Free Boris Kagarlitsky – Katrina vanden Heuvel

Paul Jay

Hi, I’m Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news. We’ll be back in just a few seconds with Katrina vanden Heuvel to discuss the arrest of Boris Kagarlitsky, an anti-war activist who was based in Moscow and is now being held in jail for his opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Boris Kagarlitsky, a leading Russian-based Marxist and anti-war activist, was arrested on July 25. Now, joining us to discuss why Boris was arrested and why there is a “Free Boris Kagarlitsky” movement developing around the world is Katrina vanden Heuvel. She’s the editorial director and publisher of The Nation, and she served as the editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019. Thanks very much for joining me, Katrina.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Thank you for having me, Paul.

Paul Jay

You’ve known Boris for decades. Give us an introduction. Who is Boris, and why do you think the arrest has taken place now? Start with how you know Boris and who he is.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Boris Kagarlitsky is probably the most important Marxist previously in the Soviet Union, now in the post-Soviet space. He’s known in the West. He’s published with Verso and New Left Review. He’s someone who founded, in 2007, an important institution, the Institute for Globalization and Social Movements.

He’s someone who’s been a dissident in other times, Paul. He was arrested, I believe, in 1982-83. He was a member of the Moscow City Council under the [Leonid] Brezhnev years, and then he was arrested again in 1993. These were brief. He spent a year in Lefortovo in 1982. In 1993, when [Boris] Yeltsin stormed the Parliament, an act which was welcomed here but was reviled by much of Russia, Boris was arrested again.

I met Boris in 1981 with my late husband, Stephen Cohen. He was an assistant, Boris at the time, to the great Marxist dissident Roy Medvedev, who wrote a magisterial book called Let History Judge, a deeply anti-Stalinist book. I remember meeting miles from the center of Moscow, and Boris was quiet. He was a graduate of the Theatrical Institute in Moscow, which is interesting. He later, I think, studied economics and political science. He was self-taught in fundamental ways. He had a great sense of humor, and he persisted.

In 1989, I did a roundtable interview with three young members of perestroika— Gorbachev’s reforms were called “restructuring”. One was Kagarlitsky, and the other was a man named Alexey Rumyantsev, who was considered the James Madison of Russia, having helped write the constitution in 1993. Another one was from the provinces. He was from the city where Kamaz trucks were made. The Rumyantsev person went on to work for Mars chocolate in Russia and for oil companies, and the provincial person went off to Finland to live. Boris Kagarlitsky has persisted. He has remained a survivor in different times in the Soviet Union and in Russia. He’s a man of integrity. He’s a man of humor. He’s a very serious man, and he takes Marxism seriously. He’s anti-war by nature.

We were talking earlier, Paul. He’s also someone who did support the annexation of Crimea at the beginning years ago. I think it is sometimes misunderstood. Alexei Navalny, who is better known in the West, also supported the annexation of Crimea. Boris, as a Marxist, has always been, as you can imagine, deeply anti-neoliberalism.

For those in the West who may have thought that Yeltsin and the Yeltsin era brought some change to Russia, democratic change, I would suggest that Boris found in [Mikhail] Gorbachev’s perestroika in Glasnost. He was much more sympathetic to that, though, understanding it was not a Marxist economics program. In Yeltsin’s years, he was extraordinarily effective and ferocious in opposition to the looting of the country, the giveaway of the country to oligarchs. I’d say that his integrity is rooted in his understanding that people have been shafted.

Then he turned to the war. He was like some Russians, more supportive of the Donbass takeover. I think he regretted it, but he saw in it a movement, politics that would be a project, perhaps any neoliberal. He came around, Paul, I want to say, maybe five, six, seven years ago, to understand that you couldn’t have true socialism as a supporter of this war. This war started before the horrific launch and aggression 22 months ago. Boris is a man of integrity.

The last point is he was aware of the threats he faced because he was named a foreign agent last year, and so was his institute in 2022. He is someone who believes in the possibilities of his country. The fact that he hasn’t left and is now in the Komi Republic, 800 miles from Moscow, in terrible detention, is a measure of his desire or sense of purpose that he needed to stay in his country and not leave.

