Union of Russian Workers
Encyclopedia
The Union of Russian Workers in the United States and Canada, commonly known as the "Union of Russian Workers" (Союз Русских Рабочих, Soiuz Russkikh Rabochikh) was an anarchist
political association of Russian emigrants in the United States. The group was established shortly after the failure of the Russian Revolution of 1905
and was essentially annihilated in America by the 1919 Red Scare
in which it was specifically targeted by the Bureau of Investigation of the U.S. Department of Justice. Thousands of the group's adherents were arrested and hundreds deported in 1919 and 1920; still more voluntarily returned to Soviet Russia
. During its brief existence the organization, which was only loosely affiliated with the anarchosyndicalist Industrial Workers of the World
, published numerous books and pamphlets in the Russian language by anarchist writers, operated reading rooms and conducted courses to teach newly-arrived Russians the English language, and fulfilled a social function for emigrants half a world from home.
in 1908 by refugees from the defeated Russian Revolution of 1905. While some have estimated that by the end of the 1910s the Union of Russian Workers achieved a membership of about 10,000, a more sanguine estimate is that the group's membership topped out at about half that number.
The URW's declaration of principles called for the unification of Russian workers in the United States and Canada so that they might do battle against capitalism and the forces of authority. The group further declared itself in favor of supporting the struggles of non-Russian workers in America and the struggle for liberation from Tsarism in Russia as well. Although in its initial phase the organization promoted the philosophy of communist anarchism, over time the ideology
of the group evolved until in 1912 it declared itself for anarchosyndicalism and developed close ties with the Industrial Workers of the World
.
In addition to publishing books and pamphlets on anarchist and syndicalist themes, the Union of Russian workers additionally provided and educational and social function, maintaining reading libraries, conducting classes to teach the English language to newcomers from Russia, and providing a setting for socialization of Russian speaking emigrants with their fellows.
. The Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia showed every sign of beating the odds and retaining power. Additional communist uprisings dotted the map, including serious efforts in Finland, Hungary
, and Germany
. In America, the Left Wing
of the Socialist Party of America
began to organize itself, proclaiming the need for revolutionary socialism
in the United States. Politicians, press, and citizens on the street alike began to feel concerned about the potential for armed insurrection in America itself.
The Union of Russian Workers, small and isolated though it may have been, was seen by some as a source of the revolutionary contagion. On March 12, 1919, police raided headquarters of the organization, located on the Lower East Side
and arrested 162 people. Although at the time of the raid Detective Sergeant James Gegan of the New York City police department's "Bomb Squad" labeled the group "a front for alien subversive activity," results of the operation were ultimately rather less definitive, as only four of those arrested were ultimately charged with "criminal anarchy."
Fear still lingered. On June 8, 1919, the influential New York Times shrieked in an article spanning four columns that "500 Russian Reds" of the Union of Russian Workers were "agents spreading Bolshevism in the United States." Citing the constitution of the URW at length, the article breathlessly declared
With public opinion thus prepared, Federal authorities headed by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in an operation conducted by his "special assistant," J. Edgar Hoover
, launched a coordinated campaign in over 30 cities across America on the night of November 7/8, 1919 — the second anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. At 8:45 in the evening of November 7, 1919, dozens of plainclothes and uniformed members of the New York Police Department together with Federal law enforcement authorities swept down on the "People's House" located at 133 East 15th Street, headquarters of the Union of Russian Workers, in what one reporter characterized as "one of the most brutal raids ever witnessed in the city." A report in the socialist New York Call
melodramatically recounted the violence of the scene:
After taking nearly 100 of those present to police headquarters for questioning, 50 men and 2 women were held for possible deportation as "undesirable aliens."
According to the report of the head of the Bureau of Immigration, Anthony Caminetti
, a total of 351 aliens "of anarchist and kindred classes" were deported from the United States from July 1, 1918 to June 30, 1920. Of these political deportations, the vast majority were made at one time aboard the USAT Buford
, which departed from New York harbor on December 21, 1919, carrying 249 involuntary passengers. Chief among these were members of the Union of Russian Workers arrested in the series of raids conducted in the fall of 1919.
