LIS statement: libertad a Igor Kuznetsov

Russian Marxist activist, union leader and journalist Igor Kuznetsov was arrested on 16 September 2021 in the Siberian city of Tomsk. Thereafter, was transferred to Moscow, and now the Russian regime is processing two criminal cases against him at once, in which he faces a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

The reason for starting this case against Igor Kuznetsov and other cases against Russian leftist opponents is as follows. In Russia, the gap between the richest and the poorest, between the capital-metropolis Moscow and the rest of the country is rapidly increasing. The ruling bourgeoisie enriches itself unprecedentedly at the expense of the low wages of the workers, pensions and the diversion of natural resources.

To continue with this robbery of the people and for fear of the imminent social explosion, in recent years the Russian bourgeoisie has restricted freedom of expression. Bloggers have received heavy fines for social media posts criticizing the actions of corrupt officials. Police officers beat with batons, use stun guns and arrest participants in peaceful demonstrations, rallies and even individual protesters. environmentalists are arrested, many unofficial posts, public organizations and dissident citizens are declared “foreign agents”. independent labor unions, doctors and teachers constantly face obstruction of their statutory activities.

People who are able to understand and explain to others the class essence of events and to organize the struggle of workers for their rights are under particularly strong pressure..

Igor Kuznetsov 57 years. Before his arrest, worked as a mechanic at a medical college in Tomsk. And he has a vast career as a fighter.

He was a leader and organizer of the labor movement, in the years 90 became secretary of the Siberian Confederation of Labor. He traveled all over the country, met with workers, strike committees and members of the trade union movement in Kazakhstan, among those who established communication and solidarity actions. Participated in the third wave of the miners' "rail war" in Kuzbass. And organized cells of the trade union of freelancers «Zashchita» in Anzhero-Sudzhensk, in Samara at the Rossiya chocolate factory and in Syzran.

He was a human rights activist from the years 80 the last century. Now, in the Tomsk pre-trial detention center, defended a cellmate who was beaten during interrogation. And in letters from the Moscow remand center, he came up with the idea and plan for the creation of the Union of Political Prisoners of Russia.

Igor is a Marxist and anti-Stalinist. Spread the ideas of Marx's scientific socialism, Engels and Lenin and shows how the Stalinist regime destroyed the Leninist party and the real soviets October '17. He is an anti-imperialist fighter for the rights of the regions and peoples of Russia. Opposes Moscow's colonial policy in relation to Siberia and other regions, for Russia to become a real federation, for the end of the expansive policy in relation to other countries and the end of the aggressive war against Ukraine, that the Kremlin began in 2014.

He is a fierce critic of the current regime and the pseudo-leftists, a social chauvinist, what, supposedly for patriotism, they agree to compromise with the Russian bourgeoisie. He is a talented journalist who covered serious social issues and workers' protest actions on his blogs and RusNews..

As a civic activist, Igor regularly attended solitary solidarity pickets: with protesters in Khabarovsk, participants in Belarusian demonstrations, with the striking doctors of Anzhero-Sudzhensk, with environmentalists, in defense of each new political prisoner. Now he himself has fallen into the mills of the repressive machine and needs our protection..

Igor Kuznetsov and his comrades are charged with "inciting riots" under article 212, part 1.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. He 16 September 2021, together with Igor young people from different cities were arrested: Dmitry Chebanov, Zhanna Chernova, Nikita Kreshchuk, Alexey Kurlov, Maria Platonova, Vyacheslav Abramov, Alexey Yanochkin, Dmitry Lamanov. For this reason, he emphasized in his speeches: "Together with my friends, I represent the peaceful protest movement. We use exclusively peaceful means to promote our views. This is the propaganda of our views, a story about what is happening in the world and analytics. the consent for the strike must be granted by half of the labor collective and only economic demands can be presented

In 2019, Igor and his companions went to unique pickets allowed by law, with posters expressing their position on the social and political ills suffered by the population. The police forcibly detained them and the courts fined them., everything against the law.

Putin's Russian regime is heir to the Stalinist totalitarian system and operates according to its methods. In remand centers and colonies all over Russia, there is a system of application of torture. It was recently exposed by human rights activists from Gulagu-net.ru, who, with the help of journalists from different countries, they published the recordings of videos with monstrous torture, registered by the employees of the Russian prisons themselves. This system is still far from broken. From the Gulagu-net publications it is known that in preventive prison no.. 5 from Moscow, where is now Igor Kuznetsov, unofficial torture chambers existed. There some suspects beat others and forced them to provide the evidence required by the investigation., they were also extorted for money.

In the conditions of almost complete dependence on the Russian courts and the prosecutor's office on the authorities, it is only possible to protect our comrades from torture during the investigation with the widest publicity throughout the world. The International Socialist League demands: The immediate release of Igor Kuznetsov and all leftist activists!, social and human rights prisoners in Russia! Enough of the persecution and repression of Putin's bourgeois regime!  

International Socialist League