BY HANK REICHMAN

Boris Kagarlitsky during the appeal hearing.

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, who was convicted of “justifying terrorism” for remarks he made about Russia’s war against Ukraine and sentenced to five years in prison (after a previous sentence of just a fine was appealed by the state), experienced another setback June 5 when a Russian court rejected his appeal.  (For background on the case see my previous posts here, here, and here.)

Kagarlitsky, the author of numerous books and articles in Russian and English about Russia, Marxism, and the Left, is no stranger to state repression.  He 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.

The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign issued this media release:

“Unjust but not unexpected”: this is how Suzi Weissman, spokesperson for the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, described the June 5 decision of a Russian court to reject Boris Kagarlitsky’s appeal against a five-year jail term for “justifying terrorism”.

The court also maintained the ban preventing the well-known Marxist sociologist and anti-war activist from managing internet sites and telecommunications channels for two years from the end of his prison sentence.

Weissman said: “The judges’ draconian decision was no great surprise since all recent appeals against sentences brought down under Russia’s catch-all anti-terrorism legislation have been rejected.”

The charge of “justifying terrorism”, which has been widely used against anti-war activists in the Russian Federation, was brought against Kagarlitsky on July 25 last year after he made some ironical remarks on the occasion of the Ukrainian Navy’s July 17 attack on the bridge connecting Crimea to Russia.

The refusal of the body hearing Kagarlitsky’s appeal (the Judicial Collegium for Military Personnel of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation) means that he will now remain confined in a penal settlement in Torzhok (Tver region).

Kagarlitsky’s lawyer, Sergey Erokhov, has already stated on his Telegram channel (June 5) that he will continue with the appeal process, taking the case to higher instances of the Russian legal system, starting with the Praesidium of the Supreme Court and going as far as the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.

International appeal ignored

The appeals court judges refused to budge on Kagarlitsky’s sentence despite a special appeal from 37 internationally prominent progressive political figures and intellectuals, including Yanis Varoufakis, Jeremy Corbyn and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, as well as ministers in the Spanish government and MPs from France, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium and Brazil.

The signatories emphasised that Kagarlitsky had never advocated terrorist methods to reach political objectives and that keeping him in jail would tarnish Russia’s international reputation.

Since his jailing Kagarlitsky has also received offers of university postings in Brazil and South Africa, while the ongoing petition demanding his release has attracted more than 18,000 signatures to date.

Increasing repression

The court rejected the two main arguments of Kagarlitsky’s defence formulated by lawyer Erekhov, namely: “(1) it is impossible to judge a social scientist … for his professional activities and (2) punishment must be fair, i.e. it must correspond to the nature of a crime, the degree of danger it entails for the public and the circumstances in which it is committed.”

For Suzi Weissman, the judges’ “barbarous” decision to ignore such basic legal criteria reflects the determination of the Putin regime to crush domestic opposition to its war on Ukraine.

“In this context the basic democratic and legal rights of anti-war activists like Boris Kagarlitsky and thousands of others count for very little.

“Upholding Boris’s appeal would have set a very bad precedent for the Kremlin: if his argument had been accepted, why not that of everyone else condemned for ‘justifying terrorism’?”

Weissman concluded that Boris Kagarlitsky has become a “courageous champion of peace and symbol of the struggle for the right to freedom of expression, who has been the victim of a gross but entirely deliberate miscarriage of justice”.

The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign will now redouble its efforts for his release. Details of a new round of initiatives will be announced soon.

At this juncture it may be useful to quote once more from Kagarlitsky’s May 2023 appeal to Western leftists:

As a matter of principle, Russian courts do not pass down acquittals (in this regard, the situation is much worse than in Stalin’s time), so any accusation, even the most absurd, is considered proven as soon as it is brought. And this applies not only to political matters, which would be at least somewhat understandable in a war, but in general to any criminal or administrative case.

To my Western colleagues, who, after more than a year since the beginning of the war, continue to call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. Do you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? In a country where museum buildings and collections formed over decades are handed over to churches, heedless of the threat of losing unique artifacts? In a country where schools drift away from the study of science and plan to abolish the teaching of foreign languages, but conduct “lessons about the important,” during which children are taught to write denunciations and are taught to hate all other peoples? In a country which every day broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike? . . .

Of course, when someone tells you that the Putin regime is a threat to the West or to the whole of humanity, this is complete nonsense. The people to whom this regime poses the most terrible threat is (aside from the Ukrainians, who are bombarded daily by shells and missiles) the Russians themselves, their people and culture, their future. . . .

We do not need any favor but a very simple one: an understanding of the reality that has developed in Russia today. Stop identifying Putin and his gang with Russia. Realize at last: those who want the good of Russia and the Russians cannot but be irreconcilable enemies of this power.

To sign the petition in support of Boris Kagarlitsky go to https://chng.it/mRsM74SRZ9

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; a second edition will be published in early 2025.