Our weekly digest of articles about emerging Europe published elsewhere this week, all of which caught our eye and all of which are well worth your time. Listing them here, however, does not necessarily mean that we agree with every word, nor do they necessarily reflect Emerging Europe’s editorial policy.
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Georgia: Rugby’s Next Superpower
From obscurity to prominence in just over a decade, the rise of Georgian rugby has been meteoric and unexpected, as a two-part film from World Rugby explains.
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Georgi Asparuhov: The Bulgarian artist who stunned England at Wembley
Bulgaria’s best ever footballer scored a fantastic solo goal against England in 1968 but died in a car crash three years later.
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Ukrainian Autocephaly and the Moscow Patriarchate
How Russia’s religious hierarchs reject the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
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Sarajevo Faces Tolerance Test with First Pride March
The first-ever pride march in Bosnia and Herzegovina this weekend will be a major step forward for tolerance and human rights – if the local authorities support it and counter-protesters don’t cause violence.
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Easing Travel Between Georgia and Breakaway Abkhazia
Curbs on ethnic Georgians’ movement to and from breakaway Abkhazia are fuelling internal disputes and tensions with Tbilisi. South Ossetia’s recently calmed crisis shows the risks of ignoring the problem. Abkhazia’s election – though widely considered illegitimate – is a good moment for a course correction.
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Bulgaria Scolds Russian Narrative On Soviet Role In Liberating Europe
Bulgaria has taken issue with an upcoming World War II exhibition the Russian Embassy is organizing in Sofia dedicated to “75 years of the liberation of Eastern Europe from Nazism,” saying instead the region was under “Soviet army bayonets” during a half century of repression.
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Why Polish People Hate Rules
Warsaw has had a long and tumultuous history, which meant that its inhabitants had to come up with ingenious ways to survive.
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Eastern Europe’s Tricky Balance on Avoiding Overtourism
The days of seeing overtourism as “a nice problem to have” are over. While they are still intent on building thriving tourism economies, some Eastern Europe tourism officials are also learning from the mistakes of their western neighbours.
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‘The Painted Bird’: Venice Review
War is brutal, and so, despite its good intentions, is The Painted Bird, a film based on Jerzy Kosinski’s controversial book about a young Jewish boy who wanders through a rural Eastern Europe that has been ravaged and dehumanised by the horrors of World War II.
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The Cheeky Girls: How We Made The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum)
‘It has been voted the worst song ever. I think that’s just people’s way of saying it’s the best’.
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