Lucha Internacionalista
The russian marxist sociologyst Boris Kagarlitsky has been arrested on the charge of “justifying terrorism” and he is in danger of 7-year imprisonment. It is more than clear that the reason of his arrest is this anti-war position, which he has been clearly declaring since the very begining of the full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine, on 22nd february 2022.
As European internationalists left, we harshly condemn this act of political repression, one more example of a long sequence of political persecution against russian anti-war activists. Eventhough Boris Kagarlitsky tried to stick within the small legal framework of state censorship, this didn’t protect him from being arrested. The detention of the most well-known contemporary Russian Marxist thinker shows a tendency towards the disappearence of any critical space in Putin’s state.
We are aware of his previous political positions in 2014-2015 about the initial stages of the war in Donbass and the annexation of Crimea, which were unaccepable to us. But during lasts years he has been gradualy changing his positions regarding the situation in Ukraine and regarding Putin’s regime. When the full-scale invasion broke out, he openly condemned it and took a clear position against the Russian imperial policies towards its neighbours. Regardless the danger of expressing such ideas in Russia, he hasn’t left the country and until the moment of his detention has been proactively working on building a wide anti-war coalition.
We demand his immediate release, as well as other political prisioners of Putin’s regime. The world needs a strong anti-war movement in Russia to end this bloody war.
Free Boris Kagarlitsky! Russian troops out of Ukraine!