Part 1, Chapter 12 : From Simón Radowitzky to Boris Wladimirovich

CHAPTER XII. From Simón Radowitzky to Boris Wladimirovich

Due to circumstances beyond their control, Durruti and Ascaso’s “Latin American excursion” would end in the country where it should have begun. And, even worse, police from three countries were chasing the Errantes for “crimes” of a character that had divided the Argentine anarchist movement in 1925. Specifically, some anarchists advocated expropriation and attacks on individuals, while others vigorously opposed such tactics and believed that they were destructive to the movement. The tendency toward violence was a natural consequence of the Argentine state’s vicious oppression of the workers’ movement. Indeed, government harassment and the high number of anarchists among the waves of immigrants and exiles arriving in the country meant that there would be an abundance of combative anarchists in Argentina.

Argentina’s militant labor federation, the FORA (Federación Obrera Regional Argentina), was founded in 1901. The emergence of this organization must be placed in the context of the long history of attempts to build a unified the workers’ movement in the country, whose first precedent was the appearance of a section of the International Association of Workers (or First International) in 1872. The First International and similar efforts later ended in failure in Argentina due to the interminable conflicts between social-democrats, marxists, “syndicalists,” and anarchists, much like to those that occurred in Europe. Anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists predominated in the labor movement, particularly in the artisanal trades. Their prevalence was evident at the FORA’s so-called Fifth Congress in August 1905, where participants decided by a large margin to embrace “anarchist communism” as the federation’s ideological identity. For their part, the social democrats had organized the Socialist Party in 1896, which belonged to the reformist and parliamentarian Second International.

A workers’ organization will not exist without class conflict and the class conflict will not exist without the bourgeoisie. Workers’ organizations began to appear in Argentina in the 1880s because the country had evolved, economically and industrially, to such an extent that the bases of bourgeois society, and consequently the class struggle, had taken shape. This struggle was going to unfold in its purest form there.

“There was a tremendous fear of the workers,” wrote Diego Abad de Santillán, “and every effort was made to weaken the movement triggered by the Buenos Aires bakers’ strike in August 1902. During this strike, Judge Navarro ordered police to raid the FORA—the headquarters of eighteen unions in the capital—and they caused tremendous damage to furniture and books.... The result of the attack was the opposite of what the judge had hoped: workers became infuriated and protested energetically. Socialist orators joined the anarchists to condemn the outrage and they held a joint rally on August 17 that 20,000 workers attended.” [160] Proletarian radicalism grew and subsequent strikes were settled violently; with police brutality on the one hand and worker sabotage and boycotts on the other.

The government did not want a May Day celebration to occur that year, but the FORA called a rally in Buenos Aires for May 1, 1904 anyway. Participants departed from the Lorea Plaza and congregated around the Mazzini statue on Julio Avenue. More than 100,000 people came to the event, according to estimates published in the bourgeois press. This was an enormous number, considering that the Argentine capital had only one million residents at the time. The police suddenly began to fire at the demonstrators and, when armed workers responded, an intense shootout began. A sailor named Juan Ocampo was shot and killed. Approximately three hundred protesters surrounded his body and several men hoisted it onto their shoulders. The enraged workers marched to the office of the anarchist weekly La Protesta on Córdoba Street. Police tried to stop them several times but realized that these armed men were prepared to fight back and thus contented themselves with following from afar. Militants later took Ocampo’s body from the office of the anarchist newspaper to the FORA building on Chili Street, where they left it in the care of the working people of Buenos Aires. The workers inside the building saw police mobilizing outside in a battle deployment. The militants recognized that another confrontation would be futile and left willingly. The guardians of law and order took advantage of this to seize Ocampo’s body and bury it secretly. In addition to killing the sailor, the gunfire wounded more than thirty workers. These events are known as the Mazzini massacre.

