Black Cat Press: An Interview
There are many pleasurable aspects about working at AK Press. One in particular is being a distributor
and seeing new materials our fellow publishers are releasing. For the past couple of years we’ve been distributing some great pamphlets from Edmonton, Aberta’s Black Cat Press, and now we’ve finally gotten copies of their newest offerings: Kontrrazvedka: The Story of the Makhnovist Intelligence Service and The Russian Revolution in the Ukraine (Volume I of Nestor Makhno’s memoirs). We truly hope that Black Cat will receive the support they deserve for all of their hard work. Please check out their projects available through AK Press here and at their own site, here. I took a moment to ask Malcolm a few questions about the press—its past, and its bright future.
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So, Black Cat Press is both a printer and a publisher. How was Black Cat formed? How long have you been printing and publishing?
Black Cat Press started way back in 1972 when I bought an offset press and copy camera for the grand total of $650. But it’s only been full time since 1994 when I and a couple of friends lost our jobs around the same time. It’s always been a marginal business but somehow manages to survive the continual crises which beset any small business. We are mainly a commercial printer and publishing is only about 5% of our work but increasing rapidly.
How is the print shop organized? Do you operate as a workers’ collective, or have some alternative structure? Similarly, do the printers share the publishing tasks and vice-versa?
Our shop is organized by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), one of the more progressive Canadian unions. Our shop almost never has more than 2 or 3 workers at a time and the union has allowed the owner (me) to be a member, partly because I work with my hands. Our workers have always been active in the Local which includes several blue collar bargaining units. Since we are so small, everyone has to get involved in all phases of production, from proof-reading to shrink-wrapping. In the case of book production, we are able to draw on volunteer help from the anarchist community in Alberta for editing, production, distribution, etc.
What distribution channels do you use?
We’ve had difficulty finding distributors, partly because our book production uses a print-on-demand model, which is not conducive to the sort of discounts wholesalers expect. This has forced us to rely on anarchist book fairs and our own website to get our publications out there. We’re grateful that we’ve recently been able to establish good relations with AK Press and appreciate the advice received about marketing our books.
Do you have specific goals as a publisher? Who do you see as your audience?
There are two trends in the rather elastic collective that decides what we publish. One tendency is looking for works of an introductory nature that are accessible to a wide readership. My own inclination is to produce books that meet scholarly standards (well-documented with indexes and cataloguing information). Such books are not likely to sell well, but will end up in libraries, where they will ultimately have an effect on historiography. In the case of the Makhnovists, for example, Western historiography has generally not been much of an improvement over the Soviet line on the movement as a manifestation of banditism. I’m very proud of our most recent book The International Anarchist Congress—Amsterdam (1907) by Maurizio Antonioli which sets a very high scholarly standard. This book is a product of a publishing collective in Florence, which was active in the 1970’s producing valuable studies which have up to now remained available only in Italian, and the English edition has been ably prepared by Nestor McNab.
At this point, Black Cat has released a number of great pamphlets and short works but you’ve 
completed two very unique book projects recently. With the publication of Volume I of Nestor Makhno’s memoirs and V. Azarov’s study of the Makhnovist’s intelligence service, English-language readers are richly rewarded. Tell us a little about the translation process.
It was actually someone from AK Press who suggested to us about 2½ years ago that translating Makhno’s memoirs into English would be a good project. As long ago as 1979, Black Cat Press had printed “My Visit to the Kremlin” by Nestor Makhno, a translation of two chapters in Volume 2 of his memoirs. This has always been a popular pamphlet, being reprinted a number times and even translated (again) into other languages. We have the capability here of translating Russian and Ukrainian works into English, and when we looked at the material available on the Makhnovist movement, it was apparent there is a dearth of up-to-date material available to English-language readers.
When can readers expect to see Volumes II and III of Makhno’s memoirs. Is that effort still in the works?
Volume II is being typset now. It will have 4 maps (it’s a road book), an index, and more of an editorial apparatus than Volume I. We also hope to bring out a new edition of Volume I with more explanatory material and an index. Volume III is being translated for us by a comrade based in Berlin.
What other projects is Black Cat currently working on or can we expect to see in the future?
We have obtained the publishing rights to Anarcho-Syndicalism in the 20th Century by Vadim Damier, a small book of about 120 pages which is being translated from the Russian and should be out this spring. Long term, we hope to publish more studies of the Makhnovist movement. Another project in the works is a classic by the Romanian anarchist Zamfir C. Arbure, which is also now being translated into English.