The revival of anarchism on the territory of the Soviet Union dates back to the second half of the 1980s and is associated with the liberalization of the internal political course that followed after the beginning of perestroika. Of course, the anti-statesmen of the beginning of perestroika still did not dare to speak of themselves as anarchists and acted as "supporters of socialism with a human face." Under this brand, they were able to operate practically legally, without being subjected to strong persecution by Soviet law enforcement agencies. The legalization of left-wing radical groups began in 1986, but the real surge in their activity occurred a year or two later. At first, the legalized left-wing radical circles were deprived of the opportunity to engage in proper political activity and focused all their attention on theoretical and propaganda work - holding seminars, lectures and conferences, publishing samizdat journals, searching and publishing materials on the history and theory of anarchism. At the beginning of 1989, attempts to consolidate the Soviet anarchists were crowned with success. On January 21-22, 1989, on the basis of the Union of Independent Socialists, the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists (KAS) was created, which became the largest anarchist (and, perhaps, radical left) organization on the territory of the USSR. The backbone of the Confederation was made up of activists of the Moscow club "Community" (at the time of the creation of the KAS there were 30 such people), its initial number did not exceed 60-70 people.
Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists
The founding conference of the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists took place on May 1-2, 1989 in Moscow, and was attended by delegates from 15 cities representing the left-wing socialist and anarchist organizations of the country. The Forest People International Communitarian Association, the Irkutsk Socialist Club, the Leningrad Anarcho-Syndicalist Free Association and a number of other anarchist and left-wing socialist groups, both belonging to the Union of Independent Socialists and previously acting independently, announced their entry into the KAS. The total number of organizations included in the CAS was 300-400 people, the bulk of which were students and young intellectuals. It was officially recognized that the Confederation of anarcho-syndicalists, in accordance with the principles of anarchism, had no governing bodies in any form. The congress was proclaimed the only supreme body of the KAS. Nevertheless, the real leadership was strengthened by the Moscow organization KAS as the capital, one of the most numerous and controlling the central printed organ of the Confederation, the magazine "Community". The actual leaders and ideologists of the KAS, determining its political and ideological line, are Andrey Isaev and Alexander Shubin.
The official ideology of the Confederation was moderate anarcho-syndicalism, based primarily on the concept of “communal socialism” put forward by the theorists of the KAS back in the days of the “Community” club. The KAS considered MA Bakunin and Pierre Proudhon as its main ideological inspirers, in fact, the KAS program was a combination of individual anarchist principles with the experience of European social democracy and modern liberalism. In addition, both leaders and rank-and-file KAS activists had a great interest in the experience of the Makhnovist movement as a transfer to practice of the ideas of collectivist syndicalist anarchism. The "Community" published a lot of materials on the history of the Makhnovist movement, the author of which was, first of all, Alexander Shubin. The Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists proclaimed the ideal of the socio-political structure a society of stateless free socialism, represented in the form of federations of autonomous and self-governing territories, communities and producers. Such a society should be based primarily on the principles of self-government and federalism. Self-government was seen as an alternative to the verticals of executive and legislative power and was presented in the form of non-partisan councils created both at the place of work and at the place of residence. The formation of these councils is carried out not through elections, as in parliamentary society, but through the delegation of people's representatives, who can be recalled at any time by the people who nominated them. In this case, the most important decisions are made through direct popular legislation, i.e. at popular meetings. Having proclaimed complete freedom of religious and political views, the KAS came out for a society without political parties, considering the latter as forces focused exclusively on the seizure of power. The principle of federalism, founded by Proudhon, was considered by the Confederation as one of the fundamental principles of a stateless social structure. Federalism, otherwise called decentralization, was understood by the KAS ideologists as the complete autonomy of territorial units in decision-making and the complete absence of any center that could infringe on the rights of autonomous units. Each of these autonomous units, called CAS communities, should have had the full right to secede or join one or another federation or union of federations. KAS demanded the destruction of any measures and orders that oppress the individual, including the immediate abolition of the passport regime and registration, all forms of forced labor, conscription, prisons, the judicial system and the death penalty. The organs of justice, the police and the army in a stateless society were subject to immediate dissolution. For effective self-defense of the population, it was supposed to be organized on a voluntary militia principle. The economic program of the CAS was based on Proudhonism and, above all, proclaimed the need to transfer the means of production into the ownership of labor collectives while maintaining small private property and market relations. The confederation of anarcho-syndicalists was an unconditional supporter of a peaceful evolutionary path towards the ideal of a stateless society and adhered to non-violent principles. By building a society of stateless socialism, the KAS proclaimed syndicalism, i.e. the organized struggle of workers united in trade unions (syndicates).
