Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, 1967.

3 · THE SYNDICALISTS


Let every conscientious man ask himself this question: Is he ready? Is he so clear in his mind about the new organization towards which we are moving, through the medium of those vague general ideas of collective property and social solidarity? Does he know the process -- apart from sheer destruction -- which will accomplish the transformation of old forms into new ones?

ALEXANDER HERZEN


A second issue, closely related to the vexed question of terrorism, arose in 1905 and greatly accentuated the divisions already discernible within the anarchist movement. A class of industrial workers had been emerging in urban Russia ever since the emancipation of the serfs. During the last decade of the century alone, the number of factory workers had nearly doubled, the figure surpassing three million by the outbreak of the revolution. What attitude were the anarchists to adopt towards the infant labor movement?

The Beznachalie and Chernoe Znamia groups, for their part, were instinctively hostile to large-scale organizations of any sort and showed little patience for the wearisome distribution of pamphlets and manifestoes in the factories, except for propaganda designed to incite the workers to violence against their employers or to signal an immediate armed uprising. Rejecting the incipient trade unions as reformist institutions which only "prolonged the agony of the dying enemy" through "a series of partial victories,"1 they tended to rely on their own militant bands as the instruments to wreck the tsarist regime. The Khlebovol'tsy and Anarcho-Syndicalists, on the other hand, condemned the terrorists for dissipating their forces in hit-and-run raids on the privileged classes; considering organized labor a powerful engine of revolt, they became champions of the syndicalist cause.

The doctrine of revolutionary syndicalism as it evolved in France during the 1890's was a curious blend of anarchism, Marxism, and trade unionism. From Proudhon and Bakunin, the makers of the anarchist tradition, the French syndicalists inherited an overpowering hatred of the centralized state, a sharp distrust of politicians, and a rudimentary conception of workers' control in industry. As early as the 1860's and 1870's, the followers of Proudhon and Bakunin in the First International were proposing the formation of workers' councils designed both as the weapon of class struggle against the capitalists and as the structural basis of the future libertarian society.2 This idea was further developed by Fernand Pelloutier, a high-minded young intellectual with strong anarchist sympathies, who became the outstanding figure in the French syndicalist movement during its formative years. During the early nineties, the notorious wave of bombthrowing in Paris created widespread disillusionment with the tactics of terrorism, causing large numbers of French anarchists to enter the workers' unions. Thus imbued with a strong anarchist flavor, the majority of unions, by the end of the century, had come to regard the state with hostile eyes and to reject the conquest of political power -- whether by revolutionary or parliamentary methods -- as inimical to their true interests. Instead, they looked forward to a social revolution which would destroy the capitalist system and inaugurate a stateless society in which the economy would be managed by a general confederation of labor unions.

The second source of syndicalist ideas, comparable in importance to the anarchist tradition, was the legacy of Karl Marx, in particular his doctrine of class struggle. Like Marx, the proponents of syndicalism pinned their hopes of eliminating capitalism on the working class, and placed class conflict at the very center of social relationships. As they saw it, producers were pitted against parasites in a relentless battle that would ultimately end in the annihilation of the bourgeois world. The class struggle lent purpose to the otherwise dismal lives of the factory workers; it sharpened their awareness of being exploited and cemented their revolutionary solidarity. Conceiving the doctrine of class warfare to be the very essence of Marxism, the syndicalists deplored the manner in which Marx's revolutionary teachings were being compromised by the reformists and revisionists of European socialism, who sought to alleviate social antagonisms through the procedures of parliamentary democracy.

Trade-unionism, the third wellspring of syndicalist concepts and techniques, resembled Marxism in treating the individual worker as a member of a class of producers, as an economic rather than a political animal. Accordingly, the workman's principal source of strength lay in the organized solidarity of his class. But where Marx urged the working class to unite for the political purpose of seizing the state apparatus, the "pure" trade unionists chose to concentrate on immediate economic objectives. The workers were to rely on their own power as producers, employing direct economic action to attain material benefits. Direct action usually took the form of strikes, demonstrations, boycotts, and sabotage. The last included "bad work for bad pay," loafing on the job, damaging machinery and equipment, and the literal observance of petty rules and work specifications; however, violence against foremen, engineers, and directors was generally frowned upon.

