London, day 1

In London, last night we stayed with two ex-Newcastle friends.
Pictures will follow of the toothpaste made by a guy who loved reading Kropotkin when he was young, and of the man on the train reading Gerard Winstanley, the man in the cafe reading Mutual Aid, and the books in Freedom Bookshop by Peter Kropotkin. I was also surprised to see a little stack of my bothy zines in there too.

This picture will, when completed, make it into the zine I will make of the travels. For now though, I need to find a bed for the night.

books books books

I am carrying SO many books.
Almost all my weight is books.

It's 3 in the morning before I go to London, and I haven't got through the books I meant to just get notes from and then leave behind. So I'm carrying even MORE down, with the hope of leaving them in London once I'm done with them. But before that, here are some I am at least leaving behind, with much regret. I didn't even get Kropotkin's classics out of my book-built shelving unit, but at least they're online. It's the more obscure or new stuff I want to finish my notes for, but I won't... And two of the biggest, most-filled-with-sticky-notes are from the library ...

A couple of Swiss things

"Freedom to travel was one of the many new relaxations enjoyed by Russian citizens under Alexander II, and one result of thsi was the establishment of student colonies in foreign towns, including Heidelberg and Zurich. Soon spies of the Third Section (Russian secret police) were reporting back that these places had been turned into cesspits of Nihilism. The area around ZXurich Polytechnic became heavily infested with young Russians whose loud voices and carefree gesticulations - not to mention their extreme Socialist views and reputation for promiscuity - shocked the staid burghers of that ancient Swiss City."

from Ronald Hingley's 'Nihilists'

Bakunin: "In Switzerland, in spite of all the democratic revolutions that have taken place there, it is still always the class in comfortable circumstances, the bourgeoisie, that is to say, the class privileged by wealth, leisure, and education, which governs. The sovereignty of the people - a word which, anyway, we detest because in our eyes, all sovereignty is detestable - the government of the people by themselves is likewise a fiction. The people is sovereign in law, not in fact, for necessarily absorbed by their daily labour, which leave them no leisure, and if not completely ignorant, at least very inferior in education to the bourgeoisie, they are forced to place in the hands of the latter their supposed sovereignty. The sole advantage which they get out of it in Switzerland, as in the United States, is that ambitiuos minorities, the political class, cannot arrive at power otherwise than by paying court to the people, flattering their fleeting passions, which may sometimes be bad, and most often deceiving them.
[but]
It is true that the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy, for at least in the republic there are moments when, though always exploited, the people are not oppressed, while in monarchies they are never anything else."

Also criticised "the parts of Switzerland where the Marxiam programme prevails, at Geneva, Zurich, Basel ... the International has descended to the point of being no longer anything more than a sort of electoral box for the profit of the Radical bougeois."
As opposed to hte programme of the International which states "The emancipation of the toilers can be the work only of the toilers themselves."

From K.J.Kenafick's edited Bakunin, 'Marxism Freedom & the State'

Kropotkin: "The egalitarian relations which I found in the Jura mountains; the independence of thought and expression which I saw developing in the workers and their unlimited devotion to the cause appealed strongly to my feelings; and when I came away from the mountains, after a week's stay with the watchmakers, my views upon socialism were settled; I was an anarchist."

1898, Luigi Luccheni kills Austria's Empress Elizabeth, in Geneva.

A few Paris sights

The Movement of the Free Spirit begain in 1200 among Paris intellectuals gathered around William Aurifex as a rebellion against the church. Openly contemptuous of monks (wearing a patched red cowl as a parody of a habit), they disrupted church services by engaging priests in debate. The central group was swiftly executed for heresy, but the movement spread to virtually every part of Europe.

Sans culottes flocked into the Champ de Mars in July 1791 to sign or set their mark on a petition calling for the King's abdication - they were violently dispersed by sabres and bullets.
[pic to insert here]
In spring 1793, after 4 years of civil war and rocketing food prices, they rose up and toppled the Government, coining the term 'anarchist' as they did so:
"We are the poor Sans-culottes, an association of artisans and peasants. We know who our friends are: those who have delivered us from the clergy, nobility, the feudal systems, tithes, the monarchy and all the ills which follow in its train, those whom the aristocrats have called the 'anarchists'."

