Bakunin and the anarchists' exile In 1848, on his return to
Paris,
Mikhail Bakunin published a fiery tirade against
Russia, which caused his expulsion from
France. The
revolutionary movement of 1848 gave him the opportunity to join a
radical campaign of democratic agitation, and for his participation in the
May Uprising in Dresden of 1849 he was arrested and condemned to death. The
death sentence, however, was
commuted to
life imprisonment, and he was eventually handed over to the Russian authorities, by whom he was imprisoned and finally sent to Eastern
Siberia in 1857. Bakunin received permission to move to the
Amur region, where he started collaborating with his relative General Count
Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky, who had been
Governor of Eastern Siberia for ten years. When Muravyov was removed from his position, Bakunin lost his stipend. He succeeded in escaping, probably with the collusion of the authorities and made his way through
Japan and the
United States to
England in 1861. He spent the rest of his life in exile in
Western Europe, principally in
Switzerland. In January 1869,
Sergey Nechayev spread false rumors of his arrest in
Saint Petersburg, then left for
Moscow before heading abroad. In
Geneva, he pretended to be a representative of a revolutionary committee who had fled from the
Peter and Paul Fortress, and he won the confidence of revolutionary-in-exile
Mikhail Bakunin and his friend
Nikolay Ogarev. Bakunin played a prominent part in developing and elaborating the theory of
anarchism and in leading the anarchist movement. He left a deep imprint on the movement of the Russian "revolutionary commoners" of the 1870s. In 1873,
Peter Kropotkin was arrested and imprisoned, but escaped in 1876 and went to
England, moving after a short stay to Switzerland, where he joined the
Jura Federation. In 1877 he went to
Paris, where he helped to start the anarchist movement there. He returned to Switzerland in 1878, where he edited a revolutionary newspaper for the Jura Federation called
Le Révolté, subsequently also publishing various revolutionary pamphlets.
Nihilist movement After an assassination attempt, Count
Mikhail Tarielovich Loris-Melikov was appointed the head of the Supreme Executive Commission and given extraordinary powers to fight the revolutionaries. Loris-Melikov's proposals called for some form of parliamentary body, and the Emperor
Alexander II seemed to agree; these plans were never realized as of March 13 (March 1
Old Style), 1881, Alexander was assassinated: while driving on one of the central streets of St. Petersburg, near the
Winter Palace, he was mortally wounded by hand-made grenades and died a few hours afterwards. The conspirators
Nikolai Kibalchich,
Sophia Perovskaya,
Nikolai Rysakov,
Timofey Mikhailov, and
Andrei Zhelyabov were all arrested and sentenced to death.
Hesya Helfman was sent to
Siberia. The assassin was identified as
Ignacy Hryniewiecki (Ignatei Grinevitski), who died during the attack.
Tolstoyan movement Although he did not call himself an anarchist,
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) in his later writings formulated a philosophy that amounted to advocating resistance to the state, and influenced the worldwide development of anarchism as well as
pacifism worldwide. In a series of books and articles, including
What I Believe (1884) () and
Christianity and Patriotism (1894), () Tolstoy used the Christian gospels as a starting-point for an ideology that held violence as the ultimate evil. Tolstoy professed contempt for the private ownership of land, but his anarchism lay primarily in his view that the state exists essentially as an instrument of compulsory force, which he considered the antithesis of all religious teachings. He once wrote, "A man who unconditionally promises in advance to submit to laws which are made and will be made by men, by this very promise renounces Christianity." On his return from Siberia in 1917 he enjoyed great popularity among Moscow workers as a lecturer. Chernyi was also Secretary of the
Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups, which was formed in March 1917. Scholars including Avrich and Allan Antliff have interpreted this vision of society to have been greatly influenced by the
individualist anarchists Max Stirner, and
Benjamin Tucker. Subsequent to the book's publication, Chernyi was imprisoned in
Siberia under the Russian
Czarist regime for his revolutionary activities. On the other hand,
Alexei Borovoi (1876?-1936), was a professor of philosophy at Moscow University, "a gifted orator and the author of numerous books, pamphlets, and articles which attempted to reconcile individualist anarchism with the doctrines of syndicallism". After initially looking favorably upon the Bolsheviks for their proposed land reforms, by 1918 peasants largely came to despise the new government as it became increasingly centralized and exploitative in its dealings with the rural population. Marxist-Leninists had never given the peasants great credit, and with the Civil War against the
White Armies underway, the
Red Army primarily used peasant villages as suppliers of grain, which it “requisitioned,” or in other words, seized by force. Abused equally by the Red and invading White armies, large groups of peasants, as well as Red Army deserters, formed “Green” armies that resisted the Reds and Whites alike. These forces had no grand political agenda like their enemies, for the most part they simply wanted to stop being harassed and be allowed to govern themselves. Though the Green Armies have largely been ignored by history (and by Soviet historians in particular), they constituted a formidable force and a major threat to Red victory in the Civil War. Even after the party declared the Civil War over in 1920, the Red-Green war persisted for some time. In Ukraine, the most notorious peasant rebel leader was an anarchist general named
Nestor Makhno. Makhno had originally led his forces in collaboration with the Red Army against the Whites. In the region of Ukraine where his forces were stationed, Makhno oversaw the development of an autonomous system of government based on the productive coordination of communes. According to Peter Marshall, a historian of anarchism, "For more than a year, anarchists were in charge of a large territory, one of the few examples of anarchy in action on a large scale in modern history. Unsurprisingly, the Bolsheviks came to see Makhno's experiment in self-government as a threat in need of elimination, and in 1920 the Red Army sought to take control of Makhno's forces. They resisted, but the officers (not including Makhno himself) were arrested and executed by the end of 1920. Makhno continued to fight before going into exile in Paris the next year.