Syndicalism -- simply the French word for trade unionism -- assigned the labor unions (syndicats) a predominant role in the lives of the workingmen. Through direct action against the employers, the unions would obtain higher pay, shorter hours, and better working conditions. Legalized in France during the 1880's, the syndicats grouped together all the workmen of a city or district according to their trade. The local syndicats, in turn, were linked together in national federations, and, finally, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), founded in 1895, embraced all the syndicats and their federations. After 1902, the CGT encompassed the bourses du travail as well. Organized along geographic rather than industrial lines, the bourses were local labor councils serving all the trade unions of a given area. They acted as placement bureaus, social clubs, statistical centers (gathering information on wages and employment), and cultural centers, equipped with libraries and offering evening vocational courses to train the workers for their future role as managers and technicians.

Material improvements, however, scarcely represented the ultimate goal of the revolutionary syndicalist movement in France. Labor unions were not organized merely to achieve partial reforms or for the benevolent purpose of social reconciliation, but to combat a class enemy. Convinced that the capitalist system faced imminent collapse, the union leaders dismissed such evolutionary tactics as collective bargaining or agitation for factory legislation on the grounds that they implied the acceptance of the existing order. The pure "economism" of the reformist unions, which confined their efforts to extracting more and more material benefits from the owners, would never succeed in doing away with the entrenched system of exploitation. Such methods only dulled the edge of the class struggle. The true value of bread and butter demands, as far as the partisans of revolutionary syndicalism were concerned, lay in strengthening the position of the workingmen at the expense of their masters. The day-to-day economic struggle served to stimulate the spirit of militancy in the workers and to train them for the final showdown with capitalism and the state. Every local strike, every boycott, and every act of sabotage helped prepare the working class for the climax of direct action -- the general strike.

The general strike was the supreme act of the class struggle, the dramatic instrument for wrecking the capitalist system. Beyond the mere elevation of living standards, it was the mission of the unions to become the vehicles of social revolution as well as the basic cells of the ensuing stateless society. No armed insurrection or political coup would be necessary. The entire proletariat would simply lay down its tools and leave the factories, thereby bringing the economy to a halt and forcing the bourgeoisie to capitulate. The spectacle of millions of workers cooperating in a universal cessation of labor would paralyze the industrialists' will to resist. Thereupon, the unions would seize the means of production and proceed to run the economy.

In the new society, the labor unions were to hold a preponderant position, supplanting both the market economy and the machinery of government. The tools of production were to become the common property of all the people, insofar as any concept of ownership could still be said to apply. In practice, the various industries would fall under the direct control of the appropriate labor unions. The CGT was to assume the responsibility of coordinating economic matters on a national scale, as well as handling public affairs and generally smoothing the operation of the entire federal system.3

Two of the original members of Kropotkin's Khleb i Volia group, Maria Korn and Gogeliia-Orgeiani, were among the earliest Russian proponents of the syndicalist creed. As emigres in Geneva and Paris, they derived their ideas in great measure from their observation of the French model. In 1903, the first number of Khleb i Volia extolled the general strike as a "potent weapon" in the hands of the working class;4 the next issue hailed the July disturbances in Baku as the first instance of a general strike in Russian history.5 At the height of the 1905 Revolution, the journal explicitly endorsed "revolutionary syndicalism."6 Maria Korn remarked that as recently as the beginning of the century there had been no Russian word for "sabotage," and that a Russian who used the expression "general strike" would have seemed to be speaking "in some strange, incomprehensible language."7 But the great strikes in the south in 1903 and the general strike of October 1905 had radically altered the situation. According to Korn, Russia was beginning to learn from the revolutionary syndicats in France, which had been attracting the "best, most energetic, youngest, and freshest forces" of the anarchist camp.8 Orgeiani also invoked the French example as he proposed the establishment in Russia of workers' unions, bourses du travail (he aptly defined a bourse as "a union of local unions"), and ultimately a general confederation of labor organizations along the lines of the CGT.9 Such a framework for Russian labor, he believed, would not merely replace the capitalist economy and the autocratic state, but would revolutionize the psychological and moral world of the workers into the bargain. The trade unions, he said, would provide a "milieu libre in which, psychologically, a new world is born and which creates the psychological conditions for a new life."10

