[3] Kagarlitsky is the director of Institute of Globalisation Studies and Social Movements (IGSO)[4] and editor in chief of Levaya Politika (Left Politics) quarterly in Moscow.

In 1988 he published his book, Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present, which won the Deutscher Memorial Prize.

In 1988, after the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika, he was permitted to resume his studies at the GITIS, graduating in the same year, and became coordinator of the Moscow People's Front [ru].

In October 1993, the former Soviet dissident was arrested, with two other members of his party, for his opposition to President Boris Yeltsin during the September–October constitutional crisis, but was released the next day after international protests.

[10] After his arrest in 2023 the Kagarlitsky Solidarity Committee was formed and signed by public and political figures around the world: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Jeremy Corbyn, Slavoj Žižek, Nadya Tolokonnikova and many others.