At the beginning of the twentieth century, the anti-state ideas of anarchists were most widespread in the western regions of the Russian Empire. This was due, firstly, to the territorial proximity to Europe, from where fashionable ideological trends penetrated, and secondly, to the presence in the western regions of the country of unresolved national problems - Polish, Baltic, Jewish. Of great importance, in particular, was the placement of the "Pale of Settlement" of the Jewish population in Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Little Russian cities.
Although in other cities of Poland and the Baltic States the anarchist movement did not receive such a scale as in Bialystok, it nevertheless actively asserted itself, using the sympathies of the workers and artisans of Warsaw, Czestochowa, Vilna, Riga. The situation here did not differ much from that in Bialystok. It is not surprising that both Warsaw and Riga became, along with Bialystok and Minsk, outposts of the most radical trends in Russian anarcho-communism - the Black Banners and the Beznachalites.
The city of weavers Lodz
Poland was a particularly turbulent region. Like the Jews, by the way, who constituted a significant part of the population of Warsaw and other Polish cities, the Poles experienced national oppression and were quite negatively disposed towards the tsarist government. N. Granatstein, who was a contemporary of those events, recalled that “In two such centers as Lodz and Warsaw, workers worked 16-18 hours a day and received the most meager wages; they did not even have the opportunity to read books. The workers were enslaved by bandits who held the entire city in their hands and had the police at their disposal. In all industrial cities there were gangs of thieves (N. Granatshtein. The first mass movement in the West of Russia in 1900. - Hard labor and exile, 1925, No. 5. Page 191.).
Since the end of the 19th century, the Polish labor movement has been characterized by radicalism in its methods of activity. The proletariat of the textile industry in Warsaw and ód, the miners of the coal basin in Dбbrovo and Sosnowice waged a continuous struggle against the excessive exploitation of the working population, using radical methods - from strikes to acts of economic terror. But various nationalist and social democratic parties tried to subjugate them.
Among the Jewish population of cities and towns, the Zionists and Social Democrats of the Bund were active, and among the Poles - the PPS (Party of Polish Socialists). Ultra-left groups arose not only on their own, but also in the ranks of the Social Democrats and Polish Socialists. Many of them leaned towards anarchism.
Nevertheless, the anarchist movement developed in Poland only in 1905, much later than in Bialystok, Nizhyn and Odessa, where by this time the anarchists had already two years of experience in revolutionary struggle. The advent of anarchists in Poland was accelerated by the revolutionary events of 1905. In a short time, the following program texts of the anarchists were published in Polish: P. A. Kropotkin "Bread and Freedom", E. Malatesta "Anarchy", E. Henri "Speech at the Trial", Kulchitsky "Modern Anarchism", J. Tonar "What Anarchists Want?", Zelinsky "Lying Socialism", "General Strike" and "Labor trade unions". Anarchist groups appeared in Warsaw, Lodz, Czestochowa and other cities. From the very beginning of their activity, Polish anarchists gravitated towards radical methods of struggle and in terms of ideology, as already mentioned, they were guided by the beznachal and Chernoznamens.
In Lodz, this recognized center of the textile industry, N. Granatstein began anarcho-communist propaganda. Like most of the "pioneers" of anarchism in the western provinces, Granatstein came from a poor Jewish family who lived in the small town of Belkhotov, Petrokovskaya province. The entire Belkhotov consisted of handicraft weavers who lived in poverty and worked in extremely difficult conditions. Granatstein also began working in the weaving workshop. He was only twelve years old. Soon, the teenager could not stand the working conditions and fled from home, heading to Lodz, a larger industrial city. Here, having got a job at a factory, he met the Bundists.
