Paul Avrich

From the celebrated Russian intellectuals Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin to the little-known Australian bootmaker and radical speaker J. W. Fleming, this book probes the lives and personalities of representative anarchists.

In the turmoil of the Russian insurrection of 1905 and civil war of 1917, the anarchists attempted to carry out their program of “direct action”—workers’ control of production, the creation of free rural and urban communes, and partisan warfare against the enemies of a free society.Avrich consulted published material in five languages and anarchist archives worldwide to present a picture of the philosophers, bomb throwers, peasants, and soldiers who fought and died for the freedom of “Mother Russia.” Including the influence and ideas of Bakunin and Kropotkin, the armed uprisings of Makhno, the activities of Volin, Maximoff, and the attempted aid of Berkman and Emma Goldman.Paul Avrich is a retired professor of history at Queens College.

Février 1921 : alors que le régime communiste sort vainqueur de la guerre civile qui s'achève et à laquelle va succéder une effroyable famine, il doit faire face au mécontentement de la population ouvrière et paysanne, plongée dans le plus grand dénuement et privée de toute liberté d'expression et d'association. C'est pour soutenir les ouvriers de Petrograd qui se sont mis en grève tout au long de ce mois de février pour protester contre la pénurie extrême à laquelle ils doivent faire face que les marins, les soldats et les ouvriers de l'île de Kronstadt se sont réunis et ont dressé une liste de revendications. Au premier rang de celles-ci, ils placent le rétablissement des libertés fondamentales pourtant inscrites dans la constitution de 1918 : les droits d'expression, d'association, de réunion ; le vote à bulletin secret ; l'élection dans ces conditions de nouveaux soviets ; les libertés de changer d'emploi et de se déplacer ; la fin des privilèges du parti communiste et la suppression de la police politique. Alexandre Skirda ne fait pas que décrire cette éphémère tentative de rétablir la démocratie soviétique et la répression féroce qui s'abattra sur elle, il la replace dans la lignée des affrontements qui ont opposé depuis 1918 ouvriers et paysans au pouvoir communiste et il retrace la façon dont les historiens, aussi bien soviétiques qu'occidentaux, ont rendu compte de cet épisode au plus haut point représentatif de la nature de ce pouvoir. Mars 1921 : une Commune pour la renaissance des soviets. Cette révolte des marins, soldats et ouvriers de l'île de Kronstadt ne dura guère plus de deux semaines et fut noyée non seulement dans le sang, mais aussi sous un flot de calomnies. Mais par ses causes, son déroulement et sa répression, elle permet, replacée dans son contexte, de comprendre très précisément la nature et les instruments du régime mis en place par les bolcheviks après Octobre 1917.

In 1889 two Russian immigrants, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, met in a coffee shop on the Lower East Side. Over the next fifty years Emma and Sasha would be fast friends, fleeting lovers, and loyal comrades. This dual biography offers an unprecedented glimpse into their intertwined lives, the lasting influence of the anarchist movement they shaped, and their unyielding commitment to equality and justice.Berkman shocked the country in 1892 with "the first terrorist act in America," the failed assassination of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick for his crimes against workers. Passionate and pitiless, gloomy yet gentle, Berkman remained Goldman's closest confidant though the two were often separated--by his fourteen-year imprisonment and by Emma's growing fame as the champion of a multitude of causes, from sexual liberation to freedom of speech. The blazing sun to Sasha's morose moon, Emma became known as "the most dangerous woman in America." Through an attempted prison breakout, multiple bombing plots, and a dramatic deportation from America, these two unrelenting activists insisted on the improbable ideal of a socially just, self-governing utopia, a vision that has shaped movements across the past century, most recently Occupy Wall Street."Sasha and Emma" is the culminating work of acclaimed historian of anarchism Paul Avrich. Before his death, Avrich asked his daughter to complete his magnum opus. The resulting collaboration, epic in scope, intimate in detail, examines the possibilities and perils of political faith and protest, through a pair who both terrified and dazzled the world.

