New Tendencies in Russian Anarchism

SEPTEMBER 4, 1921

We know that the Russian Revolution was the cause, first within the Russian socialist parties and then the international ones, of a definitive split. In the face of the reality of the social revolution, men used to calling themselves revolutionaries had to takes sides for or against violence, for or against the immediate expropriation of the rich, for or against dictatorship. And the old Russian Social Democracy founded by Plekhanov had an abyss dug within it between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. The Social-Revolutionaries divided into a categorically reactionary right and a Sovietist left. The Russian Jewish parties evolved in the same way. As for the anarchists …

The anarchists constituted a scattered, varied movement divided into poorly delineated and short-lived movements. And yet, from March to October 1917 it demonstrated great activity and great vitality. But as a result of the diffuse character of their movement there was no clear split in the movement. From the first moment most of them adhered to the October Revolution, which, along with the Bolsheviks, they had prepared and desired. It was only much later that the revolution would divide them into two opposed tendencies. Symptomatic indications nevertheless show that during the October Revolution there were currents among the anarchists who were against the latter. On the eve of events the Golos Truda (anarcho-syndicalist) published a declaration in which, responding to questions from its readers, it specified that it didn’t want to support the movement that was being prepared and was only disposed to follow it if the masses did. This was how the most widely distributed anarchist organ among the Petrograd workers expressed itself on October 23, 1917. And the day after the battles of the revolution in Moscow Dr. Atbekian, an old friend of Kropotkin’s, bitterly reproached the Bolsheviks for having unleashed a civil war.[60] But I repeat, this only indicates the weakest tendency. Most Russian anarchist militants didn’t share the hesitations of Golos Truda or the scruples of the humanitarian philosopher. And I only cite these facts because they appear to me to mark the departure point of the divisions that are growing among the Russian anarchists, forced daily to declare themselves for or against the revolution (the reality-revolution, quite different from the theory-revolution, and even more from the ideal-revolution).

Today this division is so sharp that there are a great number of anarchists who are members of the Russian Communist Party and other anarchists imprisoned by the Extraordinary Commissions [the Cheka —ed.] which consider them, rightly or wrongly, the most formidable enemies of the Communist power. Apart from these extremes, all the Russian anarchist tendencies are subdivided into a left (bitterly hostile to communism) and a right (loyal to and sympathizing with communism), which, in these times of civil war, explains why former syndicalists are imprisoned by a regime in which other former syndicalists—sometimes friends of the former—occupy positions of responsibility. To be precise, I will point out that there are two groups of former syndicalists, that of Golos Truda, which was always legal, loyal, and whose members have never ceased to work within Soviet institutions, and the Anarcho-Syndicalist Confederation, irreducibly opposed to the Communist regime; that there are also two former Universalist groups, one with Bolshevik tendencies and the other hostile to Bolshevism; and that both these less sharply delineated nuances are in the Anarchist Communist Federation (for in Moscow there is a total of about ten anarchist organizations).

In summary, there are those who, having learned nothing from the revolution, maintain their traditional positions, and those who, seeing themselves left behind by events, strive mightily to summarize their experience and realize a synthesis from which a new anarchism will sooner or later be born.

In this article I will restrict myself to describing the efforts of the second group. The anarchists, open enemies of the Communist Party, have no legal press in Red Russia. Other libertarian elements, which I will qualify as Kropotkinist “centrists,” whose opposition to the Communists is limited to the criticism of ideas, are currently publishing the Volnaya Zhizn, organ of the Pan-Russian Federation of Anarchist Communists, A. Kareline,[61] editor, 1^st House of the Soviets 219, Moscow), and the Potchin (“The Beginning,” primarily dedicated to propaganda for cooperation, Moscow, Pan-Russian Federation of Anarchist Communists). These small papers, which unquestionably respond to a need, have nothing new to teach us. The new tendencies of Russian anarchism manifest themselves, on the contrary, with increasing distinctness, in the following reviews and documents, which I will briefly analyze:

1. Declaration of the Anarchist-Syndicalists (Goloss-Truda, June-July 1921);

2. The Universal, organ of the Pan-Russian Section of the Anarchist-Universalists, nos. 1–2, 3–4, February-May 1921;

3. Through Socialism to Anarchism-Universalism, organ of the Anarchist-Universalist Association (inter-individualist), nos. 1–3, Moscow, April, May, June 1921;

4. “Declaration of the Union of Russian Anarchists Repatriated from America” (revised and completed, Moscow, July 1921).