D. I. Novomirskii, until his arrest the leading syndicalist inside Russia, similarly placed the labor movement at the focus of anarchist efforts. From his vantage point in Odessa, however, he recognized that the French model would have to be adapted to suit Russian conditions:

What is to be done [he asked in 1907] once capitalism and the state are destroyed? When and how will the transition to the future occur? What is to be done right now? Nothing concrete can be said, even if we attempt to apply in this connection the idea of the general strike. Our literature is not geared to specific Russian propaganda and to Russian conditions, and it therefore proves to be too abstract for the workers.11
Nonetheless, Novomirskii's own syndicalist theories adhered very closely to the French prototype: the trade unions were to carry on the daily economic struggle while preparing the working class for the social revolution, after which the unions would become "the cells of the future workers' society."12 Novomirskii also adopted from the French syndicalists the notion that a conscious minority of farsighted workmen would be needed to galvanize the inert masses into action. Filling the role of the "revolutionary minority," Novomirskii's Anarcho-Syndi-calists would not attempt to take command of their brother workers, but would serve only as "pathfinders" in the revolutionary struggle.13 Their immediate task was to prevent the trade unions from becoming subsidiary organs of the political parties. It was essential for anarchist workers to establish clandestine cells to combat socialist "opportunism" within the existing unions. At the same time, in order to attract the unorganized and uncommitted elements of the working class, the anarchists were to form their own unions and federate them into a Revolutionary All-Russian Union of Labor, Novomirskii's version of the CGT.14

Between 1905 and 1907, Novomirskii's South Russian Group of Anarcho-Syndicalists attracted a considerable number of workers in the large cities of the Ukraine and New Russia, as well as intellectuals from the Social Democrats, SR's, and Anarchist-Communists. Though his claim of 5,000 adherents is highly exaggerated,15 Novomirskii's syndicalist followers included, besides factory workers, a number of seamen and stevedores of the Odessa port districts, and bakers and tailors in Ekaterinoslav.16 His group forged links with anarchist circles in Moscow and elsewhere, set up an "organizational commission" to coordinate the activities of the local units, and recruited a "battle detachment" to obtain funds for the movement. "I am convinced," remarked Iuda Roshchin, "that God, if he existed, must be a syndicalist -- otherwise Novomirskii would not have enjoyed such great success."17

Apart from the Anarcho-Syndicalists, who were concentrated largely in the south, the Anarchist-Communists of the Khleb i Volia school also made headway in the blossoming Russian labor movement. In Moscow, anarchist agitators distributed leaflets in the factories of the Zamoskvorechie and Presnia districts and in the mills of the nearby textile towns; anarchist cells in such large enterprises as the Tsindel (Ziindel) Textile Factory and the Electric Power Station organized a number 0f strikes and demonstrations; and the Svobodnaia Kommuna group, loosely associated with Novomirskii's movement despite the fact that it was an Anarchist-Communist organization, drew a substantial following within the metal workers' union as well as a lesser following among the typographers.18 In April 1907, a Conference of Anarchist-Communist Groups in the Urals, largely sympathetic to the Khleb i Volia position, called for the creation of "illegal inter-party unions" and, simultaneously, for anarchist participation in the existing trade unions in order to counteract the corrupting influence of the socialist "opportunists."19 Meanwhile, in North America, thousands of emigrants were being recruited by the Anarcho-Syndicalist Union of Russian Workers of the United States and Canada.