Their example of mass direct action endured.

From Clifford Harper's 'Anarchy: A Graphic guide'

1848 revolution
"a struggle of class against class, a sort of Servile war" Tocqueville
"the first great battle ... between the two classes that split modern society" Marx

1871 was the first genuinely workers' revolution - first time urban workers created their own self-government.

From George Rude's Ideology and Popular Protest

After the Commune was destroyed, Louis Michel said at her trial:
"You are now the victors, but I tell you, in the end the social revolution will be stronger than you. I demand that you lawfully murder me as you have lawfully murdered others. The lead that pierced their breasts I want to pierce my breast also. If you are not cowards, kill me. Should you decided not to do it then I will preach hatred against your laws and your society as long as my life lasts. I cry out for revenge against the murderers and executioners of the commune."

From the terrorist period of the 1890s:

At the May Day demonstrations in Paris in 1891, nine people were killed at Fourmies, and at Clichy there was a riot in which 3 wounded anarchists were taken to Clichy police station wehre they were seriously assaulted by the police, and not even given facilities for bathing their wounds. At trial, presided over by M.Benoit, two were sentenced to 5 and 3 years imprisonment. All the talk was then of revenge.

On 11 March, Ravachol & 2 companions, he carrying two kilograms of dynamite, sharp pieces of metal and two revolvers in his pockets, wearing a top hat and tailcoat so as not to attract attention, took a tram to the hosue in the Boulevard Saint Germain where M.Benoit lived. Ravachol left his 2 companions to go up the steps, and bombed the place. He committed various other crimes also.

Later, at Montbrison prison, Ravachol spend the last 3 weeks of his life in peaceful serenity. He became a folk hero to many, not so much for his violent escapades (though revenge was a powerful urge for many), as for the courage and defiance with which he met his fate. On his way to the guillotine, he sang 'Pere Duchene'

Si tu veux etre heureux
nom de dieu!
Pends ton proprietaire,
Coup' les cures en deux
nom de dieu!
Foutes les eglis' par terre.
Sang-dieu!
Et l'bon dieu dans la merde
nom de dieu!
Et l'bon dieu dans la merde.

which translates:

If you want to be hapy
By God!
String up your landlord
Cur the sky-pilots in two
By God!
Knock down the churches
God's blood!
And fling the Good God on hte dungheap
By God!
And the Good God on the dungheap.

Popular songs commemorated Ravachol, two of which translate as:

My lads, it's very sad,
The moral of this story.
Here it is, in a few words.
It's that when one's an anarchist
One mustn't boast of one's daring deeds
To young cafe waiters.

And:

In the great city of Paris
There are some well-fed bourgeois
There are some starvelings too
With empty bellies
And these are very hungry
Long live the sound!
Long live the sound!
Of the explosion!

9th december 1893, Auguste Vaillant threw a bomb in the Palais Bourbon, the seat of the French parliament, while the Chamber of Deputies was in session.
Vaillant's execution took place in the square in front of La Roquette prison, on the morning of 6th February 1894. With barriers up, drizzle pouring, Vaillant declined to see a chaplain, saying "Religion is a useless and grotesque thing." He hummed an anarchist song and then said "The bourgeoisie whom I attempted to destroy is revenging itself. It is its right. The people who suffer will revenge itself in its turn." He walked to the scaffold with his head held high, and shouted out "Death to the bourgeoisie and long live anarchism!" before the guillotine.
At the graveyard, flowers were left. One mourning card read:

"As they have sprinkled the earth
At the hour of the rising sun
With the august and life-giving dew,
The sacred drops of your blood,
Beneath the leaves of this palm
Which outraged Right bestows on you,
You can sleep your calm slumber
O martyr ... you will be avenged."

