BORIS KAGARLITSKY
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

Fighting repression of anti-war movement in Russia

Last year, according to the latest report of banned Russian human rights organisation Memorial:

• People deprived of liberty for politically motivated and unlawful reasons rose from 2662 to 4884
• The number of political prisoners [a large part of them opponents of the Ukraine invasion] increased from 803 to 1268.
• The proportion of more serious charges rose, sentences became longer, and torture became even more widespread.

Like Boris Kagarlitsky, this growing number of victims of political repression, of which opponents of the invasion of Ukraine form a large part, have been jailed under catch-all legislation designed to crush opposition to the war and advance “Russian values”.

These elastic laws cover:

• public justification of terrorism
• bringing discredit upon the armed forces
• public dissemination of knowingly false information
• propaganda or public display of banned symbols
• extremism

They are used against any opponent of the invasion of Ukraine, whether citizen of the Russian Federation (Russian and non-Russian alike), citizens of the occupied territories in Ukraine, and even Ukrainian prisoners of war.

Advancing left theory and practice
Since Boris Kagarlitsky first became known to a non-Russian audience as the winner of the 1988 Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize (for his work The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State 1917 to the Present), he has worked to promote the left’s understanding of the world and its effort to change it—both in the former Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, and internationally.

Kagarlitsky’s latest addition to this life-long contribution is the book The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left, which in October 2024 was the subject of an important conference organised by the Campaign and hosted by Pluto Press, the Daniel Singer Prisoner of Conscience Committee, and the University of Johannesburg Centre for Social Change.

Advancing intellectual freedom
The Kagarlitsky Network for Intellectual Freedom is an alliance of people committed to defending the fundamental values of freedom of thought and investigation against any threat of repression,

Its initial focus is on the rising threat to intellectual freedom in the Russian Federation, but it will also look to strengthen solidarity with all those fighting for this fundamental value in any other country where it is under threat.
Join the Network here!