The Sacco-Vanzetti affair is the most famous and controversial case in American legal history. It divided the nation in the 1920s, and it has continued to arouse deep emotions, giving rise to an enormous literature. Few writers, however, have consulted anarchist sources for the wealth of information available there about the movement of which the defendants were a part. Now Paul Avrich, the preeminent American scholar of anarchism, looks at the case from this new and valuable perspective. This book treats a dramatic and hitherto neglected aspect of the cause célèbre that raised, according to Edmund Wilson, "almost every fundamental question of our political and social system."

Based on extensive interviews with former pupils and teachers, this Pulitzer Prize-nominated work is a seminal and important investigation into the potential of educational alternatives. Between 1910 and 1960 anarchists across the United States established more than 20 schools wherein children studied in an atmosphere of freedom and self-reliance. The Modern Schools stood in sharp contrast to the formality and discipline of the traditional classroom and sought to abolish all forms of authority. Their object was to create not only a new type of school, but also a new society based on the voluntary cooperation of free individuals. Among the participants were Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, Alexander Berkman and Man Ray.

This is the first paperback edition of a moving appraisal of the infamous Haymarket bombing (May 1886) and the trial that followed it--a trial that was a cause célèbre in the 1880s and that has since been recognized as one of the most unjust in the annals of American jurisprudence. Paul Avrich shows how eight anarchists who were blamed for the bombing at a workers' meeting near Chicago's Haymarket Square became the focus of a variety of passionately waged struggles.

This book contains 180 interviews conducted over a period of 30 years. The interviewees were active between the 1880s and the 1930s and represent all schools of anarchism. Each of the six thematic sections begins with an explanatory essay, and each interview with a biographical note. Their stories provide a wealth of personal detail about such anarchist luminaries as Emma Goldman and Sacco and Vanzetti. This work of impeccable scholarship is an invaluable resource not only for scholars of anarchism but also for those studying immigration, ethnic politics, education, and labor history. Paul Avrich is a professor of history at Queens College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York.

“Paul Avrich’s latest book is an admirable blend of serious scholarship and appealing writing. His purpose is to tell the story of popular uprisings in Russia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with particular emphasis on those led by Bolotnikov, Razin, Bulavin, and Pugachev. To do so, he has made careful and intelligent use of a large body of published materials and from them has woven a lively and engrossing narrative. More than that, drawing on the previous work of Hobsbawm and others, he has offered perceptive explanations of the outbreak, course, and outcome of each revolt. Throughout the work, the author compares the principal revolts and searches, above all, for a general characterization of the tradition of mass revolt in premodern Russia.” ―Robert O. Crummey, Yale University in Journal of Modern History The aim of this book is to unravel the tangled story of the four revolts, to examine their nature, course, and outcome, and to analyze their ultimate historical significance. Who were the rebels? What were their motives, social origins, and modes of behavior? What did they want and what did they achieve? Such are the questions this work will try to answer. Comparisons between the revolts will be made throughout the text, and especially in the concluding section of each chapter, while a final chapter will evaluate the overall significance of the revolts and their impact on the subsequent history of Russia. In particular, an effort will be made to determine the extent to which they foreshadowed the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, which so profoundly affected the course of contemporary history.

The description for this book, An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine De Cleyre, will be forthcoming.

Documents of Revolution General Heinz Lubasz

Account of the paradoxical relationship between these two great Russian revolutionaries.