12 February 1894, Emile Henry's bomb exploded at the Hotel Terminus, aimed at its bourgeois clientele.
His father had been a member of the Internationale, and as an officer of the National Guard during the siege of Paris, he was elected to the Commune to represent the 10th arrondissement on 26th March 1871. At first he pursued negotiation, but when this failed, he supported the Commune in order to save the Republic, whose very existence was menaced by the Versaillese troops. When they invaded Paris, he escaped the massacres to Spain (San Martin near Barcelona), where Emile was born. In poverty, the family settled at 3 Rue de Jouy in Paris, the father dying in 1882.
His brother was held in Clairvaux prison for propaganda of the deed.
Emile Henry's execution took place on 21 may 1894 in the Place de la Roquette (he'd been held in the Grande Roquette prison. Barriers for the small crowd, hundreds of soldiers and various newspaper men - a grand occasion!
His last words were "Courage, comrades! Long live anarchism!"

The assassination of the French President which followed in Lyons saw the perpetrator Caserio, once he checked his tears, repeat the same words after the sentence of execution was given. He was kept in the St.Paul prison, arms tied at night lest he commit suicide, and he read Don Quixote. Louis Michel, the veteran of the Paris Commune, wrote that "The blow struck at Carnot was a blow at the bourgeoisie of the whole world. It was not an assassination. It was an execution. Ravachol, Henry and Vaillant are avenged." Caserio's final words were 'Vive l'anarchie!'

From 'Four patients of Dr.Deibler', a fantastic book, by J.C.Longoni.

A few more notes on Lyons:

Its silk-weavers had a far longer tradition of militancy than craftsmen in Paris. The 18th century saw many violent conflicts between employers and employees. In 1786 they had fought for a minimum wage, and for the first time identified themselves as a 'class' exploited by their masters. Thus class consciousness first appeared here in time for the revolution of 1789. The workers lived in densely packed suburbs like La Croux Rousse and Parrache.
In November 1831 the weavers rose in rebellion, chanting the slogan 'Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant' (Live working or die fighting), overpowered the local garrison and took control of the city. Lacking organisation, they accepted a compromise and returned to their districts. They then organised in the Society of Mutual Duty and prepared for a general strike - Mutuellism was therefore banned by the Paris Government and its members arrested. This then led to further uprisings, spreading to Paris etc...

Blanqui was the first to use the term 'proletarire' in 1832.

From George Rude's 'Ideology and Popular Protest'.

The final word here from Jean Genet, who wrote it on the wall in Paris in 1968:
"C'est triste a dire, mais je ne pense que l'on puisse vaincre sans les drapeaux rouges et noires. Mais ils faut detrure - apres."
= Unfortunately I don't think we can win without the red and black flags. But they must be destroyed - afterwards.

A few London sights

Not knowing if Kropotkin's old house still stands, or any of the original anarchist clubs, there are at least these locations in London:

Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park for free speech fights - literally a fight on days like November 13 1887, Bloody Sunday when many South London workers were injured by police batons blocking their approach over the bridges. Other processions were blocked by police, but one North London contingent did make it to Trafalgar Square, to be attacked and wounded by police. One young worker, Alfred Linnel, was beaten to death. A great procession followed his coffin to the grave, with William Morris giving the funeral oration. A vast crowd stood bareheaded as Morris read the Death Chant:

"They will not learn; they have no ears to harken,
They turn their faces from the eye of fate,
Their gay-lit halls shut out the skies that darken,
But lo! this dead man knocking at the gate."

The refrain was often repeated in the years that followed:

"Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day."

And fight went on, and for a period the Square was won for free speech.

In Hyde Park, a mass meeting for 23 July 1866 was met with posters declaring the park closed from 5pm. The police refused entry to the park and the majority of the mass Reform League demo followed its leaders to Trafalgar Square, where after a few speeches the crowd went home.

