The period of the first Russian revolution 1905-1907 went down in history as a time of high intensity of the revolutionary struggle against the autocracy. Despite the concessions of the tsarist government, manifested in the establishment of parliament - the State Duma, the legalization of political parties, the flywheel of revolutionary activity turned out to be neglected and few of the revolutionaries considered it possible to stop there. At the same time, if the Social Democrats, who followed the Marxist concept, headed for the organized resistance of industrial workers, then the socialist revolutionaries and anarchists focused on individual terror. In the opinion of the ultra-radical part of the Russian revolutionaries, with the help of terrorist acts it was possible to undermine the power of the "system" and mobilize an even greater number of workers and peasants' youth into revolutionary activity.
Despite the measures taken by the tsarist police, the security department to fight against revolutionaries - terrorists, the period from 1905 to 1908. went down in Russian history as the time of the maximum outburst of political terrorism. Of course, one cannot discount the activities of provocateurs whom the police introduced into the ranks of revolutionary organizations, but nevertheless, one of the main reasons for the growth of terror was the spread of radical sentiments among the youth. The examples of Narodnaya Volya and foreign militants inspired many young people on the path of struggle, the victims of which were not only representatives of the tsarist administration and employees of power structures, but also the revolutionaries themselves and just civilians.
If a lot has been written about the Militant Organization of the Party of Socialists - Revolutionaries, then the pages of the history of revolutionary anarchists are covered to a much lesser extent. Even now, the number of scientific studies devoted to this issue can be counted on one hand. And, nevertheless, such literature exists, which allows us to form an approximate impression of the events that took place more than a century ago.
As you know, many prominent statesmen of pre-revolutionary Russia, including Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, fell at the hands of the Social Revolutionaries. However, the killer of the latter, Dmitry Bogrov, who collaborated with the security department, was previously a member of an anarchist organization. In the western regions of the Russian Empire, anarchism became widespread at the beginning of the twentieth century, which was associated both with the proximity of the Little Russian, Belarusian, Lithuanian lands to the European borders, and with social and ethnic problems that existed in cities and towns. It can be argued that in the west of the Russian state, the social base of the anarchist movement was the lower strata of the urban population - mainly working and craft youth, among whom there were many immigrants from Jews who lived compactly in the "Pale of Settlement." Thus, the class hostility of the urban lower classes towards wealthy citizens and the state was aggravated by national contradictions.
Unlike the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the anarchists, due to the specifics of their ideology, which rejected any centralization and vertical structure of management, did not manage to create a single centralized organization. However, this not only hindered the anarchists themselves in their activities, but also created serious obstacles for the police and special services, since it was much more difficult to fight against many small and often unrelated groups than with the centralized organization of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, which had clear leaders, executors, there were stable ties with the "legal" wing of the party.
In the period from autumn 1907 to spring 1908. several Little Russian cities, first of all - Yekaterinoslav (now - Dnepropetrovsk), as well as Kiev and Odessa, were destined to become the place of activity of the International Combat Detachment - one of the most serious attempts of the anarchists to create a large and ramified armed organization.
In 1907, many anarchist groups operating in the west of the Russian Empire, including in Bialystok, Kiev, Odessa, Yekaterinoslav and other cities of the western provinces, were significantly weakened by the wave of arrests of their members, the death of many activists in shootings with the police and the military. Hiding from the police, many active anarchists ended up abroad. Geneva and Paris played the role of centers of Russian anarchist emigration. It was in these cities that the two most significant emigre anarchist groups operated with their periodicals.
In Geneva, there was a group called Burevestnik, which had been publishing a newspaper of the same name since July 20, 1906. Its activities were led by a veteran of the anarcho movement Mendel Dainov. Back in 1900, this man played a key role in the creation of the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad - one of the first Russian anarchist organizations. The Burevestnik group adhered to a relatively moderate position and focused on "bread-baking" - an anarcho-communist trend, the theorist of which was considered the famous Pyotr Kropotkin. "Khlebovoltsy" advocated the organization of mass demonstrations of peasants and workers, the development of the trade union movement and were rather cool about the practice of individual terror.
