BORIS KAGARLITSKY is Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements in Moscow, Russia. Boris' latest books are Russia Under Yeltsin And Putin: Neo-Liberal Autocracy (TNI/Pluto 2002) and New Realism, New Barbarism: The Crisis of Capitalism (Pluto 1999). He won the Deutscher Memorial Prize for his book, The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State (Verso 1988). He writes regularly for The Moscow Times and Eurasian Home. Previously, he was a student of art criticism and was imprisoned for two years for 'anti-Soviet' activities related to his editorship of a samizdat journal, Leviy Povorot. Boris was co-ordinator of the Moscow People's Front between '88 and '90, and also advised the Workers' Committee of Prokpievsk and Karaganda during this period. He was a deputy to the Moscow City Soviet between 1990-93, during which time he was a member of the executive of the Socialist Party of Russia, co-founder of the Party of Labour, and advisor to the Chairperson of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia.