They could not offer me to go to the SMO because of both my age and my conviction. So, thankfully, no one made that kind of proposal to me. In any case, it was obvious in advance that I would have refused.
Another matter is that here, in the colony, general invitations are issued on a regular basis. For example, they line up the entire camp, or just several detachments, on the football field. A recruiter comes — or rather a whole group of recruiters — and they start telling us how great it will be if everyone goes to the SMO. They say that even if you are killed there, there will definitely be some good payout to your relatives. So go on and sign up.
Moreover, before morning roll calls they sometimes read out lectures on how to go to the SMO, how to enlist, how to submit an application, and so on and so forth. Naturally, I am supposed to listen to all this every time. Although sometimes a portion of the inmates who do not qualify by age or some other criteria are excused from the event. In any case, events of this kind are mandatory for most people in the camp. Everyone calmly listens to these exhortations and then goes about their own business or returns to work.
How actively have people been leaving from the pre-trial detention centre and the colony for the front, generally? And is there any trend? Opposition media reported that this year saw a record low number of contracts.
At IK-4 here they post monthly statistics for the camp, and one of the indicators is the number of inmates who have gone to the SMO. I follow these statistics closely.
Here is the trend. I was told that in 2023, in some months, there were hundreds of contract signings. When I arrived at the colony in May 2024, the monthly figures fluctuated around 35–45 people, and then from late summer they began to decline steadily and sharply, down to December 2024, when only one person left. After that there was a renewed uptick, but not an impressive one.
Lately, between 8 and 11 people a month are going. And I can say with confidence that even this slight increase is connected precisely with hope for peace. Many inmates hoped that by signing a contract they will not make it to the front in time, that a ceasefire will come first. I spoke with many of those who signed and heard this from them.
What’s more, the recruiters themselves keep saying: “Hostilities will end soon; you might not even make it to the front.” Alas, so far that has not come true. However, the recruiters have started to visit less often.
Another instructive observation concerns the motivation of those who sign up. Among them I have not met a single person motivated by ideology; on the contrary, I have repeatedly met people who are convinced opponents of the SMO. So why do they sign contracts? For the sake of release and for money for their families. The recruiters also pressed exactly these points, without placing much emphasis on patriotism. It is a pragmatic decision, dictated not by convictions but by life circumstances.
Meanwhile, we do have a certain number of ardent, ideologically minded patriots who repeat propaganda talking points, but there has never once been a case of any of them enlisting to fight. Not once.
There are many people in the camp sentenced under Article 337 [unauthorised absence from a military unit]. Not to be confused, by the way, with deserters who flee with their weapons — that’s a different article. Here, too, the dynamics are interesting. For the most part, they dissuade other inmates from signing contracts, but some of them have signed contracts themselves, and not for ideological reasons, but because they needed to have that specific charge cleared. A person says: I do not want people to think I abandoned my comrades, even though I absolutely dislike this war itself.
In general, it seems to me very important to avoid simplified, black-and-white judgments. As in: if someone fought, then he is for the war. Or the reverse: if someone does not want to fight, then he is against it. Unfortunately, everything is much more complicated.
You have been in detention for more than two years now, with only a short break. Do you regret not taking the chance to leave when you were released at the end of 2023? You could have emigrated and continued both informational and organisational work.
I have no regrets. I made a choice and consider it not just correct but extremely important.
When people tell me that from abroad I could have spoken more sharply and used harsher language, I remind them that is not my style at all. I have always tried, and still try, to speak correctly and politely, even when I am talking about people who, in my view, do not deserve respect. Restraint only makes speech more convincing.
Of course, it is harder to work when you end up in prison or a camp. There is no internet, no access to a library, and communication with colleagues and comrades is limited. Although I should, once again, put in a plug for the FSIN-Letter system. Thanks to it, I have not only repeatedly received necessary data, but I also maintain ongoing communication with a large number of people, many of whom I would never have met on the outside. And these are often very interesting and useful contacts.
By contrast, Russian Post regularly loses my letters or letters addressed to me. So there are things in our prisons that work even better than they do outside.
Just to clarify. Do you consider your decision to stay in Russia right for you personally, or for all left oppositionists in principle?
I have no intention of condemning people who went abroad, especially if they are able to sustain or create projects that are useful to the common cause. One can and should work under different circumstances. We complement one another and help one another. Some are in emigration, some inside the country, and some in prison. The main thing is that we all preserve our solidarity and our faith in what we are doing.
Do you feel informationally isolated? How do you get up-to-date information at all?