The thirteen-year-old boy was completely imbued with revolutionary ideas and tuned in to fight. He became an activist for the Bund, joining the most radical part of the circle, which consisted of workers in the garment industry. During a trip to Warsaw, Granatstein was arrested and, despite the fact that he was only fourteen years old, was left alone for nine months. This happened because a police officer, relying on the youth and inexperience of the boy, suggested that he turn in his comrades. In response, Granatstein spat in the face of the investigator. After his release, he participated in the famous Lodz Uprising, and then, hiding from persecution, went to Paris, where he joined the anarchists.
Returning to Lodz, Granatstein and several like-minded people began to propagate anarchism and soon the Lodz group of communist anarchists appeared in the city. A prominent role in it, in addition to N. Granatstein, was played by the twenty-year-old painter Iosel Skomski, who had previously worked in the Bund organization, and then moved to the position of anarchism and, in a short time, turned into the best agitator of the Lodz group.
On February 12, 1906, the police went on the trail of anarchists hiding in a safe house. Hranatstein and five of his comrades were arrested and thrown into the ód remand prison. Nevertheless, the anarchists managed to mark at least two major terrorist acts in Lodz - the murder in 1905 of the wealthy manufacturer Kunitzer, and in 1907 - the director of the Poznan factory, David Rosenthal, who had recently announced a lockout for the workers.
Warsaw "International"
But Warsaw became the main center of anarchism in Poland. Here at the beginning of 1905 an agitator who arrived from abroad nicknamed "Karl" created the Warsaw group of communist anarchists "Internationale". Like the Bialystok group "Struggle", the Warsaw "Internationale" was, for the most part, a Jewish association. Its backbone was made up of workers - Jews, former members of the Social Democratic "Bund", who went over to anarchist positions. They carried out active propaganda in the Jewish quarters of Warsaw, inhabited by workers and artisans. Campaign meetings were held in two main languages of Warsaw at once - in Yiddish and in Polish.
The active agitational activity of the anarchists led to the fact that soon the number of the "Internationale" group grew to 40 people. In addition, 10 advocacy circles were established with a total of more than 125 participants. As in Bialystok, in Warsaw most of the participants in the anarchist movement were very young people - no older than 18-20 years.
From agitation and propaganda in the Jewish quarters, the anarchists very quickly switched to active participation in the economic struggle of the Warsaw workers. Most often, they used radical methods. During the strike of bakers, the anarchists of the Internationale blew up several ovens and poured kerosene over the dough. Subsequently, having learned that anarchists were taking part in the strike, the owners usually immediately went to fulfill the demands of the striking workers. The Warsaw anarchists also did not bypass the terrorist struggle, being the most ardent supporters of "unmotivated" terrorist acts. The loudest military sorties in Warsaw were the explosions of bombs thrown by unmotivated Israel Blumenfeld into Shereshevsky's bank office and the Bristol hotel-restaurant.
The strengthening of the positions of the anarchists met with a sharply negative reaction from the socialist parties, which published articles criticizing the theory and tactics of anarchism. There were even cases of armed clashes between anarchists and socialists - statists, primarily members of the PPS. There were also murders of anarchists by socialist militants during strikes and other mass demonstrations. Thus, in Czestochowa, the anarchist Witmansky was killed for participating in the expropriation.
During the days of the October 1905 strike, Warsaw anarchists took an active part in it, speaking in front of thousands of audiences of workers' rallies. Mass arrests began of everyone who at least somehow could be suspected of involvement in anarchism. Viktor Rivkind was the first to be arrested during the distribution of proclamations among the soldiers of the army units stationed in the city. Considering his seventeen years of age, he was sentenced to four years in hard labor. Following Rivkind, the police arrested several more active members of the Internationale, destroyed an illegal printing house and seized an underground warehouse with weapons and dynamite.
The arrested anarchists were thrown into the cells of the Warsaw prison, where they were tortured and tortured by the gendarmes led by detective Green. It turned out that the Internationale group was planning to dig under the barracks of the Volyn regiment, and was also going to build a false barricade on Marshalkovskaya Street, stuffed with two mines and many fragments. It was assumed that when the soldiers and police began to dismantle the barricade, it would automatically rip apart and cause significant damage to the authorities. Having received information about this, the Warsaw Governor-General Skalon became furious and ordered all 16 arrested suspects to be hanged without trial or investigation.
