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********* After the Fall *************
A New Beginning for Russian Anarchism?
Guest Writer
It was only natural that anarchism would reappear in
this country where the state has played such an
omnipresent role in social life. The role that the
state has played in usurping other forms of organisation
has led people growing up in this society and those who
visit it to contemplate the mechanisms of the state.
Negative judgements of these mechanisms are usually
formed, so of course some people would come to realise
that the state cannot be reformed.
Even though a disproportionate amount of classical
anarchist theorists and figures came from Russia, the
movement lived a short life; the anarchist movement per
se only really started up shortly before the 1905
revolution and was prematurely executed shortly after
the consolidation of Soviet power. After a few years of
Stalinism, by 1938 there were no signs of anarchist
activity to be found. Still, ideas die hard and the
spirit of anarchism was revived in at least a few
individuals and small groups after the Thaw1. The first
self-proclaimed anarcho-syndicalist group was created in
1958 but it was short-lived, due to the effective work
of the KGB. [see box]. Throughout the '60s, up until
the Perestroika period, various groups sprang up now and
again, but all were rather small and insignificant.
As one can imagine, the beginning of Perestroika and
Glasnost signalled the start of a new era. A new type
of movement, referred to as 'the informal movement'
would grow and take the place of the dissidents. The
informals differed from the previous generation of
oppositionists in several vital regards. The dissidents
were very few in numbers and lived in their own ghetto,
with few supporters amongst the intelligentsia; the
informals were much larger in number and found more
support in the intelligentsia and elsewhere as political
ideas and cultural activity moved out of the dark
recesses of society. The informals also worked in a
wider range of activity than was possible for the
dissidents. They often operated through official
organisations, such as ideological, youth and cultural
groups and they tried to turn the language of socialist
ideology against the Soviet state. It was in the
informal movement where the modern Russian anarchist
movement took root.
Many of the anarchists who came out of the informal
movement started off as critical Marxists. The first
members of the Moscow Obschina group met while working
in the clandestine Organizing Committee of the All-Union
Marxist Workers' Party. Many of these people were
historians and therefore had access to anarchist works
that normal people were forbidden to read. They started
to publish a samizdat magazine called Obschina (Commune)
and eventually established an organisation, the
Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists (KAS).
The early post-Perestroika anarchist movement was rather
atypical in several aspects. First, it existed in a
time where there was an unusually high interest in
politics, due partially to the fact that everything was
new and that history was being reclaimed from the
Ministry of Truth2, and partially to the fact that
people were hoping for something better to be offered
for their future. Second, it was created by people who
had no experience of non-governmental organisation from
which to draw lessons. Third, it was able to attract a
rather substantial number of people in a short time; KAS
had up to 2,000 members at one point. All of these
things however contributed to what many people regard,
perhaps inappropriately, as the fall of the Russian
anarchist movement.
Interest in politics has waned considerably in the past
decade. Partly this can be explained by the deep shock
of Dr. Gaidar's therapy and by the fact that happiness
is measured in terms of material acquisitions now more
than ever before. Also, the novelty of pluralism has
somewhat worn off, and no grassroots movement ever
managed to grow out of the informal movement,
essentially leaving the people as disenfranchised from
politics and as disillusioned as ever before. The
informal anarchists, not quite comprehending what
strategies they could work, thought only on a massive
scale; no doubt they imagined that the workers could
mobilise to take control of their factories on some
significant scale and some tried (and succeeded) to get
into office at a local level, hoping to effect some pro-
worker legislation no doubt. (As for taking control of
factories, it would have been a tall order in a country
where people are so used to being ruled but also, the
privatizers had something else in mind and apparently
their promises of future material wealth held out more
promise to workers.)
It is hard to say exactly how many anarchists there are
in the former Soviet Union, particularly because there
have been too many people and groups that label
themselves anarchists but cannot be identified as such
by their politics. (Such gross mutant groups, like
anarcho- monarchists and anarcho-democrats have existed;
they obviously must be dismissed as quacks). Still one
can safely estimate the number of people who consciously
consider themselves anarchists and who have some
contacts with others as 200-300 people.
The largest federations were FRAN (the Federation of
Revolutionary Anarchists) and KAS which accounted for
about 150 people. This however will probably change
since the creation of other organisations -
Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists
(KRAS), which wants to join the International Workers
Association (IWA).; the Ukrainian-based, Revolutionary
Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists (RKAS), which
considers affiliation with the IWA not to be on the
agenda right now and the Siberian Confederation of
Labour (SKT) which wants to concentrate on creating a
syndicalist union and is not interested in taking sides
in the conflicts between various sections of the
international syndicalist movement. Many smaller groups
exist inside and outside of these groups; a typical
group may have between 3 and 10 people and like
everywhere else, they are connected by their similar
ideas on what anarchism is and what needs to be done.
There are also a number of individuals around the
country who are quite active but belong to no group.
If previously an anarchist could be considered to be a
person who read one of the journals, signed up and was a
warm body at meetings, nowadays anarchists are forced to
take a much more active role. Most of the self-styled
leaders who wrote programs and manifestos in the early
days of post-Perestroika anarchism are gone, and
although a few individuals have been more active than
others in propagandising their ideas, small groups must
meet and decide the eternal question: what is to be
done? In this regard they are not unlike small groups
in other parts of the world, particularly in isolated
places with no real contacts with any sort of radical
community.
