Ilya Budraitskis: ‘The struggle for Boris Kagarlitsky’s liberation is an integral part of the struggle for socialism from below’

[Editor’s note: The following is an edited transcript of the speech and responses to questions given by Ilya Budraitskis on the “The situation for the left in Russia today” panel at the “ Boris Kagarlitsky and the challenges of the left today” online conference, which was organised by the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign on October 8. Budraitskis is a political and social theorist, previously based in Moscow, who is now a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. Transcripts and video recordings of other speeches given at the conference can be found at the campaign website freeboris.info.]

Since the beginning of the war, we have experienced a huge transformation of the political regime in Russia and all the political guidelines that existed before the war started changed quite dramatically. Also since the beginning of the war, there have been two camps within the Russian left that are totally antagonistic to each other: a pro-war camp and an anti-war camp. They have totally different perspectives on what it means to be on the left. I think that is a very important lesson to be learned and discussed, and not only among Russian leftists. 

On the pro-war left, there are now people who are not just justifying the war, who are not just actively supporting and promoting it, but who are actually going beyond the government’s imperial rhetoric. This cleavage in the Russian left was not something unexpected. I think that the foundations of this division were laid years before the full-scale invasion was launched. But only now has it become so clear and pronounced. And I think that this division also corresponds in some respects to the divisions within the global left. That is why this lesson is also important internationally.

On the pro-war left, the leadership of the Russian Communist Party holds the central place, along with some smaller Stalinist groupings. Why do they hold this position? It is not simply because they share the imperial chauvinist worldview; it is also a survival strategy in the so-called legal framework of the current Russian dictatorship. But I think that you can find some deeper ideological roots there. The main thrust of Russian Communist Party ideology is the defence of the state. It is a conception of socialism as a top-down politics of redistribution designed to serve the interests of the state, including promoting its power in the global arena. This party perceives any sort of democracy from below as an obstacle to such aims. Before the war, in the already quite authoritarian Russian political system, the Communist party occupied the position of the so-called parastatal opposition, which was integrated in Putin’s system of managed democracy. It was dependent on the state and did not seriously compete with the Kremlin and the Kremlin’s main party, United Russia.

Moreover, this party, and especially the Communist Party, occasionally served as a channel for the expression of discontent in one part of society or another. That is why many activists, especially outside of the big cities, who wanted to be involved in any oppositional activity joined the ranks of the Communist Party. It is telling that in the first days following the invasion of Ukraine, several Communist Party deputies and regional activists even made anti-war statements. One of those deputies was Yevgeny Stupin, who is supporting this conference. However, these voices within the party were harshly suppressed, including by the party’s own leadership. So, people like Stupin were expelled from the Communist Party because of their anti-war stance. 

As early as April 2022, perpetual party leader Gennady Zyuganov made a speech in the Russian parliament demanding that the fight against the so-called fifth column inside the country be intensified. Zyuganov literally called for the escalation of repression against any sort of anti-war resistance and anti-war critique of the government. Over the next two years, representatives of the Communist Party were among the most active warmongers, notable for their extremely aggressive nationalist and imperialist rhetoric. This shift of the Communist Party can be explained both by its traditional (especially for the leadership) ideological stance on imperial nationalism, and by a desire to protect the party's legal existence under the conditions of the tightening of the political rules of the game in the country after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

On the other side of the struggle against the regime are the various strands of the anti-war left. Some of these people were forced to leave the country after the beginning of the invasion. Some were forced to censor themselves and nearly abandoned open political activity or tried to continue their political propaganda work in all legal forms that are possible, such as, for example, those mentioned in the first presentation by the representative of Feminist Anti-war Resistance. This consisted of work inside small collectives and some propaganda work using social media.

It is important to note that this propaganda work is very restricted by the current exceedingly harsh censorship. Basically, you cannot discuss what is happening on the front lines at all without breaking existing Russian laws. So, the final strategy of the Russian far left is to go underground. And that is true especially for anarchists. Since the war began there have been people primarily targeting military enlistment offices and recruiting stations. 

There are a lot of anarchist political prisoners. Most of you know about Azat Miftakhov, who was sentenced to a second prison term while he was in prison. I think it is one of the very important tasks of this conference to talk not just about Boris Kagarlitsky, but about left political prisoners in general. They are not just anarchists; there are also socialist political prisoners like Igor Kuznetsov, Darya Poludova, and many others. 

Any public legal activity of the Russian left has already ceased. For example, early this year, the Russian Socialist Movement, the organization to which I belonged, dissolved itself because it was labeled a so-called foreign agent. And according to the law on foreign agents, if you are branded a foreign agent, that basically makes any public activity inside the country impossible. Some months ago, another radical left-wing organization, the Revolutionary Workers Party, also dissolved itself due to the many arrests and police searches. 

Then there are the people on the Russian anti-war left who were forced to leave the country and who are trying not just to influence Russian audiences on social media, but also trying to work with and have discussions with the left internationally, especially in the countries where they are currently settled. So, generally speaking, the Russian anti-war left has a core audience inside the country, which follows their commentary. But it is very hard to know how big this audience is due to the current situation. 

It is also important to note that the Russian anti-war left, and especially those members of the anti-war left who settled outside Russia, was able to take part in the debates among the liberal, or democratic (broadly speaking), Russian opposition abroad because this diasporic Russian liberal opposition is now undergoing a deep ideological and political crisis. I think what Greg Yudin said about the possible proposals of the Russian left could play an important role in the debates, not just within the left milieu, but also more broadly in the diasporic Russian opposition and its audience, which is still quite large inside the country.