[Voice of Labor] in New York City beginning in 1911. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the editors returned home together to begin publishing the paper there. A new official Union of Russian Workers newspaper was launched in New York on February 26, 1919, Khleb i volia [Bread and Freedom], edited by G.V. Karpuk. According to documents seized by the Lusk Committee, the paid circulation of the latter publication was 4,547 in 1919.
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
political association of Russian emigrants in the United States. The group was established shortly after the failure of the Russian Revolution of 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
and was essentially annihilated in America by the 1919 Red Scare
First Red Scare
In American history, the First Red Scare of 1919–1920 was marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism. Concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and alleged spread in the American labor movement fueled the paranoia that defined the period.The First Red...
in which it was specifically targeted by the Bureau of Investigation of the U.S. Department of Justice. Thousands of the group's adherents were arrested and hundreds deported in 1919 and 1920; still more voluntarily returned to Soviet Russia
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
. During its brief existence the organization, which was only loosely affiliated with the anarchosyndicalist Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
, published numerous books and pamphlets in the Russian language by anarchist writers, operated reading rooms and conducted courses to teach newly-arrived Russians the English language, and fulfilled a social function for emigrants half a world from home.
Formation and development
The Union of Russian Workers (URW) was established in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1908 by refugees from the defeated Russian Revolution of 1905. While some have estimated that by the end of the 1910s the Union of Russian Workers achieved a membership of about 10,000, a more sanguine estimate is that the group's membership topped out at about half that number.
The URW's declaration of principles called for the unification of Russian workers in the United States and Canada so that they might do battle against capitalism and the forces of authority. The group further declared itself in favor of supporting the struggles of non-Russian workers in America and the struggle for liberation from Tsarism in Russia as well. Although in its initial phase the organization promoted the philosophy of communist anarchism, over time the ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
of the group evolved until in 1912 it declared itself for anarchosyndicalism and developed close ties with the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
.
In addition to publishing books and pamphlets on anarchist and syndicalist themes, the Union of Russian workers additionally provided and educational and social function, maintaining reading libraries, conducting classes to teach the English language to newcomers from Russia, and providing a setting for socialization of Russian speaking emigrants with their fellows.
Destruction
Political turmoil swept Europe in the years after World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. The Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia showed every sign of beating the odds and retaining power. Additional communist uprisings dotted the map, including serious efforts in Finland, Hungary
Hungarian Soviet Republic
The Hungarian Soviet Republic or Soviet Republic of Hungary was a short-lived Communist state established in Hungary in the aftermath of World War I....
, and Germany
German Revolution
The German Revolution was the politically-driven civil conflict in Germany at the end of World War I, which resulted in the replacement of Germany's imperial government with a republic...
. In America, the Left Wing
Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
The Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party was an organized faction within the Socialist Party of America in 1919 which served as the core of the dual communist parties which emerged in the fall of that year — the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party of America.-Precusors:A...
of the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
began to organize itself, proclaiming the need for revolutionary socialism
Revolutionary socialism
The term revolutionary socialism refers to Socialist tendencies that advocate the need for fundamental social change through revolution by mass movements of the working class, as a strategy to achieve a socialist society...
in the United States. Politicians, press, and citizens on the street alike began to feel concerned about the potential for armed insurrection in America itself.
The Union of Russian Workers, small and isolated though it may have been, was seen by some as a source of the revolutionary contagion. On March 12, 1919, police raided headquarters of the organization, located on the Lower East Side
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
and arrested 162 people. Although at the time of the raid Detective Sergeant James Gegan of the New York City police department's "Bomb Squad" labeled the group "a front for alien subversive activity," results of the operation were ultimately rather less definitive, as only four of those arrested were ultimately charged with "criminal anarchy."