But meanwhile, back at the park, tens of thousands had remained, massed at two places. At Bayswater road a throng hurled themselves at the massive iron rails, which were thrown down; at the same time, workers in Park Lane tore down the park railings and the two sections joined forces to fight the police.
The Foot guards were sent in, and the workers sought to fraternise, halting the troops near the gates. Then the horse guards trotted in, again the workers cheered, the cavalry trotted off again and the police were attacked again. More foot and cavalry guards were then sent in with orders to shoot if necessary. Many were wounded, but on that day it was the workers who won. As a Reform League paper reported:

"The people have triumphed, in so far as they have vindicated their right to speak, resolve and exhort in Hyde park. True, the gates were closed against them, and lo! in twentyh minutes after the Park all around was one vast, gaping gate. The ordinary gates were the only closed part of the fencing."

From Tom Brown's 'British Syndicalism; Pages of labour History', which also lists newcastle's Bigg market as our local area for free speech.

Kings Cross, where 'the Alarm' was printed for a while, by a small group who pooled their money to make it happen. They hired a premises behind a shop in Ossulston St, Euston Rd, which was then taken over by the 'freedom group'.

Charlotte Wilson left the Freedom paper when its editor put his own slant and censorship over the contents, but workers in the group got together and kept the paper going with John Turner as publisher.
The income from pamphlets, aided by Kropotkin's reputation, kept 'Freedom' going for years.

The London Freedom group hired a room at 144 High Holborn, from the Emily Davison Dining Club, and carried on meetings there for several years. They also held oepn-air meetings in Hyde Park.

From George Cores' 'Personal recollections of the anarchist past'

Anchoring Myself

I'm leaving 4 little talismans in the keeping of friends to keep me safe. Here are 3 of them.

Anarchy in the USSR: ed.Phil Ruff

I've been upset by a lot of the research reading I've done for my trip. Beginning with the liberal ideals and heroism of 1848, gunned down. To the amazing courage of those who despite failure, despite having lost, despite knowing the same would happen to them, still rose up and strove again and again. From the horrors of Baron von Ungern-Sternberg in Dauria and Mongolia, to the unfathomable scale of the death-camps under Stalin.

It's fascinating the courage of people who, during an age when just making a joke about Stalin would see you sent to the gulag and die, your family condemning you in order to save themselves, would nonetheless declare themselves loyal to the flag of anarchism and its uncompromising ideal.

But in a way, I found the more recent stories of anarchism in Russia the most upsetting of all. The notes which follow come from a book published in 1991, and it features optimistic voices from within the USSR, hoping for a new dawn of soldarity and freedom that reality just wasn't going to bear out.

Instead of a grassroots anarchist rebirth, post-perestroika Russia was taken over by nationalism and capitalism, and the anarchists in Russia are under ongoing and lethal attack by the fascists who so outnumber them.

MOSCOW

p5 On 28 May, 1989, 20,000 people marched through Moscow, demonstrating against the Congress of People's Deputies. The Guardian's Jonathan Steele noticed amongst the banners, "a black flag with a red star carried by the recently formed Anarcho-Syndicalist Club. The slogan read: 'No confidence in the Supreme Soviet - form a left-wing faction.'"
This was the first open display of anarchists in the Soviet capital since 13 February, 1921, when a crowd of the same size joined the funeral cortege of Peter Kropotkin. Then came Kronstadt, the rout of Makhno and the outlawing of open anarchist organisation. Trotsky boasted: "At last the Soviet government, with an iron broom, has rid Russia of anarchism".

p41 In 1921, Lenin wrote: 'All this syndicalist nonsense must go in the wastepaper basket. To proceed on those lines would mean thrusting the Party aside and making the dictatorship of the Proletariat impossible.' And he was right. Anarchism will thrust the Party and all parties aside, for anarcho-syndicalism empowers people with the means to seize control of their own lives.
(Black Flag no.200)

p78 Golos Truda's publishing house and bookshops in Leningrad and Moscow, finally closed down in June 1929. Its final work was called 'the Bolshevik Dictatorship and the Anarchist Viewpoint'. An underground anarchist press was uncovered by the OGPU in Cheliabinsk in 1930.

p76 Moscow metro station [and volcano and towns] named after Kropotkin, statue of him with cat near the never-reopened Kropotkin museum, and even a Kropotkin rouble was minted! Despite Lenin's admiration, and the offer for deluxe state editions of his Mutual Aid and the Great French Revolution (which Kropotkin politely declined), his political works were banned until Glasnost, and were circulated only in illicit samizdat versions. His scientific-geographical works, however, always were admired.

