the suspension of law and politics. But beyond media and governmental rhetoric, is Europe indeed facing a crisis and, if so, what is its nature? Is Europe on the brink of a state of exception?

Keywords: refugee crisis, refugee camps, Middle East, Europe, space of exception, state of exception, displacement, asylum seeker.

The goal of this paper is to identify and justify a normative principle that allows for an identification of inequalities incompatible with educational justice. To reach that goal, three alternative versions of egalitarianism are discussed: luck egalitarianism, threshold (minimalist) egalitarianism, and respect egalitarianism. Respect egalitarianism can be closely linked to the model of epistemic justice, which was recently the subject of intensive, far-reaching discussions in the fi eld of philosophy of education. This paper argues that the approaches of both luck egalitarianism and threshold egalitarianism are inadequate to satisfy its aim. Luck egalitarianism entails the ‘bottomless pit problem’ that seems to be conceptually and politically unsolvable. Additionally, luck egalitarians tend to interpret education as a positional, distributive good whose primary value is extrinsic. This stance ignores that education is foremost concerned with the growth of knowledge – a non-positional good whose worth is primarily intrinsic. On the other hand, threshold egalitarians do not offer a conceptual means of discriminating between just and unjust educational inequalities that lie above the capability threshold required by individuals to participate in the political life of society and/or to live a life of dignity. The approach of respect egalitarianism avoids these shortcomings. According to this approach, the most crucial form of educational injustice is treating select groups of students with disrespect by disregarding their beliefs, experiences, ideals, and achievements, as well as their knowledge-ability. Educational injustice appears as a lack of both empathy and cognitive respect toward students. To overcome this educational injustice, educational institutions should design and implement forms of teaching that equally include the beliefs and experiences of all students. Teachers should use these beliefs and experiences as a point of departure for addressing academic classroom content. Social, economic, and knowledge inequalities between students would no longer be an issue of educational injustice if principles of respect in formal education were fully implemented.

Keywords: educational justice, epistemic justice, luck egalitarianism, treshold egalitarianism, respect egalitarianism, recognition

The reflections in this article concern the creation, definition, and use of a concept that, while supposedly pertaining to the sphere of literature and the arts, was central to the ideology and culture of socialist societies: socialist realism. The article discusses transformations in Western reactions to the vocabulary and practice of socialist realism after its introduction as a formal doctrine in the USSR in the early 1930s, and after the creation of the Soviet Bloc in the late 1940s. The author argues that initial attempts by external observers to make sense of the term and related policies were reflective of the semantics of the early Cold War in general. Exploring the vicissitudes of its (mis)understanding by Western journalists, intellectuals and politicians can help us understand the mechanism behind much of intercultural and political communication between the two camps.

Keywords: socialist realism, Cold War, ideological concepts

This article concentrates on the phenomenon of Russophilia in Greece and situates it within the context of national populism. Numerous political analysts and journalists have not examined Russophilia in Greece as a component of a national populism which cuts across the traditional ‘left-right’ spectrum. This research is very topical at a time when Russia is emerging as a competitor to the EU and the Kremlin is searching for political allies throughout Central and Southeast Europe. This study demonstrates that the foundations of public Russophilia in Greece are feebler than many external commentators tend to estimate. A rather ahistorical and almost ‘Messianic’ notion of Russophilia interweaves with national populism in the light of the dispute with the EU and Germany over the management of the economic crisis.

Keywords: political culture, populism, nationalism, Greece, Russia

The security and political context of Uganda’s 2016 general elections suggest that in his fifth term in office, President Yoweri Museveni will most likely face higher levels of civil unrest, political violence, and security volatility. Is Museveni’s Uganda, once given as an example of stability, drifting into a regime crisis that will inevitably lead to a political breakdown? Drawing upon the concept of ‘competitive authoritarianism’ developed by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, this paper assesses the sources of durability of Museveni’s regime at the beginning of his fourth decade in power. By explaining the coercive (material) and ‘soft’ (non-material) sources of Museveni’s governance, it seeks to contribute to the current discussions about Uganda’s political future.

