It’s noticeable how mainstream writers writing about Surrealism play down the politics. For example in the massive book on Breton, Revolution and the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton the author Mark Polizzotti passes over the links beween Surrealism and anarchism in a couple of sentences . This despite the signal devotion of Breton in showing solidarity, as one of a few intellectuals to support the libertarian movement in a period of repression. and despite the fact that the Surrealists wrote a weekly column for Le Libertaire, a paper with not an inconsiderable readership.
“It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognized itself.” Thus wrote unequivocally the “Pope of Surrealism”, A... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “But we do not fear you or your hangmen. Soviet ‘justice’ may kill us, but you will never kill our ideals. We shall die as anarchists and not as bandits.”
— The anarchist Fedor Petrovich Machanovski at his trial before the Petrograd Revolutionary Tribunal, 13th and 22nd December 1922
After the crushing of the Makhnovists, the Siberian insurrections and the Kronstadt revolt, anarchist propaganda within the USSR was severely repressed from March 1921. There was a little window dressing, with the toleration of the bookshop/publishing ventures of Golos Truda in Moscow and Petrograd, the Anarchist Black Cross prisoner support group and the Kropotkin Museum – named after Russian anarchist Pete... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In cities the workers armed themselves and fraternized with the troops, but were eventually crushed by Soviet tanks.
It is not out of love for nostalgia that we are commemorating the 1956 Hungarian uprising: Hungary '56 was a prime example of the working class itself reaching for power. Doubly significant, it took place in one of the mythical 'workers' states'.
It showed for many, throughout the world, a new alternative to capitalism and Soviet communism - read state capitalism - and it galvanized movements towards genuine revolutionary politics.
“Fascists”
When the Soviet Army swept into Eastern Europe towards the end of the Second World War, they did not in fact liberate workers and peasants. The sa... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Stalin died on March 5th, 1953. In April the tobacco workers in Plovdiv, the second largest town in Bulgaria, began to organize around their grievances, in an unheard of display of bravery. The tobacco industry had been nationalized under the Stalinist regime in 1947. Conditions had deteriorated, with workers, who were mostly women, losing their permanent jobs and being placed on seasonal short term jobs, with no social benefits during their times of unemployment. In addition they lost the bonuses they had received in pre-nationalization days and the holiday accommodation provided by the tobacco industry was taken away. The atmosphere in the tobacco industry was increasingly repressive with workers bullied and treated harshly.
In ear... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “Huang Ai and Pang Renquan were the earliest heroes martyred in the Chinese labor movement — they both deserve to be remembered”. Li Rui
Like the Chicago anarchists of 1887, the beheading of two anarchists at Changsha in Hunan in southern China in 1922 had many repercussions, not least in stiffening the resistance of the emerging revolutionary movement. Unfortunately many facts have been obscured by the fact that Mao Zedong was involved in the events around the Changsha killings and so many accounts from Chinese historians are very much focused on his unerring infallibility and uncanny ability at being at the center of events, in line with the hagiography that has been manufactured around the Great Helmsman.
... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “In April 1918, a telegram came from Moscow about the speeches of anarchists. At this time, the Vologda anarchists became insolent. They seized the building of the hotel “Europa”, furnished it with machine guns …turned it into an almost impregnable fortress. A lot of them turned out to be from Petrograd. The Red Guard received an order from the gubernia executive committee, to at all costs disarm the anarchists. This task was carried out overnight.
The Red Guards had to contend with the so-called “violent” echelons of anarchists who were returning from the front from the old army. One of these echelons coming from Yaroslavl to Vologda, was well armed, had even a few large guns. Anarchists seized e... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Alexander Parkhomenko is known to older Russians through the pages of the novel by Vsevelod Ivanov and the 1942 film of the same name. He was paraded as one of the great heroes of the Russian Civil War, alongside other partisan leaders like Chapaev (who also had a book and film dedicated to him). He led a Red Army detachment against the Makhnovists and eventually was killed by them. He is portrayed in the film as dying a hero’s death at the hands of Makhno who is seen playing a harmonica and singing a jolly tune. Also portrayed in the popular movie are the Ataman Grigoriev (killed by the Makhnovists) and the Makhnovist commander Maksiuta.
In Soviet propaganda of the period, Parkhomenko is depicted as a model Bolshevik. Like Mak... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “Acharya….is the most salient figure among the Indian libertarians. He was above all a very informed connoisseur of Western socialist theories.“
Victor Garcia
Mandyam Prativadi Bhayankara Thirumalacharya was born around 1887 in Madras. He is usually referred to as M. P.T. Acharya, or P.B Acharya or M.P.B Acharya. His father M. P. Narasimha Ayangar was a supervisor in the Public Works Department. His forefathers had originally lived in Mysore state and moved to Madras state.The Ayangars are a Brahmin priest caste and wear their hair long.
