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Title: Paul Avrich obituary Author: Stuart Christie Date: 10th April 2006 Language: en Topics: obituary, Paul Avrich Source: Retrieved on 22nd September 2020 from https://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/apr/10/guardianobituaries.obituaries
Russian Anarchists (1967) was followed by Kronstadt 1921 (1970) and in
1972, Russian Rebels: 1600–1800. He then moved into American anarchism
with The Haymarket Tragedy (1984). This focused on the campaign for the
eight-hour day in Chicago in 1886 during which seven policemen were
killed by a bomb, and for which four innocent anarchists were executed —
one cheated the gallows by killing himself, and another three served
sentences until pardoned by the state governor. Sacco and Vanzetti: The
Anarchist Background (1991) established that the two men, executed in
1927 in Massachusetts, were serious revolutionaries rather than
“philosophical anarchists”.
Avrich was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a Jewish family originally
from Odessa. He graduated from Cornell University in New York State in
1952 and took his PhD from Columbia University in New York City in 1961.
In the early 1960s Avrich had taken advantage of liberalisation in the
Soviet Union to research his dissertation on the Russian revolution and
the factory committees there. The material he uncovered on the 1921
insurrection at the Russian naval base of Kronstadt — which was
suppressed by the Bolsheviks and left more than 10,000 dead or wounded
on both sides — was the basis for Kronstadt 1921 and much of his work on
anarchists in the Russian revolution.
Back in New York he researched amongst surviving Soviet exiles, many of
whom he met at the anarchist Yiddish Freie Arbeiter Stimme (Free Voice
of Labour) meetings and established lifelong friendships with many of
them.
Avrich’s other work included The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and
Education in the United States (1980) which dealt with the radical
schools inspired by the ideas of the Spanish anarchist educationalist
Francisco Ferrer i Guardia, which survived from 1910 to 1960.
His last important work was the extraordinary Anarchist Voices: An Oral
History of Anarchism in America (1995) based on interviews gathered over
30 years. Avrich was nominated several times for the Pulitzer prize, and
in 1984 he won won the Philip Taft Labor History award.
He is survived by his wife Ina and his daughters Jane and Karen.
· Paul Avrich, historian, born August 4 1931; died February 17 2006