Posted October 3, 2024
Free Boris Kagarlitsky and all Russian anti-war political prisoners!
October 1, 2024
Scholars from across the globe will gather for an online conference on October 8 in honor of Russian sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky, who is serving a five-year sentence in a Russian penal colony on the fabricated charge of “justifying terrorism.”
The line-up of distinguished speakers includes: Nancy Fraser, Henry and Louise Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics, New School of Social Research, New York City; Patrick Bond, Distinguished Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg; and Greg Yudin, visiting research scholar, University Center for Human Values, University of Princeton.
Andrea Levy, spokesperson for the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, explained:
“They and many other academics and activists are giving enthusiastically of their time in solidarity with Kagarlitsky, who has long been admired for his substantial body of scholarly work and trenchant analysis of Russian society and politics, shared not only in books and journals but countless magazine articles and interviews.”
Kagarlitsky’s first major work in English was The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present (Verso Press, 1988), for which he won the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize.
A thorn in the side of successive Soviet and Russian regimes, Kagarlitsky earned the particular displeasure of the Vladimir Putin regime for his condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine.
Barred from his teaching position at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences and saddled with restrictions on his freedom of expression, the drive to silence him escalated with his arrest on July 26, 2023, over off-hand comments made in October 2022 about an attack on the Kerch bridge connecting Crimea to Russia.
For this, he was jailed and is currently confined at Corrective Colony 4, Torzhok, Tver Province. Yet even confined, he has still managed to write a moving remembrance of Fredric Jameson.
The conference will include discussions on Kagarlitsky’s latest book, The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left (Pluto Press, 2024), as well as on the situation of the left in Russia and the nature of imperialism in our time.
There will also be a ceremony in recognition of Kagarlitsky being awarded the first Daniel Singer Prisoner of Conscience prize. Kagarlitsky’s daughter, Ksenia, will accept the $10,000 award on his behalf.
The event will conclude with the launch of the Kagarlitsky Network for Academic and Intellectual Freedom, which aims to unite educators, researchers and others in defence of the fundamental values of freedom of thought and investigation in the Russian Federation and the territories it occupies.
Levy said that the conference “is attracting interest not only from academics but progressive politicians, students and activists.” Registration for the conference is free and open to all. It is organised by the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee, which is dedicated to freeing Kagarlitsky and all political prisoners who have fallen victim to Putin’s relentless campaign to repress criticism of his regime’s war on Ukraine.
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