In January 1906, 16 anarchists stationed in the Warsaw Citadel were executed. Here are their names: Solomon Rosenzweig, Jacob Goldstein, Victor Rivkind, Leib Furzeig, Jacob Crystal, Jacob Pfeffer, Kuba Igolson, Israel Blumenfeld, Solomon Shaer, Abram Rothkopf, Isaac Shapiro, Ignat Kornbaum, Karl Skurzha, F. and S. Menzhelevsky. They were very young people - students and artisans, most of them eighteen or twenty years old, the oldest, Yakov Goldstein, was twenty-three years old, and the youngest, Isaac Shapiro and Karl Skurzh, were seventeen and fifteen years old, respectively. After the massacre, the bodies of the murdered were thrown into the Vistula, after filling their faces with tar so that the deceased could not be identified. In the spring, fishermen caught in the Vistula several mutilated bodies with bullet wounds and tar-covered faces.
During the searches and arrests, one of the Internationale activists managed to escape. The young turner Goltsman, nicknamed Varyat, was busy making a bomb in his apartment and, fearing arrest, fled, taking dynamite and several shells with him. On one of the streets of Warsaw, he met a patrol who was leading the arrested person. Goltsman opened fire on the convoy, wounded the soldier and gave the arrested man the opportunity to escape, but he himself was captured. He was escorted to the Alekseevsky fort. Holtzman was threatened with the death penalty, but he managed to escape, despite his broken leg during the escape, and disappeared outside the Russian Empire.
Repressions practically destroyed the Internationale group. The surviving anarchists were convoyed to hard labor and to an eternal settlement in Siberia. Those who were fortunate enough to remain at large emigrated from Poland abroad. This is how the first period of anarchist activity in Warsaw ended tragically. Until August 1906, there was practically no anarchist activity in the city.
However, by the autumn of 1906, when the wave of police repressions had subsided somewhat, the activity of anarchists revived in Warsaw. In addition to the revived Internationale group, new associations are emerging - the Svoboda group and the Black Banner Warsaw group of communist anarchists. Chernoznamensk managed to publish two issues of the newspaper "Revolutionary Voice" ("Glos revoluzyiny") in 1906 and 1907. in Polish and Yiddish.
As in 1905, in the winter of 1906 the anarchists took an active part in the class struggle of the Warsaw proletariat. To the lockout announced by the owners of the sewing shops, the workers responded with acts of sabotage, pouring sulfuric acid on the goods. In Korob's workshop, during a strike, the anarchists killed several craftsmen. Frightened owners decided to fulfill the demands of the strikers. During one expropriation, an entrepreneur was also killed, for which the anarchist Zilberstein was brought to court-martial. In December 1906, in the Warsaw citadel, they hanged anarchists transported from Bialystok - militants Iosif Myslinsky, Celek and Saveliy Sudobiger (Tsalka Portnoy). An act of revenge on the authorities was the murder of the assistant to the head of the Warsaw prison, known for his brutality against the arrested. He was shot dead on May 14, 1907 by Beinish Rosenblum, a militant of the Internationale. The court held on November 7 sentenced him to death. Rosenblum refused to ask for pardon from Tsar Nicholas II. On November 11, 1907, he was hanged in a Warsaw prison.
The Warsaw Citadel became the place of execution for many other revolutionaries who were brought to Warsaw from all the western provinces of the empire. The transported from Bialystok Abel Kossovsky and Isaac Geilikman were accused of armed resistance to the police during the general strike of 1906 in the town of Suprasl and were also sentenced to death. Kossovsky's execution was replaced by life-long penal servitude, and Geilikman was hanged.
However, the activities of the Polish anarchists were not limited to acts of economic terror and the murder of police officers. Many Warsaw revolutionaries pursued more global goals. Thus, in the first half of 1907, a secret society arose in Warsaw, which set as its goal the assassination of the German emperor Wilhelm.