In Paris, since December 1906, the newspaper "Rebel" was published - the organ of the group of the same name, more radical than "Petrel", inheriting the more radical line of the Black Banners. If the bread-lovers considered peasants and industrial workers to be their social base, then their more radical ideological relatives called for focusing on the urban and rural lumpen proletariat, even on petty criminals, since they were considered the most disadvantaged and embittered by the bourgeoisie and the state as representatives of the Russian population. Chernoznamensky called for organizing widespread armed resistance to the authorities, while adhering to the idea of "unmotivated terror".
Any person classified by the anarchists as a "class of oppressors" could become a victim of such terror. That is, it was enough to visit expensive cafes or shops, ride in a first-class carriage in order to risk dying as a result of an attack by "motivators". The most famous acts of unmotivated terror, which both domestic and foreign historians usually like to cite as examples, were the explosions of bombs thrown in Warsaw by the anarchist Israel Blumenfeld at the Bristol hotel restaurant and Shereshevsky's banking office, and the explosion of five bombs at Liebman's coffee shop in Odessa on December 17, 1905.
Some of the anarchists evoked all possible sympathy for these acts, while other anarchists, especially adherents of the pro-Syndicalist trend, sharply criticized the unmotivated terror. One of the ideologists of Khlebovoltsy V. Fedorov-Zabrezhnev wrote about the actions of non-motivators: "The dissemination of such acts can only be harmful to the cause of social revolution, distracting people who are devoted and ideological from the positive work of uniting the working masses" (V. Zabrezhnev On Terror. - Anarchists. Documents and materials. T. 1. 1883-1917. M., 1998, p. 252).
Nevertheless, some leaders of the Khlebovolites, although they did not speak directly about their radical views, sympathized with the more resolute Chernoznamens. In any case, they managed to come to a common agreement rather quickly. In September 1907, representatives of "Petrel" and "Rebel" met in Geneva and decided to join forces to support the anti-state movement in their homeland. For this, several expropriations had to be carried out on the territory of the Russian Empire, money had to be obtained and then a number of terrorist acts had to be carried out and a general congress of radical anarchist communists had to be prepared in the south of the country. The plans looked quite global - to unite the actions of the anarchists of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland, and then - the North Caucasus, Transcaucasia and the Urals.
This is how the Fighting International Group of Anarchists-Communists (abbreviated as BIGAK) was created. Within the group, an International Combat Detachment was formed to directly conduct armed operations on the territory of the Russian Empire. The group said in a statement that its main tasks are to carry out economic and political terrorist attacks, expropriations and supply Russian and foreign underground groups with weapons and money. There were at least 70-100 people ready to join the ranks of the formed organization.
Three people became the actual leaders of the group. Mendel Dainov, although he belonged to the moderate "Khlebovoltsi", but took over the financing of the organization. The most famous propagandist Nikolai Muzil, better known as "Uncle Vanya" or "Rogdaev", solved organizational issues. A Czech by birth, Nikolai Ignatievich Musil, from the end of the 19th century, participated in revolutionary activities in Russia and Bulgaria. Initially, he was a socialist-revolutionary and was even involved by the police in the case of belonging to a Socialist-Revolutionary organization. But later, having emigrated to Bulgaria, he became an anarchist.
The direct leadership of the militants and terrorist operations was carried out by Sergei Borisov. Despite his incomplete twenty-three years, Sergei Borisov, a tough working guy known in the anarchist movement under the nicknames "Cherny", "Sergei", "Taras", by the time of the creation of the detachment was already a fighter with enviable experience. The former turner had six years of underground struggle behind him - first in the ranks of the Social Democrats, then in the Odessa working group of anarchists-communists. At one time, it was he who provided the first armed resistance to the police during the arrest in the history of Russian anarchism (in Odessa on September 30, 1904). Then Borisov managed to make a successful escape from hard labor (at the beginning of 1906). It is not surprising that this particular person became the best candidate for the role of the "center" activist of the militant organization.