Third Russian Revolution troops attack
Kronstadt. The attempted
Third Russian Revolution began in July 1918 with the assassination of the German Ambassador to the Soviet Union in order to prevent the signing of the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This was immediately followed by an artillery attack on the
Kremlin and the occupation of the telegraph and telephone buildings by the
Left SRs who sent out several manifestos appealing to the people to rise up against their oppressors and destroy the Bolshevik regime. But whilst this order was not followed by the people of Moscow, the peasants of South Russia responded vigorously to this call to arms. Bands of
Chernoe Znamia and Beznachaly anarchist terrorists flared up as rapidly and violently as they had done in 1905. Anarchists in
Rostov,
Ekaterinoslav and
Briansk broke into prisons to liberate the anarchist prisoners and issued fiery proclamations calling on the people to revolt against the Bolshevik regime. The Anarchist Battle Detachments attacked the
Whites, Reds and Germans alike. Many peasants joined the Revolution, attacking their enemies with pitchforks and sickles. Meanwhile, in Moscow, the Underground Anarchists were formed by Kazimir Kovalevich and Piotr Sobalev to be the shock troops of the Revolution, infiltrating Bolshevik ranks and striking when least expected. On 25 September 1919, the Underground Anarchists struck the Bolsheviks with the heaviest blow of the Revolution. The headquarters of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party was blown up, killing 12 and injuring 55 Party members, including
Nikolai Bukharin and Emilian Iaroslavskii. Spurred on by their apparent success, the Underground Anarchists proclaimed a new "era of dynamite" that would finally wipe away capitalism and the State. The Bolsheviks responded by initiating a new wave of mass arrests in which Kovalevich and Sobalev were the first to be shot. With their leaders dead and much of their organization in tatters, the remaining Underground Anarchists blew themselves up in their last battle with the Cheka, taking much of their safe house with them. Numerous attacks and assassinations occurred frequently until the Revolution finally petered out in 1922. Although the Revolution was mainly a Left SR initiative, it was the Anarchists who had the support of a greater number of the population and they participated in almost all of the attacks the Left SRs organized, and also many on completely their own initiative. The most celebrated figures of the
Third Russian Revolution,
Lev Chernyi and
Fanya Baron were both Anarchists.