As the main directions of its activity, the Confederation considered theoretical and research work, the propaganda of anarcho-syndicalism among the masses, the organization of the trade union movement and the support of workers, participation in mass actions and in campaigns of non-violent civil disobedience. As a syndicalist organization focused primarily on the trade union struggle of workers, the Confederation considered one of its main tasks to create strong and independent trade unions of an anarcho-syndicalist type at enterprises, which would fight for the transfer of the enterprise into the ownership of the labor collective, for the introduction of workers' self-government and for autonomy. enterprises from the central government, and could also organize the protection of workers from harassment from the state and establish insurance funds for material assistance to workers. Repeatedly KAS made attempts to create such trade unions both at the enterprises of the country and in educational institutions. In 1989, on the initiative of the Moscow organization of KAS, the Union of Student Youth, controlled by the Confederation, was created; workers' trade unions "Solidarity" were created in Vorkuta and Kaliningrad. The strongest trade union organizations oriented towards anarcho-syndicalism arose in a number of Siberian cities, primarily in Omsk, Seversk and Tomsk, where KAS branches, which consisted mainly of workers and employees, were actively campaigning at local enterprises. The Siberian branches of the KAS were one of the few anarchist groups in the USSR that really had established ties with the labor movement and enjoyed some influence in enterprises. Subsequently, it was on the basis of the KAS branches that the Sotsprof of Siberia and the Siberian Confederation of Labor were created. Certain campaigning activities at the enterprises were also launched by the KAS branches in Ukraine.
In addition to organizing trade unions, the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists also actively participated in activities carried out by the common front of the democratic opposition, establishing rather close ties with the popular fronts in support of perestroika and with liberal groups such as the Democratic Union and Civic Dignity. In addition, unlike the Russian anarchists of later times, the KAS considered its participation in the elections quite possible. But after the KAS candidate for the Congress of People's Deputies, Andrei Isaev, was not registered, in November 1989 the Confederation called on the country's citizens to boycott the elections to the Supreme Soviet and reoriented to local elections. At the local level, anarcho-syndicalists really managed to achieve great success and get their own deputies to local councils in Novokuibyshevsk, Seversk, Khabarovsk and Kharkov (Kharkov anarchist Igor Rassokha was even elected to the regional council). As for the mass actions of the Confederation at this time, it should be noted the pompous celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of N. I. Makhno, timed to which the II conference of the CAS was held on October 20-22, 1989 in Zaporozhye. As a result of the celebration of Makhno's birthday, which was accompanied by pickets and rallies of supporters of anarchism in many cities of the USSR, many new members were attracted to the ranks of the KAS, primarily from among the youth.
The Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists also developed a stormy publishing activity. If until 1989 practically the only more or less massive anarchist publication on the territory of the Union remained the Moscow magazine "Community", then since 1989 there has been an increase in the number of anarchist periodicals both in Moscow and in provincial cities. By the fall of 1989, Moscow and Kharkov became the recognized centers of KAS publishing activity. At a special meeting of editors of anarchist print media held in Moscow on November 10-12, 1989, the KAS-KOR news agency (KAS Correspondents) was established to coordinate the activities of the press and more efficiently disseminate information. carried out by the Moscow and Kharkov organizations of the Confederation.
Throughout 1989-1990. The confederation of anarcho-syndicalists steadily increased in number, taking more and more activists from different cities of the Soviet Union into its ranks. An especially large influx of new members was outlined after mass actions - for example, in March 1990. 30 people joined the Moscow CAS in one day. By the mid-1990s. the number of the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists was 1200 people in 32 cities and towns of the Soviet Union. The largest and most influential were the KAS branches in Moscow, Kharkov and in the cities of Siberia, primarily in Irkutsk, Tomsk and Omsk. March 31, 1990 Tomsk hosted the 1st meeting of Siberian anarchists, in which representatives of the KAS organizations of Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tomsk and Seversk decided to revive the movement for the independence of Siberia and to create a large anarcho-syndicalist trade union in Siberia. Numerous KAS organizations have emerged in the cities of Ukraine - Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Zhitomir, Kiev, Kadievka, etc.