In order to deploy subversive work on the territory of the empire, the group and detachment needed significant sums of money. Several members of the group decided not to hesitate and left for Russia. They were most interested in Yekaterinoslav, which by 1907 became the new center of the Russian anarchist movement, instead of Bialystok, which had been drained of blood by the repressions. Yekaterinoslav and decided to choose the place for organizing the headquarters of the International Combat Detachment in Russia. Kiev was chosen as the venue for the congress of anarchist-communists of "all factions" that was being prepared in the south of the empire. This was a very bold step on the part of the International Fighting Group, since there was practically no anarchist movement in Kiev and the preparation of the ground for the organization's activities to start over.
In the fall of 1907, several prominent organizers of the International Combat Group arrived in Russia illegally - Sergei Borisov, Naum Tysh, German Sandomirsky and Isaak Dubinsky. Sandomierz and Tysh had to create an anarchist group in Kiev and prepare conditions in this city for holding a congress of anarchists, and Borisov took it upon himself to organize the expropriation to provide the group with finances.
On the evening of September 25, 1907, a group of anarchists led by Sergei Borisov attacked the post office at the Verkhne-Dneprovskaya station of the Catherine railway and expropriated 60 thousand rubles. Borisov sent part of the proceeds to Geneva. Now that the group had a lot of money, it was possible to think about terrorist acts. It was supposed to blow up the congress of miners in the south of the empire or in the Urals. Also, the Kiev governor-general Sukhomlinov was chosen as a target. The governor, according to the anarchists, was directly responsible for strengthening the struggle of the Kiev police against terrorist groups.
Arriving in Kiev with a fake passport, the activist of the group Herman Sandomirsky was directly involved in creating an organization of the Chernoznamens in the city. The group was assembled in record time. Most of its activists were students, which is not surprising - German Borisovich Sandomirsky, a twenty-five-year-old native of Odessa, himself in the recent past was a student affairs and a member of the Soviet delegation at the Genoa conference).
Together with Sandomierzsky, a twenty-three-year-old native of Warsaw, Naum Tysh, arrived in Kiev. The future killer of Pyotr Stolypin Dmitry Grigorievich Bogrov, a twenty-year-old student of the law faculty of Kiev University, the offspring of fairly wealthy parents, who was carried away by "revolutionary romance", significantly helped Tysh and Sandomirsky in creating the Chernoznamensky group in Kiev.
Considering the issue of terrorist acts, the Kiev Chernoznamensky agreed that the commission of this or that attack or robbery makes sense only if there is a specific "class expediency". Thus, they abandoned the previous division of armed attacks into “motivated” and “unmotivated” ones.
Having engaged in the preparation of the congress and agitation among the students and workers of Kiev, the anarchists rejoiced themselves in sending out "epistolary letters" to important state officials of the city demanding the payment of certain sums of money or simply with threats. The letters were signed by non-existent organizations to put the police on the wrong track. Chernoznamensky did not even know that the police became aware of their actions almost immediately, and she does not take active measures only because she is waiting for the right moment to liquidate the entire Kiev group of anarchist communists "Black Banner".
Bogrov showed himself to be a very active comrade, and no one imagined that for a year already he had been listed as an informant of the security department under the nickname Alensky, betraying the Social Revolutionaries, maximalists and anarchists to the police. Bogrova was brought into the ranks of police provocateurs by the love of a luxurious life "to the fullest" - wine, women, gambling. He was able to masterfully play his role. That he was a police agent, no one guessed until 1911, and then there were conflicting points of view in the revolutionary movement - some, following the famous "exposer of provocateurs" V. Burtsev, proved Bogrov's guilt, others, for example, his former Comrade Herman Sandomirsky, - they claimed that he lived and died as an honest revolutionary.
