Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign

Kagarlitsky designated first Prisoner of Conscience of Daniel Singer Foundation 
April 9, 2024
For immediate release                
Daniel Singer (1926-2000), a Jewish-Polish journalist and writer living in France, was a committed democratic socialist. The Daniel Singer Foundation–created in his name to support initiatives in the spirit of democratic socialism–has resolved to give an annual “Prisoner of Conscience Award” of $10,000 to a person unjustly jailed for expressing opinions unacceptable to the powers-that-be.

It has designated Boris Kagarlitsky as the first recipient of the award.

Presently in jail in Russia, writer-activist Kagarlitsky is also a lifelong democratic socialist. He has been a critic both of the Soviet Union’s anti-democratic practices, as well as of those of the anti-democratic transition under Yeltsin and Putin. 

This transition has led to the present regime in Russia, a repressive oligarchic capitalism which has chosen war on Ukraine as treatment for its internal tensions.

Kagarlitsky is perhaps the best known Russian Marxist intellectual activist, a powerful voice for socialism and Marxism in Russia and around the world. His many books and articles have been widely translated and published, and his popular broadcasts and Telegram channel posts have astutely analysed the political and economic consequences of the Putin regime.

His latest work, The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left is about to be published by Pluto Press.

First arrest

Kagarlitsky was arrested in July 2023 on a ridiculous charge of “justifying terrorism,” and served 4.5 months in pretrial detention in the Komi Republic (more than 1000 kilometers north of Moscow) before being released in December after a two-day trial that ended with him being fined about $6500.

The trial was part of a broader attack on the Russian left as a whole and on Kagarlitsky’s popular Rabkor (“Worker Correspondent”) media outlet in particular. It served as a warning that contesting the official Kremlin version of the war in Ukraine would have dire consequences.

On February 13, the prosecutors succeeded in reversing the results of Kagarlitsky’s December trial on the grounds that the penalty imposed was “excessively lenient”.

He was whisked from the courtroom to begin a five-and-a-half year sentence in a penal colony. Three days later Alexei Navalny died in mysterious circumstances in a harsh penal colony in the Arctic Circle.

Kagarlitsky is a prisoner of conscience, repressed for his public condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and critique of Kremlin policy. On February 13, Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Director for Russia, summed up the meaning of his persecution:

“This verdict is a blatant abuse of vague anti-terrorism legislation, weaponized to suppress dissent and punish a government critic. By targeting Boris Kagarlitsky, a distinguished sociologist known for his critical stance against government policies, the Russian authorities are showing, once again, their relentless assault on all forms of dissent.”

The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign has launched a petition demanding his release and that of all Russian anti-war political prisoners. It has gathered over 14,000 signatures from 41 countries  in less than a month and is presently available in the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, Spanish, English, French, Hindi, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Swedish and Ukrainian. Here is a link to the English version https://chng.it/8pXDcTcJkN

Contact for information: boris.solidarity@gmail.com