Volin
Encyclopedia
Anarchism in Russia
Russian anarchism is anarchism in Russia or among Russians. The three categories of Russian anarchism were anarchist communism, anarcho-syndicalism and anarchist individualism...
anarchist who participated in the Russian and Ukrainian Revolution
Ukrainian Revolution
Ukrainian Revolution may refer to:* Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648* Ukraine after the Russian Revolution, see also:** Russian Revolution of 1905** Russian Revolution of 1917** Makhnovist Revolution** Russian Civil War** Ukrainian War of Independence...
s before being forced into exile by the Bolshevik Party government. He was a main proponent of the anarchist organizational form known as synthesis anarchism
Synthesis anarchism
Synthesis anarchism, synthesist anarchism, synthesism or synthesis federations is a form of anarchist organization which tries to join anarchists of different tendencies under the principles of anarchism without adjectives. In the 1920s this form found as its main proponents the anarcho-communists...
.
Biography
He was born in the VoronezhVoronezh
Voronezh is a city in southwestern Russia, the administrative center of Voronezh Oblast. It is located on both sides of the Voronezh River, away from where it flows into the Don. It is an operating center of the Southeastern Railway , as well as the center of the Don Highway...
district of Central Russia, where both his parents were doctors, and after finishing college there he went to Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
to study jurisprudence. In 1904 he left the university, joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party
Socialist-Revolutionary Party
thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...
and became involved in the revolutionary labor movement. He was engaged in cultural and educational activity among the workers of the city when he met Father Gapon and joined his petition movement; on Bloody Sunday (1905)
Bloody Sunday (1905)
Bloody Sunday was a massacre on in St. Petersburg, Russia, where unarmed, peaceful demonstrators marching to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas II were gunned down by the Imperial Guard while approaching the city center and the Winter Palace from several gathering points. The shooting did not...
he was with a group that was turned back by soldiers before it could reach the Winter Palace
Winter Palace
The Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was, from 1732 to 1917, the official residence of the Russian monarchs. Situated between the Palace Embankment and the Palace Square, adjacent to the site of Peter the Great's original Winter Palace, the present and fourth Winter Palace was built and...
. During the ensuing strikes he took the lead in creating the first St. Petersburg Soviet
St. Petersburg Soviet
St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Delegates was a workers' council, or soviet in St. Petersburg in 1905.-Origins:The idea of a Soviet as an organ to coordinate workers' strike activities arose during the January–February 1905 meetings of workers at the apartment of Voline during the abortive...
in order to coordinate aid and information for the workers; although quiescent much of the year and finally suppressed in December after 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...
, the Soviet was revived during the February Revolution
February Revolution
The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...
of 1917.
After his escape from arrest in 1907 he fled to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where he came under the influence of Russian anarchists and joined that movement, a small group of Apollon Karelin, in 1911.
He took part in the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
, at first in the Ukrainian anarchist organization Nabat
Nabat
The Nabat Confederation of Anarchist Organizations, better known simply as Nabat , was an anarchist organization that came to prominence in Ukraine during the years 1918 to 1920. The area where it held the most influence is sometimes referred to as the Free Territory, though Nabat had branches in...
, then (from August 1919) in the army of Nestor Makhno
Nestor Makhno
Nestor Ivanovych Makhno or simply Daddy Makhno was a Ukrainian anarcho-communist guerrilla leader turned army commander who led an independent anarchist army in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War....
. Arrested by the Bolsheviks in January 1920, he was released from prison along with other anarchists in October because of a treaty between the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and Makhno's army, rearrested a month later, and thanks to the intervention of the Red Trade Union International, during its Congress Съезд Красного Профинтерна) held in Moscow in the summer of 1921, he was finally expelled from the country.
Admitted to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
despite lack of proper documents, he and his family lived in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, where he wrote (in German) an 80-page pamphlet called The Persecution of the Anarchists in Soviet Russia, translated Peter Arshinov
Peter Arshinov
Peter Andreyevich Arshinov, also P. Marin , was a metal worker from Ukraine who in 1904, joined the Bolshevik Party and began to edit the paper Molot . In 1906, to escape the attention of the police, he fled to Ekaterinoslav...
's История махновского движения (History of the Makhnovist Movement) and wrote a long biographical preface for it, and edited a Russian anarchist magazine. After two years he received an invitation from Sébastien Faure
Sébastien Faure
Sébastien 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...
to help him prepare the Encyclopédie Anarchiste, so he moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he wrote for the Encyclopédie and other publications.
The death of his wife affected him severely, and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
forced him to move from one hiding place to another; he returned to Paris after the war, but developed incurable tuberculosis and died in a hospital in September 1945, leaving his account of his experiences in the revolutions and civil war, La Révolution inconnue (The Unknown Revolution), to be published posthumously.
Synthesis anarchism
Volin was a prolific writer and anarchist intellectual who played an important part in the organization and leadership of NabatNabat
The Nabat Confederation of Anarchist Organizations, better known simply as Nabat , was an anarchist organization that came to prominence in Ukraine during the years 1918 to 1920. The area where it held the most influence is sometimes referred to as the Free Territory, though Nabat had branches in...
. The Nabat Confederation of Anarchist Organizations
Nabat
The Nabat Confederation of Anarchist Organizations, better known simply as Nabat , was an anarchist organization that came to prominence in Ukraine during the years 1918 to 1920. The area where it held the most influence is sometimes referred to as the Free Territory, though Nabat had branches in...
, better known simply as Nabat (Набат), was an anarchist organization that came to prominence in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
during the years 1918 to 1920. The area where it held the most influence is sometimes referred to as the Free Territory, though Nabat had branches in all of the major cities in southern Ukraine.
Volin was charged with writing a platform for Nabat
Nabat
The Nabat Confederation of Anarchist Organizations, better known simply as Nabat , was an anarchist organization that came to prominence in Ukraine during the years 1918 to 1920. The area where it held the most influence is sometimes referred to as the Free Territory, though Nabat had branches in...
that could be agreeable to all the major branches of anarchism, most importantly Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
, Anarcho-collectivism/communism, and Anarcho-individualism. The uniform platform for Nabat was never truly decided upon, but Volin used what he had written and the inspiration from Nabat to create his Anarchist Synthesis. The proposed platform for Nabat included the following sentence which anticipated synthesis anarchism: "These three elements (syndicalism, communism and individualism) are three aspects of a single process, the building, of the organization of the working class (syndicalism), of the anarcho-communist society which is nothing more than the material base nessesary for the complete fullness of the free individual."
Two texts made as responses to the Platform, each proposing a different organizational model, became the basis for what is known as the organisation of synthesis, or simply "synthesism".
Voline published in 1924 a paper calling for "the anarchist synthesis" and was also the author of the article in Sebastian Faure's Encyclopedie Anarchiste on the same topic. The main purpose behind the synthesis was that the anarchist movement in most countries was divided into three main tendencies: communist anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
, and individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
and so such an organization could contain anarchists of these 3 tendencies very well.
In English
- Voline, The Unknown Revolution, 1917-1921, 1947.
- Peter Arshinov, History of the Makhnovist Movement (1918-1921), 1923.