Bogrov became one of the organizers of the group and even took part, together with Sandomirsky, in drafting resolutions of the citywide conference of anarchists in November. This conference, to which delegates from the anarchist groups of Yekaterinoslav, Odessa, Kharkov and other cities were expected, seemed to Sandomierz a rehearsal for a general congress. According to archival data, in the period between November 26 and December 13, 1907, the conference was still held. And then the police repression began.
On December 14, 1906, Isaac Dubinsky and a certain Budyanskaya arrived in Kiev. Isaac Dubinsky, a socialist-revolutionary, who joined the International Combat Detachment, had recently fled to Geneva from the notorious "wheel" - the Amur wheel road. The idea - a fix that completely occupied him, was the organization of a mass escape of prisoners from the "wheel". But this required significant resources. To prepare them, Dubinsky and Budyanskaya planned to stay in Minsk. At that time, Budyanskaya's husband Boris Engelson, who had been sentenced to death, was in Minsk at that time in a local prison. Therefore, the anarchists assumed first of all to release Engelson in Minsk, and then prepare an escape from the wheeled road.
Neither Dubinsky and Budyanskaya, nor Herman Sandomirsky, who met them, suspected that the police were already keeping the Kiev anarchists under control. Neglecting conspiracy, they walked around the city, appeared in crowded places. On December 15, police raided the student cafeteria on Gymnazicheskaya Street. Sandomirsky, who did not have an identity document with him, also fell under the "hot hand". An accident helped out - Sandomirsky was released under the surety of a student Dumbadze, the nephew of the Yalta Governor-General. Of course, the bailiff could not even assume that a relative of such a person is also a revolutionary, only from the Bolsheviks.
But the next day, at about one in the afternoon, Sandomirsky, who had just left the apartment he was renting, was detained by two agents. He was imprisoned in the famous Squint Caponier prison and kept in shackles until sentenced. At the same time, as a result of a planned operation, 19 out of 32 members of the Kiev group of anarchist communists were arrested. Bogrov himself remained at large, allegedly due to "lack of evidence", and four years later entered Russian history forever as the murderer of the tsarist Prime Minister P. A. Stolypin.
The arrest of Sandomirsky and the liquidation of the Kiev group of anarchist communists seriously changed the plans of the International Combat Detachment. It was clearly not possible to hold an all-Russian congress of anarchists. To develop a powerful anarchist movement in Kiev - too. There was still hope for terrorist attacks. And - to Odessa and Yekaterinoslav as cities that have not yet been touched by repressions. To coordinate actions in the second half of December 1907, Sergei Borisov again arrived in Russia, for some time after the expropriation in Verkhne-Dneprovsk, he left the country.
A little later, a former student Avrum Tetelman (pseudonym - Leonid Odino) arrived, using a fake passport. Borisov and Tetelman first appeared in Odessa. From Odessa, Borisov sent a request to Geneva with a request to send him a transport of weapons in the amount of seventy Browning and Mauser revolvers. In response to Borisov's request, the organizer of the group Musil, who was in Geneva, traveled to London and brought from there a transport with the indicated number of weapons.
In January 1908, having received 2,000 rubles from his Odessa comrades, Borisov left for Yekaterinoslav. Tetelman was charged with the murder of the chairman of the Odessa Military District Court. The explosion of the courthouse and the murder of the commander of the Odessa military district, General Kaulbars, was assigned to Olga Taratuta and Abram Grossman, who arrived from Geneva, who received five thousand rubles and temporarily settled in Kiev.
On February 12, 1908, Abram Grossman left Kiev for Yekaterinoslav to organize an explosives laboratory there. Six days later, he returned to Kiev, entrusting the laboratory to "Misha" and "Uncle". Ita Lieberman ("Eva"), who was in Yekaterinoslav, having received three bombs from the Yekaterinoslavites, left in an extremely secretive manner for Kiev, where Grossman met her at the station, to whom she handed these bombs. Meanwhile, "Uncle" and Basia Khazanova found a room for a laboratory in Yekaterinoslav and equipped it. On February 19, they decided to move to the new premises the explosives that the worker Vladimir Petrushevsky kept in his house on Aptekarskaya Balka Street. But during the removal, an explosion occurred, wounding Petrushevsky himself.