There are, of course, certain difficulties with obtaining information. But it is not critical. The news that truly matters, the news we are all waiting for, reaches us anyway. And here the difference between people in prison and people on the outside is not great.
In some sense, our situation is even better, because we do not get distracted by trivialities. I often notice that people on the outside are in a kind of depression, a pessimistic mood. And so it turns out, amusingly enough, that I have to cheer them up from prison. Here in the colony, it is easier to distinguish the essential from the secondary.
Waiting is always a painful process. Prison is waiting for freedom. And what is happening beyond the gates? The same thing, really. It is just not as obvious. In many ways, it is simpler here.
Since we have shifted to media and information: Rabkor is the oldest of the left channels on YouTube. I checked — it began to develop back during the Bolotnaya protests. How do you assess the era (probably already ended) of left YouTube overall?
I think the era that began not with the “Bolotnaya protests,” but with the global economic crisis of 2008–10, the Great Recession, has not ended. I very much hope it is drawing to a close, but alas, it is not over yet. And the development of left channels on YouTube reflects much broader processes.
During the Great Recession the exhaustion of the neoliberal model of capitalism revealed itself on a global level. In Russia locally, a crisis hit the model of “managed democracy,” which they started building under [Boris] Yeltsin with the 1993 coup and which fully took shape during [Vladimir] Putin’s first term.
By 2010 it had become obvious that there was a demand for change. And the political fork in the road became clear to everyone: either genuine democratisation, or, on the contrary, a turn to open authoritarianism.
Russia’s ruling circles were frightened of democratisation, since it could have led to a loss of control. And it was not only those in power who were afraid. Leaders of the liberal opposition, and the business figures who supported them, were also fearful of uncontrollable processes.
As a result, instead of radical change we got the useless “Bolotnaya protest.” The name proved symbolic: all the protest energy drowned in the swamp of liberal opportunism.
The trouble is that those events, on the one hand, strengthened the left — you could even say they, to some extent, created a new left movement — but, on the other hand, they did not allow it to develop enough to play a determining role in the course of events.
The crisis of the early 2010s was already a specifically capitalist crisis. The link between economic problems and neoliberal policy became obvious to anyone capable of critical analysis, and a new generation came of age, formed after the Soviet Union. If before that the left consisted mainly of groups of intellectuals able to make sense of the economic and social contradictions that had developed after 1991, and free of official Soviet dogmatism, then in the 2010s a new milieu began to form and, moreover, it began to reproduce and develop.
That is when stable audiences emerged for projects such as Rabkor, Prostye Chisla, Vestnik Buri, and others. But the point is that this growth occurred against a backdrop of political weakness. There still was not an opportunity to become an independent political force.
Hence, the attempts to cooperate with the official opposition parties which, at that time, had not yet completely discredited themselves, though we knew their vices perfectly well and spoke about them publicly.
Another way some responded to this contradiction was apoliticism: “We are not interested in politics; it is all awful — nothing but opportunism, bourgeois institutions and so on. We are immersing ourselves in pure theory, in the world of ideas, or in historical reconstruction.” The trouble is that the theory that consciously turns its back on the present is a worthless theory.
And again, at the level of abstraction it is easy to draw a line between new ideas and needs that formed in the 21st century, on the one hand, and the legacy of the 1990s, which in turn is burdened with the Soviet legacy, on the other.
In real life everything is much more complicated, more tangled. Abstract criticism of capitalism and liberalism made it possible not only for different people to meet on the same platform, but also for very different, often even opposing ideas to coexist within a single head. And there were, and still are, very many such heads. We have to work with them.
Here it is impossible not to recall the Goblin phenomenon. The point is not even that his criticism of the authorities’ social policy was fused with admiration for those same authorities, but that many genuine leftists successfully appeared on his platform. I have often heard from Rabkor viewers that they came to us through Goblin. You could say the same about some other platforms — no need to list them all now.
At that time it was easier for us to gain access to some “patriotic” outlet cultivating Soviet nostalgia than to liberal outlets. In liberal media the situation started changing only toward the end of the decade, thanks to a new generation of professional journalists who did not harbour hostility toward left ideas and sometimes even sympathised with them. It was precisely young journalists who managed on some liberal platforms to achieve greater openness and influence the editors.
Meanwhile, the political system continued evolving in a completely different direction: COVID, the suppression of the protests initiated by [Alexei] Navalny, the final subordination of all Duma parties to government control, the “foreign-agent” laws. And finally, February 24, 2022.