Aside from these documents, which are in a way official, I will also quote others of lesser value when they seem to me likely to put in relief a state of mind, a way of thinking.

“No dictatorship, but all power”

All discussions obviously gravitate around the problem of dictatorship.

After having remarked that the struggle for the emancipation of the laboring masses “inevitably leads to the destruction of the state, to the liquidation of authority”; that in every revolution the creative power of the masses must be developed, even against authority; that there is needed “as normal as possible a transition of power to anarchy” (yes, yes, but how?), the declaration of the anarchist syndicalists poses in principle that: “The productive energies of the country—the proletariat of the cities and countryside—unite not on a political basis but on that of class consciousness” (article 8) … and that the party or ideological organizations will “in no way intervene in the leadership and administration of economic and social life” (article 9).

Various objections immediately come to mind. What do these organizations do? And if they refuse to abstain as they should, will they be forced to? By whom? And how? And finally, if the organized anarcho-syndicalists renounce intervening in the leadership and administration of a society in the process of revolutionary transformation in which they are only a minority, can they hope that that society, whose immense majority know nothing of the anarchist ideal, will attain it without their cooperation? That would be extremely optimistic.

I’ll skip over the guarantee for all of a “maximum of freedom and well-being.” We can guess what this maximum could, alas, be reduced to in a country blockaded and starved by a capitalist coalition, where revolution and reaction are engaged in a duel to the death. And I arrive (articles 15–16) at the song of praise to the October Revolution, “a true social revolution” from which was born the Russia of the Soviets, “a powerful lever for the emancipation of the proletariat of all countries.” It is only after this preamble that there is any mention of the “usurpation of power by a political party” and of the “monstrous hypertrophy of state socialism” that was its consequence. This way of posing the question distances us considerably from these anarchists—and not the least well-known among them—according to whom there was no October Revolution. The real revolution was that of March; in October there was nothing but a political coup d’état. For there are Russian anarchists of this opinion.

But let me quote in its entirety article 18, which deals with the problem of dictatorship. It is remarkable:

Art. 18—The dictatorship of the proletariat, as the expression of the domination of the organized class, leading to the dictatorship of one party and transforming the Soviet system itself into a bureaucratic, police, and primitive machine is inadmissible to the anarchist syndicalists. The slogan “dictatorship of the proletariat” in itself determines the destructive character of the revolution. We must oppose to it the creative and constructive slogan of “all power to the working class personified by its vanguard regiments.”

Communists also condemn the harmful deformities and deviations of the dictatorship. But what is disconcerting here is to see opposed to the principle of the dictatorship exercised by a party that of all power to the working class represented by its organized revolutionary vanguard (the defective translation says it even better: by its regiments, which implies an idea of strict discipline.)

Let’s not play with words: all power—the power to do everything—means a dictatorship; an organized revolutionary vanguard (even as a union) is the same as a party.

Moreover, we read further on: “Article 19—During the critical period of the revolution the anarchist syndicalists of the revolution consider admissible and sometimes inevitable the application of organized violent and repressive measures against the active defenders of the destroyed order.”

Let us speak clearly: This means prison for the conscious or unconscious—it makes no difference—defenders of the bourgeoisie; death for the most fearsome among them; terror if necessary; and the organization, the systematization of all these measures by extraordinary commissions.

The positive part of this document is praiseworthy. The relations between the city and the countryside must be fraternal. To be sure. The “armed defense of the country” is organized by factory committees. Even though the experience of Red Hungary of a “union” army wasn’t a happy one. One is allowed to hope that in other circumstances the factory committees will be able to form a Red Army.

The impression all this gives is quite clear: the Russian anarcho-syndicalists in realty only condemn the dictatorship of other revolutionaries. They know how to point out the errors of the latter, but in their criticism they don’t know how to abstain from unpleasant exaggerations, (see in this regard article 23, a condemnation of “socialist imperialism” that no pacifist liberal would disavow). They note the material and moral exhaustion of the country, i.e., they don’t share the illusions of certain Ukrainian anarchists concerning an imminent third revolution. They call for participation in the work of Soviet economic reconstruction (article 20). What are their guiding ideas? I see two.