The Russian syndicalists both at home and in exile were enormously impressed by the tendency of the industrial workers towards self-organization, in spite of the government's unbending opposition. Clandestine unions had already been leading a precarious existence in Russia for some 30 years, in defiance of the legal ban against them, and strike committees had appeared during the great Petersburg textile strikes of 1896 and 1897. In 1903, the government permitted the formation of councils of elders (sovety starost) in industrial enterprises, and even though the election of elders was subject to confirmation by the employers, their mere existence constituted an important stage in the evolution of Russian workers' organizations. Many of the councils, in fact, became true representatives of labor during the heady days of 1905. The revolution also witnessed the spontaneous formation of workers' committees in the factories and workshops. These committees played a vital role in the creation of the Soviets of workers' deputies, first in the textile center of Ivanovo-Voznesensk and later in St. Petersburg and other cities. The trade unions likewise made remarkable progress in 1905, and were finally legalized in March of the following year.20

The revolutionary atmosphere in Russia fostered a radical spirit in these workers' organizations, more akin to the revolutionary syndicalism of France or Italy than to the evolutionary trade unionism prevalent in England or Germany. In 1905, the Russian labor movement was still weak and undisciplined, riven by factionalism and by mistrust between the manual workers and the intellectuals. Without a tradition of parliamentary democracy or of legal unionism, the Russian workers expected very little from either the state or the industrialists, and turned to the devices of direct action exercised through local militant committees. The heavy concentration of labor in large enterprises seems to have encouraged rather than hindered the growth of small workers' committees, since the bigger industrial concerns were commonly divided into numerous workshops, which proved fertile soil for radical action groups.

The events of 1905 confirmed the belief of many syndicalists in the spontaneous generation of local cooperative institutions, above all during times of acute crisis. There were those, no doubt, who saw the Soviets, trade unions, and factory committees in a Kropotkinian light, as the modern expression of man's natural propensity towards mutual aid, traceable to the tribal councils and village assemblies of a more primitive age. But the partisans of syndicalism went beyond Kropotkin by reconciling the principle of mutual assistance with the Marxian doctrine of class struggle. For the syndicalists, mutual aid did not embrace humanity as a whole, but existed only within the ranks of a single class, the proletariat, enhancing its solidarity in the battle with the manufacturers. The various workers' organizations, they insisted, were combat units, not arbitration boards designed to alleviate class conflict, as liberals and reformists believed. The syndicalists regarded the Soviets, for instance, as admirable versions of the bourses du travail, but with a revolutionary function added to suit Russian conditions.21 Open to all leftist workers regardless of specific political affiliation, the Soviets were to act as nonpartisan labor councils improvised "from below" on the district and city levels with the aim of bringing down the old regime. This syndicalist conception of the Soviets as nonpolitical and non-ideological battle stations of the working class was anathema to the Russian Social Democrats. Opposed to the ultra-extremism of the anti-syndicalists in the anarchist camp, and fearful of the dangerous competition of the pro-syndicalists, the socialists strove to exclude both groups from the Soviets, trade unions, and workers' committees. In November 1905, after the general strike had begun to subside, the executive committee of the Petersburg Soviet voted to bar all anarchists from entering its organization;22 this action increased the determination of the Russian syndicalists to form their own anarchist unions separate from the existing institutions of labor, contrary to the nonparty and non-ideological beliefs of the French syndicalists.