Perhaps in moral and even ideological terms we achieved noticeable successes, formed stable audiences that survived the test of the past three years and on the whole persist. We now have a milieu, cadres, a distinctive culture and tradition — in short, much of what we lacked in the 2010s. And paradoxically, against the background of the moral and political collapse of the formerly official opposition, we are at least more visible and more capable of developing independent political initiatives.
But at the same time society as a whole is crushed not even by repression, but by depression. The problems of the left are, in the end, the problems of Russian society as such: weak solidarity, fragile ties, and a lack of experience.
Were you surprised that most of the so-called left bloggers, people who are supposed to rouse and radicalise their audiences, have openly or implicitly taken the side of the Russian authorities in recent years? Moreover, most of them have no political ambitions and distance themselves from politics. Is this a pattern, or did something go wrong?
You will laugh, but I expected it to be even worse. A few people pleasantly surprised me. As for depoliticisation, I fully agree: declaring oneself “left” does not at all imply either activity or a position on current political issues.
But there is another curious point concerning post-Soviet Stalinists. Historically, Stalinist ideology went through several stages and changed substantially. One thing is the ideology of the 1930s, where there is still a lot of revolutionary rhetoric, references to class interests, and so on. Another thing is the ideology of 1948–1953, which in essence prepares today’s “red imperialism.” There’s nothing progressive left in it. To use familiar terms, there was a shift from Soviet Thermidorianism to Soviet Bonapartism.
And in 2022 it immediately became clear which period of Soviet history this or that blogger looked back to. Among those oriented to the ideas of the 1930s, many spoke critically about the SMO, while the “red imperialists” naturally supported the authorities. It’s all quite logical.
Do you have the sense that the left media sphere did something wrong in the years before the Ukraine conflict? Do you feel there was a strong tilt toward history and criticism of liberals (I have my own share of guilt here), and that narratives were promoted that created the strange phenomenon of a depoliticised left audience — narratives that were, frankly, anti-Marxist?
Of course, in hindsight certain mistakes are always visible. But when it comes to criticising liberals, it seems to me we were right. And it is not even about theoretical points, but that most liberal opponents of the authorities categorically refused to see the systemic and economic roots of what was happening. In other words, they were calling not to change the system, but to replace some very bad and corrupt people who came out of the security services with very good and respectable people, preferably from business. And of course to hold fair elections.
No one will quarrel with the last point, but today’s political system did not arise out of thin air; it rests on certain relations of economic power and property, on a social structure that not only presupposes egregious social and material inequality, but also alienates the overwhelming majority of citizens, including even the middle class, from participation in decision-making.
If we want to secure mass support for change, we have to talk about all of this. And we should criticise liberals for their inconsistency, for the fact that many of them are afraid of democracy and do not even hide it.
Naturally, criticism can take different forms. It is silly to berate liberals just for being liberals, or to forget the decent and courageous people in the liberal camp with whom we now share common problems. We must not confuse democratic solidarity with the absence of our own position. And obviously the criticism should be substantive and civil. Leftists who, instead of reasoned debate, simply start throwing slogans around will achieve nothing good.
We have to understand that liberal activists are now undergoing a very serious reappraisal of values. This does not mean they will all become leftists tomorrow (though some will, and already have). At the very least, they will listen to us, and in such a situation what is required of us is to set out our position clearly and convincingly on concrete issues, to respect our opponents and demand respect for ourselves. When one of our mutual acquaintances suddenly starts shouting about the “damned lefties” who must be crushed, that does not look much like democratic solidarity either.
I agree with you. But it seems to me the problem also lies in the angle of criticism. You have surely thought many times about how openly right-wing ideas were and are being promoted in Russia under the red flag. And this concerns not only the CPRF [Communist Party of the Russian Federation] but also extra-systemic parties. Sexism, chauvinism, antisemitism, anti-democratism, vaccine denialism, conspiracy theories — all this is commonplace in the Russian “left” audience. Do you agree that many “leftists” in Russia are in practice right-wing, and that over the years of “red” YouTube this situation could not be corrected?
In my view, depoliticisation and the promotion of reactionary ideas are closely linked. I often encounter the same person saying something quite sensible when the discussion concerns, say, their professional field, and then spouting conspiratorial nonsense when it comes to politics or political history. But real politics is always concrete and demands systemic logic. In other words, politicisation orders and structures consciousness.
Is “red YouTube” to blame for the current state of affairs? Partly yes, but only partly. Perhaps we should have paid more attention to debunking various reactionary myths and conspiracism. And yes, we were trying to expand the audience, including at the expense of a public far from free of those myths.