This bloody crackdown didn’t subdue the working class; on the contrary, worker militancy increased throughout the country. In June 1905, the Longshoreman or Port Workers’ Union called a South American congress to form a Federation of Maritime and Land Transport Workers that would unify all the transport unions in South America. The circular laying the foundations of the initiative said:

This Committee resolves to hold ... the First Congress of the South American Maritime and Land Transport Workers. The Maritime Transport associations in the following Republics will take part: Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chili, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Mexico. We will create a South American alliance and discuss the best way to counteract the advances of insatiable capitalism and also begin dialogue with the International Federation of Transport Workers based in Hamburg [Germany].

This initiative was very significant, both socially and politically. For the labor movement, it meant strengthening international ties among workers in a continent formed by a mosaic of states created according to the interests of the ruling classes. Spain first dominated the area and then came the neocolonial powers of Great Britain and the United States. For the ruling classes, the rise of independent proletarian organizations was a threat to the partnership between the local bourgeoisie and imperialist powers. They were particularly worried about the possibility of unity among the Latin American workers’ movements and any attempt to redefine the integration of the diverse Spanish speaking countries in liberatory terms. For this reason, the state persistently and brutally attacked the workers’ rebellions, their unions, and their federation (the FORA).

The May Day rallies after the one narrated above were equally intense. The reason lay in the terrible conditions to which the working class was subjected. The workers’ responded by declaring their commitment to anarchist communism at the FORA’s Fifth Congress in 1905 and, afterwards, the workers’ movement became increasingly aggressive. In 1906 alone, there were thirty-nine strikes in Buenos Aires, in which a total of 137,000 workers participated, and an average of six hundred laborers were on strike at any given time. This pervasive social antagonism put the rulers on edge. Indeed, the increasing pressure from the workers and the spread of anarchist propaganda was especially irritating for Buenos Aires Police Chief Colonel Falcón. He swore that he would crush the libertarians and, in his effort to do so, continuously violated individual liberties, abolished the freedom of association, instituted restrictive laws, and wantonly applied martial law. A war was brewing between the workers and the Argentine state.

The government applied the so-called “State of Siege” for the first time in 1902, which swept away the most venerated constitutional rights, and it was imposed thereafter for long periods of time by almost all elected or de facto governments. It was the exception rather than the rule to live under constitutional law. Furthermore, that same year the government also passed one of the most hated laws in Argentine history: the Ley de Residencia (number 4,144), which remained in force for more than half a century. This law enabled the government to deport all foreigners that it deemed undesirable. It was a direct attack on the working class, which is obvious when one considers the very high number of immigrant workers—especially Italians and Spaniards—that began to arrive in Argentina in 1875 and continued to do so until 1914. The law was an excellent weapon for the government, which it used to free itself of forward thinking men who struggled for democracy and liberty.

The FORA reacted to the regime’s arrogance by calling on the workers to rebel and fight class exploitation. The year 1909 would be decisive in this bitter war between the high-bourgeoisie (a satellite and accomplice of international capitalists) and Argentines condemned to the worst working conditions, which they shared with the masses of immigrants brought into the country as cheap labor.

The high-bourgeoisie and Argentine statesmen were preparing to commemorate the anniversary of the country’s first government on May 25, 1910. One hundred years earlier the area known as the United Provinces of the River Plate separated from Spain and became Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. However, heirs of these nineteenth century national liberation struggles saw the working class’s growing militancy with disdain and believed that class conflict was something “alien to the lands of the River Plate.” The dominant class simply could not understand that the country’s economic development and incorporation into the capitalist world market as a semi-colony required the emergence of the class struggle. It was inevitable that a revolutionary movement would emerge. The bourgeoisie and its government representatives responded with outrage; trying to silence every voice of protest and human dignity with the police, shutting down unions, banning the workers’ newspapers, breaking into and destroying proletarian centers and libraries, and imprisoning and deporting activists who rose up in defense of the rights of man.

Nevertheless, the workers did not retreat and began 1909 by calling general strikes, rallies, and gatherings. There was deep outrage at the execution of Francisco Ferrer in Spain, whose death was among the issues prompting the anger and protests.

