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Majrelende wrote

Maybe— it depends on whether you are comfortable with it. To me, though, it seems possibly appropriate as long as there is something separating it from statist and libertarian movements.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote (edited )

I don't think that the anarchist community has a central body of organization to tell you what is and what isn't okay to use in anarchism; if there is, it wouldn't be here and no one who regularly visits this website in good faith would actually treat it with anything other than derisive scorn.

If you're an ancom feel free to do it, just know that you'll probably attract a few non-anarchist leftists as well and that there are other actual ancom friendly symbols to use that don't invoke thoughts of the USSR such as: the classic circle-A, black cat, a black rose, the IWW emblem, and a bisected red & black flag. Pretty sure that's all we have and it's more than we'll need.

If you're not an ancom feel free to do it, just know that you'll probably attract a few non-anarchists as well and that there are other actual anarchist symbols to use that don't invoke thoughts of the USSR such as: the classic circle-A, a black rose, and a black flag. You could use that Stirner doodle if you want to be a meme spewing bore and squatters are closely tied to anarchism, so you could probably get away with using the international squatter's symbol as well. Pretty sure that's all we have and it's more than we'll ever need.

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ziq wrote (edited )

I wouldn't. It was commissioned by Lenin to represent the USSR. The USSR is not a project any anarchist needs to associate with. Lenin also ordered the execution of all the anarchists and leftcoms when he seized power.

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BrowseDuringClass1917 wrote

That second part is just not true

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ziq wrote

February Revolution

In 1917, Peter Kropotkin returned to Petrograd, where he helped Alexander Kerensky's Russian Provisional Government to formulate policies. He curtailed his activity when the Bolsheviks came to power.

Following the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in February 1917 and the subsequent creation of a Provisional Government, many Russian anarchists joined the Bolsheviks in campaigning for further revolution. Since the repression after the Revolution of 1905, new anarchist organizations had been slowly and quietly growing in Russia, and in 1917 saw a new opportunity to end state power.[13]

Though within the next year they would come to consider the Bolsheviks traitors to the socialist cause, urban anarchist groups initially saw Lenin and his comrades as allies in the fight against capitalist oppression. Understanding the need for widespread support in his quest for Communism, Lenin often deliberately appealed to anarchist sentiments in the eight months between the February and October Revolutions.[13] Many optimistic anarchists interpreted Lenin's slogan of “All Power to the Soviets!” as the potential for a Russia run by autonomous collectives without the burden of central authority.[13] Lenin also described the triumph of Communism as the eventual “withering away of the state.”[14] All this time, however, anarchists remained wary of the Bolsheviks. Mikhail Bakunin, the hero of Russian anarchism, had expressed skepticism toward the scientific, excessively rational nature of Marxism. He and his followers preferred a more instinctive form of revolution. One of them, Bill Shatov, described the anarchists as “the romanticists of the Revolution.”[15][16] Their eagerness to get the ball rolling became apparent during the July Days, in which Petrograd soldiers, sailors and workers revolted in an attempt to claim power for the Petrograd Soviet. While this was not a strictly anarchist-driven event, the anarchists of Petrograd played a large role in inciting the people of the city to action. In any case, Lenin was not amused by the revolt and instructed those involved to quiet down until he told them otherwise.[14]

In spite of some tension between the groups, the anarchists remained largely supportive of Lenin right up to the October Revolution. Several anarchists participated in the overthrow of the Provisional Government, and even the Military Revolutionary Committee that orchestrated the coup.[13]

October Revolution

At first it seemed to some Anarchists the revolution could inaugurate the stateless society they had long dreamed of. On these terms, some Bolshevik-Anarchist alliances were made. In Moscow, the most perilous and critical tasks during the October Revolution fell upon the Anarchist Regiment, led by the old libertarians and it was they who dislodged the Whites from the Kremlin, the Metropole and other defenses. and it was the Anarchist sailor who led the attack on the Constituent Assembly in October 1917. For a while, the Anarchists rejoiced, elated at the thought of the new age that Russia had won.

Bolshevik-anarchist relations soon turned sour as the various anarchist groups realized that the Bolsheviks were not interested in pluralism, but rather a centralized one-party rule. A few prominent anarchist figures such as Bill Shatov and Yuda Roshchin, despite their disappointment, encouraged anarchists to cooperate with the Bolsheviks in the present conflict with the hope that there would be time to negotiate. But most anarchists became disillusioned quite quickly with their supposed Bolshevik allies, who took over the soviets and placed them under Communist control.