The family was heavily involved in the nationalist cause. A close relative, M C Alasingaperumal had started a monthly journal Brahmavadin, and his uncle S. N. Thi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Greeks had settled along the north coast of the Black Sea in what is now Ukraine and Crimea from at least the 5th Century BC. At the time of the Revolution of 1917 there were around 180,000 of these Pontic Greeks in the region. When the Austrian and German military backers of the puppet Hetman Skoropadsky withdrew from the Ukraine in 1918, the White forces of Denikin attempted to enforce conscription on the local Greek population of the Mariupol area and met with armed resistance from them. The Greeks resisted the Denikinist requisitioning of food and other materials and were appalled by the rape of local Greek women and the high handed comportment of the Whites. They had not originally wanted to be involved in the strife but were forced to... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The Bulgarian anarchist movement has produced many heroic figures, not least Alexander Nakov himself, but there were many others. Georgi Sheytanov 1 comes to mind, as do Dimitar Balkhov, Stanko Paraskov and a host of others. Georgi Balkanski (real name Grigoriev), who became the historian of the movement and helped publicize it in the West, was himself an exceptional activist within the movement.
Hristo Botev, elevated to the stature of ‘National Poet’ by the Stalinist regime and still held in great esteem in Bulgaria, was to fall under the influence of the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and was probably the first to introduce anarchist ideas into Bulgaria with his distribution of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Jaime Balius Mir was born into a bourgeois family in Barcelona in 1904. He gained his baccalaureate and registered in medical faculty. However a slowly advancing paralytic disease crippled him, and he was forced to withdraw. He became Catalan nationalist and was attracted to the insurrectionary nationalism of Colonel Macia. In 1922 he joined Accio Catalana and took part in the Catalanist demonstrations of 1923. Two years later he was one of the signatories of the Catalanist Manifesto of Bandera Negra and was involved in the Garraf plot against Alfonso XIII and in preparations for an secret Exercit Catala (Catalan Army). He was imprisoned and then exiled. In France, he became disillusioned with Macia and independentism . When the Republic wa... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We reproduce here a brief excerpt taken from the projected book The Idea: Anarchist Communism Past, Present and Future written by Nick Heath. The text below describes how Joseph Déjacque was the first person to use the word libertarian as a term interchangeable with anarchist. Nick Heath also outlines how Déjacque was an early and significant theorist of communist anarchism.
The first two chapters of The Idea are currently available in full on Libcom.org.
Joseph Déjacque also participated in the 1848 events as well as in the insurrection the following year. In often extremely violent and poetic language, he attacked religion, property, the family and the State, and advocated action by small groups who wou... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Ivan Sergeevich Kolesnikov was born in 1894 in the settlement of Stara Kalitva in Ostrogozh county of Voronezh province in a large but prosperous farming family of four sons and four daughters. He is described as having blond hair, and as being of medium height with a stocky build. During the First World War he went from private to junior noncommissioned officer and platoon commander, fighting in the Caucasus on the Turkish front. From May 1919 he served in the 107th Red Army cavalry reconnaissance detachment and from August 1919 in the 357th Infantry Regiment, 40th Infantry Division. At the end of May 1919 he was appointed platoon commander and then commandant of the regiment headquarters and in early January 1920 temporarily filled the po... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “Beside me on the big bay horse raced Brigade Commander Gregory Maslakov. This was a man of great physical strength and desperate courage. There were in his behavior major shortcomings, but courage in battle, the ability to win over the soldiers by personal example to achieve victory atoned for them.” Budyenny’s Memoirs
Gregory Savelievich Maslakov was born in 1877 in the Stavropol province into a poor peasant family. He worked in the Sal district in the Don region as a breaker-in of horses on a stud farm. He is described as having a cheerful personality and being fond of a drink. During World War one he served in the artillery in the Russian Army. At the end of 1917, he organized a Red partisan group that fough... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Born at Alexandrovsk, (now Zaphorozhye)in 1885 Maria Grigorevna Nikiforova was a worker, who had jobs as a baby sitter, sales clerk, and finally as a bottle washer in a vodka distillery.As a member of a local anarchist-communist group she was condemned to death for armed attacks on the Czarist authorities in 1905, commuted to twenty years hard labor and imprisonment. She spent part of the sentence in the Petropavlovsk prison in Petrograd. Transferred to Siberia, she organized a riot in the Narymsk prison and escaped in 1910, passing like Bakunin, from Japan, to the USA. A group of Chinese anarchists living in Japan helped with her passage to the USA. In New York she made contact with the large number of anarchist exiles there and apparently... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Nikolai Ivanovich Pavlov was born in Russia in 1881. He joined the Social-Revolutionary Party in 1901. During the 1905 Revolution he took part in the armed uprising of the soldiers’ penal battalion in Bobruisk. He was subsequently arrested four times and sentenced to death, spending five years in prison. In 1910 he escaped abroad where he became an anarchist-communist.