It should be noted that, despite the fact that the bulk of the Confederation's activists were young people of 18-26 years old, some representatives of the older generation of left radicals who took part in the activities of the radical left underground circles in the 50s-60s and in the labor movement. Thus, a participant in the 1962 unrest joined the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists. in Novocherkassk Pyotr Siuda, who served 12 years in Soviet camps, a former political prisoner Vladimir Chernolikh, who was convicted of anti-Soviet agitation, a participant in the workers' uprising in 1959 in Temir-Tau, anarchist Anatoly Anisimov. Representatives of the older generation did not at all perform "decorative" functions and were actively involved in the practical activities of the KAS (Vladimir Chernolikh, for example, was elected to the local council of the Primorsky district of the Irkutsk region).
Anarchism in 1990 Crisis and split of the CAS
Being the largest anarchist association on the territory of the USSR, the KAS included not only supporters of syndicalism, but also adherents of almost all the directions of anarchism that existed at that time - anarcho-individualists, anarcho-capitalists, anarcho-communists, pacifists and Tolstoyans, and even such an exotic current as "anarcho-mystics". Naturally, such an ideologically varied composition could not ensure the ideological homogeneity of the organization and ensure its normal activity. In most cases, the provincial anarchist organizations that were part of the KAS retained not only their name, but also their own ideological principles and their own periodicals, on the pages of which they defended their point of view. Since the provincial groups belonged to the most different directions of anarchism, within the KAS practically from the first months of its existence, rival ideological currents and factional groups were clearly defined, criticizing both the positions of each other and, to an even greater extent, the official line of the KAS.
On the extreme right flank of the KAS was the anarcho-capitalist wing (or anarcho-liberals), represented mainly by the right side of the Leningrad anarchists and some groups from Nizhny Novgorod, Tver and Kazan. The ideology of this trend combined anarcho-individualism in the spirit of Max Stirner with the concepts of neoconservative and neoliberalism and in fact represented the Soviet analogue of American libertarianism. Right-wing anarchists not only were unconditional supporters of market relations, but, in contrast to the official line of the KAS, declared the full recognition of private property as one of the most important means of individual expression and confirmation of his individual freedom. Standing for complete freedom of the market and private property, the anarcho-capitalists were also decisive opponents of any revolutionary action, focusing exclusively on the peaceful libertarian evolutionary path of transition to a stateless society. At the same time, the anarcho-capitalists even put forward the thesis of the gradual independent and inevitable evolution of a bourgeois-democratic society into a stateless society of free capitalism. Among a certain part of the anarcho-capitalists, even the slogan was cultivated to eliminate the contradictions between a democratic republic of the Western type and anarchy. The recognized ideologue of the extreme right "capitalist" part of the Soviet anarchists was the Leningrad anarcho-capitalist, one of the founders of the ACCA, Pavel Geskin. Anarcho-capitalists took an intermediate place between the anarchists and the radical part of the democratic movement, insisting on the development of cooperation of the KAS with liberal organizations, up to the formation of a single bloc. The Leningrad anarcho-capitalists, who left the ACCA, formed their own organization that remained in the KAS - the Anarcho-Democratic Union of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Confederation (ADS-KAS) and began constant polemics with more left-wing supporters of the syndicalist line. In 1990, Leningrad launched its own print edition of an anarcho-capitalist orientation - the Svobodny Contract newspaper, edited by Pavel Geskin and published on behalf of ADS-KAS with a large circulation of 11,000 copies.
Somewhat more moderate positions than the anarcho-capitalists were occupied by the anarcho-individualist wing, which was also located on the "right" of the official line of the KAS. Anarcho-individualists grouped around the Leningrad ACCA, which by this time had been renamed the Association of Free Anarchist Sections and expanded its activities to Saratov and Petrozavodsk. Since the summer of 1989, the Leningrad newspaper ACCA "Novy Svet" has become the main press organ of the anarcho-individualists, and the actual ideologist of the trend is Pyotr Raush. Supporters of the official line prevailed in the Moscow, Irkutsk and Kharkov organizations of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Confederation, as well as in Siberian groups. The ideologists of the official line were Isaev and Shubin, as well as Podshivalov (Irkutsk) who was adjacent to them. As before, the syndicalists determined the policy and ideology of the Confederation and controlled the release of most of the central organs of the organization, from the "Community" to "KAS-KOR".