In exile , author of
My Disillusionment in Russia. Following the suppression of the anarchist movement in Russia, a number of anarchists fled the country into exile, such as
Emma Goldman,
Alexander Berkman,
Alexander Schapiro,
Volin,
Mark Mratchny,
Grigorii Maksimov,
Boris Yelensky,
Senya Fleshin and
Mollie Steimer, who went on to establish relief organizations which provided aid for anarchist political prisoners back in Russia. , co-founder of the
platformist tendency. , co-founder of the
synthesis tendency. To the disillusioned Russian anarchist exiles, the experience of the Russian Revolution had fully justified Mikhail Bakunin's earlier declaration that "socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality." Russian anarchists living abroad began to openly attack the "new kings" of the
Communist Party, criticising the NEP as a restoration of capitalism and comparing
Vladimir Lenin to the Spanish inquisitor
Tomás de Torquemada, the Italian political philosopher
Niccolò Machiavelli and the French revolutionary
Maximilien Robespierre. They positioned themselves in opposition to the Bolshevik government, calling for the destruction of Russian state capitalism and its replacement with
workers' self-management by
factory committees and
councils. But while anarchist exiles were united in their criticisms of the Bolshevik government and their recognition that the Russian anarchist movement had collapsed due to its disorganization, their internal divisions remained, with the
anarcho-syndicalists around
Grigorii Maksimov,
Efim Yarchuk and
Alexander Schapiro establishing ''The Workers' Way
as their organ, while anarcho-communists around Peter Arshinov and Volin established The Anarchist Herald'' as their own. The anarcho-syndicalists looked to remedy the issue of anarchist disorganization through the foundation of a new international organization, culminating in the establishment of the
International Workers' Association (IWA) in December 1922. The IWA analyzed the events of the Russian Revolution as having been a project to build
state socialism rather than
revolutionary socialism, called for the construction of
trade unions to win short-term gains while building towards a
general strike and declared their goal to be a
social revolution that would abolish centralized states and replace them with a network of
workers' councils. Maxmioff later moved to the
United States, where he edited ''The Laborer's Voice'', a
Russian language publication of the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). and
Alexander Berkman, while in exile in
Paris (1927). Meanwhile, the anarcho-communists around the ''
Workers' Cause'' journal began to develop the
platformist tendency, calling for the construction of a tightly coordinated anarchist organization, which was supported chiefly by Peter Arshinov and
Nestor Makhno. This platform was criticized as authoritarian by a number of dissenting voices, including Voline,
Senya Fleshin and
Mollie Steimer. Arshinov and Makhno's short-tempered response to these criticisms drew the ire of other Russian exiles such as
Alexander Berkman and
Emma Goldman, who denounced them respectively as a "Bolshevik" and a "militarist", while also expressing a distaste with Fleshin and Steimer's factionalism. During the late 1920s, a number of anarchist exiles decided to return to Russia and appealed to the Soviet government for permission. With the aid of the
Right Oppositionist
Nikolai Bukharin, Efim Iarchuk was permitted to return in 1925, after which he joined the Communist Party. In 1930, Arshniov also returned to Russia under amnesty and joined the Communist Party, leaving
Dielo Truda in the editorial hands of Grigorii Maksimov. Under Maksimov, the publication took on a notable syndicalist stance while also offering a platform to other anarchist tendencies, becoming the Russian anarchist exiles' most important publication. Maksimov attempted to bridge the divide between the anarcho-syndicalists and anarcho-communists, publishing a
social credo that attempted to synthesise the two along the lines of
Peter Kropotkin's earlier works. Maksimov suggested the establishment of
agricultural cooperatives and
factory committees that could oversee the improvement of conditions and reduction of working hours during the transition to
communism, the replacement of prisons with public welfare institutions and disbandment of standing armies in favor of a "people's militia", and the taking over of product distribution by a network of
housing and
consumer cooperatives. He also denounced the
Communist International and claimed that the IWA was the true successor to the First International of
Karl Marx and
Mikhail Bakunin, due to their adherence to the idea that "the liberation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves", condemning
centralization as leading inevitably to
bureaucracy - as evidenced by the events in Russia. In his later years, Maksimov published his history of the Soviet Union
The Guillotine at Work and edited the collected works of Mikhail Bakunin. The remnants of the Russian anarchist exiles began to wane during the 1930s, as their journals became less frequent and filled with republications of old texts, their activities mostly consisted of celebrating the anniversaries of past events and their criticisms became increasingly levelled at
Joseph Stalin and
Adolf Hitler. The events of the
Spanish Revolution briefly revived the exile movement, but after the defeat of the
Republicans in the
Spanish Civil War, the exiles largely ceased activity. During this period a number of the exiled anarchist old guard began to die off, including Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman during the late 1930s, and Voline, Alexander Schapiro and Grigorii Maksimov in the wake of the
Allied victory in
World War II. The surviving
Abba Gordin had since shifted away from communism, publishing a critique of
Marxism in 1940 that concluded it was an ideology of "a privileged class of politico-economic organisateurs" rather than of workers, and further characterized the Russian Revolution as a "managerial revolution". Gordin increasingly gravitated towards
nationalism, culminating in his adoption of
Zionism and his eventual emigration to
Israel, where he would die in 1964.
