Despite being confined to a penal colony, Russian dissident Boris Kagarlitsky succeeded in addressing the October 8 online conference “Boris Kagarlitsky and the Challenges of the Left Today”, held to honour him and his work.

The conference attracted 450 attendees from 38 countries and the streaming of its proceedings by Russian left platform Rabkor has so far registered more than 7200 viewings.

In a series of handwritten messages to the conference,  Kagarlitsky shared his analyses of the Russian left and accounts of prison life:

“The line at the store takes four or five hours and there is no guarantee that you will return with groceries,” he related. “And those who smoke near the store risk not returning at all — for this they can send you to solitary confinement. Fortunately, I do not smoke.”

Serving a five-year sentence in Vladimir Putin’s contemporary gulag for thought crimes, Kagarlitsky manages to resist despair. Alina Chetaeva, a former Kagarlitsky student and International Solidarity Campaign member noted, “he has been in prison for over a year, and all this time he’s maintained his optimism, his strength, his confidence in his position.”

The conference revolved around the challenges of the left today, the subject of Kagarlitsky’s latest book, The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left, which was also launched at the conference.

Risk defied

Kagarlitsky is a symbol of defiance against the drive to silence dissidents inside and outside academic institutions in Russia. The Russian intellectuals and activists who spoke at the conference did so at considerable personal risk or from exile.

Speakers painted a grim picture of the suppression of dissent, especially anti-war sentiment, and the stifling of free expression in universities. Before being sent to prison, Kagarlitsky was branded a “foreign agent” and barred from teaching — victim of a pattern of persecution that has silenced many educators and researchers in Russia.

However, as award-winning philosopher Nancy Fraser reminded the conference attendees: “Basic freedoms of thought and expression are not just under the gun in Russia. There are Borises everywhere, in Palestine and in Israel, in Iran and in China, in India and Brazil, in Germany, France and in the United States.

“Most of these repressed leftists are less well known to the international left intelligentsia than Boris is. But they are equally in need of our support, and this event, I hope, can serve as a model in a moment of acute global crisis and repression.”

Intellectual repression

The conference was also the launchpad for the Kagarlitsky Network for Intellectual Freedom (KNIF), an alliance of educators, researchers and others who are committed to defending the fundamental values of freedom of thought and investigation.

Speaking on the topic, Pavel Kudyukin, the co-chairman of the Interregional Labour Union of Higher Education Workers (“University Solidarity”) gave an account of the throttling of academic freedom in Russia, beginning with the 2012 Law on Education, which limited universities’ right to self-management.

Pointing out that there is no such thing as tenure at Russian universities, he explained professors are afraid to defend their rights or speak out against authorities for fear of not having their contracts renewed. University professors are also subject to draconian laws introduced since Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine started in 2022. Their aim, Kudyukin said, is to “criminalise and punish dissent”.

These include the “foreign agent law,” and laws against “discrediting the Russian army,” “showing disrespect to authorities” and “justifying terrorism”, the last of which was used to jail Kagarlitsky.

Hundreds of prisoners have been charged or convicted under this repressive legislation, many of them scholars, intellectuals and artists. Kagarlitsky is the best known on the left, but there are many others, such as anarchist mathematician Azat Miftakhov.

Network launched

The Boris Kagarlitsky Network for Intellectual Freedom will focus on the growing threat to intellectual freedom in the Russian Federation and the territories it occupies, but also strive to strengthen solidarity with those fighting for this fundamental right everywhere it is in jeopardy.

Introducing the Network, Transnational Institute executive director Fiona Dove remarked, “when we lose [the] right to freely express our opinions, to dissent, to speak truth to power, we enter the dark tunnel of totalitarianism.”

The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, organiser of the conference, is dedicated to freeing Kagarlitsky and other Russian prisoners of conscience who have fallen victim to Putin’s relentless campaign to repress criticism of his regime and war on Ukraine.

The contributions to the conference will be published on the website of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, at www.freeboris.info.

For further information:

United States: Suzi Weissman +1 818 521 2860
Canada: Andrea Levy +1 514 433 7890 Quebec: André Frappier +1 514 476 7306
United Kingdom: Alex Callinicos +44 (0)7703 358 909
South Africa: Patrick Bond +27 834 251 401
Europe: Alexei Sakhnin +33 758 988 815 Adam Novak +421 904 232 129
Dick Nichols +34 683 171 461
Latin America and Australia: Fred Fuentes +61 412 556 527