[News of Kagarlitsky’s arrest has sparked anger and empathy
among a wide range of activists.]
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DEFEND BORIS KAGARLITSKY!  
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HANK REICHMAN
July 28, 2023
Academe Blog
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_ News of Kagarlitsky’s arrest has sparked anger and empathy among
a wide range of activists. _

Boris Kagarlitsky,

 

Sociologist 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, was arrested
[[link removed]]
by the Russian FSB on July 25. He stands accused of “justifying
terrorism” under Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code of the
Russian Federation, based on his discussion about the motivations of
the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the October Crimean Kerch Bridge attack.
He had written that the explosion could be understood “from a
military perspective.”

“In his work, professor Kagarlitsky never supported or justified
terrorism. The purpose of all his statements is to show the real
problems faced by the Russian state,” his lawyer Sergei Yerokhov was
cited
[[link removed]]
as saying.

Kagarlitsky was detained after the head of the FSB in the Komi
Republic determined that his post to the _Rabkor_ blog
[[link removed]], which he edits, constituted justification of
terrorism (_Rabkor_ also has a YouTube channel
[[link removed]].) He has been taken to Syktyvkar, in
the Komi region, more than 800 miles from his Moscow home. He was
ordered to be held in the Verkkny Chov pretrial detention center until
September 24, when, presumably, he is to be put on trial. The charges
could be very serious—he may face years in prison. Three of
Kagarlitsky’s co-editors at _Rabkor_ were also arrested, but
released without charges (for now).

Kagarlitsky, the author of numerous books and articles in Russian and
English [[link removed]] about
Russia, Marxism and the Left, is no stranger to state repression. The
64-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 co-founded 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 [link removed].

In May, _Russian Dissent_ published an especially eloquent appeal by
Kagarlitsky to Western leftists, “A Very Simple Request: A plea to
my Western progressive friends
[[link removed]].” It
reads in part:

But try to imagine what it is like to live in a state where you can be
detained and prosecuted for wearing the wrong clothes, for liking a
“seditious” post on social networks, or simply because the
incoming police chief did not like your appearance. 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?

I don’t think I really want to.

So, we in Russia also do not want to live like this.

We resist or at least try to preserve our beliefs and principles based
on the humanistic tradition of Russian culture. And when we read on
the Internet about another call to “understand Putin” or “to
meet him halfway,” this is perceived inside Russia as complicity
with criminals who oppress and ruin our own country.

Such appeals are based on a deep, almost racist contempt for the
people of Russia, for whom, according to Western liberal pacifists, it
is perfectly natural and acceptable to live under the rule of a
corrupt dictatorship.

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.

As the _Nation_ magazine, which has published Kagarlitsky in the US,
noted
[[link removed]],
“Kagarlitsky’s experience is a clear reminder of the need to
defend a free press in the face of efforts by governments—including
our own—to silence journalists escalate across the world.” True
academic freedom has for some time been largely, if not entirely,
absent in Russia under the Putin regime (see for examples my posts
here
[[link removed]],
here
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and here
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Now Kagarlitsky’s arrest suggests an intensification of the assault
on both journalism and independent scholarship.

In a statement
[[link removed]]
published (in Russian) on their website, the editors of _Rabkor_
declared, “We continue to work. _Rabkor_ is not only Boris
Kagarlitsky. This is a text site with editors and admins, YouTube
channel hosts and those who work behind the scenes. The most important
thing that our team can now do for Boris Yulevich is to preserve
_Rabkor_ and make it the centerpiece of the international solidarity
campaign for the release of Kagarlitsky.”

In a statement
[[link removed]]published
in English by the journal _Jacobin_, the Union of Marxists, a Russian
communist group, declared:

Such calculated precautions taken by those orchestrating the political
persecution of Kagarlitsky demonstrate their serious concern about
organized support for the left-wing sociologist—perhaps more so than
any other remaining public figure in Russia. And not without reason,
as news of Kagarlitsky’s arrest has sparked anger and empathy among
a wide range of activists: all those who learned from him, debated
with him, and worked alongside him.

Furthermore, this is not the first case of persecution against
left-wing activists: criminal and administrative charges on false
grounds are being brought against trade unionists and activists, such
as Anton Orlov and Kirill Ukraintsev, and the “foreign agent”
status is being imposed on new individuals every week, including
mathematician and left-wing activist Mikhail Lobanov. Despite the near
obliteration of legal avenues for resisting government oppression in
Russia, we will not leave Kagarlitsky alone to face his accusers.

Kagarlitsky must be freed; and may this slogan be echoed by all who
have ever shaken his hand or read his books. We call upon you to
support him: through publications, actions, and attention to his
books. People may perish, but ideas do not, and Kagarlitsky has done
everything to ensure that prison walls will not hinder his fight for
human freedom.

_Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of history at
California State University, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and
president 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
[[link removed]]_,
based in part on posts to this blog, was published in 2019. His
_Understanding Academic Freedom
[[link removed]]_
was published in October 2021.  _

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