In the Soviet Union Under the NEP Following the suppression of the
Kronstadt rebellion, the Communist Party's
10th Congress implemented the
New Economic Policy (NEP), which put an end to
war communism and transformed the
Soviet economy into a form of
state capitalism. Many of the "
Soviet anarchists" that had previously sought conciliation with the Bolshevik government quickly became disillusioned with the policies of the NEP, which they regarded as a step back from their revolutionary aims, and subsequently resigned from their posts in order to pursue scholarly activities. The Congress also instituted the suppression of any remaining opposition to Bolshevik rule, which
banned internal party factions such as the
Workers' Opposition and ordered a
purge of anarchist and syndicalist elements. Anarchists were rounded up by the
Cheka and tried by a
Revolutionary Tribunal, with many either being sentenced to internal exile or sent to
concentration camps, where they endured harsh living conditions. Anarchist political prisoners in the
Solovki prison camp protested their internment with a series of
hunger strikes, some even committing
self-immolation, which led to their removal from the
Solovetsky Islands and their dispersal to various other Gulags in the
Urals and
Siberia. Some key figures of the anarchist old guard began to die off during this period, including
Peter Kropotkin,
Varlam Cherkezishvili,
Jan Wacław Machajski and
Apollon Karelin. The Bolshevik government did allow some anarchist activity to continue peacefully through the 1920s. The bookshop owned by
Golos Truda remained open and published
Mikhail Bakunin's collected works, the work of the Kropotkin Museum was allowed to continue without interference, and a number of prominent anarchists secured permission to publicly protest against the execution of the Italian American anarchists
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. However, by 1928 a factional dispute had broken out over control of the Kropotkin Museum, in spite of Kropotkin's widow Sofia's attempts to secure the museum's future, and the following year the establishments owned by
Golos Truda were permanently closed down by the authorities. The
Tolstoyan movement was also forced to relocate its
Life and Labor Commune to
Siberia, where a number of their members were arrested.
Under Stalinism ,
libertarian socialist member of the
Left Opposition to
Stalinism. Following the
establishment of the
Soviet Union,
Vladimir Lenin was left incapacitated by a stroke and a
Troika made up of
Lev Kamenev,
Joseph Stalin and
Grigory Zinoviev assumed control of the state. The Troika government was briefly opposed by the
council communists of the
Workers' Group, but they were swiftly expelled from the Communist Party and eventually repressed entirely. When
Lenin died of his ailments, a power struggle broke out between the Communist Party's various factions: the
right-wing led by
Nikolai Bukharin, the centre led by the Troika and the
left-wing led by
Leon Trotsky. When Stalin allied himself with the right-wing policy of
socialism in one country, the Troika broke up, with Kamenev and Zinoviev forming a "
United Opposition" in coalition with the left-wing. The Opposition demanded
freedom of expression within the party, called for an end to the
New Economic Policy (NEP), and proposed the
rapid industrialization of the economy and a reduction of state
bureaucracy. The "anarcho-Bolshevik"
Victor Serge subsequently joined the Opposition upon his return to the country, but predicted its defeat at the hands of
reactionary forces within the party. The Opposition was defeated at the
15th Party Congress, with many of its members being expelled from the party and forced into exile, where Serge became an outspoken critic of the authoritarian way that Stalin governed the country - describing the
Soviet government as "
totalitarian". The anarcho-syndicalist
Maksim Rayevsky, who had previously edited
Golos Truda and
Burevestnik, was also arrested for publishing the Opposition's platform. With the Opposition purged,
Joseph Stalin had completed his
rise to power. He subsequently
broke with the
New Economic Policy (NEP) and shifted the economy towards a
five-year plan of
rapid industrialization and
forced collectivization, marking the beginning of the
Stalinist era. The introduction of
totalitarianism in the Soviet Union brought a quick end to the anarchist activity that had been tolerated during the 1920s under the NEP, as a new wave of
political repression was unleashed, with many anarchists being arrested and internally exiled to
Siberia and
Central Asia. While internally exiled in
Tobolsk, the anarchist Dmitri Venediktov was arrested on the charges of "Disseminating rumors about loans and dissatisfaction with the Soviet regime", and within three days was sentenced to
execution without appeal. ,
individualist anarchist victim of the
Great Purge. During the
Great Purge, many that had participated in the Revolution were arrested and executed, including a number of
Old Bolsheviks,
Trotskyists and anarchists. A number of members of the anarchist old guard such as
Alexander Atabekian,
German Askarov and
Alexei Borovoi were noted to have died during the Purge, with others such as
Aron Baron disappearing upon their release from prison. Even Efim Iarchuk and
Peter Arshinov, who had both experienced a rapprochement with the Bolsheviks and returned to the Soviet Union, also disappeared during the Purge. By 1937, the
Life and Labor Commune had been converted into a state-owned
collective farm, its members were arrested and sent to
labor camps, with their settlements disbanded entirely. And by 1938, the few remaining people that were maintaining the Kropotkin Museum had themselves become subject to repression, leading to the museum's closure following the death of
Sofia Kropotkin. . But despite the elimination of the anarchist old guard during the Purge, anarchist activity continued at a reduced scale. A new generation of anarchists emerged within the Gulags, with some participating in a 15-day hunger strike at the Penalty Isolator in
Yaroslavl. Following the Allied victory in
World War II, many POWs that were freed by the
Red Army were subsequently met with deportation to Gulag camps in Siberia. There, a number of Marxist and anarchist POWs established the Democratic Movement of Northern Russia, which organized an uprising in 1947 that spread throughout several camps before being suppressed by the army. Anarchist tendencies subsequently spread throughout many of the Siberian camps, culminating in 1953 when the
death of Stalin brought with it a wave of
uprisings, some of which included anarchist participation. The
Norilsk uprising, in particular, saw the active participation of a number of Ukrainian Makhnovists.
