BY HANK REICHMAN
Sociologist, antiwar activist, and internationally renowned Marxist thinker Boris Kagarlitsky, a professor at the Moscow Higher School of Economics and head of the Moscow think tank The Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements, has been released after paying a fine of 600,000 rubles ($6,600) for “justifying terrorism” in comments he made about Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. As I reported on this blog, Kagarlitsky was arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) on July 25 and has been held in prison in northwestern Russia’s republic of Komi since. A Moscow military court—which heard the case at the Komi Supreme Court—found Kagarlitsky guilty, but rejected the prosecution’s request for a five-and-a-half year prison sentence in favor of the fine. Kagarlitsky has continued to proclaim his innocence. He has been a vocal critic of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, but has remained in Russia despite the Kremlin’s sweeping crackdown on anti-war activism. In May 2022 the government designated him as a “foreign agent.” His Institute had been previously so designated in 2018.
In my previous post on Kagarlitsky’s arrest I wrote:
Kagarlitsky, the author of numerous books and articles in Russian and English about Russia, Marxism, and the Left, is no stranger to state repression. The sixty-four-year-old was a leader of a Marxist opposition group in the Soviet Union, Levy Povorot (Left Turn), from 1978 until his arrest in 1982. He was released the following year. In 1990, he was elected to the Moscow City Soviet and to the Executive of the Socialist Party (USSR). He cofounded the Party of Labor (Russia) in October 1992. In October 1993, Kagarlitsky was again arrested, with two other members of his party, for opposing President Boris Yeltsin during the September–October constitutional crisis but was released the next day after international protests. Later that year, his job and the Moscow City Soviet were abolished under Yeltsin’s new constitution.
During those years I had the privilege of lunching with Kagarlitsky when he visited Berkeley on a book tour. He was then, and remains, one of the most interesting and perceptive leftist critics of the former Soviet and current Russian state. After the Putin regime invaded Ukraine, many liberal and leftist intellectuals fled Russia, but Kagarlitsky not only chose to remain but spoke out boldly and repeatedly against the government and its imperial war. He remained and continued to write and speak even after the government in 2022 labeled him a “foreign agent” for his antiwar stance. His commentary, along with other voices from the Russian left, is available in English at https://russiandissent.substack.com/.
This is most welcome news for Boris’s comrades and for all who campaigned for his release. I wish him the best and hope that he will be able to continue fighting for a peaceful and democratic Russia.
Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and chair of the AAUP Foundation; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. His book, The Future of Academic Freedom, based in part on posts to this blog, was published in 2019. His Understanding Academic Freedom was published in October, 2021.
