How the Russian anarcho-syndicalist became a political journalist, ended up in the Red Army, and helped organise Kropotkin’s funeral
~ Nikolai Gerasimov ~
In the 1930s, Chicago was the capital of American gangsters. The mafia gang of Paul Ricca and Tony Accardo successfully continued the work of Al Capone—they controlled the entire shadow economy of the city and most of the criminal business of the northwestern United states. The American government did everything possible to destroy organised crime, but did not forget about another threat to national security—left-wing radicals. Since the late 1920s, Chicago police regularly conducted raids in places where Russian immigrant workers congregated. The secret services were afraid of the “Red Threat” and saw every “leftist” as a potential agent of Soviet intelligence. Russian anarchists fleeing Bolshevik terror and fascist concentration camps were persecuted by the FBI. Among those who attracted the unwanted attention of the authorities was the leading theorist of anarcho-syndicalism, Gregory Maximoff.
Gregory Petrovich Maximoff (1893–1950), a journalist and revolutionary who stood at the origins of the anarchist labour movement, having survived two World Wars, Red Terror, and emigration. Before his eyes, the revolution turned into a reaction, and the liberation movement died out, faced with a new enemy—the totalitarian state. Even before Karl Popper and Hannah Arendt, Maximoff began to study the origins of totalitarianism and the reasons why the good, progressive undertakings of revolutionaries lead to the creation of inhuman political regimes. His biography is inseparable from the history of the development of anarchist thought.
Gregory Maximoff was born on November 10, 1893, in the village of Mityushino in Smolensk province. After finishing school, his parents sent the future revolutionary to the Vladimir Seminary to study theology. Maximoff had an ideological conflict with the seminary administration, and he realized that theology was clearly not his calling. Maximoff met the beginning of the First World War in Petrograd, where, under the influence of Kropotkin’s writings, he carried out revolutionary agitation.
In 1915 he entered the Higher Agricultural Institute, studying to be an agronomist. But the war required new human resources—Maximoff was mobilised. However, even in the army, he continued to spread anarchist ideas. The February Revolution freed Maximoff from service. From that moment on, he took an active part in revolutionary events—in particular, he became one of the organizers of the Petrograd student group of anarcho-syndicalists and the group Golos Truda [The Voice of Labour]. In the summer of 1917, Maximoff was a representative of the newly formed Union of Anarcho-syndicalist Propaganda (SASP), from which he was elected to the Central Council of Factory and Plant Committees of Petrograd. Under the pseudonym “Mr. Lapot,” he wrote articles for the newspaper Golos Truda, in which he examined issues of a socio-economic nature: the organisation of labour collectives, the economic reorganization of society on the principles of anarchism, as well as ways to support grassroots social initiatives.
Collaboration with Golos Truda became one of the most important stages in the life of the thinker. The periodical was organised in 1911 in the USA by Russian émigré workers who closely interacted with American anarcho-syndicalists and exchanged experiences with them. In 1917 the editors took advantage of the general amnesty and moved the publication to Petrograd. Maximoff did not know that in less than ten years he would again have to publish in émigré journals.
In 1918 the first large-scale repressions against anarchists began: the authorities closed printing houses, arrested activists, and significantly limited the distribution of political literature. Publication of Golos Truda was temporarily suspended. In the autumn of 1918, Maximoff was elected secretary of the Executive Bureau of the All-Russian Confederation of Anarcho-syndicalists. In the same year, the organisation was liquidated due to both internal (political disagreements among anarcho-syndicalists) and external (Bolshevik repressions) reasons. Despite a series of arrests, Maximoff agreed to join the Red Army. However, his service did not last long: in 1919, in Kharkiv, he refused to carry out an order to suppress an uprising of peasants unhappy with Bolshevik policy. In 1950 the anarchist M. Gudel recalled this episode in Maximoff’s biography:
[In] 1919, he was in the ranks of the Red Army and fought against the counter-revolution with revolutionary zeal, but when his unit was called to pacify the Ukrainian peasants, Maximoff, having learned of the appointment, declared to the head of his unit: "The Red Army is organised to fight against the enemies of the Russian people, and not against the peasants and workers, I will not go to pacify the peasants." He was well aware of the meaning and consequences of this protest. He knew that in the Red Army, as in any other, refusing to obey and carry out an order was punishable severely. He also knew that the head of the unit had enormous powers and could shoot him without any trial. He knew the consequences of the protest and nevertheless went through with it. He acted this way because he knew, he was convinced, that the suppression and disarming of revolutionary peasants was one of the government's steps that was dangerous for the revolution. He did not want to be a participant in this crime.