Wilhelm was believed to be influencing his cousin Nicholas II, advising him not to ease the oppression of the Polish population. The assassination of Wilhelm would not only avenge the mockery of the Polish people, but would also help raise the popularity of the anarchist movement both in Russia and Germany, and throughout Europe as a whole.
To organize the assassination attempt, four militants settled in Charlottenburg, with whom the anarchist August Waterloos (Saint-Goy), who was operating in the German part of Poland, contacted. The Bialystok anarchists Leibele the Mad and Meitke Bialystoksky also intended to arrive in Charlottenburg, but Meitke was killed on the way. Having abandoned the assassination attempt, the anarchists left Charlottenburg.
In July 1907, a conference of Polish and Lithuanian anarchist groups was held in Kovno, the participants of which came to the following decisions:
1). In view of the disunity and isolation of the anarchist groups, it is necessary to unite in a federation.
2). Reject petty expropriations and robberies and recognize the need to commit large expropriations in state and private institutions. Recognize that only a federation is capable of organizing such expropriations and that it is expedient and economical to spend the funds obtained.
3). Fight the trade unions through propaganda as a dangerous and cunning means of the bourgeoisie to seduce the worker from the revolutionary path to the path of compromises and deals that obscure his revolutionary class consciousness.
4). Recognize the need for massive looting of grocery warehouses and shops with a general strike, lockouts and unemployment.
However, according to the denunciation of the police provocateur Abram Gavenda ("Abrash"), 24 participants in the conference of anarcho-communist groups were arrested. Among them, Waterloos was detained. The trial of the participants in the Covenian conference took place on September 11-19, 1908 in Warsaw. Only three defendants were acquitted, and 21 people were sentenced to various terms of hard labor - from 4 to 15 years. The Warsaw group of communist anarchists "Internationale" existed even until the spring of 1909, having ceased its activities as a result of a general decline in revolutionary activity.
Day of the Last Judgment in Riga
Another troubled region of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century was the Baltics. Like the Poles, the inhabitants of the Baltic States waged a fierce and bloody struggle against the tsarist government. In rural areas, the Latvian peasants resorted to the methods of agrarian terror, to the seizure of vacant land and the felling of the landlord's forests. Landless laborers, who had nothing to lose, were particularly radical.
After the suppressed peasant uprisings, many of their participants, fleeing punitive detachments formed by local landowners with the support of the authorities, went into the forests. There they formed detachments of "forest brothers" - partisans, who under cover of night attacked landowners' estates and even groups of punishers. Even in winter, despite the twenty-degree frosts, the partisans hiding in the forests of the Courland province did not stop their activities. They lived in huts hidden in thickets and covered with sheepskins brought by the peasants, and they ate meat obtained from hunting or from attacks on the landowners' cattle yards.
The movement of the "forest brothers" that developed in the Kurland province, although it did not officially proclaim itself anarchist, was anarchist in nature. In the units of the "forest brothers" there were no bosses, nevertheless, questions were deprived only by general consensus and no one obeyed anyone. Someone Shtrams, who left memories of the activities of the "forest brothers" in the early years of the twentieth century, emphasized that participation in these formations was absolutely voluntary, on the other hand, most of the militants never refused to perform even the most dangerous and difficult missions (Shtrams. From history of the movement of "forest brothers" in Dondangen (Kurland province) - in the book: Almanac. Collection on the history of the anarchist movement in Russia. Volume 1. Paris, 1909, p. 68).
In the cities, the first anarchist groups appeared in 1905, initially among the poorest Jewish proletariat and artisans in Riga. Anarchist groups appeared among the Latvian workers and peasants only in the spring of 1906. Quite quickly, the anarchists spread their activities not only to the Jewish quarters of Riga, but also to Libava, Mitava, Tukkum and Yuryev. The propaganda was carried out in Yiddish and in Latvian, less often German was used. As in Bialystok, some of the more radical socialists and social democrats left their parties and joined the anarchists.