Two days later, on February 21, the police got on the trail of the anarchists and arrested "Uncle", "Misha", Basya Khazanova, Ita Lieberman and ten other people. When the group was arrested, they found a Browning revolver, bomb plans and propaganda literature. On February 26, Sergei Borisov was also arrested in Yekaterinoslav. Two days later, Abram Grossman, who discovered surveillance, shot himself on a train from Kiev. The next day, the police arrested 11 anarchists in Kiev. On March 2, 17 more people were arrested in Odessa.
The international combat detachment actually ceased to exist: Taratuta, Borisov, Dubinsky, Tysh, Sandomirsky were behind bars, Abram Grossman shot himself. The only organizer of the detachment who remained at large was Nikolai Muzil (Rogdaev). Arriving in Yekaterinoslav, he tried to organize the escape of like-minded people from the city prison, which ended in tragedy.
The escape was scheduled for April 29, 1908. The political prisoners held in Yekaterinoslavskaya prison managed to carry dynamite into their cells. Three bombs were made of iron teapots, which were carried in mattresses to the prison yard. There were three powerful explosions, but it was not possible to destroy the strong prison wall. The guards who fled, at the command of the assistant head of the prison, Mayatsky, opened fire on all the prisoners in the courtyard. Then the guards began to shoot the prisoners who remained in the cells through the bars. As a result, 32 people died, more than fifty were injured of varying severity.
The news of the shooting in the Yekaterinoslav prison, bypassed the entire revolutionary movement, both in the country and abroad. In retaliation, Nikolai Musil, the last prominent activist of the International Combat Detachment, who remained at large, began planning a terrorist attack. On May 18, 1908, he bombed the Hotel France with two bombs. The calculation was made that one bomb would explode, and when the police authorities arrived at the scene of the explosion to investigate and draw up a protocol, a second bomb would detonate. But, by chance, both explosions in the France Hotel did not cause significant damage. To avoid exposure, Nikolai Musil hastened to leave Yekaterinoslav and went abroad.
On February 18-19, 1909, a trial took place over the members of the Kiev group. The District Military Court sentenced Isaac Dubinsky to 15 years in hard labor, Herman Sandomirsky to 8 years in hard labor, and 10 more Kiev Black Banners to various terms from 2 years and 8 months to 6 years and 8 months in hard labor. The actual leader of the International Combat Detachment, Sergei Borisov, received a death sentence and was executed on January 12, 1910.
As we can see, the activities of the International Combat Detachment did not bring anything good to anyone. Of course, it was impossible to improve the socio-economic situation of the working people of the population by means of terrorist acts, but the police persecution of any opposition as a result of the actions of the radicals only intensified. For many BIO activists, their enthusiasm for revolutionary ideas cost their lives, at best - long years spent in hard labor.
The International Combat Detachment was far from the only such terrorist organization operating in the Russian Empire. The popularization of radical ideas among the population of the country was facilitated by the far from perfect political system, and socio-economic problems, first of all - social inequality, poverty and unemployment of a significant part of the population, interethnic tension, corruption of the state apparatus. At the same time, it is difficult to deny the role of the Western powers interested in weakening the Russian Empire: at least most of the revolutionaries who were wanted in Russia for numerous crimes had the opportunity not only to live quietly in London or Paris, Zurich or Geneva, but also to continue political activities. Western governments preferred to close their eyes, following the rule that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Of course, most of the young anarchists and Socialist-Revolutionaries were sincere and in many ways heroic people who fought against the autocracy with the best of intentions. However, it can be argued with confidence that the years of revolutionary terror brought only negative consequences - not only for the ruling political class of the empire, but also for ordinary people. The revolutionary movement itself suffered great damage, which turned out to be seriously weakened and battered by the arrests and deaths of many activists, deprived of the opportunity to act in a "peaceful regime", gaining the support of the population without using extremist methods.
