Dedication
Aron Baron was born into a poor Jewish family in the Kiev province of the Ukraine in July, 1891. He was sent to Siberia following the 1905 Revolution and eventually made it to the United States in 1912. In Chicago he met his first wife, Fanya, and was active with the Russian Workers Union and the Industrial Workers of the World. They returned to the Ukraine in 1917.
Baron was an editor of the Nabat journal and participant in the movement of the same name. He was an active speaker and organizer. The arrests and imprisonment by the Cheka for Baron’s revolutionary agitation began in 1919, and never seemed to end. In September of 1921 Fanya Baron was shot by the Cheka.
Years of exile and imprisonment follow... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Epigraph
Soon the younger generation will be consigning us to the archives, will they not?
No, it’s too soon to put us in the archives—right, my fine, young friend?
—Aron Baron, 1925, in a letter to Mark Mrachny (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Introduction by The Friends of Aron Baron
History may not have ended, but it certainly has gotten strange. The social contract neoliberalism once imposed—a patchwork of economic shell games and the political rituals needed to foist them on people—has shredded with surprising speed in recent years. The result has been a rapid universalization of precarity. Unpredictability and groundlessness are ubiquitous parts of our lives, which unfold in a supposedly “post-truth” world where the basic prerequisites for understanding almost anything seem lacking—or at least seem to change with each news cycle.
This new reality was both cause and effect of Donald Trump’s election as forty-fifth president of... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Anarchy and “Scientific” Communism by Luigi Fabbri
I. The bourgeois phraseology of “scientific” communism
A short while ago, through the publishing firm of the Communist Party of Italy, a little twelve-page pamphlet was issued by that “superlative theoretician” (as he was introduced to the public in the socialist and communist press) Nikolai Bukharin. It bore the pompous title Anarchy and Scientific Communism. Let us just have a look and see how much “science” there is in it.
Bukharin does not set out any true notion of anarchism, any of the points in the anarchist-communist program as they truthfully are; nor does he take the trouble to inform himself on anarchist thinking by... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Soviet System or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat? by Rudolf Rocker
Perhaps the reader thinks he has found a flaw in the above title and that the soviet system and the dictatorship of the proletariat are one and the same thing? No. They are two radically different ideas which, far from being mutually complementary, are mutually opposed. Only an unhealthy party logic could accept a fusion when what really exists is an irreconcilable opposition.
The idea of “soviets” is a well defined expression of what we take to be social revolution, being an element belonging entirely to the constructive side of socialism. The origin of the notion of dictatorship is wholly bourgeois and as such, has nothing to do with socia... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Idea of Equality and the Bolsheviks by Nestor Makhno
The 14th Congress of the Russian Communist Party has roundly condemned the notion of equality. Prior to the congress, Zinoviev had mentioned the idea in the course of his polemic against Ustrialov and Bukharin. He declared then that the whole of contemporary philosophy was sustained by the idea of equality. Kalinin spoke up forcefully at the congress against that contention, taking the line that any reference to equality could not help but be harmful and was not to be tolerated. His reasoning was as follows:
“Can we talk to peasants about equality? No, that is out of the question, for in that case, they would set about demanding the same rights as workers, whic... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The State and Revolution: Theory and Practice by Iain McKay
There were three Revolutions in 1917—the February revolution which started spontaneously with strikes on International Women’s Day; the October revolution when the majority of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets voted to elect a Bolshevik government; and what the Russian anarchist Voline termed “The Unknown Revolution” in between when the workers and peasants started to push the revolution from a mere political change into a social transformation.
This Unknown Revolution saw the recreation of the soviets first seen during the revolution of 1905 based on delegates elected from workplaces subject to recall, workers creating unions and fact... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
A Decade of Bolshevism by Alexander Berkman
The communist dictatorship in Russia has completed its first decade. It may therefore be interesting and instructive to sum up the achievements of the Bolsheviki during that time, to visualize the results of their rule.
But “results” are a relative matter. One can form an estimate of them only by comparing them with the things that were to be achieved, with the objects sought.
What were the objects of the Russian Revolution? What have the Bolsheviki achieved?
The Romanov regime was an absolutism; Russia under the czars was the most enslaved country in Europe. The people hungered for liberty.
The February-March Revolution, 1917, abolished that absoluti... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Preface to Ida Mett’s “The Kronstadt Commune” by Maurice Brinton
The fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution will be assessed, analyzed, celebrated or bemoaned in a variety of ways.
To the peddlers of religious mysticism and to the advocates of “freedom of enterprise,” Svetlana Stalin’s sensational (and well-timed) defection will “prove” the resilience of their respective doctrines, now shown as capable of sprouting on what at first sight would appear rather barren soil.