But here is the fine point. On the one hand, you cannot indulge such things. On the other hand, look at Western leftists who immediately brand any ordinary person who tells an un-PC joke as a fascist — thereby really pushing him toward the fascists, the real ones.
The work of enlightenment requires constant effort, patience, perseverance, and a benevolent attitude toward people who have become victims of ideological manipulation, combined with complete intolerance toward the manipulators themselves and their ideology.
I very much hope that politicisation will speed things up. The more practical experience people gain in political struggle, the easier it will be for them to sort these things out.
Do you think that February 24, 2022 and subsequent events marked the end of the old left movement in Russia, which flowed out of the red-brown movement of the 1990s, and that we are now at a fork where there are three main paths for Marxists: (1) a red-conservative path supporting the authorities; (2) red “reconstructionism” at the level of subculture without real political influence; and (3) a progressive left path whose contours are still undefined?
Undoubtedly, the event of February 24, 2022 was a turning point. It became very clear who is worth what, and who is good for what. And the main thing is not even what happened in 2022, but how it will end. It is retrospectively that the behaviour of various people and groups will be evaluated. I am not talking about our judgments — we have already made them — but about how what is happening will be perceived by society. We are in an intermediate moment now. It has dragged on intolerably, but still lacks any content of its own.
By the way, the complaints about the left project being ill-defined are of the same order. The vagueness of the political situation does not allow us to fully shape a left project, even in its economic aspects. For example, we advocate the nationalisation of natural monopolies. But the concrete plan and forms of nationalisation, its boundaries and organisational possibilities, we will be able to determine only after prospects for political action open up. Then we will understand who is ready to support us and to what extent, how to come to terms with allies and win them over, what society will be ready to accept and support.
As democrats, we must take the opinion of the masses into account. But that does not mean trailing behind the masses. To formulate a project, you have to be a step, half a step ahead of the process — but by no means tear yourself away from it.
Some time ago many people (in part you as well, in the book Between Class and Discourse) criticised left influencers for abandoning class and political issues in favour of cultural battles and “online wars.” This especially concerned the so-called “Twitter feminists,” who formed toxic communities and rushed to “cancel” those who did not fit their discourse. Do you not think that today, given the complexity of real politics, defenders of the Soviet Union on the internet have become exactly the same “Twitter feminists,” who pounce on exposing anyone who criticizes the Soviet Union — with or without cause? And that such defence is either depoliticised or outright reactionary?
In fact, the answer is already contained in the question. Yes, a painfully aggressive reaction to certain words and topics is at the very least an unhealthy sign. But it seems to me we need to dig deeper and think about what is it exactly that people are defending. Which Soviet Union? What is it in the Soviet experience that attracts them?
I can speak for myself. Undoubtedly, the achievement of the revolution was the social state, which, incidentally, only fully took shape by the 1960s, though it was declared as a goal from the very beginning; mass enlightenment, not only through schools and universities, but through the spread of high culture; and, of course, the immense work of transforming an agrarian country into an industrial one, the development of science, and so on.
But the point is that the Soviet Union was an extremely contradictory society. And the aspects of Soviet history I am talking about did not simply coexist in parallel with repression, the suppression of the individual, campaigns against genetics or “rootless cosmopolitans,” savage bureaucratism, and the like — all of this was tightly intertwined.
And here we see the crucial problem. Those who now so zealously defend the Soviet Union are in fact defending not the Soviet Union, but precisely the dark, reactionary or conservative sides of Soviet history — the very traits of the Soviet system that ultimately doomed it to historical defeat. For us as leftists it is of fundamental importance to draw critical conclusions from that experience so as to not repeat it and not repeat its defeat. We are not planning to wallow in nostalgia; we intend to win. See the difference?
You have probably heard that I recently released a long video about Stalinist terror against Communists and, more broadly, against the left. Do you think raising such topics is destructive?
I did hear about the video, although, unfortunately, I could not watch it. We do not have internet here. But it seems to me the question is not about the video, it is about the reaction to it.
What is interesting is why the reaction is so painful right now. After all, repression against Communists in the Soviet Union is a fact that has long been known. Was there not the exposure at the 20th Congress of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] back in 1956? Even if someone did not like [Nikita] Khrushchev’s assessments — some thought they were not radical enough, others the opposite, too categorical — the facts are obvious.