“Like almost always, two demonstrations occurred on May 1 that year: one organized by the Socialists and one called by the anarchists. The anarchists gathered in Lorea Plaza (today Congreso), whereas the Socialists assembled in Constitution Plaza. Around 30,000 people participated in the former. After they began marching, the police charged and fired at the people. It was impossible to stop this unanticipated attack and a massacre took place. President Figueroa Alcorta’s government draped itself in glory. There were eight deaths and 105 injured among the demonstrators. A including a young Russian named Simón Radowitzky was among the aggrieved workers.” [161]

In response to this brutality, the Socialists in the Unión General de Trabajadores and the anarchists in the FORA called a general strike and declared that their members would not resume working “until the imprisoned comrades are freed and the unions reopened.” The strike lasted for a week, and it was both spirited and unanimous, despite government violence during those seven days. Authorities ultimately had to cede; they released eight hundred prisoners, repealed the municipal code of penalties, and permitted unions to be reopened. But Colonel Falcón, the instigator and ringleader of the oppression, was still at the head of the police. This was a mockery and a provocation to the working class.

The May Day assault deeply shook Simón Radowitzky, who was only eighteen years old and a recent arrival in the country. Working completely alone, he decided to free the people of the bloodthirsty animal that tormented them: he killed Colonel Falcón with a bomb on November 14, 1909. One month had passed since Alfonso XIII had executed Francisco Ferrer. As expected, a violent crackdown followed the murder. Although the government banned La Protesta, its editors still managed to release a clandestine bulletin applauding the young Russian. Likewise, the FORA also used an illegal publication ( Nuestra Defensa) to praise Simon Radowitzky’s act of vengeance.

It was in the midst of this climate of violence that the patriotic and bourgeois commemoration of the centenary of Argentine independence was being planned. The FORA wanted to transform the event into a revolutionary and internationalist celebration and called a South American workers’ congress for April 30 of that year. All the labor associations sympathetic to the FORA’s ideas said that they would attend.

From their respective countries, the Latin American bourgeoisie decried the gathering and pushed Argentina to finally get the unruly anarchists in line. The heavy repression began on May 13: the government declared a state of emergency and imposed police terror everywhere. The first to be arrested were the editors of the La Protesta, La Batalla, and the members of the Federal Councils of the FORA and CORA (Confederación Obrera Regional Argentina, which emerged from a 1909 split in the FORA and was “syndicalist” and “economicist” in orientation). Authorities then detained many prominent militants, including a large number of foreigners. Gangs of thugs organized demonstrations and took to the streets, all with the support of the bourgeoisie, the government, and the police. They ransacked and burned down centers of proletarian agitation, including the offices of La Protesta and the Socialist paper La Vanguardia.

The government packed Ushuaia with prisoners. This infamous penitentiary in southern Argentina was commonly known as the “cemetery of living men.” Many foreigners were also deported. And yet, despite all this, the Buenos Aires workers still had the courage to declare a general strike to protest the centenary and the bourgeois-police terror.

After the events in 1910, the FORA spent three years underground. It began to re-organize its unions after authorities relaxed some legal restrictions in 1913. Older militants were shocked to see a new, younger generation in their ranks that had joined the struggle during the difficult, underground period.

Although there were still class conflicts after the First World War, they were less bloody than before. One reason for this may be the split that occurred at the FORA’s ninth congress in April 1915. One faction, which called itself the “FORA of the Ninth Congress,” adopted a syndicalist line, while the other—the “FORA of the Fifth Congress”—held fast to organization’s anarchist stance. A bitter dispute erupted between the two groups and energies that they should used to fight the bourgeoisie were wasted in intra-movement battles.

