It didn't take a crystal ball to predict the fate of anarchists in Russia after the Bolsheviks came to power. Though the Bolsheviks have gone, the persecution of anarchists continues to this day, and not just in Russia.
Here is an extract from the new PM Press edition of Voline’s anarchist history of the Russian Revolution, The Unknown Revolution (with
a new introduction by Iain McKay), describing Voline’s encounters with
Leon Trotsky, before and during the Russian Revolution. It goes well
with Emma Goldman’s “Trotsky Protests Too Much,” which
I posted earlier. The excerpt can also be found in Daniel Guérin’s No
Gods, No Masters (Ni Dieu Ni Maitre), published by AK Press.
Encounters with Trotsky
In April 1917 I met Trotsky again. (We had known each other in Russia, and, later in France from which we were both expelled in 1916.) We met in a print shop which specialised in printing the various publications of the Russian left. He was then editor of a daily Marxist paper Novy Mir (New World). As for me, I had been entrusted with editing the last numbers of Golos Truda (Voice of Labour), the weekly organ of the anarcho-syndicalist Union of Russian Workers, shortly before it was moved to Russia. I used to spend one night a week at the print shop while the paper was being prepared. That is how I happened to meet Trotsky on my first night there.
Naturally we spoke about the Revolution. Both of us were preparing to leave America in the near future to return home.
In the course of our conversation I said to Trotsky: “Truly I am absolutely sure that you, the Marxists of the left, will end up by seizing power in Russia. That is inevitable, because the Soviets, having been restored, will surely enter into conflict with the bourgeois government. The government will not be able to destroy them because all the workers of the country, both industrial workers and peasants, and also most of the army, will naturally put themselves on the side of the Soviets against the bourgeoisie and the government. And once the Soviets have the support of the people and the army, they will triumph in the struggle. And once they have won it will be you, the Marxists, who will inevitably be carried into power. Because the workers are seeking the revolution in its most advanced form. The syndicalists and anarchists are too weak in Russia to attract the attention of the workers rapidly by their ideas. So the masses will put their confidence in you and you will become ‘the masters of the country.’ And then, look out anarchists! The conflict between you and us is unavoidable. You will begin to persecute us as soon as your power is consolidated. And you will finish by shooting us like partridges. . .”
“. . .Come, come, comrade,” replied Trotsky. “You have a stubborn and incorrigible imagination. Do you think we are really divided? A mere question of method, which is quite secondary. Like us you are revolutionaries. Like you we are anarchists in the final analysis. The only difference is that you would like to establish your anarchism immediately without a preparatory transition, while we, the Marxists, do not believe it possible to ‘leap’ in one bound into the libertarian millennium. We anticipate a transitory epoch in the course of which the ground for an anarchist society will be cleared and ploughed with the help of the anti-bourgeois political powers: the dictatorship of the proletariat exercised by the proletarian party in power. In the end, it involves only a ‘shade’ of difference, nothing more. On the whole we are very close to one another. We are friends in arms. Remember now: we have a common enemy to fight. How can we think of fighting among ourselves? Moreover, I have no doubt that you will be quickly convinced of the necessity of a temporary proletarian socialist dictatorship. I don’t see any real reason for a war between you and us. We will surely march hand in hand. And then, even if we don’t agree, you are all wrong in supposing that we, the socialists, will use brutal force against the anarchists! Life itself and the judgement of the masses will resolve the problem and will put us in agreement. No! Can you really admit for a single instant such an absurdity: socialists in power shooting anarchists? Come, come, what do you take us for? Anyhow, we are socialists, comrade Voline! We are not your enemies."
In December 1919, seriously ill, I was arrested by the Bolshevik military authorities in the Makhnovist region of the Ukraine. Considering me an important militant, the authorities advised Trotsky of my arrest by a special telegram and asked for his instructions concerning me. The reply, also by telegram, arrived quickly, clearly, laconically: “SHOOT HIM IMMEDIATELY—TROTSKY.” I was not shot, thanks to a set of circumstances particularly fortunate and entirely fortuitous.
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