Sociologist and political prisoner Boris Kagarlitsky, who was sentenced to five years in a penal colony in a case of alleged “justification of terrorism,” deliberately chose not to leave Russia even after a court initially imposed only a fine of 600,000 rubles in December 2023. According to his daughter Kseniya, he was issued a foreign passport after being released from pretrial detention, but did not treat that as a signal to emigrate.
Kagarlitsky was arrested in July 2023 over remarks about the explosion on the Crimean Bridge; Memorial said the charges were linked to a video posted on the Rabkor YouTube channel in October 2022. Prosecutors sought 5.5 years in prison, but on December 12 the court unexpectedly limited the punishment to a fine. His associates believe the authorities were trying to intimidate him while effectively leaving him a chance to leave the country.
He stayed. As Kseniya recalls, he went calmly to the appeal hearing scheduled for February 13, 2024, having even bought non-refundable tickets to Egypt and arranged to meet friends in a cafe afterward. Instead of traveling, he saw the court replace the fine with a real prison term.
According to his daughter, he believes that anyone who wants to remain part of Russian political life must remain in Russia, and that prison can itself become part of political struggle.
This was not Kagarlitsky’s first arrest. In 1982, he became a defendant in the “Young Socialists” case together with Pavel Kudyukin and others from a left-wing discussion circle that published samizdat journals. The case was prepared as a major example, reportedly reaching the Politburo, but in the end the defendants were not sent to prison after the investigation.
People interviewed by the outlet describe Kagarlitsky as one of the key figures of the Russian left. Blogger Andrey Rudoy and former Left Front coordinator Alexey Sakhnin say he influenced several generations of left-wing writers and activists and became known in the West as one of the few prominent Russian left theorists.
In late October, lawyer Yulia Kuznetsova reported that his health had worsened: according to his daughter, his blood pressure has been rising for weeks to 160–200, yet instead of being hospitalized he was placed in a punishment cell over “disorder in his bedside cabinet.” Even so, he refuses to be included in prisoner exchange lists, viewing such swaps as a form of forced expulsion and an additional mechanism of repression.
Kseniya Kagarlitskaya is running an international campaign in support of her father. She says sociologists, political scientists and journalists from different countries have joined it; as part of that effort, questions about Kagarlitsky were put to Vladimir Putin, and an international petition in his defense was circulated.