Paul Jay

Boris told me, and for viewers, I’ve interviewed Boris three, four or five times now. We put all the interviews up on a page. So if you look for the one Boris interview, you’ll find all the Boris interviews on our website. If you’re watching on YouTube, it’s actually easier to do this on the website, but there’s a playlist, a Boris playlist there too. Boris said his early support for Donetsk and Luhansk was that the Left, he thought, was really in the leadership of the movement there. He thought that after a few years, they lost any influence there, and essentially Putin’s forces really took over. And that’s how he explained it.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Do you know what’s interesting, Paul? First of all, I want to say that, yes, Boris, by the way, has written for The Nation for decades, and he came to visit The Nation in 2019. He would come and speak when he was in the United States. What’s interesting is, in the context of Russian society and politics today, a week before Boris was detained and arrested, the leader of the Donbass project, his real name, I believe, is Igor Girkin, but he’s called Strelkov, was arrested.

Listen, in times of war, forces of independence and good politics don’t do well. Independent voices, dissident voices, and heretical voices are the first to go. You have on this patriotic rights sector, Strelkov arrested a week before Boris. I think there’s more and more repression, if that’s possible, inside Russia, post-Prigozhin mutiny, as the war amps up again in this counter-offensive offensive. Boris has become, I think, part of this increasing repression.

What’s striking to me, Paul, if I could, is in some of the coverage and, of course, Open Democracy has a leftist understanding of why solidarity with Boris today is important, despite his early support for Donbass and Crimea. You do have people like Sergei Markov, who is a Kremlin pundit I’ve known for decades, who was more of a newspaper analyst, saying what a mistake it was that the Kremlin did this because Boris is an important figure of the Left in the West. I haven’t seen a crack in the Kremlin like that. In addition, the head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, said this was a big mistake.

There’s something interesting in that that people believe Putin is an all-seeing, omnipotent autocrat. He is an authoritarian. There was a survey about five years ago that 40% of the decrees from the Kremlin are not fulfilled. It’s a huge country. So the question is why this federal security agent, head of the security forces in the Komi Republic, 800 miles from Moscow, suddenly saw Boris’s post from almost a year ago about the Crimean Bridge, and he was taken from Moscow, which is very unusual. Those arrested in Moscow are often kept in Moscow. There are cracks here that are worth exploring in the commitment of those in the West who understand Boris’s role in Russian society to support him, to be in solidarity with him.

The question is, what? You know this issue, Paul, it’s vexing. What is the best position to assist someone like Boris at this moment? Is it international pressure? Is it international attention to make sure that the conditions of his confinement are more humane than they might be? I think Boris has made clear, as have members of his institute, that attention is important.

Paul Jay

The article you referred to that was apparently the basis of the charges against Boris– I say Boris because I’m too Anglo to say Boris– Boris was so innocuous. He was discussing the attack on the bridge in Crimea, explaining why the Ukrainians did it. It’s not like he came out and supported doing it. It was a very dispassioned analysis. It’s a fig leaf excuse. It’s also kind of odd because some of the stuff Boris has said more recently has been so overtly against the war, denouncing Putin in the strongest of terms, yet they picked a year plus some old article to go after him with.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

The idea that it’s fomenting terrorism is delusional. The Crimean Bridge is more than just a bridge. It’s a project. It was Putin’s personal special project to show that he could unify Ukraine’s landmass with Crimea. It was done under special circumstances. Oligarchs were given all they needed. So there’s something in that. Boris just spoke about how the supply lines would be impacted. It wasn’t really like go, go, go, go. There have been others who have said that the Kerch Bridge is a legitimate war target because there are debates about whether it’s being used for the delivery of weapons.

In any case, it seems to me that Boris has gotten caught up in this dangerous time when the war is going on. It’s amping up even as the counter-offensive by the Ukrainians doesn’t seem to be moving as effectively as many in the West had thought. The Russians are increasing their air bombing and going for places like Odesa, which are very, again, symbolic to the Ukrainians and to Russians. Boris may be caught up in this cycle of repression, war, post-Prigozhin, where Putin wants to show how tough he is. Again, though, I think you have elements around the country which want to show they’re tough. Tough means what we saw with arrests of all kinds.

Paul Jay

For viewers who aren’t familiar with Katrina and her husband, Stephen Kohen, who passed away a few years ago, I did a long series of interviews with Stephen, which you can find on our site. Some of the most prominent voices over the last few decades opposing Russophobia, both Katrina and Stephen, were very important in opposing the crazy hysteria, anti-Russia hysteria we’ve heard from the U.S. for years. Katrina and Stephen’s voices are not people who would jump on some anti-Russian bandwagon whatsoever.

