INTRODUCTION

I'm David Castle, editorial director at Pluto Press, who published Boris's most recent book: The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left. I will soon introduce the really stellar speakers who we have here to discuss the book today. But first of all, I wanted to just to give a little bit of background about the book: how we came to publish it and also Pluto's relationship with Boris. As you may already know, Pluto Press is an independent, left wing radical publisher based in London. We've been going now for 55 years, founded in 1969. And we've actually been publishing Boris for 30 of those years. We have had a really long standing relationship with him. We published, I think, a total of eight books with Boris now including some really notable books. There was a very substantial trilogy, which began with New Realism, New Barbarism, and then The Return of Radicalism, and finishing with The Twilight of Globalization. That was over 1999 and 2000. And this trilogy was a really ambitious, broad ranging account of capitalist globalization and the changed terrain for the left back then, taking into account the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and the early rise of neoliberalism. I think in many ways, we can see The Long Retreat as a return to those themes 25 years later.

Boris also wrote some brilliant accounts of Russian politics and history, which Pluto published: Russia Under Yeltsin and Putin in 2002 and the Empire of the Periphery in 2007. Many of Boris's books which Pluto published were published in partnership with the Transnational Institute (TNI), based in Amsterdam, with whom Boris was a Fellow for many years and who have been really invaluable in bringing Boris’s work and thought to an international audience. It was the TNI who approached Pluto about publishing The Long Retreat. This was early in July 2023 last year, only a fortnight before Boris was arrested. At this time, Boris had already been labelled a foreign agent by the Russian state, but refused to go into exile. Pluto thought it was particularly important to publish a dissident leftist from Russia at this time. And I tried to move things forward with the author. So I managed to be in touch with Boris before he was arrested over the book. He explained that the book had already been published in Russian, but with some sections cut due to censorship. The edition that Pluto has published in English has had those sections returned to the text. Boris was able to send me a draft manuscripts in English at this time because it had already been translated by his longtime collaborator Renfrey Clarke.

Boris was then arrested on 26th of July. Following the initial shock we then had to work out a way to progress things. Now it was much harder to communicate with the author. Fortunately, Boris has some fantastic friends and comrades around him who did their very best to keep the lines of communication as open as possible.

I began by reviewing the manuscript. It quickly became clear to me that we were handling a very original work, written by an extremely sharp intellect, which presented a perspective rather different to those we are used to on the Western left. As Boris sets out early on in the book, The Long Retreat is an account of the rise of the right and the decline of the left over the past four decades or more. And despite temporary advances in certain places, it is hard to argue that the overall trajectory in recent decades has largely been that of retreat as previous gains are lost and new fronts have emerged. Certainly at a governmental level and largely at the level of mass movements as well. Boris argues persuasively that the left should have a strategy for retreat, just as we have for advance, and the left needs to learn how to defend positions rather than simply take them for granted before they are wiped from the board. The book includes a wide ranging account of the state of global capitalism informed by a deep historical perspective, and it gives a very sobering account of the state of the left today.

There are a couple of things that really stood out for me and others at Pluto, as we read and discussed the text. Firstly, there is the global perspective, or more particularly, a perspective from the post-Soviet world, strengthened through decades of direct, active political experience, which was so refreshing and valuable. Secondly, there is Boris's clear sighted, unsentimental and brutally honest account of the Left today, both parties and formations that cannot come to terms with new realities, but rather simply try to re-enact the past, and also, as Nancy Fraser has mentioned very lucidly, a critique of an identitarian politics of difference which makes forming broad mass political projects very difficult.

So Pluto took the decision that we should publish the book. The Transnational Institute very generously offered funding to make the book Open Access, which means that the PDF edition of the book is available to be downloaded for free by anyone, anywhere, and you'll be able to find that link on the Pluto website if you look at our Open Access section.

here was then a rather difficult road ahead towards actually publishing The Long Retreat. With Boris now under arrest, editorial work and all communications had to be undertaken through intermediaries. All correspondence with Boris had to be through physical letters which needed to pass through the prison censors, which made communication slow and elliptical. Others had to step in at times in place of Boris. I'm very grateful to all the friends and comrades of Boris who assisted in this: Patrick Bond, who also wrote the excellent foreword to the book; Jeff Sommers, who took the lead editing the draft manuscript before Pluto began copy editing; Barry Gills, who gave invaluable early advice on the text; Fiona Dove and Nick Buxton at the TNI; Boris's daughter Ksenia; Anna Ochkina, who most often acted as my intermediary as I corresponded with Boris while he was in prison; and the translator Renfrey Clarke, who had to deal with many queries about the text as we approached publication.

It was then really wonderful to be in touch with Boris directly again, following his release from prison on 13th December 2023. We at Pluto were able to consult with him directly on the book, including getting his approval for the book's subtitle, and he talked directly to Patrick Bond about his forward. Very sadly, Boris was free for just two months before being sentenced to five years detention in a prison colony on 13th February. The Long Retreat was finally published in English, with Boris still in prison, on 20th May 2024.

I've only met Boris a few times in person, at the Pluto office and at a Fellows meeting of the Transnational Institute. He always came across to me as a man of huge energy and conviction, who was not afraid of taking a minority position against the consensus, but who did so with warmth and humour. He struck me as someone with great integrity, and this has shown through very starkly in recent times, as Boris has stuck to his convictions in the face of draconian opposition and repression by the Russian state. I should mention that the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee is creating the Kulwicki Network for Intellectual Freedom. This will be launched at the closing stage of this conference. Please attend that event and join this network. It will be directly campaigning for Boris's freedom and, over time, expanding its demands for others as well. If you can't attend that last session, you will be sent a link via email after the end of the conference.

It is time now to move onto our first speaker. Bill Fletcher is a long standing activist in workplace and community struggles. He is the former president of TransAfrica forum and a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the author of They're Bankrupting Us and 20 Other Myths About Unions, amongst other books. Bill, over to you.