Alexander Tarasov
Russian academic and politician
Alexander Nikolaevich Tarasov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Тара́сов; born March 8, 1958) is a Soviet and Russian left-wing sociologist, political scientist, culturologist, publicist, writer, and philosopher. Up until the beginning of the 21st century he referred to himself as a Post-Marxist alongside István Mészáros and a number of Yugoslav Marxist philosophers who belonged to Praxis School and emigrated to London. Since in the 21st century the term Post-Marxism has been appropriated by Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and their followers, Alexander Tarasov (together with the above-mentioned István Mészáros and Yugoslav philosophers) stopped referring to himself as a Post-Marxist.
Early political activity and arrest
Between December 1972 and January 1973 Tarasov, together with Vasily Minorsky, founded a clandestine radical left group called the "Party of New Communists" (PNC) (Russian: Партия новых коммунистов (ПНК)), and became the group's informal leader in the summer of 1973. In 1974 PNC merged with another clandestine radical left group called "Left School" (Russian: Левая школа) to form the "Neo-Communist Party of the Soviet Union" (NCPSU) (Russian: Неокоммунистическая партия Советского Союза (НКПСС)). Tarasov became one of the NCPSU leaders and theorists, writing the party program, The Principles of Neo-communism (Russian: Принципы неокоммунизма) in 1974. The KGB arrested him in 1975. Upon preliminary imprisonment and a yearlong confinement in a special psychiatric hospital he was released as the NCPSU case was never brought to trial. In the psychiatric hospital Tarasov was subjected to cruel treatment and (de facto) torture (beatings, ETC – electroconvulsive therapy, induced hypoglycemia, injection of large doses of neuroleptics) all resulting in severe somatic disorders, which Tarasov has been suffering from since his release, leaving him virtually disabled (hypertonia, Ankylosing Spondylitis, liver and pancreas diseases). After his release, Tarasov participated in restoration of NCPSU, which he had led until its self-dissolution in January 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alexander Tarasov” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.