On the other hand, Katrina has been very critical of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and very supportive of Boris. Now, that said, Boris has taken some positions I haven’t agreed with, which I said in the recent interview. Boris has essentially adopted much of what some of the Ukrainian Left says, which is not only is this war defending Ukraine just, which I think it is too, but that it should be waged until the complete liberation of Donbass and Crimea. There’s no onus on the Ukrainians to negotiate or stop this short of that. Now Boris has been advocating that as a position. I’m wondering what you think of that. 

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Well, first of all, Steve greatly admired Boris, and I think Boris admired Steve. They had debates of different kinds. Boris was often more utopian as to what might change. Now, Steve’s last book was War with Russia. Just briefly on Russophobia, I think the demonization of Russia in these last years has contributed to some of what we’re seeing. I continue to see that Putin’s messianic language and ideas are very dangerous for a true kind of world.

On the other hand, NATO expansion cannot be dismissed. The relationship in 2000 had possibilities, which, by 2007, when Putin spoke in Munich and criticized the unipolar United States and Iraq, is something that has to be understood. Then five years of Russiagate demonized Russia to such an extent that there was an easy path toward more conflict.

I was in touch with Boris during the Prigozhin mutiny and asked him to write, and he did write at the end of it. He said Prigozhin is going to be in Moscow tonight. Boris was a brilliant person, but his analysis didn’t often come true. He would be more quick to argue, and I think he may have turned, as you suggest, he was deeply anti-war, but I don’t agree with some of what he wrote, but you have to respect that voice. I think in these times, any independent voice you don’t have to agree with, but you want to give space to it.

That’s what I think is wrong in this country right now. There’s almost a smearing of those who raise alternative ideas as to how to resolve the Ukrainian crisis. You’re called pro-Putin or pro-Russian too quickly when you speak in your own voice, but it may intersect with a way forward to peace talks or finding alternatives to ongoing arming, arming weapons of the Ukrainians.

Boris’s strength, in my view, is that he saw the Soviet project as the Russian project, power and property. He was not sentimental. It was a looting of a country, and it was a looting of values he believed in and was going to remain a force for through his institute and through his writing, a commitment to a Marxist stance. You don’t agree with everyone, but you support their right to speak. I think being in solidarity at this moment, especially with those who may believe the war in Ukraine is a just war, but I’m someone who believes we’ve overmilitarized our security. I’m a great believer in human security, and I’m a great believer in Gorbachev and what he and people like Olof Palme put forth as the hope of a common European home seems so distant but not militarized like NATO, but from Vladivostok to Lisbon of value and principle. I think Boris is, in essence, someone who believes in that. At the moment, he’s reacting and speaking to the current circumstances.

Paul Jay

He told me while he thinks NATO is an aggressive, militarist bloc, while he thinks NATO should be disbanded, he does think some of the Left, whether it’s North America or what people are calling the Global South. I don’t love that term because it’s such a mixed bag. What’s in the Global South?

Katrina vanden Heuvel

It is. It is very different.

Paul Jay

Yeah, but whatever. For the sake of argument, the Global South. He thought the factor of NATO expansion was being greatly exaggerated and that, in fact, it was pretty clear Ukraine wasn’t getting into NATO. France and Germany had made it clear this was nothing imminent. Turkey wasn’t going to [agree]. They weren’t going to have a consensus. 

Katrina vanden Heuvel

That is post [inaudible 00:19:48]. I would agree that is [crosstalk 00:19:50]. 

Paul Jay

Well, even before this goes right back to the beginning when the Bush administration was pushing for Ukraine and NATO. France and Germany said no. Boris said that it wasn’t such a factor as some people are saying.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

There is a debate, and I continue to think that NATO expansion, which we had a special issue about in 1997 at The Nation, and played a vital role in. It wasn’t just the expansion of NATO. It was the ravaging of a relationship. By 2008, when Georgia and Ukraine were offered fast track, we’re not going to go through not one step eastward but the violation. Paul, in this country, can you imagine Warsaw Pacts setting up on the Mexican border? There is a belief in spheres of influence. I’m not sure that’s the best politics or approach, but Boris has his opinions. I’m not sure what he thought was the reason for the war. Did he think it was messianic ideas of reconstituting a Soviet empire?

