Follow Us

AK Press

Revolution by the Book The AK Press Blog

The Tragic Procession: Alexander Berkman and Russian Prisoner Aid

Posted on March 31st, 2010 in AK Allies, Anarchist Publishers

The Kate Sharpley Library and the Alexander Berkman Social Club have recently teamed up to release an important piece of anarchist history: The Tragic Procession: Alexander Berkman and Russian Prisoner Aid. The book is an original reprint of the collected Bulletin of the Joint Committee for the Defense of Revolutionists Imprisoned in Russia and Bulletin of the Relief Fund of the International Working Men’s Association for Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists Imprisoned or Exiled in Russia. Yeah, that’s a mouthful, but what it boils down to is a fascinating (and, like the title says, tragic) chronicle of international efforts to get the word out about what Russian anarchists and revolutionists were suffering under the Bolshevik regime.

It’s not pretty. We’re talking about people who were imprisoned, tortured, driven mad, and exiled to places so remote no contact with the outside world was possible…men and women who disappeared into a totalitarian darkness. But at the same time, it’s a story of the astonishing effort of small groups of radicals who tried to highlight the vicious reality of the Bolshevik government, alert a wider public to the awful situation its prisoners found themselves in, and provide concrete support to the victims.

Below are a few snippets from the book’s introduction to give you some of the basic facts. You can also go here to see a PDF of the November-December 1925 issue of the Bulletin.

——

In January 1922, Freedom, the English-language anarchist newspaper, published an article titled “Bolsheviks Shooting Anarchists” by Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. Written together, probably with Alexander Shapiro, it is a critical document in the history of anarchism. Accounts of tensions between anarchists and Bolsheviks in Russia had been regularly surfacing in the international anarchist press well before this, but this account, by well-known anarchists, had a much greater impact. Three internationally renowned comrades, who were living in Russia and had embraced the revolution as the future hope of the world, accused the Bolsheviks of putting “the best revolutionary elements of the country” in their prisons. Anarchists, Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Maximalists, members of the Workers’ Opposition were all rotting in the prisons of the old Tsarist regime, now commandeered by the Bolshevik dictatorship.

……….

The first Bulletin was printed in Berlin in October 1923, and reflected its contributors’ desire to record the names of anarchists and revolutionists arrested and exiled in Russia, as well as identify where they were imprisoned or living. This proved to be a huge task, given the size of the country, the lack of access to information, and the reluctance and refusal of some Bolsheviks to provide friends and families of the arrested with any information at all.

The Bulletin was, according to Mark Mratchny, primarily, the work of Berkman and himself.1 Mratchny wrote some articles in Russian, which Berkman translated; I.N. Steinberg contributed material on imprisoned Left Socialist Revolutionaries; others including Rudolf Rocker, Augustin Souchy, and Fritz Kater were also involved. Kater, through Der Syndicalist printing group, published the Bulletin, as well as Berkman’s pamphlets on Russia, already mentioned.

……….

By December 1926, the Bulletin had been taken under the aegis of the International Working Men’s Association and became The Bulletin of the Relief Fund for Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists Imprisoned or Exiled in Russia. Its production meant that Berkman and Mratchny withdrew from the Joint Committee and, through the IWMA, secured a slightly sounder financial platform for their work. Mollie Steimer, Senya Fleshin, and Volin took on more prominent roles in the Relief Fund and the Bulletin was published from Paris, where Berkman was living (having moved to France in December 1925), and Berlin, where Mratchny still resided.

……….

So why republish these Bulletins? First, of course, to name names; to, at least, bring these people back from the darkness of the Bolshevik pit. To shed a little light on the struggles of our comrades and keep their names alive even in our small circles. It would be disgusting if the pain and torment they suffered at the hands of erstwhile “comrades” was subject to a historical amnesia because it does not fit in with our preoccupations and narratives today. When we talk to any Marxists, these dead should never be forgotten—never mind that the Bolshevik beast ate its own children as well!! Secondly, to commemorate those who, in the most trying of personal and economic circumstances, refused to forget their comrades in Russia. We commemorate those who sent money, food, and clothes in the hope (often vain) that they would arrive at their destination and provide some comfort. And we honor those, like Berkman and all the others, who criticized the horror of Bolshevism from a radical position, who never gave up in the struggle for a stateless society free of the horrors of state socialism. They were a tiny voice, but they never stopped shouting. After all these years, it might be comforting to say “we told you so!”—but at what cost!?

—Alexander Berkman Social Club, 2010

——

1. Mratchny had previously been with Nestor Makhno in the Ukraine and had edited the anarchist paper there. Arrested in 1920, he was imprisoned in Moscow and was one of the anarchists released for a day to attend Kropotkin’s funeral on February 13, 1921. Later, in July of that year, he took part in a hunger strike with eight other anarchists, including Gregory Maximoff and Volin. They were all eventually deported to Berlin. Maximoff went on to compile The Guillotine at Work: Twenty Years of Terror in Russia, published in 1940, by the Alexander Berkman Aid Fund in Chicago—essential reading in tracking the deliberate and murderous decimation of the radical opposition by the Bolsheviks.