And since then a pile of research has been produced. Some of it — for example [Viktor Nikolaevich] Zemskov’s book Stalin and the People — is often cited by the Stalinists themselves when they argue that the number of victims was lower than liberal anti-Soviet authors claim. That, by the way, is true: in many publications of the late 1980s and 1990s the number of victims was exaggerated. But there were victims! Or are nearly 700,000 people shot by verdicts of “special troikas” not enough? How many do you need to start taking the repressions of the 1930s seriously?
So, if the facts are known, why such a reaction? And why now, when the CPRF leadership officially condemns the decisions of the 20th Congress, which have no direct relation to the present moment? It seems to me there are two reasons.
The first is that history is being substituted for politics. This is not even depoliticisation; it is worse: the defence of myths becomes the main content of activity — or of passivity. And, I repeat, these are reactionary myths. The myth of the great leader is reactionary in itself because it is aimed at suppressing the independent, democratic activity of the masses. Big Brother will do your thinking for you.
The second reason is simply the desire to please the current authorities. Perhaps unconsciously. But it is no secret that the authoritarian legacy of the Soviet Union is quite accepted and approved by today’s regime, unlike the progressive Soviet heritage, such as the emancipation of women, the separation of school and culture from the church, and so on.
More broadly, now, when the struggle for democratic freedoms is becoming the most important aspect of the struggle for social transformation, we are being offered a cult of authoritarianism and conservatism. In other words, there is already a definite politics here, in the interests of preserving the existing order.
The conclusion follows. Even if someone does not like it, we have to raise the questions of democracy, because in the final analysis they are social questions, class questions.
Why, in your view, does the left movement in Russia refuse to let go of the spectre of [Josef] Stalin? And does it not seem time to develop a new socialist image — both political and aesthetic?
As long as the left are associated with the past, we have no future. Of course you can read polling data about Stalin’s popularity. But what matters is what questions were asked and how they were worded. One thing is how you assess Stalin’s personality. Let’s discuss it, argue about it, think it through.
But here’s another question: would you like to go back to 1937? Or generally to the Stalin era — without private apartments, without the internet, even without the right to freely choose your place of residence in your own country? And here we find that the vast majority of people would not even want to think about such a prospect. We have to rid ourselves of the ghosts of the past simply because we need the support of today’s majority, the support of the people with whom we will build the future, not mourn the great past.
Another sore point for today’s Russian left is the struggle for democratic rights. It is clear to me, as to many (I assume to you as well), that there can be no direct transition from the Putin regime to a socialist regime, from today’s society to a socialist one; moreover, dictatorship and the restriction of freedoms push us away from a bright future rather than bringing us closer to it. But when this comes up, we hear reproaches that we are “advocating for improving capitalism,” that we have “gone liberal,” and so on. How would you explain to those who do not grasp the meaning of the struggle for democratic freedoms why it is necessary?
Let us keep it simple. Please, let someone show me a quotation from [Karl] Marx, [Vladimir] Lenin, or even Stalin stating outright that a bourgeois dictatorship is better than a bourgeois democracy. It is obvious that none of the “classics” ever said such blatant nonsense. And for the especially hardheaded I recommend Stalin’s speech at the 19th CPSU Congress. The key theme there is that Communists in capitalist countries must be at the vanguard of the struggle for democracy.
Why do I say the question of democracy is a class question? Because the mass self-organisation of working people is possible only under conditions of freedom and openness, when many rank-and-file members of the working class, and not just individual heroes and activists, can join left organisations, can voice their views without fear of repression, and can, finally, influence politics — including the politics of left parties.
I understand perfectly well that some leftists do not need any working masses; they dream of becoming bosses and imposing their transformations on the people from above. But those are bad leftists. And above all, they will not succeed.
I often encounter a reply from admirers of the Generalissimo that we are moralising. That Marxism is about historical necessity, not about morals and ethics. Is there room for morality in Marxism? If so, what could be a firm foundation for such morality for materialists, for whom divine powers and their dogmas do not exist?
I find it strange to suppose that in order to be a decent person one must necessarily be afraid of God. Can you not behave decently simply as such? For example, not feel a compulsive desire to foul your neighbour. And we have no shortage of people who constantly declare their faith while acting as if at the devil’s prompting.
Now, of course, if one of us needs God, I have nothing against it. But from a sociological point of view, society simply needs morality, certain ethical benchmarks without which the reproduction of social and economic relations would be impossible. These general moral rules can be codified in religious form — through the Ten Commandments — or in the form of the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism. That is not the point. The point is that they are established informally through communication, upbringing, art, the experience of other people whom one takes as examples.