Finally, the left flank of the KAS was occupied at that time by a relatively small number of anarcho-communists, who operated primarily in Leningrad and Ukrainian organizations, especially in the Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye KAS. Back in the fall of 1989, the Dnipropetrovsk anarcho-communists criticized the activities of the Moscow organization of the KAS, not wanting to come to terms with the recognition by the official line of the KAS of market relations and with the silence of the KAS theorists of the anarchist-communist trend and the prominent role of P. A. Kropotkin in the development of anarchist ideas.
Practically from the very first moments of the CAS activity, disagreements began to grow in it. Already in the spring of 1989, a few months after the creation of the organization, the leader of the ACCA Petr Rausch (pictured), seeing the impossibility of a full-fledged unification within the framework of the Confederation of all Soviet anarchists, put forward a proposal to create a new "black front" on broader ideological and organizational principles. which would really be able to unite all anarchist groups in the Soviet space. If in 1989 the disagreements in the CAS were not yet so noticeable, then with the beginning of the new 1990 they literally reached their limit and the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists was on the verge of a split. At the same time, the KAS leaders themselves realized that the normal functioning of the association with such ideological heterogeneity was impossible, but they proposed their own solution to this problem, which, not without reason, considered one of the reasons for the split of the Confederation. In the winter of 1990, Isaev and Shubin, with the support of Podshivalov, advocated the transformation of the KAS into a purely anarcho-syndicalist organization, which implied the recognition by regional associations of the priority of the official line and their complete transition to the position of anarcho-syndicalism. The crisis, which had been brewing from the very beginning of 1990, resulted in an open confrontation between the supporters of the official line and their opponents from regional organizations, primarily from the Leningrad ACCA, which initiated the disengagement from the KAS. At the II Congress of the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists, held in Moscow on April 17, 1990, despite a number of measures taken by the leaders of the KAS to prevent a split (the removal of the status of the central organ of the KAS from the Community and the further expansion of the powers of regional groups), serious contradictions that they ended in a split in the organization. The hall was left by representatives of Leningrad, Kazan, Saratov, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye and Nizhny Novgorod. In fact, this meant the beginning of the collapse of the organization.
Association of Anarchist Movements as an Alternative to CAS
On May 5-6, 1990 in Leningrad, in the premises of the Palace of Culture of Food Industry Workers, an alternative congress of opponents of the official line was organized, at which it was decided to create, in parallel with the KAS, a new anarchist association on broader ideological and organizational principles. Naturally, the leaders of the KAS took this congress extremely negatively and the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists was practically not represented at it, with the exception of the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya KAS, which dissociated themselves from the official line. The congress was attended by representatives of the Association of Free Anarchist Sections from Leningrad, Petrozavodsk and Saratov, the Anarcho-Democratic Union, the Moscow Union of Anarchists, the Alliance of Kazan Anarchists and a number of smaller groups, including environmental and pacifist ones. Despite the fact that during the congress, significant contradictions in views on the organizational and ideological construction of the future organization were also revealed between its participants, the congress ended with a decision to create an Anarchist Association. After the congress, the anarchists carried out a symbolic action of "washing away historical sins from Lenin," which consisted of publicly wiping the bust of the leader of the Communist Party. This action was the reason for the refusal of the administration of the Palace of Culture to further provide premises to the anarchists. On the second day of the congress, almost all of its delegates took part in the defense against the militia of the ACCA headquarters, who were in an unauthorized room in a house intended for demolition. As a result of the clash with the police, more than 20 anarchists were detained. This incident drew public attention to the Leningrad Congress of Anarchists, making it clear that the new association would be much more radical than the KAS.
