In 1893, Grigorii Petrovich Maksimov was born into a peasant family in
Smolensk. He studied at a
seminary of the
Orthodox Church in
Vladimir, but ultimately decided not to become a priest and instead moved to
Saint Petersburg, where he studied to become an
agriculturist. During his time at the Agricultural Academy, he became acquainted with
anarchism, through the works of
Mikhail Bakunin and
Peter Kropotkin. After graduating in 1915, he was immediately drafted into the
Imperial Russian Army and deployed to the
Eastern Front. He returned to Petrograd during the
February Revolution and participated in the workers' strikes that overthrew the
Russian Empire. He quickly became a prolific speaker in factories and at workers' rallies. By June 1917, he had been elected to the city's central council of
factory committees and became one of its most active members, as part of a rising tide of
anarcho-syndicalism in the Russian capital. In August 1917, he joined the editorial staff of the anarcho-syndicalist newspaper
Golos Truda and became one of its main contributors. In the articles he penned for the paper, Maksimov spoke in favour of the
factory committees as a model for
workers' control, while he criticised mainstream Russian
trade unions, which he considered to be a relic of
capitalism. He also criticised the
anarcho-communists for their advocacy of the immediate
expropriation of factories by workers, instead believing in the need for a transitional stage for workers to be trained for the tasks of
self-management. Following the
October Revolution, Maksimov participated in the
First All Russian Congress of Trade Unions, where delegates of the
Bolsheviks and
Mensheviks resolved to integrate the anarcho-syndicalist factory committees into the state-controlled trade unions. Maksimov objected, crediting the factory committees for the overthrow of
capitalism and the
Tsarist autocracy, and cited
Karl Marx's appeals for a
permanent revolution against the
state, even declaring himself a better Marxist than the Marxists themselves. Maksimov rebuffed the claims of
David Riazanov, who favoured the trade unions, dismissing him as a "white-handed intellectual who had never worked, never sweated, never felt life." But despite Maksimov's objections, the Bolshevik-majority Congress voted to dissolve the factory committees and to convert them into organs of the state's trade union apparatus. In
Golos Truda, Maksimov denounced the
centralisation of industry by the Bolshevik party and declared that Russian anarchists should oppose the
Soviets, as they were by this time under the control of the state. When there was a subsequent flare-up of
terrorism by the anarcho-communists, he condemned their violent tactics, arguing that they shifted revolutionary energy away from organised action.
Political repression followed soon after, with the Bolshevik government closing down
Golos Truda in May 1918. In August 1918, Maksimov participated in the First All-Russian Conference of Anarcho-Syndicalists, which was held in
Moscow. The conference was fiercely critical of the Bolshevik government, which it denounced as a regime of "
state capitalism". To express the anarcho-syndicalist critique, the conference also established a new newspaper,
Volny Golos Truda, which was edited by Maksimov. But the critical articles published in this paper quickly resulted in it being shut down. Despite this setback, in November 1918, the syndicalists were able to convene a second congress, which resolved to form a nationwide anarcho-syndicalist confederation. The conference elected Maksimov as secretary of an Executive Bureau that would form this confederation. During the subsequent period, Maksimov attempted to organise food workers into underground factory committees, which he hoped would form the nucleus of a nationwide General Confederation of Labor. In March 1920, Maksimov spoke at the Second All-Russian Congress of Food-Industry Workers, which adopted his resolution that denounced the Bolshevik's "
dictatorship over the proletariat" and called for the establishment of free soviets. Although his own organising efforts resulted in little success on this front, Maksimov's idea for a decentralised workers' confederation was taken up by the
workers' opposition, led by
Aleksandra Kollontai. In November 1920, during a wave of political repression against the anarchist movement, Maksimov was arrested by the
Cheka and held in custody for weeks. Following the outbreak of the
Kronstadt rebellion, the
10th Bolshevik Party Congress declared a
ban on factions, suppressing the workers' opposition and imprisoning Maksimov. In order to draw the attention of visiting European syndicalists, who had arrived in Moscow for the first congress of the
Profintern, Maksimov and his fellow anarchist inmates in
Taganka prison staged a
hunger strike. The resulting protest forced the Soviet government to release the prisoners, on condition that they immediately leave the country. In January 1922, Maksimov left for
Berlin. In their German exile, the anarcho-syndicalists founded a new newspaper called
Robochii Put (), printed using the presses of the
Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD). Out of a reaction to the disorganisation of the Russian anarchist movement, Maksimov and his fellow emigrants resolved to establish an international syndicalist organisation, together with their foreign comrades. In December 1922, they established the
International Workers' Association (IWA). After a brief stay in Paris, in 1925, he moved to the
Chicago, where he hung wallpaper and edited
Golos Truzhenika, the
Russian language organ of the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Following
Peter Arshinov's defection to the
Soviet Union, Maksimov also took up editing
Delo Truda, which took a notedly more syndicalist stance under his stewardship. During his time in the United States, Maksimov attempted to reconcile the syndicalist and communist factions of the anarchist movement. In 1933, he published a "Social Credo" that synthesised the two tendencies, drawing from the works of
Peter Kropotkin. He called for the IWA to form
agricultural cooperatives and factory committees in order to transform the economy, as part of a transition towards
communism. In 1940, he merged
Delo Truda with the Detroit-based journal
Probuzhdenie, which kept him busy as its editor. During the 1940s, he also wrote a history of Soviet political repression and compiled a collection of the Mikhail Bakunin's works. In 1950, Grigorii Petrovich Maksimov died of a heart attack. He is interred in
Waldheim Cemetery, near other Chicago anarchists. == Selected works ==