In Riga, a group appeared, named by analogy with Warsaw - the Riga group of anarchist-communists "Internationale". She was predominantly Jewish in its ethnic composition, extremely young in age, and carried on propaganda among the Jewish poor. For propaganda purposes, the Riga International issued proclamations in Yiddish “To all workers”, “Political or social revolution”, “To all true friends of the people”, “To all clerks”, as well as E. Nakhta's brochures “General strike and social revolution "," Is Anarchism Necessary in Russia? "," Order and Commune ".
Somewhat later, the Latvian groups of anarchist-communists "Word and Deed", "Equality" and the flying combat detachment "Day of the Last Judgment" also emerged in Riga. PA Kropotkin's "Bread and Freedom", 3 issues of the satirical collection "Black Laughter", "Flame" and "Critical Essays" were published in Latvian. The anarchists of Riga were most active in their propaganda at the Felser and Phoenix carriage works, and then at the factories beyond the Dvina. In October 1906, the Federation of Riga Communist Anarchist Groups was created, which united the groups operating in the city.
One of the most notorious armed actions of the Riga anarchists was the clash with the police in August 1906. When the police surrounded the anarchist laboratory, the brother and sister Keide-Krievs, who were in it, held the defense of the house from six in the morning, firing back throughout the day. They blew up a ladder and threw a bomb at the police, but it did not hurt them much. Not wanting to fall into the hands of the police, brother and sister Keide-Krievs committed suicide. On the same day, on Mariinsky Street, the anarchists put up armed resistance to the police, for which the militant Bentsion Shots was sentenced to 14 years in hard labor.
The "selbstschutzer", the German nationalists, also became a favorite target of the anarchists. Such formations were recruited from the offspring of German families in order to resist anarchists, socialists and radical opposition in general. In Yuriev selbstschutz numbered about 300 people. Of course, anarchists and socialists from time to time had to enter into confrontation with the ultra-right. So, during their meeting in the Mitava suburb, the anarchists detonated a bomb, another bomb exploded during a similar gathering on Vendenskaya Street. In both cases, there were casualties.
During a strike of tram workers in Riga, anarchists threw several bombs to paralyze the movement of those trams that were still in operation. The loudest act of anti-bourgeois terror was the explosion of two bombs thrown by anarchists at Schwartz's restaurant - a favorite gathering place for Riga capitalists. Although the bombings were not fatal, the public resonance and panic among the bourgeoisie were enormous.
In January 1907, on Artilleriyskaya Street, the police, who were planning to carry out a raid on the Riga anarchists, met with fierce resistance. The anarchists managed to shoot two soldiers and the police overseer Berkovich and wound the detectives Dukman and Davus and the head of the Riga secret police Gregus. In the summer of 1907, the police pursuing the expropriators were attacked by accidentally passing anarchists, who opened fire on the police and then fled into a nearby grove.
Naturally, the tsarist authorities tried to suppress the anarchist movement in Riga. In 1906-1907. many Riga revolutionaries were arrested. The anarchists Stuhr, Podzin, Kreutzberg and Tirumnek were sentenced to 8 years in prison, 12 years in prison were received by soldiers of the sapper unit Korolev and Ragulin, 14 years in prison - Bentsion Shots. During the beatings in the Riga prison, an anarchist prisoner Vladimir Shmoge was killed with ten bayonets.
On October 23, 1906, a military court sentenced the militants of the Riga group "Internationale" to death. Silin Shafron, Osip Levin, Petrov, Osipov and Ioffe were sentenced to death, despite their young age. Before their deaths, the three condemned Jews were asked by the rabbi to repent. To this proposal, the anarchists all as one answered that they had nothing to repent of.