“The productive energies of the country unite, not on a political basis, but on that of class consciousness.” But isn’t it necessary that within organizations based on a class consciousness that is developed to very different degrees, the revolutionaries endowed with the highest class consciousness and united by a community of ideals should come together, precisely to orient and lead events, to set an example of the sacrifices necessary, and also to crush the harmful tendencies within any workers’ movement capable of asserting themselves during times of troubles? This grouping—be it anarchist syndicalist, if it calls itself “Federation” or “Confederation”—will it not, in fact, be political; will it not be the party that at the decisive moment will exercise dictatorship?

“The measures of revolutionary violence must in no case be set as a system of coercion” (article 19).

This is perhaps the most important point. The greatest danger of dictatorship is that it tends to firmly implant itself, that it creates permanent institutions that it wants neither to abdicate nor to die a natural death. In all of history there is no example of a dictatorship that died on its own. The necessary arm of the revolution of today, the dictatorship, when it will have replaced the best revolutionaries and corrupted the others, will it not become a formidable obstacle to communist progress? This is the problem to be faced by all revolutionary consciences. The anarcho-syndicalist declaration only sketches it and doesn’t solve it. Revolutions have a certain duration. The convulsions of the French Revolution extended from 1789 to 1799. One doesn’t transform a world in a few days. In these conditions repressive measures must be organically established as a system. No one will disagree that this period of transition and dictatorship should be a brief as possible. But experience doesn’t allow us to conceive of it as lasting but a few days or even a few months. The most rapid phases of history are counted in years.

In the same order of ideas I have before me a proposed “Platform of Anarchism,” written by a well-known Russian militant who incidentally belongs to no organization. This author also harshly condemns the state and the dictatorship of the party. He advocates that of the workers. “In the transitional period between the domination of capital and the triumph of labor, over the course of the revolutionary destruction of the organs of bourgeois violence and the construction of the free workers’ society, the organized dictatorship of the workers is inevitable.

It must be exercised by the General Confederation of Labor and “any attempt by the parties and the soviets to deform the dictatorship of the proletariat must be mercilessly repressed.”

We can fully understand the federal committee mercilessly repressing the most varied movements. But that this should be the application of a platform for anarchism is something less understandable.

The author speaks readily about the “Republic of Labor,” which in the end is nothing but the CGT elevated to the power of a state and an army (by anarchists!) and an apparatus of coercion. But just because they are apolitical (?) do they offer more guarantees, more intelligence, more revolutionary devotion than the Communist Party and the CSR, that is, than the workers’ minorities organized for the revolution on the basis of a doctrine of social emancipation? For my part, I am convinced of the contrary.

In the final section of this “Platform for Anarchism” I note an unexpected conclusion, that the author advocates the large-scale adherence of sympathizing organizations, of syndicalist organizations—inspired by the anarchists—to the Third International.

Such today is the ideology—a confused one, as we can see—of the Russian anarcho-syndicalists. Nevertheless, it attests to a remarkable evolution of anarchism toward new formulas that other Russian militants state much better.

“We want a strong organization”

Two issues of The Universal, organ of the Pan-Russian Section of the Anarchist-Universalists, appeared in February-March and April-May. Others are in preparation. This large format review has more than thirty-two pages of compact text in two columns, and so we can seek a complete and detailed expression of anarchist-universalism in its pages. Founded at the end of 1920, the Anarchist-Universalist Association initially adopted as its platform a manifesto written by Comrade Gordin.[62] There could be found in it the formal recognition of the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of revolutionary and industrial centralization, the condemnation of traditional federalism, etc. But inflated by the influx of anarchist elements of a mentality completely different from that of the founders of the new movement, the organization soon passed through a crisis that ended in a stormy split. The minority, grouped around Gordin, who had launched the word “Universalist,” was expelled by the majority. As in all old parties, the expulsion of the minority by the majority was accompanied—on both sides, it appears—by insults, defamation, and violence. Today the two groups, in excommunicating each other, exchange the most suggestive pleasantries. But let’s move on. This simply proves that the anarchists as well are not equal to their ideas and that in the practice of organization, polemic, fraternity, and revolutionary tolerance they are in no way innovators.