Fear still lingered. On June 8, 1919, the influential New York Times shrieked in an article spanning four columns that "500 Russian Reds" of the Union of Russian Workers were "agents spreading Bolshevism in the United States." Citing the constitution of the URW at length, the article breathlessly declared
"An organization directly connected with Russia is at work in the United States with an underground propaganda for overthrow of the Government by force. * * *
"Traces of the activity of the organization have been found from New York to San Francisco.... The agitation has been chiefly among the Slav races, but Scandinavians and the representatives of other European races in this country have been subjects of the underground campaign. The main instrument of the propaganda is literature which calls for the overturn of government by violence, asserting that there is no moral wrong in accomplishing revolution by bloodshed.
"The literature is distributed at meetings and handed individually at other places to those whom it is thought are ready to give hearing to the measures advocated.... From the traces of their activity it is estimated that there are not less than 500 propagandists of the Russian Workers' Union in this country."
With public opinion thus prepared, Federal authorities headed by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in an operation conducted by his "special assistant," J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
, launched a coordinated campaign in over 30 cities across America on the night of November 7/8, 1919 — the second anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. At 8:45 in the evening of November 7, 1919, dozens of plainclothes and uniformed members of the New York Police Department together with Federal law enforcement authorities swept down on the "People's House" located at 133 East 15th Street, headquarters of the Union of Russian Workers, in what one reporter characterized as "one of the most brutal raids ever witnessed in the city." A report in the socialist New York Call
New York Call
The New York Call was a socialist daily newspaper published in New York City from 1908 through 1923. The Call was the second of three English-language dailies affiliated with the Socialist Party of America to be established, following the Chicago Daily Socialist while preceding the long running...
melodramatically recounted the violence of the scene:
"A witness of the event said that he saw one of the Russians trying to rush out of the building, his face and clothing covered with blood. Agonized cries were heard.
"One who was close to the scene while the raiders were covering themselves with the blood of men and women against whom no crime had been charged heard heavy thuds as of clubs descending on human flesh.
"All who attempted to escape were driven back into the building, and none but officers were permitted to enter. Two Call reporters who attempted to gather the facts of the assault were threatened with arrest if they did not leave at once. One policeman on the stoop of the building shouted to the crowd that had collected outside: 'If there’s a soldier among you, get after them!' * * *
"They were beaten, not only with clubs, but with blackjacksBlackjackBlackjack, also known as Twenty-one or Vingt-et-un , is the most widely played casino banking game in the world...
. After the police and other guardians of law had their fill of clubbing and blackjacking, they crowded the Russians together in the back of the hall and cross-examined them. Then they bandaged the heads of those who had suffered more than others, but even the bandages were heavily bloodstained. Meanwhile, patrol wagons which had been stationed in the neighborhood came clanging up and were filled as fast as they appeared with the Russians who had been beaten up. Most of them had their heads bandaged.
"They were thrown down steps of the stoop without ceremony. One of them moaned loudly and the crowd outside mimicked him. The crowd was not permitted to approach too closely and a Call reporter was unable to see what marks had been made by the clubs of the police on the faces of the assaulted men and women."
After taking nearly 100 of those present to police headquarters for questioning, 50 men and 2 women were held for possible deportation as "undesirable aliens."
Deportation via the USAT Buford
According to the report of the head of the Bureau of Immigration, Anthony Caminetti
Anthony Caminetti
Anthony Caminetti was a United States Representative from California.-Biography:He was born in Jackson, California. He attended the public schools of his native county, the grammar schools in San Francisco, and the University of California, Berkeley. He also studied law and was admitted to the bar...
, a total of 351 aliens "of anarchist and kindred classes" were deported from the United States from July 1, 1918 to June 30, 1920. Of these political deportations, the vast majority were made at one time aboard the USAT Buford
The Buford
USAT Buford was a cargo and passenger ship, originally launched in 1890 as SS Mississippi, but requisitioned by the US Army in 1898. She was transferred to the US Navy in 1919 and briefly commissioned as USS Buford , and was returned later that year to the Army...
