I’m very pleased to welcome everyone to the conference too, but I should apologize to the English-speaking audience. Before I start my introductory word, I would like to turn to our audience and welcome them in Russian. [Ẁelcomes Russian-speaking audience] Now I turn to our English speaking audience. Hello again. I want to say that Boris Kagarlitsky has been in prison for over a year and all this time he's maintained his optimism, his strength, his confidence in his position. In spite of everything, he shares his optimism with us. Some people even told me that Boris’s letters are the most uplifting thing in their daily routine.

But Boris not only tries somehow to lift our spirits, he also keeps working. He shares with us articles, comments on the news, and gives us new ideas. From my perspective, one of his main messages to us is that the left in Russia should not just wait for some bright future that will automatically bring us a lot of opportunities, but must use this time, this time of crisis effectively to organize our forces around the most important issues.

One of them is the issue of political prisoners. We all understand that it's a long-term problem, so we must use this situation to work together, not just on special occasions but on a permanent basis. Helping political prisoners is routine work, but the skills that we are gaining here will help us somehow in the future. And moved by Boris's thinking, the Russian Left Political Prisoners Fund was set up. And now it provides regular help to more than 20 prisoners. So not only Boris. And this fund has compiled a list of people with left-wing views. It's about 50 prisoners. Just think about it. 50 prisoners.

But there are a lot of prisoners we don't know about at all. Their names are not known to the mainstream media audience because our media universe in Russia is constructed in such a way that only notable figures, usually liberals, can get some attention. And knowing all this, Boris called for this problem to be somehow addressed. And at the very least, leftists themselves need to understand the extent of political repression. And not just in Russia, but internationally, where, you know, there is a view among some leftists, that there’s only one kind of conflict in Russia, between the Kremlin power elite and the liberal opposition. The situation is not like that, and not only in the case of Boris, but in many other political trials against leftist prisoners--I mentioned that we count 50 prisoners just in the Left Political Prisoners Fund.

So, we call on the international community to pay attention to this fact. Today we will have a section dedicated to the situation of the left in Russia, so we will be discussing the issue in more detail. But the only thing I would like to add here is that everyone is welcome to follow the news from both the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign and the Left Political Prisoners Fund. All the links will be available to everyone registered for the conference and they are available below the stream on YouTube.

Andrea has already mentioned the note from Boris speaking to all of us, so I would like to finish reading from it.

Boris writes: “I have big plans. We all have big plans. We are going through another period of crisis, yet all the revolutionaries, from socialists to anarchists who threatened to destroy the Old World, have not succeeded.

“The Old World itself is crumbling before our eyes under the weight of its own contradictions. But to deal with systemic crisis, we need the revolutionary imagination that allows us to go beyond the generally accepted recipes, to risk thinking in new ways without fear of being accused of radicalism. We are too poor to buy cheap, says the conventional wisdom. The current situation is too serious to afford moderation. Radicalism is not irresponsible. On the contrary, it demands intellectual and political responsibility for one's words and thoughts so that they are translated into deeds and actions. Let us learn to speak honestly about our problems and stop being afraid of ourselves, of our imagination and our ideals. All must be put to work.

In the meantime, I sincerely thank everyone involved in the campaign for my release, everyone who has shown solidarity and faith in the success of our common cause. There is still much work to do. We will do it together in Russia, in Europe, everywhere. I will see you again.”