The best articles of the The Universal are signed by Comrade Askarov.[63] In issues 1–3 this comrade passes a severe and well-reasoned judgment on the recent past of Russian anarchism: “It’s a mystery to no one,” he says, “that since the October Revolution, for three years, the anarchists have manifested the most complete confusion in the work of social construction…. They have been inert.” And “when the new state was formed they found themselves cast out of life.”

Askarov considers the socialist state a fact. But in the face of this fact he stresses the resolution of the Universalists to participate in the labor of constructing the new society “which opens possibilities to us that we never had under the capitalist regime.”

On the question of organization the Universalists are very clear: they “reject the old principles of anarchist organization,” and this is fortunate! “Anarchist-Universalists, we consider necessary the creation of a single, coherent organization, bound by firm self-discipline and which places itself on a defined revolutionary platform” (no. 1, [p. 10]).

One would think one was listening to a communist develop the ideas so often defended by Zinoviev on international organization: “An organization of one sole bloc with iron discipline …” Here the expression is accentuated, categorical; there it is a bit ambiguous. The meaning is the same. Thus, in the matter of organization the revolution leads communists and anarchists to similar conclusions. In the same issue of “The Universal” another comrade opposes “the organized action of the masses to the traditional individualism of small groups.” And this, too, is speaking like a communist.

The first Anarchist-Universalist Conference, according to the summary account in issues 2–3 of The Universal, signifies the “passing from anarchist Blanquism to the class struggle.” It affirms that the Universalists need to participate in the Soviets, where they, incidentally, have several deputies (Askarov, Barmach,[64] Urovsky) and accepts the defense of the revolution by force of arms. On this subject I would like to recall that from their first steps the Anarchist-Universalists had greeted the first victories of the Red Army with joy …

“Taking into account the revolutionary importance of the Communist International in relation to the different countries, the Anarchist-Universalists declare that they have no desire to manifest any hostility toward it.” For the defense of the October Revolution they proclaim themselves disposed to form a bloc with the parties that continue it.

In the present situation, in regard to the New Economic Policy (freedom of small-scale commerce and middle industry) the Anarchist-Universalists (Askarov, Universal, issues 3–4) calls for the “preparation of the unions for the taking over of industry, the unionizing of the workers of the land, and economic reorganization through the free cooperation of workers and peasants,” all of these excellent things that are in no way in disagreement with the communist program or its practice.

In summary, the Anarchist-Universalists defend the October Revolution, condemn the past errors of the Russian anarchist movement, advocate participation in the Soviets, recognize what the revolution owes the Red Army, don’t want to demonstrate any hostility toward the Communist International, and seek practical, immediate, and peaceful methods of work within the socialist state.

These are undeniably indications of a tendency toward the revision of consecrated anarchist values. As for the present, the Universalists are particularly interested in the practical, but the consequences of their initiatives, if they were to develop, would be of a singular import in the realm of theory.

The timeliness of their initiative seems to be confirmed by their relative success. Despite extremely difficult conditions for existence, they have groups in Briansk, in the Urals, in Riazan, Minsk, and Samara. In Moscow they have a conference room, a bookstore, a club and a restaurant in the center of the city, and two clubs in the suburbs (in Krasnaya-Prennia and in Sokolniki).

“To anarchism through socialism”

Everything that is only in sketched by the “majoritarian” anarchist-universalists—to use a handy expression—everything among them that is confused, ambiguous, and indecisive can be found, though fully realized, in the form of a well-defined, original, and clear ideology among their “dissident” brothers, Gordin and his friends. For this reason the few issues that have appeared of their compact little review, edited by the latter, “Through Socialism to Anarchist-Universalism,” are truly interesting. In order to distinguish themselves from other Universalists Gordin’s friends, whose language is only too fertile in neologisms, have imagined a new term and call themselves “inter-individualists.” Which does no harm.