Paul Jay

Not primarily, no. What he said was that Putin’s party did very badly in the last elections. There was a rising sentiment, especially outside of two or three of the major cities. Much of Russia is doing terribly. The poverty was getting worse. In every indicator, life was getting worse for people.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

They needed to go out [inaudible 00:21:36].

Paul Jay

Yeah, he thought this would be a way. Under pressure from the toxic religious Right, the Russian Orthodox Church, the other sections of the Right militarists, a way to balance all of these problems, a quick victory in Ukraine and would get a lot of nationalist enthusiasm going. They never expected such a disaster.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

But that doesn’t mean NATO expansion wasn’t a factor. Speaking about Boris, I want to add that he is a figure, and we don’t see this often in any country’s politics, who’s not only a thinker, but he was a doer. He would travel the country, and he was helping lead campaigns of independent candidates in parts of the country far from Moscow. He was very involved with the creation of an independent trade union. He continued to pursue. I think he’s right that you can’t ignore the Russian Orthodox Church and the rise of its power in the elite, which has been one of the stories missing from our news reporting these last years. Boris had his ideas. He has his ideas, but it doesn’t mean that there’s no solidarity with someone who has been an important force in exposing the corruption in Russia. He’s always been critical of Putin, and then for different reasons.

Of course, there’s the traditional view that when your country, the economics is failing, and your support is falling, a war, a quick war, which is apparently what was anticipated, is not a bad way to fix your problems. That has not happened. The problems have been exposed.

Paul Jay

I just want to add something. I think something he thought, and certainly, I think, whether NATO was the reason or not, and I don’t think it was the reason, but it’s a reason.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

What?

Paul Jay

Even if it’s a subjective part of the narrative of Russian nationalism, that isn’t nothing. Why was the United States in Afghanistan for so long? Because you’re not supposed to lose a war in Afghanistan. It had nothing to do with real strategic problems. Let me say what should have been done, and there were lots of Ukrainian voices saying this before the invasion. Ukraine should have taken NATO off the table and said, okay, forget this. 

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Here we are, Paul. Did you see the last NATO summit? It was cruel, in a way, to Ukraine. You can’t join until this, this, and this condition is met. The fact of the war, the division, and the economic crisis in Ukraine is going to keep it from joining at any point soon. Now, that may change. Again, Boris fully understood and understands that Ukraine is probably Russia’s most– the Russians and Ukrainians are interrelated or intermarried. Ukraine is not Georgia.

The other thing Boris understood was the power of American militarism. That doesn’t mean you don’t oppose this war, but you do understand that America has declared itself the sole superpower with the right to police the world. What Putin said in Munich in 2007 is this is no longer a unipolar world. I think whatever America strives to achieve as a sole superpower it’s not possible anymore. No president wants to tell their country that it’s in decline. You don’t have to say it’s in decline. You suggest restraint. You suggest being one of many in order to build a better just world. But underlying Boris’s principles of Marxism is what really has led him to engage with the poor, the disaffected, and the disenfranchised in Russia. He didn’t stay in Moscow. He’s travelled the country and tried to rebuild different politics against all odds. Boris has a sense of humor which cannot be belied, and that has kept him going strong, and I don’t diminish that.

Paul Jay

His wife calls him the greatest optimist on Earth. Even in jail, he’s in a pretty good mood, even though he could be looking at seven years or more of imprisonment.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

The other thing that’s dangerous is that detention often extends longer than they say at the outset. I think what people can do, and maybe you’ll list some information, Paul, on this program, is make sure that the Russian government knows we know where Boris is. It is very scary to see the journalists in the past– now, Boris is more than a journalist, but to see the sentences and the years being given to people who are journalists, and this happens in countries of repression.

I think solidarity with Boris, even if you disagree, and I do disagree, in the sense that I believe that it’s a moment where facts on the ground suggest that any way to offer Ukraine solid security guarantees, begin reconstruction, maybe tithe Russian oligarchs, it’s going to be a long road. The hatred, the maximalist positions, one doesn’t want to speak for the Ukrainians, but in order to rebuild their country with secure guarantees is something I believe is in the interest of building a better world. I know Boris has strong views, but I still have worked with him for decades. My late husband, who didn’t agree with him on everything, and Steve certainly had strong views, felt Boris was a person of integrity.