In 1889 two Russian immigrants, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, met in a coffee shop on the Lower East Side. Over the next fifty years Emma and Sasha would be fast friends, fleeting lovers, and loyal comrades. This dual biography offers an unprecedented glimpse into their intertwined lives, the lasting influence of the anarchist movement they shaped, and their unyielding commitment to equality and justice.Berkman shocked the country in 1892 with "the first terrorist act in America," the failed assassination of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick for his crimes against workers. Passionate and pitiless, gloomy yet gentle, Berkman remained Goldman's closest confidant though the two were often separated-by his fourteen-year imprisonment and by Emma's growing fame as the champion of a multitude of causes, from sexual liberation to freedom of speech. The blazing sun to Sasha's morose moon, Emma became known as "the most dangerous woman in America." Through an attempted prison breakout, multiple bombing plots, and a dramatic deportation from America, these two unrelenting activists insisted on the improbable ideal of a socially just, self-governing utopia, a vision that has shaped movements across the past century, most recently Occupy Wall Street.Sasha and Emma is the culminating work of acclaimed historian of anarchism Paul Avrich. Before his death, Avrich asked his daughter to complete his magnum opus. The resulting collaboration, epic in scope, intimate in detail, examines the possibilities and perils of political faith and protest, through a pair who both terrified and dazzled the world.

Τα δεκατρία κείμενα αυτού του τόμου συναποτελούν μια ευσύνοπτη παρουσίαση του ιστορικού ρόλου που έπαιξαν οι αναρχικοί και οι μπολσεβίκοι κατά τη μακρόχρονη διαδικασία της Ρωσικής Επανάστασης.Τα πρώτα τρία κείμενα, γραμμένα από δύο ελευθεριακούς πανεπιστημιακούς ερευνητές (ο ένας πολιτικός επιστήμονας και ο άλλος ιστορικός), εξιστορούν τις δραματικές εξελίξεις στις οποίες έλαβαν μέρος ποικίλες τάσεις και ρεύματα των Ρώσων αναρχικών καθώς και το ιστορικό πλαίσιο εντός του οποίου αυτές έλαβαν χώρα. Τα υπόλοιπα δέκα κείμενα προέρχονται από εμβληματικές μορφές του διεθνούς αναρχικού κινήματος που έζησαν από τα μέσα τα αιματηρά γεγονότα (Κροπότκιν, Μπέρκμαν, Γκόλντμαν, Σαπίρο) ή και πρωταγωνίστησαν σε αυτά (Μαχνό, Βολίν, Μαξίμοφ).Οι συγγραφείς αναφέρονται εκτενώς στο ακανθώδες ζήτημα της προβληματικής σχέσης αναρχικών και μπολσεβίκων η οποία προσέλαβε επικίνδυνες διαστάσεις, με αποτέλεσμα τη φυσική εξόντωση, την εξορία ή την αυτοεξορία όλων των δρώντων αναρχικών (ακόμη και των μη βίαιων Τολστοϊκών «ιδεολόγων» αναρχοχριστιανών επειδή, ως αντιρρησίες συνείδησης, αρνούνταν να στρατολογηθούν στον Κόκκινο Στρατό).Ο συλλογικός αυτός τόμος έρχεται έτσι να συμβάλει όχι μόνο στην αποκατάσταση της ιστορικής αλήθειας αλλά και στην ερμηνεία των αιτίων για την τερατογένεση του πρώτου ολοκληρωτικού κρατιστικού μορφώματος, υπό τον ψευδεπίγραφο τίτλο Ε.Σ.Σ.Δ. – Ένωση Σοβιετικών Σοσιαλιστικών Δημοκρατιών, δηλαδή, όπως τόνιζε ο Κορνήλιος Καστοριάδης: «τέσσερις λέξεις, τέσσερα ψέματα».

Bu kitapta, ünlü Rus entellektüelleri Michael Bakunin ve Peter Kropotkin'den: hakkında çok fazla şey bilinmeyen bir çizme yapımcısı ve iyi bir konuşmacı olan J.W Fleming'e kadar anarşist harekete katılanları temsil edenlerin yaşamları ve kişilikleri inceleniyor. Paul Avrich, politik ve toplumsal adaletsizliğe karşı mücadelede anarşizmin önemli rol oynadığı bir dönemi anlatıyor.Kitapta yer alan ve kendi içlerinde şaşırtıcı olan biyografiler, anarşist hareketin doruğuna ulaştığı 19. yy'ın sonu ve 20.yy'ın başlarında ortaya çıkardığı etkilerin daha fazla farkında olmamızı sağlayan güçlü ve önemli bir işlev görüyor.''Bu kitap...Avrich'in Amerika'da bir ideoloji olarak anarşizmin aykırılıklarını, gücünü, zayıflıklarını ve aynı zamanda sıra dışı ithafını ve bu hareketi temsil edenlerin karakterlerini açık ve net olarak ortaya koyduğu karma bir anarşizm resmidir.''-James Joll-(Arka Kapak'tan)