Keywords: Uganda, Museveni, the Movement, regime durability, political parties, elections

Nancy Fraser, PhD, is Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science at the New School for Social Research in New York. She works on contemporary critical and feminist theory. Her work builds a comprehensive theory of justice, containing three basic dimensions: redistribution, recognition and political representation. She is the author of Fortunes of Feminism: From State Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (2013); Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (2008); Redistribution or Recognition? A Political- Philosophical Exchange (co-authored with Axel Honneth, 2003); The Radical Imagination: Between Redistribution and Recognition (2003); Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition (1997); Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (co-authored with Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, and Drucilla Cornell, 1994); Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (1989).

Ивайло Дичев, Мария Иванчева, Меглена Кунева 9 февруари 2012 г.

Участници: Ивайло Дичев, Мария Иванчева, Меглена Кунева;

Водещ: Боян Знеполски

Днешната дискусия е първата в поредицата от дискусии, посветени на темата: „Народът“ и „гражданското общество“ като ресурси на демокрацията“. Темата е: „Как гражданските мобилизации ни помагат да разбираме и променяме нашето общество?“ Тази дискусия е продължение на една първа поредица от лекции и дискусии, която се проведе в Софийския университет през есента на 2011 г. в академична среда,с активното участие на студенти от няколко софийски университета. От днес и през следващите няколко месеца тя ще се пренесе в Центъра за дебати „Червената къща“, тоест ще се пренесе в „гражданското пространство“, като и самите участници ще бъдат много по-разнообразни.Основният въпрос, който ще ни вълнува е въпросът за смисъла на протестните движения на гражданите, как тези движения легитимират себе си, но също и как могат да бъдат делегитимирани? Този въпрос е актуален, защото през последните години България е арена на много граждански протести. Ще спомена само някои от тях – голямата учителска стачка,стачката на лекарите от Пирогов, протестите на научните работници от БАН, протестите на няколко софийски висши учебни заведения, протестите на зърнопроизводителите през последната есен, стачката в БДЖ, в момента текат протестите срещу АСТА, срещу шистовия газ и т.н. Мисля,че напоследък гражданската активност в България е много сериозна, кое-то изцяло опровергава фалшивите интервюта, които се разпространяват във Фейсбук. Могат да се прочетат какви ли не интервюта: с Умберто Еко, с холандския премиер, с различни посланици в България и т.н. В тях се казва почти едно и също: „Вие, българите, за нищо не ставате“; „Вие ни-кога няма да се оправите“ и т.н. Очевидно става въпрос за собствената ни лоша съвест.

Ивайло Дичев, Мария Иванчева, Меглена Кунева 9 февруари 2012 г.

Участници: Ивайло Дичев, Мария Иванчева, Меглена Кунева;

Водещ: Боян Знеполски

Днешната дискусия е първата в поредицата от дискусии, посветени на темата: „Народът“ и „гражданското общество“ като ресурси на демокрацията“. Темата е: „Как гражданските мобилизации ни помагат да разбираме и променяме нашето общество?“ Тази дискусия е продължение на една първа поредица от лекции и дискусии, която се проведе в Софийския университет през есента на 2011 г. в академична среда,с активното участие на студенти от няколко софийски университета. От днес и през следващите няколко месеца тя ще се пренесе в Центъра за дебати „Червената къща“, тоест ще се пренесе в „гражданското пространство“, като и самите участници ще бъдат много по-разнообразни.Основният въпрос, който ще ни вълнува е въпросът за смисъла на протестните движения на гражданите, как тези движения легитимират себе си, но също и как могат да бъдат делегитимирани? Този въпрос е актуален, защото през последните години България е арена на много граждански протести. Ще спомена само някои от тях – голямата учителска стачка,стачката на лекарите от Пирогов, протестите на научните работници от БАН, протестите на няколко софийски висши учебни заведения, протестите на зърнопроизводителите през последната есен, стачката в БДЖ, в момента текат протестите срещу АСТА, срещу шистовия газ и т.н. Мисля,че напоследък гражданската активност в България е много сериозна, кое-то изцяло опровергава фалшивите интервюта, които се разпространяват във Фейсбук. Могат да се прочетат какви ли не интервюта: с Умберто Еко, с холандския премиер, с различни посланици в България и т.н. В тях се казва почти едно и също: „Вие, българите, за нищо не ставате“; „Вие ни-кога няма да се оправите“ и т.н. Очевидно става въпрос за собствената ни лоша съвест.