Nowa lewica w Rosji
The New Left in Russia: Boris Kagarlitsky

Practice and Theory

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the essential ideas of the theory and practice of New Left politics in the work of the well-known scientist and politician Boris Kagarlitsky. Since he is actively involved in the political life of the New Russian Left, the exposition of theoretical issues is impossible without placing them in the context of the socio-political situation of contemporary Russia. The collapse of the USSR and the socialist bloc revived the ideas of the ‘free market’ and liberalism. Today the liberal capitalist system is in crisis; this does not lead to a renaissance of leftwing forces, though. The forces of the Left at the beginning of the 21st century proved to be completely incapable of offering a coherent political program. Even the obvious resistance of the Left to Neo-Liberalism and its reforms in the social sphere, medicine and education has not become a consolidating factor in the new politics. The article attempts to examine how the New Left in Russia answers the question of what it means to build a society that is qualitatively different from capitalism: what nineteenth-century ideologists called socialism.

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