Through his many books on the history of anarchism, Paul Avrich has done much to dispel the public's conception of the anarchists as mere terrorists. In Anarchist Voices, Avrich lets American anarchists speak for themselves. This abridged edition contains fifty-three interviews conducted by Avrich over a period of thirty years, interviews that portray the human dimensions of a movement much maligned by the authorities and contemporary journalists. Most of the interviewees (anarchists as well as their friends and relatives) were active during the heyday of the movement, between the 1880s and the 1930s. They represent all schools of anarchism and include both famous figures and minor ones, previously overlooked by most historians. Their stories provide a wealth of personal detail about such anarchist luminaries as Emma Goldman and Sacco and Vanzetti.

Originaires des quatre coins de l’Empire, les anarchistes – russes, juifs, ukrainiens, polonais ou géorgiens – furent en première ligne contre l’autocratie tsariste, puis contre le régime bolchevique. Théoriciens et militants, idéalistes ou pragmatiques, propagandistes, syndicalistes, pacifistes ou terroristes, ils payèrent cher, souvent de leur vie, leur quête effrénée de liberté et de justice sociale.Dans cet ouvrage incontournable, Paul Avrich, historien et professeur au Queen’s College de New York, dévoile un pan méconnu de l’histoire russe, analysant le rôle joué par le mouvement anarchiste depuis son apparition dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle jusqu’à son anéantissement au sortir de la révolution d’Octobre.Exterminés par les communistes, oubliés par l’historiographie tant marxiste que libérale, les anarchistes russes retrouvent, grâce à ce livre, la place qui leur revient dans l’histoire de la lutte des opprimés pour leur émancipation.

The Nechaev period of Bakunin's career was relatively brief. Yet, apart from being a fascinating psychological drama it forms and important chapter in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement, posing fundamental questions of revolutionary tactics and revolutionary morality with which radicals have continued to grapple to this day. Paul Avrich reappraises the relationship in this assay.

Professor Avrich records the history of the anarchist movement from its Russian origins in the 19th century, with a full discussion of Bakunin and Kropotkin, to its upsurge in the 1905 and 1917 Social Democratic Revolutions, and its decline and fall after the Bolshevik Revolution. While analyzing the role of the anarchists in these fateful years, he traces the close relationships between the anarchists and the Bolsheviks and shows that the Revolutions were conceived in spontaneity and idealism and ended in cynical repression. The Russian anarchists saw clearly the consequences of a Marxist "dictatorship of the proletariat" and, though they had no single cohesive organization, repeatedly warned that the Bolsheviks aimed to replace the tyranny of the tsars with a tyranny of commissars.Originally published in 1967.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In this comprehensive study of the Modern School movement, Paul Avrich narrates its history, analyzes its successes and failures, and assesses its place in American life. In doing so, he shows how the radical experimentation in art and communal living as well as in education during this period set the precedent for much of the artistic, social, and educational ferment of the 1960's and I970's.Originally published in 1980.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In March 1921 the sailors of Kronstadt, the naval fortress in the Gulf of Finland, rose in revolt against the Bolshevik government, which they themselves had helped into power. Under the slogan of Òfree soviets,'' they established a revolutionary commune that survived for sixteen days, until an army came across the ice to crush it. After a savage struggle, the rebels were subdued. Paul Avrich vividly describes the uprising and examines it in the context of the development of the Soviet state.Originally published in 1970.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.