![Tajikistan: Strained Hospitality](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2009_18148.jpg)
Tajikistan: Strained Hospitality
Dushanbe has offered a cautious, and limited, welcome to refugees from the violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
More...We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
Dushanbe has offered a cautious, and limited, welcome to refugees from the violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
More...
The Slovak government is examining the treatment of Romani youngsters in school. But is it asking the right questions?
More...
Putin again uses raw power, and again the result is a major failure.
More...
As Serbia takes tentative steps to reform its decrepit social security system, some say far more radical change is needed.
More...
An interview with Radmila Sekerinska, Macedonia’s deputy prime minister in charge of European integration.
More...
Slovak public TV can't make up its mind between profit maximizing and public service.
More...
An asylum case casts Romania’s judiciary in a bad light just as Brussels considers admitting the country to the EU next year.
More...
It may be eclipsed by the anti-EU musings of the current Czech president, but the influence of Vaclav Havel lives on in Czech efforts to support dissidents and promote democracy.
More...
Bribery is devaluing the notion of education as valuable in itself. But the value of a diploma in Russia seems to be rising.
More...
As the video-sharing site takes off, policy-makers and politicians try to find ways to catch a ride. Including authoritarian Belarus.
More...
Europe’s human rights court already has a heavy caseload from Russia. It should be a lot heavier.
More...
The European Commission is weighing a new corporate tax scheme that could sap the treasuries of poorer countries.
More...
The Macedonian government plans to buy computers for every student. But many schools are not equipped to connect.
More...
The policies of the Polish and Czech governments have made them pariahs in Europe. Both are on very wobbly ground.
More...
Reformers behind the old Iron Curtain are again adhering to a Marxist ideal. But economic miracles are not made of flat taxes alone.
More...
The European public supports a more muscular EU foreign policy. Efforts to help six jailed Bulgarians show that similar concerted influence might work in the Balkans.
More...
The Republika Srpska town of Foca is ground zero for new ideas on governing. If only the EU and others would listen.
More...
Stelian Tanase puts together revealing documents about the history of communism in Romania. Excerpts from a minute of a Romanian Workers Party 1956 meeting regarding the anti-party activity of some comrades.
More...
The paper starts with an examination of the real working of the communist system. The thesis is that it was not a command system; it was a system based on approvals. The approvals of the nomenklatura positions were central to the system. The nomenklatura was not a social class; it was an institution, i.e. a system of rules. Then the paper examines the role of the proletarian quota: according to the nomenklatura institution, a percentage of the leaders (up to 80-85 per cent) had to be industrial workers. The main claim of the paper is that the nomenklatura is a self-destructive institution. The children of those who held key-jobs in the system and, in general, the children of the proletarians who had access to university education cannot have real political power because of the quota system. 1989 was their great opportunity to get rid of the quota system.
More...