By law alone and the threat of repression it is impossible to sustain, on an everyday level, the reproduction of society; something self-evident is needed, grounded not in fear of punishment, but in the need for constructive interaction and mutual understanding with other people. We cannot do good on a desert island. Marx rightly laughed at “Robinsonades.” In order to do good, you need an “other.” You need social relations. And we, the left, want to change these relations, making them more humane and minimising violence and coercion.
Do you envisage a left political force that could become significant in the future and take the place of the CPRF and other organizations? And what should it be organisationally and ideologically? Orthodox Communist, a party of democratic socialism, a social-democratic party? Or could it be a whole spectrum of political forces?
If we speak of the changes that have occurred over the past three years, one of the most important is the disappearance of the old Duma opposition. We could criticise the opportunism of the CPRF leaders as much as we liked and convincingly argue that they are neither Communists nor leftists at all, but they remained practically the only opposition represented within the system; therefore, people still joined them, and we had to look back at them, to reckon with their monopoly.
After February 24, 2022, they finally lost the function that Anatoly Baranov called “providing opposition services to the population.” The political field in Russia is not only “cleansed,” it is cleared. We can start from scratch, and that is excellent.
We not only can and must build a new political force on the left flank, we can and must make it the most modern and advanced on a world scale — and that is our advantage over, say, our comrades in the West, because they have to look back at structures, organisations, and institutions that have persisted from previous years, while we have none of that.
Meanwhile, it is precisely at the global level that the process of re-forming the left movement is ripening and already beginning. Look at the new party being created by Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters in Britain; look at the new leaders of the left in the United States. Our task is not only to unite supporters but also to find new organisational forms.
I will say right away that I have several organisational ideas which I would prefer not to make public prematurely. But that concerns technique. At the political level it is clear that we will have to form a coalition. Achieving complete ideological uniformity is impossible, and we should not strive for it. But political unity on the main issues is quite achievable.
Obviously, in the words of Lenin, “Before we can unite, we must draw lines of demarcation.” In this sense, the current discussion of history initiated by Vestnik Buri is perfectly natural and timely. But it is also clear that real unification, a coalition, will be built not around the question of attitudes toward Stalin, but around questions of democratisation, the nationalisation of natural monopolies and the socialisation of platforms, around questions of war and peace, education and social rights. And here it will turn out that a fair number of people who are now zealously debating the past will prove absolutely uninterested in working for the future. If someone refuses, that will be their choice, their freedom.
We must unite a broad coalition around a program of democratic and social reforms, while individual elements of this coalition can retain their ideological particularities — that is normal.
The discussion of a reform program has already begun; I can cite the “New Deal” document, which was discussed about a year ago. In my view, the project is too moderate and therefore unrealistic.
If the left gets a chance, it happens against the backdrop of a deep crisis that demands more radical solutions affecting the structure of power and property. But of course we are not talking about total statisation in the spirit of the old Soviet economy.
During the previous upswing of the left movement, when “red” YouTube was developing, study circles also began forming en masse. But it is now obvious that in most of them people were reading literature that was 100–150 years old, which participants treated too dogmatically, often losing scholarly relevance in the process. In your view, which contemporary books and authors on Marxism are worth studying? And how do we get Marxists to read non-Marxist literature as well, to broaden their horizons and avoid an information bubble?
In essence, the answer is already contained in your question. You need to read a variety of literature, including non-Marxist. Marx, for example, did not only read [Friedrich] Engels and himself. And Lenin studied John Maynard Keynes’ The Economic Consequences of the Peace and even corresponded with him. All of that is obvious.
What is more interesting is this: our circle members often do not just have a poor grasp of non-Marxist literature, they do not always read Marx himself carefully. Who in fact studied volumes two and three of Capital in these circles? Or the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844? Or the articles on British rule in India? If those texts had been read attentively, many absurd disputes and complaints about other leftists would never have arisen, especially at moments when those leftists were simply repeating an idea first articulated by Marx. Or by Rosa Luxemburg, for that matter.
We also need to read the large body of work written by left researchers over the past hundred years. A whole library has accumulated. There is a great deal there that is valuable and relevant. The Direct-Media publishing house is now trying to partially fill this gap with its “Red Books” series.
Being in prison, I cannot fully take part in this work, but I try to help. For example, Otto Šik’s Plan and Market under Socialism should finally be coming out soon. The series is interesting because it presents different authors and currents of socialist thought, from Austro-Marxists to Mao [Zedong]. Let readers draw their own conclusions. The main thing is to overcome ignorance. And from the non-Marxist sociological and economic classics, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Keynes, and Joseph Schumpeter are must-reads.