, which departed from New York harbor on December 21, 1919, carrying 249 involuntary passengers. Chief among these were members of the Union of Russian Workers arrested in the series of raids conducted in the fall of 1919.
Newspapers
The URW issued a newspaper called Golos TrudaGolos Truda
Golos Truda was a Russian language anarcho-syndicalist newspaper. Founded by working-class Russian expatriates in New York in 1911, Golos Truda shifted to Petrograd during the Russian Revolution in 1917, when its editors took advantage of the general amnesty and right of return for political...
[Voice of Labor] in New York City beginning in 1911. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the editors returned home together to begin publishing the paper there. A new official Union of Russian Workers newspaper was launched in New York on February 26, 1919, Khleb i volia [Bread and Freedom], edited by G.V. Karpuk. According to documents seized by the Lusk Committee, the paid circulation of the latter publication was 4,547 in 1919.
Books and pamphlets
- Errico MalatestaErrico MalatestaErrico Malatesta was an Italian anarcho-communist. He was an insurrectionary anarchist early in his life. He spent much of his life exiled from his homeland of Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison. He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of...
: V kafeine. [At the Cafe.] New York: Soiuz Russkikh Rabochikh, 1916. - Tovarishch, ne izmeniai: Uveshchanie shtreikbrekhera. [Comrade, Don't Be Unfaithful: Admonition to a Strikebreaker.] New York: Soiuz Russkikh Rabochikh, 1916.
- Sébastien FaureSébastien FaureSébastien Faure was a French anarchist . He was a main proponent of the anarchist organizational form known as synthesis anarchism.- Biography :Before becoming a free-thinker, he was a seminarist...
: Prestuplenie Boga. [The Crimes of God.] New York: Soiuz Russkikh Rabochikh, 1917. - Mikhail Aleksandrovich BakuninMikhail BakuninMikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
: Bog i gosudarstvo. [God and State.] New York: Soiuz Russkikh Rabochikh, 1918. - Grigorii Petrovich MaksimovGregori MaximoffGrigori Petrovitch Maximoff was a Russian-born anarcho-syndicalist who was involved in Nabat, a Ukrainian anarcho-syndicalist movement. Along with several other anarchists, he was imprisoned on 8 March 1921 following a Cheka sweep of anarchists in the area...
: Sovety rabochikh, soldatskikh, i krest'ianskikh deputatov i nashe k nim otnoshenie. [The Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies and Our Relations with Them] New York: Soiuz Russkikh Rabochikh, 1918. - Paul Bertolet: Novoe evengelie. [The New Evangelism.] New York: Soiuz Russkikh Rabochikh, n.d. [c. 1918].
- Petr Alekseevich KropotkinPeter KropotkinPrince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
: Khleb i volia. [Bread and Freedom.] New York: Soiuz Russkikh Rabochikh, 1919. - Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin: Nravstvennaia nachala anarchizma. [The Moral Origins of Anarchism.] New York: Federatsiia Russkikh Rabochikh Soed. Shtatov i Kanady, 1919.
- Novomirskii: Manifest anarkhistov-kommunistov. [Manifesto of the Communist-Anarchists.] New York: Federatsiia Russkikh Rabochikh Soed. Shtatov i Kanady, 1919.
Additional reading
- George A. Evans, Statement of the Experience of George A. Evans, a Former Teacher at the People’s House, 133 East 15th Street, Telling of the Brutal Treatment of the Police in the Raid Made There November 7, 1919." DoJ/BoI Investigative Files, NARA M-1085, reel 926. Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2011.
- Edgar B. Speer, "The Russian Workingmen’s Association, sometimes called the Union of Russian Workers (What It Is and How It Operates): A Bureau of Investigation Internal Report, April 8, 1919." DoJ/BoI Investigative Files, NARA M-1085, reel 926, file 325570. Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2007.
External links
- Finding Aid for the Lusk Committee Records, New York State Archives, Albany, NY. —available on microfilm and including the best archive of Union of Russian Workers publications, many of which have not otherwise survived.