The two Gordin brothers have played a key role in the Russian anarchist movement of these past few years. Tireless orators and propagandists, prolific writers, journalists, pamphleteers, and initiators of multiple enterprises, combatants at the barricades of July and October 1917, thanks to their ever-working imaginations they have greatly contributed to creating and sustaining both the life and the waste of this movement. In 1917 they founded the Association of the Five Oppressed (“the Proletariat, the Nationality, Femininity, Individuality, and [Youth]) and edited the anarchist daily of Petrograd, the Bourevertnik, which they had violently wrested from another tendency; they also dreamed up Pan-Anarchism, which was to multiply the “socio-technums” or centers of study and industrial practice. A delirious fantasy, a perpetual dream rising to the heights of lyricism, of healthy practical ideas, much energy, violence, and vehemence, all of it expressed in a language sprinkled with scientific-seeming barbaric neologisms. This is what is found in the literature of yesteryear of these Gordin brothers who, in 1917 and 1918, ceaselessly cast anathema on Lenin. Since then one of them, possessed by the idée fixe of a universal language of which he is the inventor and which is written in numbers, the language AO, has become—as he himself proclaims in Moscow through signs posted in his window on the Tverskaya—the “Beobi Man” and addresses lyrical messages to the Third International in cipher. The other, dominating his imagination, not allowing himself to become embittered by the avatars of his personal life, has progressively arrived at forging for himself an original doctrine, one undeniably viable and sane and which I will briefly examine.

“It is necessary that a new, healthy, and real anarchism succeed the destructive anarchism of Bakunin and mutualist anarchism of Kropotkin” (Through Socialism 2, May 1921, 41–42). This was Gordin’s conclusion: “When the illusions of a vast anarchist movement lost its way amid disorganization and chaos”; when they understood that destroying is not creating, remembering that at the most somber hours of the October Revolution the anarchist militants “were only able to foresee pillaging and sharing of the existing stock” they erected into a principle that “we must henceforth create and not destroy.” “It is the creative spirit that is also a destructive spirit,” but the opposite, Bakunin’s old formula, is false. And Gordin asks (Through Socialism 2) if the necessary preconditions allowing for the formation of a libertarian society in Russia have currently been realized. No. At the height of the movement, “at a time when in certain milieux no one thought of repressing us, when they rather feared our repressions, we did not have a true movement because we lacked sufficient consciousness.” In their critique of socialism the anarchists had to “either surrender themselves to a shameless demagogy or limit themselves to an abstract critique unintelligible to the masses.” The fact is that in the current phase the revolutionary transformation of societies imposes a transition through socialism. Federalism, that is the division of power, the return to the localism of the Communes of the Middle Ages idealized by Kropotkin, a dogma of decentralization incompatible with the technical necessities of modern industry, an apolitical dogma: Gordin and his friends abandon all this baggage of old ideas, which in their eyes is outdated. They clearly say that they accept the dictatorship of the oppressed of yesterday over the oppressors of yesterday, the indispensable centralization of industry and revolutionary defense, and the organization corresponding to these new ends. They don’t fear the nascent might of the socialist state, whose historically ineluctable mission most anarchists refuse to understand. Judging it with more lucidity than even certain of its founders, they hope for the state to reach its apogee. This must be the next stage of the revolution (or of evolution). The state that will come out of the class war and dictatorship will concentrate within it all the forces of social oppression against the individual. It will truly incarnate society, in this way assuming before the individual the responsibility for all the evil the collective can do. In this way, in the dialectic of history, “the state will dig its own grave, and all we have to do is hope for its victory” (Gordin, June 1921). And it’s the individuality of the free man that will assume the succession of the state that died a masculine and normal death.

Gordin foresees and hopes for the victory of the Third International, whose goal is to create a federation of soviet republics. This stage, too, is necessary.

In truth, I see no contradiction between these ideas and those of communism. These anarchists have ended up as communists. And it is precisely this that some reproach them bitterly for. But what, it might be asked, distinguishes them as anarchists? By their philosophy of the personality. What is too often lacking in communist ideology is a philosophy of the individual for the individual’s sake.

In issue number 3 of his review, Gordin lays out how and why he approves the New Economic Policy of the Soviet government. Revolutionary idealism, at first absolute, believes itself all-powerful. It dares. It wants to dare. It believes it has victory in its grasp. But the battle forces it to become realistic by creating armies. The economic battle, difficult in another way, wrests from it other concessions. “Do people imagine that socialism could emerge victorious with one blow?”

Most often what Gordin writes—when it’s not in verse—is well thought through and well expressed. I briefly and a bit broadly summarized his ideas. Gordin is the creator of a libertarian ideology contrary on many points to the traditions of the anarchist movement. It is odd to note that it is in perfect agreement with communism, even though it is the work of an adversary of communism who bitterly fought it from the first hour.