Finally, there are also new useful works now appearing, including in Russian. I, for one, disagree with [Yanis] Varoufakis in many respects, but I still think his Technofeudalism is a must-read today. As is Nick Srnicek’s Platform Capitalism.
I heard you were upset when [Donald] Trump won the election. And it is obvious that his return to the White House has already had dire consequences for domestic and international life. But is there no silver lining, since the peace process has at least budged from a standstill thanks to him?
I do not agree that the peace process moved forward because of Trump. Reports of back-channel talks appeared as early as the summer of 2024. On the contrary, in my view Trump’s policy led the process into a dead end.
He assumed that by offering Moscow favourable deal terms he would get the desired result very quickly. But he categorically failed to understand the causes and dynamics of this conflict, which is rooted not in a struggle over territory or the ideology of the “Russian world,” but in Russia’s domestic political problems and, to some extent, Ukraine’s.
You cannot reach an agreement on the basis of a geopolitical bargain simply because geopolitics, or even the question of who seizes rare-earth deposits, is entirely secondary. The main issue is the transfer of power in the Kremlin. And in Ukraine, I think, there is also a question of power redistribution, only in a different form.
The end of the war means the end of the current political configuration. It does not even matter how the hostilities end. Peace is a challenge for which the actors are not ready; they are terrified of it. But it is inevitable anyway. I used to think there would be a peace agreement and then, as a result, a transfer of power. Now I think it will be the other way around: first the transfer, then peace. In any case, it seems to me Trump only delayed and muddled the matter.
It seems a new escalation is brewing. Trump is disappointed by Moscow’s intransigence and is transferring missiles to Ukraine. How do you assess the prospects for peace now, in 2026?
As I said, the necessary conditions for a ceasefire were already in place by the end of 2024. Both sides understood perfectly well that prolonging the fighting would not improve their strategic position. As for the negotiating process, delaying it clearly works against Russia: after each breakdown of a proposed deal, the next version will only be worse. Trump made the maximum possible concessions at the very outset, and the logic of events is forcing him to harden his stance.
The problem is not the negotiations but the internal alignments in Moscow. Paradoxically, Kremlin and liberal propaganda produce the same picture: consolidated elites with a single leader pursuing some global goal known only to him. Nothing could be further from reality. There hasn’t been one-man rule for a long time; the elites are deeply divided and pursue entirely different, often incompatible goals. But they fear an open split and therefore try to resolve issues by consensus, which is impossible. As a result, decisions that are ripe and even prepared simply are not taken.
It is like a ship drifting by inertia while an endless argument rages on the bridge over where to sail. How long can this go on? We have been sailing this way for at least a year. And we can drift on until an iceberg appears. What could play the role of an iceberg? A serious military setback or an acute manifestation of economic and financial crisis. So far nothing of that sort is visible, but an iceberg, as is known, emerges from the fog unexpectedly.
And here it does not matter whether a collision occurs. What matters is that those arguing on the bridge notice it and finally decide to turn the wheel. Everything will happen suddenly and very quickly. In short, the title of Alexei Yurchak’s classic comes to mind: Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More.
Some time ago you and a number of other political prisoners signed an open letter calling on world leaders to grant amnesty to political prisoners in Russia and Ukraine. How close, in your view, are we to such an amnesty?
If there is a transfer of power, there will be a peace agreement and an amnesty. I must add, however, that it is not only about political prisoners. Thousands are in camps and prisons under Article 337 — unauthorised absence from a military unit. They are there because of the war, and they should be freed.
Even under ordinary criminal articles, including the so-called “economic” ones, courts handed down clearly inflated sentences, calculating that people would sign contracts with the military. Obviously, the amnesty should be broader, covering not only all political prisoners but other articles as well.
And looking ahead, judicial reform is needed. I am in a general-regime camp; there are hardly any real villains here. But I can say with confidence about my neighbours that at least a third of them should not be here at all; a fine or community service would have sufficed.
Some leftists criticized both your open letter and the appearance by [Yevgeny] Stupin, [Mikhail] Lobanov, and [Alexey] Sakhnin at PACE [Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe], saying they appeal not to peoples and working masses but to bourgeois politicians and bourgeois political institutions. How would you respond to such claims?
Strange claims. If we issue a public statement that hundreds of thousands of people can read, we are already appealing to the masses. If the orientation were toward elites, we would need back-room negotiations and various visits to influential gentlemen, which is precisely what many liberal emigrés are doing. Fine, let them. I am not against it. But our stance is public; we are trying to influence public opinion in Russia and in the West.