The sense of betrayal came to a head in March 1918, when Lenin signed the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Germany. Though the Bolshevik leaders claimed that the treaty was necessary to allow the revolution to progress, anarchists widely saw it as an excessive compromise which counteracted the idea of international revolution.[14] After months of increasing anarchist resistance and dwindling Bolshevik patience, the Communist government decisively split with their libertarian agitators in the spring of 1918. In Moscow and Petrograd the newly formed Cheka was sent in to disband all anarchist organizations, and largely succeeded.[13]

On the night of April 12, 1918, the Cheka raided 26 anarchist centres in Moscow, including the House of Anarchy, the headquarters of the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups. A fierce battle raged on Malaia Dimitrovka Street. About 40 anarchists were killed or wounded, and approximately 500 were imprisoned. A dozen Cheka agents had also been killed in the fighting. Anarchists joined Mensheviks and Left Socialist revolutionaries in boycotting the 1918 May Day celebrations.

By this time some belligerent anarchist dissenters armed themselves and formed groups of so-called “Black Guards” that continued to fight Communist power on a small scale as the Civil War began.[14] The urban anarchist movement, however, was dead.

Civil War

The anthropologist Eric Wolf asserts that peasants in rebellion are natural anarchists.[17] After initially looking favorably upon the Bolsheviks for their proposed land reforms, by 1918 peasants largely came to despise the new government as it became increasingly centralized and exploitative in its dealings with the rural population. Marxist-Leninists had never given the peasants great credit, and with the Civil War against the White Armies underway, the Red Army primarily used peasant villages as suppliers of grain, which it “requisitioned,” or in other words, seized by force.[18]

Abused equally by the Red and invading White armies, large groups of peasants, as well as Red Army deserters, formed “Green” armies that resisted the Reds and Whites alike. These forces had no grand political agenda like their enemies, for the most part they simply wanted to stop being harassed and be allowed to govern themselves. Though the Green Armies have largely been ignored by history (and by Soviet historians in particular), they constituted a formidable force and a major threat to Red victory in the Civil War. Even after the party declared the Civil War over in 1920, the Red-Green war persisted for some time.[18]

Red Army generals noted that in many regions peasant rebellions were heavily influenced by anarchist leaders and ideas.[18][19] In Ukraine, the most notorious peasant rebel leader was an anarchist general named Nestor Makhno. Makhno had originally led his forces in collaboration with the Red Army against the Whites. In the region of Ukraine where his forces were stationed, Makhno oversaw the development of an autonomous system of government based on the productive coordination of communes. According to Peter Marshall, a historian of anarchism, "For more than a year, anarchists were in charge of a large territory, one of the few examples of anarchy in action on a large scale in modern history.[13]

Unsurprisingly, the Bolsheviks came to see Makhno's experiment in self-government as a threat in need of elimination, and in 1920 the Red Army sought to take control of Makhno's forces. They resisted, but the officers (not including Makhno himself) were arrested and executed by the end of 1920. Makhno continued to fight before going into exile in Paris the next year.[13]

Third Russian Revolution

The attempted Third Russian Revolution began in July 1918 with the assassination of the German Ambassador to the Soviet Union in order to prevent the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This was immediately followed by an artillery attack on the Kremlin and the occupation of the telegraph and telephone buildings by the Left SRs who sent out several manifestos appealing to the people to rise up against their oppressors and destroy the Bolshevik regime. But whilst this order was not followed by the people of Moscow, the peasants of South Russia responded vigorously to this call to arms. Bands of Chernoe Znamia and Beznachaly anarchist terrorists flared up as rapidly and violently as they had done in 1905. Anarchists in Rostov, Ekaterinoslav and Briansk broke into prisons to liberate the anarchist prisoners and issued fiery proclamations calling on the people to revolt against the Bolshevik regime. The Anarchist Battle Detachments attacked the Whites, Reds and Germans alike. Many peasants joined the Revolution, attacking their enemies with pitchforks and sickles. Meanwhile, in Moscow, the Underground Anarchists were formed by Kazimir Kovalevich and Piotr Sobalev to be the shock troops of the Revolution, infiltrating Bolshevik ranks and striking when least expected. On 25 September 1919, the Underground Anarchists struck the Bolsheviks with the heaviest blow of the Revolution. The headquarters of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party was blown up, killing 12 and injuring 55 Party members, including Nikolai Bukharin and Emilian Iaroslavskii. Spurred on by their apparent success, the Underground Anarchists proclaimed a new "era of dynamite" that would finally wipe away capitalism and the State. The Bolsheviks responded by initiating a new wave of mass arrests in which Kovalevich and Sobalev were the first to be shot. With their leaders dead and much of their organization in tatters, the remaining Underground Anarchists blew themselves up in their last battle with the Cheka, taking much of their safe house with them. Numerous attacks and assassinations occurred frequently until the Revolution finally petered out in 1922. Although the Revolution was mainly a Left SR initiative, it was the Anarchists who had the support of a greater number of the population and they participated in almost all of the attacks the Left SRs organized, and also many on completely their own initiative. The most celebrated figures of the Third Russian Revolution, Lev Chernyi and Fanya Baron were both Anarchists.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

web.archive.org/web/https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/john-zerzan-running-on-emptiness-the-failure-of-symbolic-thought

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