I want to welcome you on behalf of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign. It’s wonderful to see everyone here, even if only across a screen, and even though the circumstances that bring us together today are deplorable and deeply worrying. Boris Kagarlitsky, an internationally renowned sociologist and left-wing intellectual whose body of work spans four decades and counting, has been cruelly confined to a penal colony, sentenced to a five-year term on the ludicrous charge of justifying terrorism.

He is not unique in suffering this fate. Hundreds of his compatriots are languishing in the Russian carceral system for having the moral fibre and bravery to defy Vladimir Putin’s drive to silence criticism of his authoritarian rule and quell condemnation of his war on Ukraine. But as Boris pointed out before he himself was imprisoned, explicitly left-wing dissidents don’t receive the kind of attention conferred on other opponents of the Putin regime especially by conventional media in the global north.

Boris Kagarlitsky is exceptional also in this regard. He has long been read, respected and debated by left intellectuals and activists, around the world, north and south alike. A thorn in the side of successive Soviet and post-Soviet regimes, he is a symbol of the struggle within and beyond Russia for justice, for intellectual freedom and for socialism. He is also a symbol of a kind of personal political commitment and courage that is humbling to those of us made of lesser stuff.

Boris could have fled persecution. He had an opportunity to leave Russia in December 2023 when he was unexpectedly and temporarily released from jail. But he chose not to “get the message” and resolved to stand his ground.

Determined to remain in Russia despite onerous restrictions, including being barred from teaching, he sought to carry on the fight for the freedom of dissent and for democracy. But Boris represented too great a threat to Putin’s veil of propaganda, which is why he can’t be here with us today.

But even being in prison, where he is deprived of access to the Internet or a library, hasn’t stopped Boris from sharing his impressions, observations and analyses via handwritten letters. In fact, he managed to send the organizing committee a note about today’s event, opening with his characteristic dry humour, “To be honest", he writes, “when I heard about the conference dedicated to me, I was both happy and a little scared: usually such conferences are organised in honour of people who have already died. Fortunately, nowadays you don't have to die, you just have to go to prison. The difference is that when you die you don't come back, but I do hope to come back from prison. I have big plans.”


I have no doubt that everyone here heartily shares that hope. Boris may be in prison, but he is not alone. In addition to his devoted family, he has thousands of friends, comrades and supporters pulling for him throughout the world. That’s how the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign came to be formed.

We are a group of people from Russia, Europe, North America and Australia who have joined together to amplify Boris’s voice and help draw attention to the injustice of the regime that is conspiring to muffle that voice along with those of so many other lesser known political prisoners, some of whom have received even harsher sentences for thought crimes and especially opposition to the war.

This conference was conceived in that aim and in particular to pay homage to Boris’s work as a left scholar, which continues even as he serves time in the Torzhok penal colony. As you know, his latest book, The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left, was published only a few months ago when Boris was already in jail, so this conference will do double duty as a book launch, sadly in the absence of the author.

Today’s conference is also a launchpad for the Kagarlitsky Network for Intellectual Freedom, an alliance of people both within and outside academia who are committed to defending the fundamental values of freedom of thought and investigation, in Russia and beyond. This network will be the focus of the last session of the conference and more information will be made available on our website at freeboris.info.

Finally, let’s not forget material conditions. The committee elected to provide free and open access to this conference, but as you can well imagine the efforts to free Boris and other prisoners do not come cheap. So if you are in a position to help out, even a little, we’d be much obliged. Please go to the Support Us section of the website and donate what you can.
Once again, on behalf of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign I want to thank you all for being here at what promises to be a day and evening of lively and stimulating presentations and discussion. I also want to thank our hosts, Pluto Press, the Daniel Singer Prisoner of Conscience Committee and the University of Johannesburg Centre for Social Change.

In addition, I want to send a big shout out to all of our sponsors, who represent a significant slice of left media internationally, demonstrating the reach of Boris’s ideas across borders and political currents.

Now I’ll turn the floor over to another member of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, Alina Chetaeva, who holds a Master’s degree in political science and was Boris’s student at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Science.