To incorrigible liberals, the recent, cautious reintroduction of the profit motive into certain sectors of the Russian economy will “prove” that laissez-faire economics is synonymous wit... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Kronstadt Commune by Ida Mett
The Kronstadt Events
“A new White plot... expected and undoubtedly prepared by the French counter-revolution.” Pravda, March 3, 1921.
“White generals, you all know it, played a great part in this. This is fully proved.” Lenin, report delivered to the 10th Congress of the R.C.P.(B), March 8, 1921, Selected Works, vol. IX, p. 98.
“The Bolsheviks denounced the men of Kronstadt as counter-revolutionary mutineers, led by a White general. The denunciation appears to have been groundless.” Isaac Deutcher, The Prophet Armed, (Oxford University Press, 1954) p. 511.
“No pretense was made that the Kronstadt mutineer we... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism by Otto Ruhle
I.
Russia must be placed first among the new totalitarian states. It was the first to adopt the new state principle. It went furthest in its application. It was the first to establish a constitutional dictatorship, together with the political and administrative terror system which goes with it. Adopting all the features of the total state, it thus became the model for those other countries which were forced to do away with the democratic state system and to change to dictatorial rule. Russia was the example for fascism.
No accident is here involved, nor a bad joke of history. The duplication of systems here is not apparent but real. Every... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
My Disillusionment in Russia—Afterword by Emma Goldman
I
Non-Bolshevik Socialist critics of the Russian failure contend that the Revolution could not have succeeded in Russia because industrial conditions had not reached the necessary climax in that country. They point to Marx, who taught that a social revolution is possible only in countries with a highly developed industrial system and its attendant social antagonisms. They therefore claim that the Russian Revolution could not be a social revolution, and that historically it had to evolve along constitutional, democratic lines, complemented by a growing industry, in order to ripen the country economically for the basic change.
This orthodox Marxian view leaves an im... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Cries In The Wilderness: Alexander Berkman and Russian Prisoner Aid by Barry Pateman
“Not even a miserable piece of stone is dedicated to their memory for fear of rippling a placid
existence.” —Francesc Torres[235]
You can get tired of anniversaries. As you get older there are more and more of them, rolling towards you like a never ending freight train carrying commentary after commentary as the skeleton of each event is enthusiastically picked over to justify the positions and ideas that groups and individuals now hold. I am not interested in doing that for October 1917 (or for any other anniversary come to think of it). I rather think peoples lives and experiences are important in themselves ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Bolshevism and Stalinism by Paul Mattick
The alleged purpose of Trotsky’s biography of Stalin[260] is to show ‘how a personality of this sort was formed, and how it came to power by usurpation of the right to such an exceptional role.’ The real purpose of the book, however, is to show why Trotsky lost the power position he temporarily occupied and why his rather than Stalin’s name should follow Lenin’s. Prior to Lenin’s death it had always been ‘Lenin and Trotsky’; Stalin’s name had invariably been near or at the end of any list of prominent Bolsheviks. On one occasion Lenin even suggested that he put his own signature second to Trotsky’s. In brief, the book helps to explain... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Role of Bolshevik Ideology in the Birth of the Bureaucracy by Cornelius Castoriadis
[1. The Significance of the Russian Revolution]
We are happy to present to our readers the first translation into French of Alexandra Kollontai’s pamphlet The Workers’ Opposition in Russia. This pamphlet was published in Moscow at the beginning of 1921, during the violent controversy that preceded the Tenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party. This Congress was to close discussion forever on this controversy as well as on all the others.
People have not finished talking about the Russian Revolution, its problems, its degeneration, and about the regime it ultimately produced. And how could one? Of all the revolts of the working cl... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Publishing Information
“Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism,” by Luigi Fabbri, was first published in 1922 as Anarchia e comunismo sciendfico by Libreria editrice tempos nuovi and translated by Paul Sharkey for the 1981 Cienfuegos Pamphlet The Poverty ofStadsm.
“The Soviet System or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat?,” by Rudolf Rocker, was first serialized in Fraye Arbayter Shdme as “Raten-sistem oder diktatur?,” May 15 through May 29, 1920. It was published in French in Les Temps Nouveaux as “Le systeme des soviets ou la dictature du proletariat?” that same year.
Numerous Spanish editions were based on the French. This English translation by Paul Sharkey... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
[1] All quotations in this introduction are taken from the authors’ essays in this anthology.
[2] It is believed that Bukharin here refers to more than just Russian anarchism and Russian anarchists. In his pamphlet he makes no distinction and speaks in a global sense. On the other hand, Russian anarchists have the same ideas and programs as anarchists in other countries.
[3] See The ABC of Communism by Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, Editorial Avanti!, Milan, p. 85.
[4] See Marx: “The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men’s Association” in Works of Marx, Engels and Lasalle edited by Avanti!, Milan, vol. 2. (English translation from Marx-EngelsLenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndic... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