p8 1950, underground student group formed in Moscow, avowedly Marxist but with the slogan 'Soviets, not Party'. Its manifesto opposed all political parties, and advocated government based in trade unions & worker & peasant soviets.
'Predictably, its members were all arrested and shipped-of to the Gulag.'

p15 First Congress of the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists (KAS), Moscow 1 May 1989
[Met 2 kilometers from the official state parade, knowing they were watched by the KGB.]
"Alexei told how he had been listening to the BBC's Russian language service when they quoted from the anarchist paper Obschina. He then realised he was not alone, "and now I am at this Congress." He had also taken part in a strike over dangerous working conditions. He was fired and now alone. ...
The Congress agreed on a minimal programme and decided that their principle motto would be 'all power to the people, not the party', the slogan of the Kronstadt workers and sailors during the uprising of 1921."
[outlined a federalist model of organisation, and changed the symbol from the red star on a black flag to the red and black banner of the international anarcho-syndicalist movement.]
(reported in Black Flag no.197)

p27 In November 1989, KAS adopted a pacifist stance, seeing 'political terrorism' as leading to the strengthening of totalitarian structures and thus as counter-productive.

p19 "Our motto remains the words of Bakunin: 'Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality'." Andrei Isaev

p23 Obschina no.43
"We do not want to impose our views on you, even less to call upon you to sacrifice your lives for them on the barricades. We can see perfectly well that time has killed the old, stubborn, terrorist, war anarchism. Anarchism is dead ... so long live anarchism, the great ideal of liberty, mutual respect and solidarity among people!"

p55 Moscow Union of Anarchists, declaration of principles, February 1991
"Replacement of the 'barracks' type of army and of the State-employed police forces by full access to arms for all the people, on a voluntary basis and with professional branches in the 'scientific' sectors of the army (chemical weapons, anti-missile technology...).
Freedom and self-determination for all peoples and nations."
p56 "Free movement of people within the country, as well as in and out of it (the enslaving system in which registration of the dwelling place, passports and identity cards are compulsory, is abolished)."

p41 1990 May Day in Moscow saw the red and black flags of anarchy being paraded through the streets of Moscow bearing the slogans 'Power to the people, not the parties' and 'Tell us, Communists when is your state going to whither away?'. And in May Day demonstrations from Leningrad to Kharkov, Kaluga to Angarsk in Siberia, the anarchists marched.

p58 SMOT Council of representatives, Moscow February 1991
"When you are a worker, you have nothing to do in everyday life with Yeltsin, Landsbergis or Gorbachev, but rather with the cashier at work who pays you little, and with the cashier at the shop who takes a lot from you, and even peeps in your passport. We worry much more about changing those relationships, than about the relationships between Yeltsin, and Gorbachev and Landsbergis."

RADIO

p9 In 1970, a BBC World Service programme about Soviet radio pirates made mention of one which described itself as anarchist.

ST PETERSBURG

p10 25th CPSU Congress in Feb 1976, leaflets appeared all over Leningrad declaring the Party compromised, its policies bankrupt, its methods Stalinist and its Congress a bluff. Anonymous authors called for pluralism and humane socialism, ending: "Long live the new revolution! Long live communism!"
2 weeks later, KGB arrested 17yr old Andrei Reznikov, sentenced to a strict regime camp but due to his youth was transferred to Red Army after 2 months.
Reznikov a member of a Leningrad student circle called the Left Opposition. Another member, Alexis Khavine, arrested in 1977 for disseminating works by Kropotkin.
[Summer 1978, they published 3 issues of a magazine, including anarchsit Trotskyist and New Left ideas, eg. Marcuse & Cohn-Bendit, plus reprints of samizdat manifestos, articles about the Kronstadt rebellion etc..]
The Left Opposition planned a conference of leftist groups from across the USSR (Leningrad, Moscow, the Baltics, Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Caucasus) in Sept 1978. It was postponed, and those who did turn up were rounded up by the police. Then police raids, KGB questioning, arrests.
On 5 december, over 200 students staged a demonstration in Leningrad's Our Lady of Kazan Square, in protest at the arrests.
[Reznikov attacked in the street, those arrested sent to hard labour, internal exile, psychiatric hospital etcc. Some forced to emigrate to avoid that fate.]

