109 lines
6.2 KiB
Plaintext
109 lines
6.2 KiB
Plaintext
Anarchists, Bolsheviks, and Serge
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From Daniel Guerin's _Anarchism_ (Monthly Review Press) (reprinted
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with permission):
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During the revolutionary days that brought Kerensky's bourgeois republic
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to an end, the anarchists were in the forefront of the military struggle,
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expecially in the Dvinsk regiment commanded by old libertarians like
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Grachoff and Fedotoff. This force dislodged the counter-revolutionary
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"cadets." Aided by his detachment, the anarchist Gelezniakov disbanded
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the Constituent Assembly: the Bolsheviks only ratified the accomplished
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fact. Many partisan detachments were formed or led by anarchists... and
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fouch unremittingly against the white armies between 1918 and 1920.
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Scarcely a major city was without an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist
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group, spreading a relatively large amount of printed matter--papers,
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periodicals, leaflets, pamphlets, and books. There were two weeklies
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in Petrograd and a daily in Moscow, each appearing in 25,000 copies.
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Anarchist sympathizers increased as the Revolution deepened and then
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moved away from the masses. The French captain Jacques Sadoul, on a
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mission in Russia, wrote in a report dated April 6, 1918: "The anarchist
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party is the most active, the most militant of the opposition groups and
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probably the most popular.... The Bolsheviks are anxious." At the end
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of 1918, according to Voline [the premier historian of the anarchists
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during the revolution, as well as an active participant in the events
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described--cf], "this influence became so great that the Bolsheviks,
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who could not accept criticism, still less opposition, became seriously
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disturbed." Voline reports that for the Bolshevik authorities "it was
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equivalent... to suicide to tolerate anarchist propaganda. They did
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their best first to prevent, and then to forbid, any manifestation of
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libertarian ideas and finally suppressed them by brute force."
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The Bolshevik government "began by forcibly closing the offices of
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libertarian organizations, and forbidding the anarchists from taking part
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in any propaganda or activity." In Moscow, on the night of April 12,
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1918, detachments of Red Guards, armed to the teeth, took over by
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surprise twenty-five houses occupied by the anarchists. The latter,
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thinking that they were being attacked by White Guards, replied with
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gunfire. According to Voline, the authorities soon went on to "more
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violent measures: imprisonment, outlawing, and execution." "For four
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years this conflict was to keep the Bolshevik authorities on their
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toes... until the libertarian trend was finally crushed by military
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measures (at the end of 1921)."
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The liquidation of the anarchists was all the easier since they had
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divided into two factions, one of which refused to be tamed while the
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other allowed itself to be domesticated. The latter regarded "historical
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necessity" as justification for making a gesture of loyalty to the
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regime and, at least temporarily, approving its dictatorial actions.
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They considered a victorious end to the civil war and the crushing of the
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counter-revolution to be the first necessities.
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The more intransigent anarchists regarded this as a short-sighted
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tactic. For the counter-revolutionary movements were being fed by the
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bureaucratic impotence of the government apparatus and the disillusion-
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ment and discontent of the people. Moreover, the authorities ended up
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by making no distinction between the active wing of the libertarian
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revolution which was disputing its methods of control, and the criminal
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activities of its right-wing adversaries. To accept dictatorship and
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terror was a suicidal policy for the anarchists who were themselves
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to become its victims. Finally, the conversion of the so-called soviet
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anarchists made the crushing of those other, irreconcilable, ones
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easier, for they were treated as "false" anarchists, irresponsible and
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unrealistic dreamers, stupid muddlers, madmen, sowers of division, and,
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finally, counter-revolutionary bandits.
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Victor Serge was the most brilliant, and therefore considered the most
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authoritative, of the converted anarchists. He worked for the regime
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and published a pamphlet in French which attempted to defend it against
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anarchist criticism. The book he wrote later, _L'An 1 de la Re'volution
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Russe_ [_Year One of the Russian Revolution_--cf], is largely a justifi-
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cation of the liquidation of the soviets by Bolshevism. The Party--or
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rather its elite leadership--is presented as the brains of the working
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class. It is up to the duly selected leaders of the vanguard to discover
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what the proletariat can and must do. Without them, the masses organized
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in soviets would be no more than "a sprinkling of men with confused
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aspirations shot thorugh with gleams of intelligence."
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Victor Serge was certainly too clear-minded to have any illusions about
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the real nature of the central Soviet power. But this power was still
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haloed with the prestige of the first victorious proletarian revolution;
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it was loathed by world counter-revolution; and that was one of the
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reasons--the most honorable--why Serge and many other revolutionaries
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saw fit to put a padlock on their tongues. In the summer of 1921 the
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anarchist Gaston Leval came to Moscow in the Spanish delegation to the
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Third Congress of the Communist International. In private, Serge confided
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to him that "the Communist Party no longer practices the dictatorship
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of the proletariat but dictatorship *over* the proletariat." Returning
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to France, Leval published articles in "Le Libertaire," using well-
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documented facts, and placing side by side what Victor Serge had told
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him confidentially and his public statements, which he described as
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"conscious lies." In _Livining My Life_, the great American anarchist
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Emma Goldman was no kinder to Victor Serge, whom she had seen in action
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in Moscow.
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===========================================================================
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For more information on Guerin's _Anarchism_, which, by the way, takes
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more of a libertarian socialist position than that of what might be
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called traditionally anarchist, contact Monthly Review at
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<mreview@igc.apc.org>.
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Chris
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--
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========================================================================
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"Free thought, necessarily involving freedom of speech and press, I may
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tersely define thus: no opinion a law--no opinion a crime." --Alexander
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Berkman*********************************************cfaatz@teleport.com
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