Maximoff was indeed sentenced to death, but was pardoned and released thanks to the efforts of the All-Russian Union of Metalworkers. After all that had happened, Maximoff became an implacable opponent of the Bolsheviks and even rejected the very idea of the Soviets. The power of the Soviets, in his opinion, is no different from any other form of power and does not lead to the withering away of the state, but to its strengthening.
In 1919, Maximoff wrote for another anarcho-syndicalist journal, also called Golos Truda. He reviewed works on the theory of anarchism and discussed the possible directions of development of Russian anarcho-syndicalism. While criticising the Bolsheviks, Maximoff did not forget about the theorists of anarchism, many of whom, in his opinion, distort the traditional socio-political meaning of anarchist doctrine. In particular, Apollon Karelin and his community of mystical anarchists came under fire.
In opposition to the anarcho-mystics, pan-anarchists and many other thinkers, Maximoff proposed to create a “program” of anarcho-syndicalism understandable to the general public, where the actual philosophical part would be an outline of political ideas from William Godwin to Kropotkin.
It is noteworthy that philosophy in his project is subordinated to the political program of building an anarchist society. Maximoff was not interested in metaphysics, aesthetics, or ontology. He allowed people of different philosophical views into the ranks of anarcho-syndicalists, as long as these views did not contradict the practice of revolutionary struggle.
At the end of 1920, the Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, defeated the rebel army of Nestor Makhno. Already in 1921, along with the “Makhnovshchina”, all anarchist institutions on the territory of Ukraine were liquidated, including the Confederation of Anarchist Organizations “Nabat,” many of whose members (Volin, Mark Mrachny-Klavansky, Aron Baron, Alexey Olonetsky, and others) were under arrest. In January 1921, the prisoners were transferred from Kharkov to Moscow. The general atmosphere of anxiety was aggravated by the fact that the health of the 79-year-old Kropotkin, whose authority had long prevented mass repressions against anarchists, had deteriorated sharply.
In an attempt to establish a dialogue with the Bolsheviks, a delegation of anarchists (Maximoff, Alexei Borovoy, and Alexander Shapiro) went to the Cheka, but the initiative did not bring any results. Meanwhile, a bulletin on Kropotkin’s health was published in Izvestia, and Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman went to see the sick man. The Bolsheviks showed the utmost possible care for Kropotkin, but the arrested anarchists continued to be kept in prison. When Kropotkin died (8 February, 1921), the Soviet authorities decided to arrange a funeral for the great revolutionary at the expense of the state. Obituaries were published in Izvestia and Pravda. Maximoff became one of the main initiators of the campaign aimed against the Bolsheviks’ attempts to use the memory of Kropotkin in their own interests.
Through the efforts of Maximoff, Borovoy, and many others, the Commission of Anarchist Organizations for the Funeral of P. A. Kropotkin was created. Maximoff recalled its activities as follows: “By energetic actions, the Commission discouraged the Bolsheviks from burying P. A. at state expense and thus once again advertising themselves to the international revolutionary proletariat, for which the Bolsheviks, in turn, tried to cause the Commission a number of difficulties, which the latter wrote about in its report. “The Cheka was waiting for the moment to deal with everyone who actively spoke during Kropotkin week, and at the same time to settle scores with some members of the Funeral Commission. This moment soon arrived”.
Translator’s note by Malcolm Archibald
This is a translated excerpt from the new book To Kill in Oneself the State – How rebels, philosophers and dreamers invented Russian anarchism, published in Russian by Moscow philosopher Nikolai Gerasimov. The phrase “I killed in myself the state” is a refrain from the popular song “The State” by the Russian anarchist poet Yegor Letov. This survey includes chapters on such familiar figures as Peter Kropotkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Emma Goldman, as well as such diverse thinkers as Alexander Sviatogor (biocosmism), Georgiy Chulkov (mystical anarchism), and Andrey Andreyev (neo-nihilism).
The Red Terror of the early Soviet state, followed by the Great Terror of the 1930s, physically eliminated those proponents of Russian anarchism who had not fled abroad. Gerasimov points out that in post-Soviet Russia the Communists could still rely on nostalgia for their former political culture. But for anarchists, instead of a living tradition there was only a void. Nevertheless, he has some hope for the future because anarchists, with their willingness to take bold measures, can thrive in an era of crisis such as the one we live in now. The excerpt is from Chapter 9, pp. 279-286.
Top photo: Maximoff at Kropotkin’s funeral (top left, behind Emma Goldman)