“We shouldn’t be afraid to seize power”

At the end of 1920 the government of the United States decided to expel and deport en masse those revolutionary Russian workers whose pro-Soviet enthusiasm had become too turbulent. In one night their most militant organization was decimated by the police. Four to five thousand arrests carried out simultaneously broke the Union of Russian Workers of America, a federation of anarchist-leaning organizations that counted somewhere between seven and ten thousand members. After having imprisoned a certain number, and after killing some as a result of brutality, more than two hundred militants considered the leaders of foreign Bolshevism in America were put on ships for Russia. And yet most were anarchists. Notably, among them were found the members of the Committee of Russian Workers of America, whose former secretary now belongs to the Russian Communist Party. Upon contact with the harsh realities of the revolution many of these comrades found themselves completely disoriented. Some of them, after numerous intellectual experiences, nevertheless managed to conclude. Along with Comrade Perkus, a young theoretician and initiator in America of the movement of Soviet emigrants, they founded the Union of Russian Anarchist Workers Repatriated from America, whose platform has already been published overseas.

Without reticence they accept the principle of the revolutionary dictatorship. The even think that the anarchists must, if need be, exercise it. In fact, we read in their platform:

Concerning the attitude of the anarchists of Europe and America before the revolution and when the latter occurs, we think that they must not fear seizing power or dictatorship or the use, during the period of revolutionary transition from slavery to freedom, of both constraint and persuasion, if they don’t want to remain outside of and dragging behind the movement, and if, on the contrary, they want to lead it.

The lines that follow this state that the forms of revolutionary dictatorship will obviously vary with the degree of intellectual and economic evolution of the different countries, the quantitative, and especially qualitative value of the organized masses.

If the anarchists, not understanding this, fail in their task, “it will be necessary for other groups, perhaps translating to a lesser degree the aspirations of the masses, to accomplish this task, as happened in Russia.”

The principle of dictatorship must be accepted because “organized violence is much more rational that chaotic and arbitrary violence”; because in social revolutions, which are above all the work of “united, convinced, conscious, energetic, and advanced revolutionary minorities” there is no other final recourse than violence. “Precursors of a superior society, the anarchists, in the period of humanity’s great revolutionary struggles, must adopt a realistic and positive attitude.”

The realization of the anarchist ideal being conditioned by two factors, the intellectual and moral development of the masses and the technical development of industry, “it is essential to substitute for small-scale private industry a vast economy based on collective labor and to reeducate the worker.”

In other words, anarchy, these anarchists say, will not be the fruit of chaotic violence. After the revolution—victorious through organized violence—it will be based on economic development and intellectual and moral culture.

“In this critical moment of history we must not have a hostile, but only a critical, attitude toward the extreme artisans of collectivism, the Communist-Bolsheviks.”

For my part, I do not admit, despite a few deplorable exaggerations, that communism desires the absorption of the individual by the collective being. On the contrary, I am only a communist—of libertarian philosophy and ethics—because I see no possibility for the future liberation of the individual outside of a communism called on to evolve a great deal (once it has emerged victorious). To claim that communist ideology leaves no room for the individual thus seems to me to be inexact, though there are unquestionably communists who understand it in this way.

In fact, the Russian Anarchist Workers Repatriated from America feel themselves to be so close to the Communists that they feel the need to explain, at the end of their manifesto, why they don’t join the party.

It is “in order not to lose our personality, and because Marxism only admits material economic forces, while our thought is also founded on the awareness of the personality, on individualism.”

I understand that under the current forceful organization of the Russian Communist Party, a party in power, a party of the mobilized that we can fairly compare to a vast army of volunteers in service to the revolution and led by intransigent Marxists, these comrades fear they can’t assert themselves as much as they’d like. I will only remark here that the question should rather be posed in this way: Is it preferable, for the salvation of the revolution, that the personalities of the militants be affirmed to the detriment of cohesion, of the whole, of the unity in action of the movement, or that a sacrifice be sweepingly made of them to the organization? History has answered this question (contrary to our past hopes) by necessitating the formation of a powerful party organization. What is more, the American comrades present us with a narrow Marxism. G. Sorel, B. Croce, K. Liebknecht, who I think delved far deeper into Marxism, understand it completely differently. I could also quote a speech of Trotsky’s, given at the Third Congress of the Communist International, where he spoke of the value of personalities and the importance of the will to win. Perhaps there are indeed Marxists whose intelligent doctrine is the one revealed to us by the Russian anarchists of America. But thank God, it is not those Marxists who are making and will make communism.