During the Thaw system which inspired later-Soviet
libertarian communists The power struggle that followed in the wake of Stalin's death ended with the consolidation of control by
Nikita Khrushchev, who implemented a
reform program that relaxed
political repression and
censorship, released millions of
political prisoners from the
Gulag and instituted a
de-Stalinization of Soviet society. A
dissident protest movement began to emerge in the public sphere for the first time in decades, with a number of
libertarian communists inspired by
Yugoslavian socialist self-management developing
anti-statist tendencies and some even going on to call themselves anarchists. Khrushchev launched a crackdown on the nascent anarchist movement, with many of the new generation ending up in Gulag camps, often under the charge of "
anti-Soviet propaganda". Given that openly identifying as an anarchist was dangerous, some anarchists identified themselves with the emerging
human rights movement. Anarchists in Leningrad were arrested for providing aid to the dissident
Yuri Galanskov and one anarchist dock worker was arrested for agitating among his colleagues.
During the Era of Stagnation During the
era of Stagnation, a new group known as the "Left Opposition" was established by a collective of Leningrad students in 1978. Led by the
libertarian socialist,
Alexander Skobov, they established a commune in the city, which acted as a meeting place for left-wing Soviet dissidents, and published their own journal
Perspektivy. The journal published articles by a number of different authors of various tendencies, including anarchist authors like
Mikhail Bakunin,
Peter Kropotkin and
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, as well as Marxist authors like
Leon Trotsky and
Herbert Marcuse. The ideas published in their programme were characterized as "
ultra-left", positioning itself against the Soviet state and in favor of
freedom of association and the right to
self-determination. Some more radical members of the group, inspired by the
Red Army Faction, even called for the use of armed struggle and illegalist methods against the state, but its leaders Arkady Tsurkov and Alexander Skobov encouraged
nonviolence. The group planned to organize a conference that would bring together leftist dissident groups from throughout the Union, but the planned conference was postponed by an
orthodox Marxist group and eventually called off entirely due to political repression preventing delegates from arriving. The commune was raided, their members followed and their leaders sentenced to years in the Gulag.
Autonomous Action (Russian:Автономное действие) played a major role in the 2011-2013 Russian protest movement against the regime of
Vladimir Putin. In August 2013, at the XII Congress of Autonomous Action there was an intra-organizational conflict that grew into a split in the organization. For several months, two organizations were operating in Russia bearing the name "Autonomous Action" and standing on similar libertarian-communist positions. However, on October 27, 2013, the breakaway group adopted the name Autonomous Action (Social-Revolutionary) (ADSR). (later this organization was renamed "
People's Self-Defense") On October 31, 2018,
Mikhail Zhlobitsky, a seventeen-year-old college student, committed a
suicide bombing against a local
FSB headquarters in
Arkhangelsk. In a social media message allegedly posted by Zholbitsky prior to the attack stated that he was an
anarcho-communist and carried out the attack against the FSB due to their persistent use of torture and evidence fabrication.
Russo-Ukrainian War Anarchists have played a significant role in Russian opposition to the
2022 invasion of Ukraine, including the
2022 military commissariats arsons.
The Insider has named the
Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists "the most active 'subversive' force" in the country since the beginning of the invasion. On 19 April 2023,
Dmitry Petrov, one of the organisation's founders, was killed in the
battle of Bakhmut while fighting for the
Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces. ==Notable anarchists==