In early 1917, the bourgeoisie launched another offensive against the workers. Police killed twenty-six proletarians that year alone. There was also a new rise in workers’ militancy in response to the Russian Revolution and the agitation that erupted in 1919 and 1920: the factory occupations in Turín, the workers’ councils in Bavaria, the revolution in Hungry, and the multiple forms of subversion throughout Spain. All these events had a powerful impact in Argentina and created a highly politicized youth, who joined the FORA (of the “Fifth Congress,” which we will call the FORA hereafter) and other radical groups. Then something extraordinary took place: the spontaneous emergence of revolutionary consciousness, which was ultimately unable to lead to a revolution (because it was spontaneous). All these passions resulted in the “Tragic Week” of January 1919. A situation emerged that seemed revolutionary but, in reality, needed more solid foundations to be so. The anarchists could not work miracles or simply seize the state like the Bolsheviks. The revolutionary spontaneity gave everything it could and then collapsed after the first onslaught. The lesson of the “Tragic Week” was the pressing need to organize the revolution. Although the proletariat was going to pay dearly for its lack of preparation, its impulses filled the ruling classes with terror. That is why the bourgeoisie unleashed the tremendous wave of persecution after the 1919 insurrectionary strike. Authorities dragged 55,000 into police stations across the country and turned the Martín García Island into a prison. Amazingly, the FORA and its unions, the workers’ groups and their newspapers, continued to survive and publish (although underground). In fact, a new workers’ daily called the Tribuna Proletaria began to appear.

During this rebirth of the workers’ movement, which we locate in 1920, the Russian Revolution had a strong impact in Argentina, as it had in countries around the world. The question of whether or not to support the Soviet Union became a source of conflict within the FORA: enthusiasm for Russia and its “dictatorship of the proletariat” swept up some FORA militants, much as it had captivated activists at the CNT’s Congress in 1919. “This dissension,” writes Abad de Santillán, “weakened the FORA precisely when it was on the verge of absorbing the country’s entire labor movement into its heart.”

The FORA of the Ninth Congress supported the “anarcho-Bolshevik” current within the FORA (of the Fifth Congress) and even financed their pro-Bolshevik newspapers. Ultimately, the Bolshevik supporters in the FORA and the FORA of the Ninth Congress fuzed to create a new workers’ organization in March 1922: the Unión Sindical Argentina. Lamentable acts of proletarian abandonment occurred between 1920 and 1922. During these difficult years, Moscow’s agents came to Buenos Aires to divide the workers’ movement, partially achieving what the Maurín-Nin group had attempted unsuccessfully in Spain.

“The agitation in Patagonia,” wrote Santillán “began to be a public concern around this time [August 1921]. At first it was a simple rebellion with modest demands, but police persecution and landowner hatred transformed it into a historic event. It enveloped thousands of ranch workers and lasted almost a year, until the National Army savagely annihilated it. Dead and injured workers numbered in the thousands. The hero of those brilliant days was the Lieutenant Colonel Varela, ‘the pacifier.’”

Divisions in the workers’ movement bore responsibility for this and other sad events during the period. FORA activists tried to end the internal debates and dedicate themselves to rebuilding the labor movement, but the damage had already been done. And, as expected, in the midst of these intramovement conflicts, a united front emerged against the anarchist movement. How were the militant anarchists going to respond? The most immediate reply came from a German worker named Kurt Wilkens who was active in Buenos Aires’s anarchist groups. With a bomb and some bullets, he killed the “pacifier” of Patagonia on January 23, 1923.

Men like Simón Radowitzky and Kurt Wilkens naturally made a powerful impression upon the youth, who had been educated as militants in the heat of defeats, massacres, and that united front against the anarchist movement. And, since one drop of water resembles another, the same thing that occurred in Spain in the early 1920s happened in Argentina: the organization of revolutionary defense against government terror. Expropriation would be one of the strategies of a movement that the bourgeoisie and state had cornered and hoped to crush.