Sixteen-year-old Osip Levin, who comes from a poor family, said: “Of all the money we took from the capitalists for our holy Anarchy, I didn’t even allow myself to make a pair of trousers … I am dying in old trousers given to me by my student brother, because I walked like a ragamuffin … My money was holy and I used it for holy purposes. I find that I am not dying a sinner, but a fighter for all of humanity, for the oppressed by the present regime (Leaves of the Minsk Group. - in the book: Almanac. Collection on the history of the anarchist movement in Russia. Volume 1. Paris, 1909, p. 182) …
All those executed died with the exclamation "Long live the land and freedom!" Even the liberal newspapers of Riga, which did not differ in sympathy for the revolutionary movement and, moreover, for the anarchists, resented the brutal execution in the Riga prison of young revolutionaries. They noted that even among the soldiers of the firing squad there were no people willing to kill the teenagers. The soldiers fired to the side, deliberately trying to miss, but the command was adamant. It took several volleys to kill the young men.
Yankovists
The repression directed against the anarchist communists affected the change in the tactics of anti-authoritarian groups. Many Latvian revolutionaries turned to anarcho-syndicalist activities. At the end of 1907, a group arose in Riga, which, due to its low popularity in Russian historical literature, should be specially mentioned. A free workers' organization was created on the initiative of a private teacher J. Ya. Yankau received, after the name of its leader, the second name - Yankovist-syndicalists. In Riga, the activities of the Yankovists were directed by J. Grivin and J. A. Lassis.
The ideology of the Free Workers' Organization had much in common with the so-called. "Makhaevism", characterized by a sharply negative attitude towards the intelligentsia and the desire for the self-organization of the working class without the participation of political parties. Taking into their ranks only workers, the Yankovists opposed the proletariat to all other classes and social strata, especially with a negative attitude towards the intelligentsia. Speaking for illegal and radical methods of resistance to capital, the Yankovists divided them into "passive" - strikes, and "active" - expropriations and acts of economic terror, which included the destruction of factories and plants, the destruction of equipment, sabotage.
The highest form of resistance for the Yankovists was the economic revolution, abolishing "slavery in all its forms" and organizing "the life of workers' producers on the basis of economic equality." The ranks of the SRO were replenished mainly by radical members of the Social Democracy of the Latvian Territory (militants, party members expelled for violation of discipline, etc.), as well as former members of the Latvian Social Democratic Union and representatives of trade unions.
The Yankovists tried to spread their propaganda and reach as many legal and illegal trade unions of workers as possible with their influence. Members of the SRO did not pay contributions, the money to the organization's cash desk came from expropriations of state, public and private institutions, as well as from performances and evenings held in the building of the Latvian Society in Riga.
In January 1908, the Yankovists came into contact with the anarchist-syndicalists operating in Riga, and planned to publish a general party magazine. In the spring and summer of 1908, there was a further rapprochement between the Yankovists and the anarchist syndicalists. Both of them jointly campaigned in the working environment for a wider use of the possibilities of creating legal trade unions, using them for legal propaganda. In July 1908, most of the Yankovists joined the legal trade unions, adhering to the anarcho-syndicalist program. In September 1908, the Free Workers' Organization ceased to exist, its remnants partly joined the anarchist syndicalists, partly - to the Social Democracy of the Latvian Territory. Jankau himself emigrated to Germany.
As in other regions of the Russian Empire, by 1908-1909. the anarchist movement in Poland and the Baltic States has significantly lost its popularity and lost the positions that were acquired during the 1905-1907 revolution. Many anarchists were executed by court martial sentences or died in shootings with the police, some were destined to go to Siberian hard labor for many years - all in the name of the idea of a stateless society, which was portrayed as the ideal of social justice. Its practical implementation entailed terrorist acts, including those that had no real motives and were carried out against people who did not bear any personal responsibility for the policies of the tsarist regime. On the other hand, the tsarist government did not always act humanely with the anarchists in all cases, since many of them were very young people, due to age maximalism and peculiarities of social origin, they were not always aware of the meaning of their actions.