Become communists de facto, the anarchists would surely find it easier to preserve their autonomy by remaining outside the party. I am not arguing this. I merely state the weakness of the reproaches they addressed to their Marxist brethren.

The platform of the Russian Anarchists Repatriated from America is signed by seven militants: Perkus, Oradovsky,[65] Derkatch, Lessiga,[66] Feinland, Bukhanov, and Ryoukov.

Conclusion

And so, Russian anarchists, after four years of revolutionary experiences, say:

“No dictatorship, but all power!”

“We want a strong organization!”

“The road to anarchy passes through socialism.”

“We shouldn’t be afraid to seize power.”

And the most remarkable thing is that the men who express themselves in this way are men belonging to different groups, divided among themselves by questions of principle, and who are often enemies. Coincidence? In sociology there are neither coincidences nor chance. The life of ideas has its own logic. Le Libertaire of Paris and the Réveil can stick to their old formulas. The Russian anarchists all more or less clearly feel that they must find something else. Through the quotations brought together in these articles we have seen that their current thought, when it will be better known overseas, will greatly surprise those who think they share their ideas.

The tendencies I have studied, however different they might be, have various common characteristics:

1. They agree in noting the organizational and creative incapacity of the Russian anarchists, of their practical insufficiencies in 1917–18, i.e., at a decisive historical moment;

2. They are deliberately undertaking a veritable revision of anarchism. In order to appreciate the importance of this we should refer to the discussions on organization and syndicalism at the International Anarchist Conference of Amsterdam. Among the Russians I quoted, almost nothing remains of the dogmas of the time;

3. They recognize the need for a serious organization;

4. In principle, they admit the principle of revolutionary dictatorship.

These are the starting points of an evolution.

But this is proving itself to be difficult. Too many old things, I mean things of the old world, hinder those Russian anarchists who want to advance at the same pace as life. In the publications I quoted entire columns are, alas, given over to sometimes lyrical, sometimes metaphysical extravagances in both prose and in poetry. Universalism, interindvidualism, bioximism (there is actually a bioximism!)—how many superfluous “-isms.” Other columns are dedicated to the mutual praise of members of the same chapel, and a third to the merciless denigration of the excommunicated belonging to the chapel next door. Old, old customs that are as little anarchist as possible. We would like to see the anarchists, the free-thinkers par excellence, practice a little tolerance in their little groups, admit their opponent’s good faith, and not supplement arguments with major excommunications. It is true that this mainly concerns the press of the two Universalist groups, both busy raining down invective on each other.

The sectarian spirit that betrays itself among the most “advanced”—if I can use the term—Russian anarchists can only hider the evolution of nuclei already weak and isolated.

Will they succeed in creating movement of some importance in the near future? I don’t think so. It is too late. Events are unfurling in Russia without the anarchists, totally outside an influence they were able to either exercise or sustain. They will only be able to think of reconquering it when they will have competed their internal transformation.

But the impulsive, the embittered, the unpolished rebels who want anarchy immediately, and who are as ready to suffer martyrdom for that cause as to exchange blows or shots, form an incoherent, scattered anarchist majority that it is difficult to stand up to, given that, as it is dominated by feelings and instincts, it is pretty much unamenable to education. I don’t think that the best elements of the movement will soon succeed in swimming against this current.

When we see the disaster of Russian anarchism during the revolution, the birth of these tendencies nevertheless appears to be something that is cause for joy. Sooner or later there will be—or at least I hope there will be—a new anarchism, one renewed and freed, thanks to its contact with the experience of the revolution, from its elementary utopianism and equipped with a practical and concrete program that will form organizations capable of assuming responsibilities and pursuing well-thought-out actions. This anarchism will doubtless be very close to Marxist communism. In any case it is its ally before and during the revolution, and at other moments its fraternal adversary. Knowing that in the aftermath of the revolution the libertarian spirit must be a grand, beneficent social force, it will understand that during the Civil War the anarchists must not be strictly a disorganizing element, strictly rebellious, demanding the absolute, but on the contrary must assume, even at the price of a few concessions to reality, the task of educating and organizing the masses that falls to them in the vast communist movement.

Moscow, September 4, 1921

(Bulletin Communiste 48–49, November 3, 1921)

____________