June 16-17, 1990 In the city of Balakovo, Saratov region, where at that time an environmental protest camp was held against the construction of a nuclear power plant, a founding congress was held, at which the Association of Anarchist Movements (ADA) was proclaimed as a new, alternative to the KAS, an association of Soviet anarchist groups. The congress was attended by delegates from 13 cities of the country, representing 14 anarchist organizations. The Association of Sections of Free Anarchists from Leningrad, Saratov and Petrozavodsk, the Anarcho-Democratic Union, the Moscow Union of Anarchists, the Alliance of Kazan Anarchists and some other groups announced their entry into the ADA. The congress adopted the Declaration of the Associations of Anarchist Movements, the Agreement on Interaction between the subjects of ADA, provisions on self-defense groups, on environmental activities and on the government's economic program. Unlike the KAS, the Association of Anarchist Movements fundamentally abandoned a certain ideology and the creation of organizational structures, presenting itself as a free association of collective and individual members, aimed at coordinating the joint activities of all anarchists, regardless of their ideological affiliation. It was decided that any provision should be considered accepted only if consensus was reached, there was no fixation of collective or individual members in the ADA. At the congress, it was decided to create a unified information network of the Association of Anarchist Movements for a full exchange of information between the organizations that are part of the ADA. In fact, the role of the "information bureau" of the ADA was assigned to the Leningrad anarchists and the printed projects they published (Novy Svet, An-Press, etc.). Soon after the congress, on June 28, 1990, the anarchists who remained in the ecological camp, with the support of local residents, held a mass demonstration in Balakovo against the nuclear power plant, in which several thousand people took part.
In fact, the creation of the Association of Anarchist Movements meant a split of the Soviet anarcho-movement into two parts, and the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists gradually began to lose its hitherto strong position in it. If in the summer of 1990 the consequences of the split were not so obvious and many anarchists retained their membership in both the CAS and ADA at the same time, then by the fall the contradictions between the two organizations had reached their limit. In the fall of 1990, Igor Podshivalov circulated among the members of the CAS the article "CAS is an organization, not a get-together," in which he advocated the introduction of at least some semblance of discipline and organization. But this proposal of the leader of the Irkutsk UAN was ignored. In November 1990, the III Congress of the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists was held in Leningrad, at which the leaders of the KAS tried to strengthen the organizational and ideological unity of the Confederation. But the speech of Andrey Isaev about the categorical disagreement of the KAS with the democratic and nationalist movements, and other attempts to correct the situation, did not lead to a successful result. It was at the third congress of the KAS ACCA, and after it, and other groups included in the ADA, announced their complete and final separation from the leadership of the KAS. After the third congress, the crisis of the CAS becomes obvious and begins not only the cessation of the replenishment of the ranks of the Confederation with new members, but also the outflow of old activists to other anarchist organizations, primarily into the ADA, as well as a massive surge of new anarchist associations, which seemed much more promising and consistent than the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists. As the most vivid evidence of the grave crisis of the UAN, almost immediately after the III Congress, in the fall of 1990, it ceases to be published regularly since 1987. the leading printed organ of the KAS is the "Community" magazine.
As already noted, opponents of the KAS official line criticized primarily the policy of "syndicalist diktat" in relation to representatives of other anarchist trends. But no less indignation from the anarchist masses was caused by the overly moderate positions of the Confederation, in particular its practical actions aimed at further rapprochement with the democratic opposition, as well as orientation towards participation in the electoral process. A more radical than the KAS, part of the anarchists, regardless of whether they belong to the right or left wing of the movement, regarded the participation of representatives of the Confederation in the elections not only as ideological inconsistency and promiscuity, but also as a direct manifestation of the opportunism of the official line and even a betrayal of the ideals of anarchism. Isaev and his supporters were accused of both deviating from the traditional principles of the anarchist movement, and groveling before the authorities and unwillingness to completely disassociate themselves from the national-patriotic and liberal opposition. The split of the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists was facilitated, oddly enough, by the growth of theoretical literacy and the outlook of the Soviet anarchist masses, also thanks to the activities of print publications alternative to the Kasovs. With a more detailed study of Bakunin's theoretical views, for example, Soviet anarchists very soon discovered a discrepancy between the real positions of the "father of Russian anarchism" and those views attributed to him by the official line of the KAS. Naturally, Bakunin not only did not recognize market relations and was not a supporter of a nonviolent evolutionary path to a stateless society, but also, on the contrary, was in extremely revolutionary rebellious positions and was a staunch opponent of the market economy.