As for Western politicians, it is on the left flank that the issue of political prisoners is raised most of all. I will go further: since the humanitarian crisis around Israel’s operation in Gaza erupted, it has become clear that the human rights question is polarising and highly ideological. The internationalist left position is that everyone has an equal right to life and freedom — Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Palestinians.
Let us return to your daily life in the camp. In IK-4 there are several left political prisoners: you, Ruslan Ushakov, Gagik Grigoryan. Does such a community help? And how are the guys doing?
In IK-4 a community of political prisoners has formed, with leftists at its core.
Paradoxically, most people serving time under political articles are not actually very politicised. They were simply outraged by events in recent years and began expressing their indignation on social media. As a result, they ended up in IK-4. And only here, after encountering other political prisoners, do they begin to think in political categories. And even then, not always.
But this is where it becomes clear that they are spontaneously left. Not because they have read theoretical books, but because of their life experience. Add to this the effect of the milieu. Our small group regularly gathers, drinks tea, discusses the news; sometimes I tell stories about history or sociology. Some borrow books from me to read (and not only the political prisoners, by the way).
This is an important lesson for left activists: do not lock yourselves in your own milieu. We need to make it interesting for the ordinary, depoliticised layperson to be with us, and to make it possible for them to identify with us. Then it will be easy to advance a political agenda. That is hegemony. Not in theory, but in practice.
As for our little circle, yes, with Ushakov and Grigoryan you can discuss books, episodes in the left movement, and debate them. But everyone else listens with interest too. Denis Anokhin regularly drops by as well. I very much hope that when we get out of here, we will act together.
Not long ago another participant in our tea gatherings, Valentin Shlyakov, was released from IK-4. He now writes me letters, nostalgic for our evening meet-ups. But Shlyakov’s situation is tough — no job, housing problems, and he has been put under administrative supervision for eight years. In tsarist times this was called “police surveillance in plain view.”
In any case, among these people I am in my place. There are thousands of political prisoners in Russia. And we can help them not only from the outside, but also from the inside: by sustaining a community and supporting one another. It seems to me we are succeeding.
I understand that places of confinement are joyless, but still: what were the funniest and happiest situations that happened to you or around you in these two years? (Release does not count.)
Oddly enough, a lot of absurd and amusing things always happen in jail and in the camp. In fact, there is nothing surprising about the absurdity. Prison itself is by definition a rather absurd institution. But I will not tell anything specific now, because I keep notes — I write down the most curious stories and the most interesting characters in a little notebook. And I am not going to tell stories about what happens in prison.
I very much hope there will be a book, if I ever get out of here. And in that book I will describe in detail everything that has happened here. All the funny, comic, grotesque and sometimes, of course, slightly eerie stories that I either observed or heard during my wanderings through jails and IK-4. I think the book will be — I at least very much hope — a success.
So, for now you will have to wait until I get out, because I do not want to make this public earlier.
Speaking of release: if you found yourself in front of Dud’, what would you say to him?
An interesting question. I have not been invited to Dud’. But if I were, I would have to praise him to start with. It seems to me he has grown greatly as a journalist.
As you understand, I have not seen his latest work, but the difference between what he was doing when he was just starting out in socio-political journalism and what he achieved, for example, in 2023, is enormous. The interview with [Andrei] Lankov was the last one I managed to watch; it is a very good piece of professional work.
It would be hard to suspect me of initial sympathies for Dud’, but I fully agree with you. And when you are free, you will have plenty to watch from him. The interview with Volkov is almost a form of contemporary art. Let me ask you one last question: what would you like to do first once you are free?
We will talk about release when there is a final release. My two-month vacation between arrests does not really count. Nor do the visitations that let you feel free for a few days or hours.
But, actually, there is a lot that is instructive and even funny in prison. If I get out of here, as I already said, I will definitely write a book. It even has a title — Walks with Leviathan. I assure you, there will be plenty of humour in it.
People around me, and even staff, already know about this not-yet-written book. I remember that in Rzhev the head of operations summoned me and asked: “Are you really writing a book about prison?” I said yes, I am. He said: “Then please write about our problems. Our funding is bad and we can’t even do proper repairs.” I promised. I will write it.
Of course, I have big plans, both political and literary. But first of all I need to work on restoring my health. Nothing terrible has happened to me here, but a camp is not a resort. Besides, I have a family. There are lots of people who want to see me. And, of course, there is the cat Stepan. Everyone and everything needs time.