The first anarchist to use expropriation as a revolutionary strategy in Argentina was a Russian. He name was Germán Boris Wladimirovich and he was a doctor, biologist, writer, and painter. [162] At age twenty he was active in Lenin’s party but separated from the Russian Social Democrats—later called Bolsheviks—after their congress in 1906. Boris then began to turn toward anarchism until he finally devoted himself to the movement fully. He traveled through Germany, Switzerland, France, and ultimately settled in Argentina on his friends’ advice (after contracting a respiratory illness), where he spoke and wrote for the cause. Like Bakunin, Boris was a dedicated anarchist but never stopped being and feeling Russian. Indeed, his acts after the “Tragic Week” reflect his Russian roots.

Before the “Tragic Week,” a fascist organization began operating that was first known as the “Civil Guard” and later the “Patriotic League.” It was made up by sons of the Argentine bourgeoisie and led by Manuel Carlés, a doctor who was influential in governmental circles. Carlés put the League at the police’s service and its members actively participated in the crackdown on the workers both during and after the “Tragic Week.” The Patriotic League’s motto was: “Be a patriot, kill a Jew.” In Buenos Aires, the vast majority of Jews were Russian, but for Carlés and his supporters Jews and Russians were the same thing, especially when it was a question of fighting the Russian Revolution. These right-wingers called for a “slaughter of Russians!” in their muddled, nationalist tracts. Could this anti-Russian and anti-Semitic propaganda take root among Argentines? Unfortunately history offers many examples of collective psychosis...

Boris Wladimirovich was Russian, possibly Jewish, and knew from experience how dangerous these campaigns against “Russians” and “Jews” can be. Doubtlessly he thought of the constant pogroms in his homeland. How, then, could he explain the Russian Revolution to the Argentine people? Boris Wladimirovich and his compatriot Juan Konovezuk, both active in the FORA’s pro-Bolshevik wing, decided to start a newspaper to inform Argentines about the revolution in their country and undermine the influence of the Patriot League’s anti-Russian propaganda. But they had no money, so Boris—who probably had experience with expropriation in Russia—planed to holdup a jeweler. He and Juan Konovezuk carried out the unsuccessful heist on May 19, 1919. During the robbery, Konovezuk—who turned out to Andrés Babby, a thirty year old white Russian who had been in Buenos Aires for six years—shot a policeman to death. Both were arrested and the country’s press devoted a great deal of attention to the matter. At their trial, Boris declared: “A propagandist like me has to face these contingencies.... I already know that I won’t see the triumph of my ideas, but others will follow in my footsteps sooner or later.” Boris and Babby received life sentences and were incarcerated in Ushuaia.

The action carried out by these two Russians caused a debate to erupt among Argentine anarchists about the legitimacy of expropriation as a revolutionary strategy. La Protesta opposed the use of violence and attacks on individuals. It wanted to preserve an untainted anarchism, although it was difficult to do so while also calling for “class vengeance,” which was the maxim it used to defend Simón Radowitzky, Boris Wladimirovich, Kurt Wilkens, and Sacco and Vanzetti. In contrast to La Protesta’s contradictory and temperate position, the La Antorcha magazine argued that revolution and therefore revolutionaries are beyond the law by definition. Rodolfo González Pacheco, a strong personality reminiscent of Flores Magón, was this publication’s most outstanding figure. He was an incisive and steely writer, as demonstrated in the short pieces he published under the title “Posters” and other works. The divide between La Protesta and La Antorcha over revolutionary methods was absolute in 1923.

There were two additional figures of great significance among the “Antorchists:” Miguel Arcángel Roscigna and Severino di Giovanni. The former was a celebrated leader of the Buenos Aires metalworkers and secretary of the Prisoner and Persecuted Support Committee. The latter, a schoolteacher and secretary of the Italian Anti-Fascist Committee, had a sentimental and idealistic disposition. The brutal force of the state will soon transform him into “the idealist of violence.” [163] Boris Wladimirovich had put a mechanism into motion that only needed to be oiled. Hipólito Irigoyen, following the example of previous Argentine presidents, provided much of the “oil” with his methodological persecution and continued imprisonments. This was the situation in Argentina when Los Errantes arrived in August 1925.