         ********* After the Fall *************
         A New Beginning for Russian Anarchism?
                                   Guest Writer

It was only natural that anarchism would reappear in 
this country where the state has played such an 
omnipresent role in social life.  The role that the 
state has played in usurping other forms of organisation 
has led people growing up in this society and those who 
visit it to contemplate the mechanisms of the state.  
Negative judgements of these mechanisms are usually 
formed, so of course some people would come to realise 
that the state cannot be reformed. 

Even though a disproportionate amount of classical 
anarchist theorists and figures came from Russia, the 
movement lived a short life; the anarchist movement per 
se only really started up shortly before the 1905 
revolution and was prematurely executed shortly after 
the consolidation of Soviet power. After a few years of 
Stalinism, by 1938 there were no signs of anarchist 
activity to be found. Still, ideas die hard and the 
spirit of anarchism was revived in at least a few 
individuals and small groups after the Thaw1.  The first 
self-proclaimed anarcho-syndicalist group was created in 
1958 but it was short-lived, due to the effective work 
of the KGB. [see box].  Throughout the '60s, up until 
the Perestroika period, various groups sprang up now and 
again, but all were rather small and insignificant. 

As one can imagine, the beginning of Perestroika and 
Glasnost signalled the start of a new era.  A new type 
of movement, referred to as 'the informal movement' 
would grow and take the place of the dissidents. The 
informals differed from the previous generation of 
oppositionists in several vital regards.  The dissidents 
were very few in numbers and lived in their own ghetto, 
with few supporters amongst the intelligentsia; the 
informals were much larger in number and found more 
support in the intelligentsia and elsewhere as political 
ideas and cultural activity moved out of the dark 
recesses of society.  The informals also worked in a 
wider range of activity than was possible for the 
dissidents.  They often operated through official 
organisations, such as ideological, youth and cultural 
groups and they tried to turn the language of socialist 
ideology against the Soviet state.  It was in the 
informal movement where the modern Russian anarchist 
movement took root.

Many of the anarchists who came out of the informal 
movement started off as critical Marxists.  The first 
members of the Moscow Obschina group met while working 
in the clandestine Organizing Committee of the All-Union 
Marxist Workers' Party.  Many of these people were 
historians and therefore had access to anarchist works 
that normal people were forbidden to read.  They started 
to publish a samizdat magazine called Obschina (Commune) 
and eventually established an organisation, the 
Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists (KAS).

The early post-Perestroika anarchist movement was rather 
atypical in several aspects.  First, it existed in a 
time where there was an unusually high interest in 
politics, due partially to the fact that everything was 
new and that history was being reclaimed from the 
Ministry of Truth2,  and partially to the fact that 
people were hoping for something better to be offered 
for their future.  Second, it was created by people who 
had no experience of non-governmental organisation from 
which to draw lessons. Third, it was able to attract a 
rather substantial number of people in a short time; KAS 
had up to 2,000 members at one point.  All of these 
things however contributed to what many people regard, 
perhaps inappropriately, as the fall of the Russian 
anarchist movement.

Interest in politics has waned considerably in the past 
decade.  Partly this can be explained by the deep shock 
of Dr. Gaidar's therapy and by the fact that happiness 
is measured in terms of material acquisitions now more 
than ever before.  Also, the novelty of pluralism has 
somewhat worn off, and no grassroots movement ever 
managed to grow out of the informal movement, 
essentially leaving the people as disenfranchised from 
politics and as disillusioned as ever before.  The 
informal anarchists, not quite comprehending what 
strategies they could work, thought only on a massive 
scale; no doubt they imagined that the workers could 
mobilise to take control of their factories on some 
significant scale and some tried (and succeeded) to get 
into office at a local level, hoping to effect some pro-
worker legislation no doubt.  (As for taking control of 
factories, it would have been a tall order in a country 
where people are so used to being ruled but also, the 
privatizers had something else in mind and apparently 
their promises of future material wealth held out more 
promise to workers.)

It is hard to say exactly how many anarchists there are 
in the former Soviet Union, particularly because there 
have been too many people and groups that label 
themselves anarchists but cannot be identified as such 
by their politics.  (Such gross mutant groups, like 
anarcho- monarchists and anarcho-democrats have existed; 
they obviously must be dismissed as quacks).  Still one 
can safely estimate the number of people who consciously 
consider themselves anarchists and who have some 
contacts with others as 200-300 people. 

The largest federations were FRAN (the Federation of 
Revolutionary Anarchists) and KAS which accounted for 
about 150 people.  This however will probably change 
since the creation of other organisations - 
Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists 
(KRAS), which wants to join the International Workers 
Association (IWA).;   the Ukrainian-based, Revolutionary 
Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists (RKAS), which 
considers affiliation with the IWA not to be on the 
agenda right now and the Siberian Confederation of 
Labour (SKT) which wants to concentrate on creating a 
syndicalist union and is not interested in taking sides 
in the conflicts between various sections of the 
international syndicalist movement.  Many smaller groups 
exist inside and outside of these groups; a typical 
group may have between 3 and 10 people and like 
everywhere else, they are connected by their similar 
ideas on what anarchism is and what needs to be done.  
There are also a number of individuals around the 
country who are quite active but belong to no group.

If previously an anarchist could be considered to be a 
person who read one of the journals, signed up and was a 
warm body at meetings, nowadays anarchists are forced to 
take a much more active role.  Most of the self-styled 
leaders who wrote programs and manifestos in the early 
days of post-Perestroika anarchism are gone, and 
although a few individuals have been more active than 
others in propagandising their ideas, small groups must 
meet and decide the eternal question: what is to be 
done?  In this regard they are not unlike small groups 
in other parts of the world, particularly in isolated 
places with no real contacts with any sort of radical 
community. 

