Academics and activists from Russia and around the world will address an online conference on October 8 in support of jailed Marxist sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky.
This comes four months after the Judicial Collegium for Military Personnel of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation upheld the five-year prison sentence handed to Kagarlitsky for the trumped-up charge of “justifying terrorism”.
In a statement released shortly after the June 5 ruling, the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign said the charge, “which has been widely used against anti-war activists in the Russian Federation, was brought against Kagarlitsky on July 25 last year after he made some ironical remarks on the occasion of the Ukrainian Navy’s July 17 attack on the bridge connecting Crimea to Russia.”
The court ruling means Kagarlitsky “will now remain confined in a penal settlement in Torzhok (Tver region)”.
Among those to address the conference will be United States philosopher and feminist Nancy Fraser, University of Johannesburg Centre for Social Change director Patrick Bond, Russian sociologist Greg Yudin, Ukrainian historian Hanna Perekhoda, University Solidarity Trade Union (Russia) co-chair Pavel Kudyukin, and speakers from Russian-based organisations Feminist Anti-War Resistance and human rights NGO Memorial.
The conference will also feature the public presentation of the inaugural Daniel Singer Prisoner of Conscience Award, which will be collected by Kagarlitsky’s daughter, Ksenia Kagarlitskaia, on his behalf. Kagarlitskaia recently organised the Freedom Zone international festival in support of political prisoners.
Conference organisers said the seminar “will address the double aspect of [Kagarlitsky’s] contribution: his wide-ranging analysis of the left’s dilemmas in the face of multiple global crises and the advance of the far right; and his resistance — together with other persecuted anti-war activists in the Russian Federation — to the authoritarianism of the regime of Vladimir Putin.”
The seminar will discuss Kagarlitsky’s latest book, The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left. Other topics include: The situation of the left in Russia; Imperialism(s) today; and Political repression and the threat to intellectual freedom in Russia and beyond.
The final session of the conference will launch the Kagarlitsky Network for Academic and Intellectual Freedom.
[Visit freeboris.info to view the full conference program and register. Federico Fuentes is a member of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign.]