p11 On 7 October, 1979, Vladimir Mikhailov, Alexei Stasevich and Alevtina Koncheva were arrested in Leningrad, for painting slogans and fly-posting leaflets, which demanded 'democracy not demagogy' and 'down with state capitalism!' The leaflets advocated an 'anti-authoritarian order' and opposed the 'evils' of the family, private property and the state.
[found guilty of 'hooliganism', VM & AS 3 years in a strict regime camp, AK 1year 3months. All were members of the Movement of Revolutionary Communards, about which little is known.]

p12 Formation of SMOT in 1979, the Free General Workers Union, continuing at least till 1982 = the first active advocate of independent working class organisation to appear in the USSR since the elimination of the anarcho-syndicalist organisations of the 1920s.

SIBERIA

p5 The full story of the anarchist underground during the Stalin years has not been told (there were 'armed anarchist uprisings' in Siberia, in the late 1920s, of which nothing is known).

p8 The penal colonies of North Russia, Siberia and Central Asia were home to anarchists of every ilk and nation in the years 1946-54: 'religious anarchists' (Tolstoyans and Monashki), Ukrainian Makhnovists, anarcho-syndicalists, Poles, Russians, Latvians.
They participated in a wave of strikes and uprisings (sometimes armed), triggered off in the camps in 1953, by news of Stalin's death and the execution of Beria.
[Spanish CNT members took part in Karaganda insurrection, Kazakhstan]
The most bitter revolts took place in the coal-mining camps at Norilsk and Vorkuta, in the summers of 1953/54, where the banner of the strikers was the black flag.

p76 The Monashki was a libertarian Christian sect started by former Communists in Moscow & Leningrad at the end of the 1930s. It espoused a strict doctrine of civil disobedience to the state, and advocated a stateless, classless society, founded on the gospel of 'from each according to their ability, to all according to their needs', with the commune providing the basic unit of society. The movement seems to have been quite widespread among the peasants of Siberia and Central Asia. Inside the camps, its members distinguished themeslves by their determined refusal (backed up by countless hunger strikes) of any work by which the state might profit. There were some 8000 Monashki in the camps of Vorkuta in 1953.

p9 1973 report by ex-prisoner that she encountered anarchists in all the camps through which she passed. In one, a group of anarchist prisoners included young students and elderly women who had been in detention since before the Stalin era.
Another inmate, from 1957-1965, met anarchists "They had read books by Kropotkin and sometimes by Bakunin (whose works are very hard to find in libraries inside the USSR); they were even conversant with the ideas of Proudhon and with contemporary Western thought".

p38 Sitnikov, anarchist and striking worker from Siberia, murdered by KGB.
p74 Aaron Baron first exiled to Siberia by the Tsar's regime. Escaped to the USA and edited teh anarchist newspaper the Alarm (still in Chicago) until returning to Russia in 1917. One of the organisers of the Nabat (Alarm) Confederation of Anarchist Organisations in Ukraine, in 1918; joined Makhno's army; arrested November 1920, two years in Orel prison, then the notorious Solovetsky islands until 5 Jan 1925. Arrested in Moscow soon after his release and exiled to Altai, Siberia. his wife, Fanny Avrutska, was summarily executed (with the anarchist poet Lev Cherny) by the Cheka in Sept 1921.

TOMSK

p24 1990 On 3 April in Tomsk (Siberia), a new KAS paper Golos Truda (The Voice of Labour) came out.