As a result, in 1990, both in the regions and in the capital, where the positions of the official line were formerly unshakable, numerous new anarchist groups emerge, fundamentally unwilling to be part of the KAS and subjecting its policy to sharp criticism. Almost all of these organizations differed in their youth composition and attracted primarily newcomers to the anarchist movement, especially punks and other groups of politicized informals. During 1990, two of the largest radical anarchist organizations that are not part of the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists were created in Moscow. So, in May 1990, the Moscow Union of Anarchists (MSA), headed by Alexander Chervyakov, broke away from the Anarcho-Communist Revolutionary Union. The ISA acted as one of the organizers of the founding congress of the Association of Anarchist Movements and took over the functions of the ADA representative office in Moscow. The ISA differed from other anarchist groups primarily in its rather tough discipline - for example, a strict dry law was in force in the organization. The Moscow Union of Anarchists was, perhaps, the only anarchist organization in the country that paid attention to regular classes in hand-to-hand combat, shooting and combat training (later, a private security agency was created on the basis of the ISA). In the fall of 1990, also in Moscow, another group of anarchists emerged that radically criticized the KAS policy - the Anarcho-Radical Association of Youth (AROM), which included predominantly politicized and anarchist-oriented Moscow punks. The leader of AROM was Andrei Semiletnikov ("Dymson"), a well-known figure in the Moscow informal movement, later - the defender of the House of Soviets in October 1993.
The process of creating new anarchist associations continued in the provinces. Thus, in Krasnodar in the summer of 1990, a group of young anarchists, dissatisfied with the inaction of the Kuban organization KAS and its leader Vladimir Lutsenko, organized the Union of Radical Anarchist Youth (SRAM), which later became the largest anarchist organization in southern Russia. As a result of skillfully delivered propaganda, CPAM soon significantly increased its numbers - again, first of all, by attracting informal youth.
Until the end of 1990, Soviet anarchists remained predominantly within the framework of the right wing of the anarchist movement, and left-wing anarchist ideas did not enjoy the influence they gained in post-Soviet Russia. Most of the provincial anarchist organizations were quite right-wing, from the official line to individualism and anarcho-capitalism. However, since the end of 1990, as the right-wing, market tendencies were established in Soviet political life, socialist views became more and more widespread among anarchists. Critics from the “left” appeared within the Moscow organization of the KAS, claiming the priority of socialist and communist values over individualistic ones. One of them was Vadim Damier, now a doctor of historical sciences, one of the largest specialists in Russia on the history of the international anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movement. In the late 1980s. Vadim Damier was also co-chairman of the Green Party and from the mid-1980s. led his own developments in the field of theory. In 1989, on the pages of The Third Way magazine, he presented the Ecosocialist Manifesto, in which he sharply criticized industrial civilization and proposed a model of a stateless, decentralized society based on federalist and communitarian principles. If, until the second half of 1990, ideological contradictions were observed primarily between the center of the CAS and the regions, and the political and ideological line of the Confederation was sharply criticized either from groups not belonging to the CAS or from regional branches, then in 1990 contradictions cover the very heart of the Confederation. the stronghold of the official line is the Moscow organization of KAS. The disagreements in this case were caused by the spread of left anarchism among some of the KAS activists and the emergence within the Moscow organization of the KAS so-called. "Youth opposition", organized in 1990 in the Non-Party School. Contrary to the ideology of the KAS official line, the youth opposition gravitated towards left-anarchist and anarcho-communist views.
In the winter of 1991, the final demarcation of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Confederation from the Anarcho-Communists took place and the extreme left wing was separated from it, whose activists almost immediately after being expelled from the KAS created new, more radical, anarcho-communist organizations. In the early spring of 1991, the creation of the Anarchist Youth Front (AMF) group was announced, which included the radical part of the Moscow anarchist and informal youth. Dmitry Kostenko, Evgenia Buzikoshvili and Vadim Damier gathered a conference on March 5, 1991, at which the Revolutionary Anarchist Initiative (IREAN) was proclaimed, unlike ADA, which united not just those dissatisfied with the KAS policy, but that part of Soviet anarchists that occupied the most radical and most leftist positions and ideologically oriented towards anarcho-communism.
Thus, the following conclusions can be drawn. The formation of the anarchist movement in the last years of the existence of the Soviet Union was due to the liberalization of the political course in the country. Actually operating in 1987-1991. anarchist organizations became the foundation for the emergence of subsequent organizations of Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and other post-Soviet anarchists. Many of the anarchists, who began their political path in the late 1980s, continue their active social and political activities at the present time. As for the ideological aspects of the movement's activities, it was in the period between 1989 and 1991. there was a final turn of most of the Russian anarchist movement on the path of anarcho-socialism and anarcho-communism, which was associated with economic changes in the country. The construction of capitalism made individualistic and capitalist ideas more unfashionable among the radical opposition.
