Post-Soviet

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  9/22/2020
  

  Desiring Machines

  In 1993, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, consensual same-sex relationships were decriminalized in Russia as the economy underwent a wrenching transition away from central planning. Documentarian William E. Jones documents this moment by splicing together the non-sexual scenes from gay pornography shot in the former Soviet bloc. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  9/8/2020
  

  Centrists Are Pining for a Golden Age that Never Was (Review)

  A review of Anne Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy" argues that the author focuses on the role of nostalgia and personality in driving authoritarianism and breaking up the center-right coalition, but ignores the fact that that the center failed to deliver an improved standard of living to the broad public.