In 1917 he was one of the leading lights of the Petrograd Federation of Anarchist Communists, and subsequently the Union of Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda -Voice of Labor . He was an active participant in the July and October uprisings against the Provisional Government of Kerensky. He wrote the famous and well known statement Why I Am An Anarchist on 23rd Octobe... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Preface
In 1926 a group of exiled Russian anarchists in France, the Dielo Trouda (Workers’ Cause) group, published this pamphlet. It arose not from some academic study but from their experiences in the 1917 Russian revolution. They had taken part in the overthrow of the old ruling class, had been part of the blossoming of workers’ and peasants’ self-management, had shared the widespread optimism about a new world of socialism and freedom ... and had seen its bloody replacement by State Capitalism and the Bolshevik Party dictatorship.
The Russian anarchist movement had played a far from negligible part in the revolution. At the time there were about 10,000 active anarchists in Russia, not including the movemen... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “Between 1918 and 1921, in the anarchist Ukraine, one of the greatest victories of the anti-hierarchical struggle inside the man class took place. Nestor Makhno — who was nicknamed ‘Batko’, that is, ‘Father’ — made some elegant speeches during the insurrection: (...) But when Makhno spoke of the emancipation of humanity, that did not prevent him, in his everyday behavior, from restricting membership of humanity. Voline, who took part in Makhno’s insurrectionary campaign, writes: ‘The second shortcoming of Makhno and many of his close associates — commanders and others — was their attitude towards women. Especially when inebriated, these men indulged in inadmissible acts &mdas... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In 1920 throughout Poltava province a general insurrection began against the Reds with the formation of 200 units. In the north of Gadiach county there were units led by Alexander Koval, Krupsky, Dmitrenko and Buhovetsky. In Kremenchug county units led by Kikot, Ovdienko, and Prikhodko were set up and in Kobelyatsky county one led by Levchenko. In Zenkov county operated the units of Maxim Mandyk, Pylyp Masyuta, Stepenko, Latoha, Antonenko, Timoshenko, Turchin, Tyutyunnik and others. Masyuta had led the resistance to the White forces of Denikin, had become the Red commandant of Zenkov but had defected to the insurgents. Mandyk had served in the Red militia in Zenkov. This was indicative of the number of officers as well as rank and file sold... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “My freedom is only valid if yours is too.”
Canek Sanchez Guevara.
Canek Sanchez Guevara was the eldest grandson of Ernesto Che Guevara. Hildita Guevara was his mother and his father was Alberto Sanchez, a Mexican leftist. He was born in Havana on the 22nd May 1974. Canek means Black Snake in Yucatec Maya.
As a child he lived with his parents in Milan and Barcelona, attending a Spanish-Catalan school in the latter city. He then lived in Mexico, returning to Cuba in 1986. He quickly became disgusted with the Castro regime and the way it persecuted writers, artists and others. He rejected the role that the regime were preparing for him as a high ranking military officer. He started dressing like a punk. He he... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The work for this book has involved research at archives and reference libraries. Since I was not supported by grants or by any academic institution this could have been a rather desperate undertaking. I had, however, the sense to work part-time as a stagehand at the Fortune and Drury Lane theaters during the writing of the book, which kept my feet very much on the ground.
I would like to thank the following for the discussions and the pleasant experience of working with them: Arthur, Reg, Allen, Bob and John from the Fortune; and Alan, Kenny, Billy, Del, Brian, Tim, Tom, Jim, John, Colin, Richard and Sabba at the Theater Royal, Drury Lane.
Perhaps as an ‘unofficial’ historian I have had to r... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) During the Civil War in Russia, Lenin’s government was faced with a number of predominantly peasant uprisings which threatened to topple the regime. Can the accusation be justified that these were led by kulaks (rich peasants), backed by White reaction, with the support of the poorer peasants, unconscious of their real class interests? Or was it, as some opponents of Bolshevism to its left claimed, the start of the ‘Third Revolution’?
“All those who really take the social revolution to heart must deplore that fatal separation that exists between the proletariat of the towns and the countryside. All their efforts must be directed to destroying it, because we must all be conscious of this — that as muc... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)