Projects
Anarchists have started different projects, with varying
degrees of success. In Moscow some anarchists and other
sympathetic listeners gather every Thursday to give
lectures on various topics, including anarchism and
other philosophies. This is very important for people
as we lack good books on anarchism in Russian and people
need to understand it better. Still, the question then
becomes one of how is to conduct these lectures on a
larger scale and how to advertise them so that people
can show up and listen. And how to attract people when
so many are indifferent to politics? Some people wanted
to form a cultural centre but the person who found space
wants to run things herself. Instead of creating a
space for different collectives to use, the space has
become a hang out joint, sometimes visited by skinheads
and other idiots but occasionally host to some
discussion or concert as well. In Tver and Kharbarovsk,
concerts are sometimes held and in every city with some
anarchist presence you might find a picket now and
again.
One thing where anarchists have been somewhat productive
is in creating zines3 and papers, although they are of
varied quality. Still this activity is limited as
printing costs are prohibitively high and typically
people cannot afford to buy them; the publications must
be subsidised if they are to have any distribution. At
least a dozen come out sporadically, ranging from
idiotic movement gossip sheets to larger zines with
several interesting articles.
A number of groups have tried to make contact amongst
workers, most notably some Ukrainian anarchists now part
of RKAS (the Revolutionary Confederation of Anarcho-
Syndicalists, not to be confused with the Russian group
KRAS, the Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-
Syndicalists). Some people have formed 'unions', but
many of these are purely symbolic, usually consisting of
two or three people. Obviously, these people are at a
loss over what to do. There are no (and have not been)
any grassroots movements here, in years, and so
everything must be started from scratch.
The anarchists face an uphill battle here. People are
very accustomed to having the state handle everything
for them and this attitude is antithetical to the
anarchists' principles of self organisation. The state
also did a good job of destroying most ties people had
with each other; community was to extend no further than
the nuclear family, a structure which dominates Soviet
life and creates various barriers to organisation.
(Although few people here realise this.)
Isolated into their minute cubicles, many people have
retreated into the home, preferring it to the harsh new
world of capitalist Russia. There are no real leftist
events, depriving anarchists of one of their traditional
grounds for recruiting new people and there is little
alternative media so to speak of. (The exception being
in Kharbarovsk where local anarchists do a radio show.)
Those problems could be expected and we imagine that
they plague people in other parts of the world as well.
There are many places in the world that have very weak
anarchist movements for much the same reasons; perhaps
only the fact that there was Bakunin, Kropotkin and
Makhno can explain why a small movement has grown in
Russia. There are also problems endemic to the Russian
scene. Most people are rather poor and it is difficult
to fund activities so some people became rather
dependent on fund raising from abroad, often creating
mythologies around their groups and engaging in
political prostitution. Also, due to the strange
alliance between 'left' authoritarian forces and 'right'
authoritarian forces, some people wishing to add warm
bodies to the count often hang out with not only
leftists but fascists. Naturally those people with half
a brain have been trying to disown these people from the
anarchist movement and the injustice they do to the
movement is probably far more grave than anything else.
Slowly but surely a few dozen people are trying to
develop their ideas about anarchism and figure out how
to organise something. Personal politics are not an
issue as yet and this reflects their status in society
as a whole, but this will change. Gradually anarchist
texts will be translated into Russian and some native
works are bound to appear as well. The developmant of
an anarchist movement may dependent on what will happen
in the near future; threats of a return of wholesale
authoritarianism always loom on the horizon and it is
unclear whether or not material conditions will improve.
Still one thing is clear: we are now laying the
foundations for the future.
Footnotes by R&BR
1 After Stalin died and Kruschev came to power, when
the penalties for oppositional activity and the level of
surveillance were reduced slightly.
2 An Orwellian reference (1984) to the fact that before
Glasnost history could only be written in a way that
vindicated the current leadership of the Communist party
and its past actions. History was a machine for
justifying the party.
3 In the west a zine is typically a small circulation,
crudely produced magazine distributed through personal
contacts and by post rather than through selling in
shops or other locations. We presume this is also the
meaning here.
******* After Stalin Box *********
A group of people from the History Department of Moscow
State University began to gather in 1957 and discuss
different ideas, among them the ideas of workers'
councils and of Bakunin. They formed a clandestine
group in Oct. '58 and wrote a program. The group's
activities ended in Jan. 1959 when one of its founders,
Anatoly Mikhailovich Ivanov, was arrested in the History
Library for writing anti-Soviet literature and sent to a
psychiatric hospital. He was released in 1960 and
people began to gather again. (Some people were poets
and some political people so there were two tendencies
in their loose group.) Then in 1961, before the Party
Congress, three of them, Osipov, Ivanov and Kuznetsov,
were arrested for plotting to kill Kruschev. Apparently
they had seriously entertained this idea as they
believed he would start a large-scale war. None of the
three resumed anarchist activities afterwards.