Projects

Anarchists have started different projects, with varying 
degrees of success.  In Moscow some anarchists and other 
sympathetic listeners gather every Thursday to give 
lectures on various topics, including anarchism and 
other philosophies.  This is very important for people 
as we lack good books on anarchism in Russian and people 
need to understand it better.  Still, the question then 
becomes one of how is to conduct these lectures on a 
larger scale and how to advertise them so that people 
can show up and listen.  And how to attract people when 
so many are indifferent to politics?  Some people wanted 
to form a cultural centre but the person who found space 
wants to run things herself.  Instead of creating a 
space for different collectives to use, the space has 
become a hang out joint, sometimes visited by skinheads 
and other idiots but occasionally host to some 
discussion or concert as well.  In Tver and Kharbarovsk, 
concerts are sometimes held and in every city with some 
anarchist presence you might find a picket now and 
again.

One thing where anarchists have been somewhat productive 
is in creating zines3 and papers, although they are of 
varied quality.   Still this activity is limited as 
printing costs are prohibitively high and typically 
people cannot afford to buy them; the publications must 
be subsidised if they are to have any distribution.  At 
least a dozen come out sporadically, ranging from 
idiotic movement gossip sheets to larger zines with 
several interesting articles.

A number of groups have tried to make contact amongst 
workers, most notably some Ukrainian anarchists now part 
of RKAS (the Revolutionary Confederation of Anarcho-
Syndicalists, not to be confused with the Russian group 
KRAS, the Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-
Syndicalists).  Some people have formed 'unions', but 
many of these are purely symbolic, usually consisting of 
two or three people. Obviously, these people are at a 
loss over what to do.  There are no (and have not been) 
any grassroots movements here, in years, and so 
everything must be started from scratch.

The anarchists face an uphill battle here.  People are 
very accustomed to having the state handle everything 
for them and this attitude is antithetical to the 
anarchists' principles of self organisation.  The state 
also did a good job of destroying most ties people had 
with each other; community was to extend no further than 
the nuclear family, a structure which dominates Soviet 
life and creates various barriers to organisation.  
(Although few people here realise this.)

Isolated into their minute cubicles, many people have 
retreated into the home, preferring it to the harsh new 
world of capitalist Russia.  There are no real leftist 
events, depriving anarchists of one of their traditional 
grounds for recruiting new people and there is little 
alternative media so to speak of. (The exception being 
in Kharbarovsk where local anarchists do a radio show.)

Those problems could be expected and we imagine that 
they plague people in other parts of the world as well.  
There are many places in the world that have very weak 
anarchist movements for much the same reasons; perhaps 
only the fact that there was Bakunin, Kropotkin and 
Makhno can explain why a small movement has grown in 
Russia.  There are also problems endemic to the Russian 
scene.  Most people are rather poor and it is difficult 
to fund activities so some people became rather 
dependent on fund raising from abroad, often creating 
mythologies around their groups and engaging in 
political prostitution.  Also, due to the strange 
alliance between 'left' authoritarian forces and 'right' 
authoritarian forces, some people wishing to add warm 
bodies to the count often hang out with not only 
leftists but fascists.  Naturally those people with half 
a brain have been trying to disown these people from the 
anarchist movement and the injustice they do to the 
movement is probably far more grave than anything else. 

Slowly but surely a few dozen people are trying to 
develop their ideas about anarchism and figure out how 
to organise something.  Personal politics are not an 
issue as yet and this reflects their status in society 
as a whole, but this will change.  Gradually anarchist 
texts will be translated into Russian and some native 
works are bound to appear as well.  The developmant of 
an anarchist movement may dependent on what will happen 
in the near future; threats of a return of wholesale 
authoritarianism always loom on the horizon and it is 
unclear whether or not material conditions will improve.  
Still one thing is clear: we are now laying the 
foundations for the future. 

Footnotes by R&BR
1  After Stalin died and Kruschev came to power, when 
the penalties for oppositional activity and the level of 
surveillance were reduced slightly.
2  An Orwellian reference (1984) to the fact that before 
Glasnost history could only be written in a way that 
vindicated the current leadership of the Communist party 
and its past actions.  History was a machine for 
justifying the party.
3  In the west a zine is typically a small circulation, 
crudely produced magazine distributed through personal 
contacts and by post rather than through selling in 
shops or other locations.  We presume this is also the 
meaning here.


     ******* After Stalin Box  *********

A group of people from the History Department of Moscow 
State University began to gather in 1957 and discuss 
different ideas, among them the ideas of workers' 
councils and of Bakunin.  They formed a clandestine 
group in Oct. '58 and wrote a program.  The group's 
activities ended in Jan. 1959 when one of its founders, 
Anatoly Mikhailovich Ivanov, was arrested in the History 
Library for writing anti-Soviet literature and sent to a 
psychiatric hospital.  He was released in 1960 and 
people began to gather again.  (Some people were poets 
and some political people so there were two tendencies 
in their loose group.)  Then in 1961, before the Party 
Congress, three of them, Osipov, Ivanov and Kuznetsov, 
were arrested for plotting to kill Kruschev.  Apparently 
they had seriously entertained this idea as they 
believed he would start a large-scale war.  None of the 
three resumed anarchist activities afterwards.

