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Boris Kagarlitsky
Boris Kagarlitsky
Борис Кагарлицкий
	Kagarlitsky in 2011
Born	29 August 1958 (age 66); Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Alma mater	State Institute of Theatrical Art (GITIS); Moscow State Social University
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy; Russian philosophy
School	Marxism; World-systems theory
Main interests	Philosophy, sociology, labour, history, class struggle

Boris Yulyevich Kagarlitsky (Russian: Бори́с Ю́льевич Кагарли́цкий; born 29 August 1958) is a Russian Marxist theoretician and sociologist who has been a political dissident in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. He is an associate of the Transnational Institute.^[3] Kagarlitsky is the director of Institute of Globalisation Studies and Social Movements (IGSO)^[4] and editor in chief of Levaya Politika (Left Politics) quarterly in Moscow. Kagarlitsky hosts a YouTube channel Rabkor, associated with his online newspaper of the same name.^[5]

Political activities

Soviet Union

In the 1970s, he studied theatre criticism at the State Institute of Theatrical Art (GITIS), before being expelled for dissident activities in 1980. His editorship of the samizdat journal Levy Povorot (Left Turn) from 1978 to 1982, and contributions to the samizdat journal Varianty (Variants) during the same period, led to his arrest for 'anti-Soviet' activities in 1982. He was pardoned and released in 1983.

In 1988 he published his book, Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present, which won the Deutscher Memorial Prize.

In 1988, after the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika, he was permitted to resume his studies at the GITIS, graduating in the same year, and became coordinator of the Moscow People's Front [ru]. In 1990, he was elected to the Moscow City Soviet and to the Executive of the Socialist Party (USSR) [ru].

Russian Federation

He co-founded the Party of Labour (Russia) [ru] in October 1992. In October 1993, the former Soviet dissident was arrested, with two other members of his party, for his opposition to President Boris Yeltsin during the September–October constitutional crisis, but was released the next day after international protests. Later that year, his job and the Moscow City Soviet were abolished under Yeltsin's new constitution. He documents the events and his experiences during this period in his book Square Wheels: How Russian Democracy Got Derailed. His 2005 historical essay Marxism: Not Recommended for Teaching was criticized by Mikhail Vasilyevich Popov.^[6]

In 2022, Russian authorities designated Kagarlitsky as a foreign agent.^[7] On 25 July 2023, Russia's Federal Security Service opened a criminal case against Kagarlitsky.^[8] He was arrested on charges of "justifying terrorism" on 26 July 2023 according to Russian state agencies, as part of a wider crackdown on outspoken critics of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.^[7] In December 2023, he was charged 600,000 rubles fine on this charge.^[9]

In February 2024, his sentence was changed to five years' detention in a prison colony.^[10]

After his arrest in 2023 the Kagarlitsky Solidarity Committee was formed and signed by public and political figures around the world: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Jeremy Corbyn, Slavoj Žižek, Nadya Tolokonnikova and many others.^[11]

Academic career

From 1994 to 2002, he was a senior research fellow at the Institute for Comparative Political Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISPRAN). He was awarded his Doctorate degree for his thesis, "Collective Actions and Labour Policies in Russia in the 90s," in 1995, and has taught political science at Moscow State University, the Moscow School for Social and Economic Sciences, and the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Personal life

According to Kagarlitsky, his paternal family descends from Ilya Kagarlitsky, a successful Jewish businessman from the city of Kaharlyk in Ukraine. His mother comes from an Orthodox Christian family.^[12] He has a daughter, Ksenia.^[13]

Books in English

Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present, Verso Books, 1989, ISBN 0860919617
The Dialectic of Change, Verso Books, 1990, ISBN 0860919617
Farewell Perestroika: A Soviet Chronicle, Verso Books, 1990, ISBN 0860912922
The Disintegration of the Monolith, Verso Books, 1993, ISBN 0860915735
Square Wheels: How Russian Democracy Got Derailed, Monthly Review Press, 1994, ISBN 0853458928
Mirage of Modernization, Monthly Review Press, 1995, ISBN 0853459126
Restoration in Russia: Why Capitalism Failed, Verso Books, 1995, ISBN 1859849628
Globalization and Its Discontents: The Rise of Postmodern Socialisms, co-edited with Roger Burbach and Orlando Nunez, Pluto Press, 1997, ISBN 0745311709
New Realism, New Barbarism: Socialist Theory in the Era of Globalization, Pluto Press, 1999, ISBN 0745315569
The Return of Radicalism: Reshaping the Left Institutions, Pluto Press, 1999, ISBN 0745315917
The Twilight of Globalization: Property, State and Capitalism, Pluto Press, 2000, ISBN 074531581X
Russia Under Yeltsin and Putin: Neo-Liberal Autocracy, Pluto Press, 2002, ISBN 0745315070
The Politics of Empire: Globalisation in Crisis, co-edited with Alan Freeman, Pluto Press, 2004, ISBN 0745321836
Empire of the Periphery: Russia and the World System, Pluto Press, 2007, ISBN 074532682X
Back in the USSR (What Was Communism?), Seagull Books, 2009, ISBN 9781906497279
From Empires to Imperialism: The State and the Rise of Bourgeois Civilisation, Routledge, 2014, ISBN 9781138778856
Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism, Routledge, 2019, ISBN 0367231085
Between Class and Discourse: Left Intellectuals in Defence of Capitalism, Routledge, 2020, ISBN 0367562707
The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left, Pluto Press, 2024, ISBN 9780745350288