Paul Jay

In terms of American policy, as much as I condemn the invasion and whatever you make of NATO, invading Ukraine didn’t weaken NATO anyway. The whole thing is a debacle. Most importantly, the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people that are getting killed that is at the center or should be at the center of this discussion and usually isn’t. That being said, the Biden administration seems to be doing nothing but dragging this out. They don’t have to say it’s up to the Ukrainians whether to negotiate or not negotiate because the Americans can say, we’re not going to give you the weapons if there’s no negotiation.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

It’s not clear what the Biden policy is at this stage, except for arming, more arming, and maybe appointing Victoria Nuland. Victoria Nuland was the diplomat in Maidan in 2014. Forget the cookies that she handed out to all the protesters, but she basically let the American ambassador to Ukraine know that America was running the show when she said f-c-k, the EU. She’s known as a hardliner or a hawk. What kind of signal does that send to Russia? I think there have been some back channels. The Biden White House has essentially said, we don’t have anything to do with it, but there have to be some back channels. Right now, the world is essentially depleted of weapons. The food security and the hunger crisis are brutal. The country Ukraine is the most mined country in the world.

You talked about the thousands who’ve been killed, Paul, yes. The military in Russia and Ukraine has always been a source of corruption, of bad training. The idea is that both countries have now raised their conscription years. It is 60 now. I’m not sure a 60-year-old guy in Russia, where the mortality rate for men is 67, is going to be thinking, this is my future. That’s happened in Ukraine, too.

By the way, Prigozhin’s just one of the– I’m writing about all the private military companies that are now being formed by governors, by oligarchs, and it’s a moment of peril. The more this war goes on, in my view, it is going to be a depletion of all the best and an amplification of all the worst.

Paul Jay

The other thing to add to what you said, I think every single conversation, whether it’s about geopolitics or you name it has to start with how this affects the climate crisis and the threat of nuclear war. If you don’t start your analysis from those two points, then nothing else matters. I’ve argued with Ukrainian leftists about this. If you want to end this with the liberation of Crimea and you’re going to fight to the end for that, you tell me what Ukraine is there left in 10-15 years when we hit 1.5 and then two degrees warming. We’re not even talking about that now because all we’re talking about is this war.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

I will say that inside Ukraine, you have the largest environmental crisis of contemporary Ukraine in the last 30 years. You have a dam, which is brutal for the climate crisis. Then you have Zaporizhzhia, where they’ve been fighting around for months now, which is the largest, I believe, nuclear reactor site in Europe. The more fighting that goes on around there, the more danger and the more desperate as the war goes on, both sides may be; you could see, God help us, a resort to tactical nuclear weapons.

Paul Jay

There are real voices in Russia calling for nuking Poland, serious foreign policy voices.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

That is something your viewers should pay attention to— the danger of Poland coming into the West of Ukraine. There may be some movement there. Poland is a NATO country. I think the more guarantees Ukraine can get, the more both countries move away from their maximalist positions, the more possibility there is for a Global South, a term we don’t love; it’s a very variegated Global South, can have to live better. The collateral damage of this war has been to worsen the situation. And note that much of the world, while opposing the war, is not taking sides. They see two superpowers at war over a European country. They’re like, this is Eurocentric. China, India, and Turkey have emerged, as has Brazil to some extent, as forces in possibly resolving this.

Paul Jay

I hope so. For people watching, Google Boris Kagarlitsky. You’ll see several places where there are campaigns. I don’t know if it’s petitions.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Open letters.

Paul Jay

Open letters. As Katrina has said, whether you agree with everything Boris says or not, he’s been one of the most important voices for reform and progress in Russia. To be headed off for possibly or probably even a decade of imprisonment, people need to condemn this and call for his release. Any final word, Katrina?

Katrina vanden Heuvel

I’ve gone to Russia since 1978, and I think I’d like to see the country thrive. It’s been battered. I again come back to Gorbachev, who gave the country a possibility of democratization. The economy was tough, but that possibility of democratization, I think, has been squandered both under Yeltsin, who began de-democratization and under Putin. War is bad. There are cases where I’m not a pacifist, but I would say let’s end this war as speedily as we can so that it also offers Ukraine security, but that we can move on to the crises of our times as you’ve laid them out, Paul. Thank you for having me on.

Paul Jay

All right, thanks a lot, Katrina. Sorry, go ahead. Sorry, I cut you off.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

May Boris be released.

Paul Jay

Thanks very much, Katrina. For everybody watching, we only get to do this because people donate. If you go to the website, you’ll see a donate button up there. Most important, get on the email list if you’re not on it. Thanks so much for watching.