EASTERN EDGE OF RUSSIA DURING WORLD WAR II

p6 A lot of the old political prisoners [incl left SR leader Maria Spiridovna] were killed by the NKVD in 1941, during the evacuation of territory threatened by the Nazi invasion: to stop them falling into the hands of the Germans (who would have hanged them!).
p75 At the start of WW2 Orel isolation prison for political offenders held 5000 prisoners. When the Germans were about to take Orel, the prisoners were herded into the basement, which was then flooded. All 5000 died.

p6 By 1942, Germans occupied Ukraine, Byelorussia & reached Leningrad & outskirts of Moscow: amongst the partisan groups who resisted, there were some who professed an allegiance to anarchism and the memory of Makhno.

p8 Amongst occupying troops at end of war, a secret organisation called Zavietti Kronstadta (the Kronstadt accords) alleged to be active in the Red Army in East Germany and Austria, including "former Makhnovists or veterans of Kronstadt".

LIBERTY FOR OTHER NATIONS
(echo of 1848 national liberation hopes)

p52 Open Letter handed out in Moscow, 13 January 1991
"We support the Lithuanian people's determination in their struggle for independence. We hope the government of our country, the Soviet Union, will fail in its attempt to bring Lithuania back into the USSR.
No to the Empire! Yes to a voluntary union of free nations! Long live your freedom and our freedom!
Signed by supporters of the leftist movement 'Self-management by the People'"
[ short list of names, including 3 KAS members]

UKRAINE

p7 In 1944-5, the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) noted in its war despatches, frequent encounters with "the Ukrainian anarchist partisans". Assuming these were the same people who later appeared as prisoners, in the camps at Karaganda and Vorkuta, they included some old members of Makhno's army; the younger ones having become anarchists under the spell of Makhno's legend.

p7 Nabat youth organisation set up by V.I.Us. [not the same as the earlier Nabat]
A school headmaster who had been badly wounded and captured by the Germans in 1941, Us escaped to his former village and recruited his former pupils as guerrillas. In November 1943, Nabat launched an armed uprising, seized the village and created a bridgehead on the West bank of the Dnieper, which it held until reinforced by a Corp of the Second Ukrainian Front. Nabat was highly commended by the political division of the Fourth Guards Army. After Soviet forces regained control of Ukraine, Us was arrested and sentenced to twenty years, for "voluntarily surrendering and creating a nationalist organisation".
[Set free 4 years later, he and Nabat were finally rehabilitated after Stalin's death.]

p33 Piotr Petrovich Siouda, 53 year old activist of the KAS, was killed in secret on 5 May, 1990. He had been investigating the repression carried out by the KGB in the town of Novocherkassk [in 1962] for the KAS paper Volya, and making the details widely known through the communist press too.
He was one of the survivors of the insurrectionary strike wave of the '60s, in which the workers were shot down in town after town.
"The ethnic unrest and the fascist groups that sprang up in the seventies were a deliberately introduced counter-balance to workers struggles - an exactly parallel situation with the capitalist world."

p35 A few days before he was killed, he told a local reporter that he had come into possession of a secret KGB document whcih gave the order to fire upon the crowd of rioters in Novocherkassk in 1962, constituting 'irrefutable proof' of the KGB's guilt.
Born Rostov-on-Don, founder member of the KAS.

p78 Solzhenitsyn reports on the Novocherkassk massacre that the wounded all disappeared without trace. Their families, and those of the dead, were all deported to Siberia, along with many of the workers. "A whole town rebels - and every trace is licked clean and hidden."

ALEXANDROVSK

p39 Never mentioned in the official press, workers uprisings in the 1960s in Alexandrovsk, Murom, Nizhni-Tagil, Temirtau, Odessa, Dneprodzerzhinsk, Lubny, Kuybyshev, Kemerovo, Kirvoy-Rog, Grozny, Donetsk, Yaroslavl etc... over housing and wages.
In Alexandrovsk, summer 1961, a worker beaten to death by the militia. Factory workers struck and went to the Commisariat with banners demanding the prosecution of the murderers. After they had stormed the building and set it on fire, they went to the prison where the soldiers refused to fire on the crowd. Special troops were then sent in and the massacre began. [over 100 killed]
The director of the factory who had supported the strike, the doctor who had exhumed the corpse of the first worker killed and attested to the means of his death, the painter who made the banners, were secretly judged and shot.