Compared with the enthusiasm of Korn and Orgeiani for the syndicalist cause, Kropotkin's attitude was at best lukewarm. He was chary of the socialist-dominated Soviets and recommended anarchist participation in workers' organizations only so long as they remained nonparty vehicles of popular rebellion. An Anarchist-Communist group in Kharkov, sympathetic to Kropotkin's point of view, declared that if the Soviets were to fall under the political control of the socialists, they would never fulfill their true function as "battle organizations" rallying the toilers for "the insurrectionary general strike."23 Dominated by phrasemongering intellectuals, the revolutionary Soviets would inevitably degenerate into parliamentary debating societies. As for the workers' unions, Kropotkin did not share the enchantment of his young associates, but offered only qualified support. He acknowledged that the unions were "natural organs for the direct struggle with capitalism and for the composition of the future order," and also that the general strike was "a powerful weapon of struggle."24 At the same time, however, he criticized the syndicalists, as he had been criticizing the Marxists, for thinking solely in terms of the industrial proletariat to the neglect of the peasantry and its needs. Still only a small minority in predominantly rural Russia, the working class could not by itself carry out the social revolution, nor could the trade unions become the nuclei of the anarchist commonwealth.25 In Kropotkin's estimation, the Anarchist-Commune vision of the future was far broader than that of the Anarcho-Syndicalists, aiming as it did at an integrated society in which all healthy aspects of human life could flourish.

To a certain extent, Kropotkin might also have been troubled by the syndicalist belief in a "conscious minority" whose function was to arouse the enthusiasm of the languid multitudes. The idea of a revolutionary vanguard -- even if composed exclusively of manual laborers -- had the odor of Jacobinism, Kropotkin's bete noire, and bore too close a resemblance to the elitist theory of Bolshevism that Lenin was elaborating at that time. It was dangerous to rely too heavily on the workers' unions for still another reason: they might seek an accommodation with the bourgeois world or, even worse, fall prey to the ambitious socialist intellectuals. The wise course, therefore, was to establish purely anarchist unions or to join only nonparty unions, with the intention of winning them over to the anarchist cause. At all events, the anarchists were adjured to keep out of any union that already had adopted a socialist platform.26

The acrimonious dispute over the relationship between an- 1 archism and syndicalism was by no means confined to Russia. Indeed, it was threatening to split the anarchist movement throughout Europe into two hostile camps. The issue came to I a head at an International Congress of Anarchists held in Amsterdam during the summer of 1907.27 The gathering heard a lively debate between Pierre Monatte, a young French exponent of revolutionary syndicalism, and the dedicated Italian Anarchist-Communist Errico Malatesta. Monatte presented an extreme interpretation of labor's place in human affairs. Echoing the Charter of Amiens, a succinct statement of the syndicalist position adopted by the CGT the previous year,28 he assigned the trade unions the task of transforming the bourgeois order into a workers' paradise; the unions, after waging the struggle to overthrow capitalism and the state, were to become the phalanxes of social reorganization in a world inherited by the industrial workers.29

In an eloquent rebuttal, Malatesta hinted strongly that the syndicalist preoccupation with the proletariat smacked of narrow Marxism. "The fundamental error of Monatte and of all the revolutionary syndicalists," he declared, "proceeds, in my opinion, from a much too simplified conception of the class struggle."30 Malatesta reminded his audience that they were anarchists first and foremost. As such, their goal was the emancipation of all humanity, not of a single class alone. The fight for liberation was the work of the abused millions from every walk of life. It was folly, Malatesta continued, to regard the general strike as a "panacea," precluding the necessity of an armed rebellion of all the underprivileged and oppressed. The bourgeoisie had accumulated large stores of food and other necessities, but the proletariat was compelled to rely entirely on its labor for survival. How then could the workers, merely by folding their arms, hope to bring the employers to their knees? Malatesta admonished the delegates to shake off their naive fascination with the labor movement, which was leading them to attribute extraordinary powers to the working class.31 He cautioned them against entering unions infested with socialist politicians, lest they lose sight of the ultimate goal of a classless society. Fearful that syndicalism would sink into the morass of trade-unionist reformism and "bureaucratism,"32 Malatesta warned his anarchist comrades not to become union officials. Should they ignore this advice, he said, they would find themselves pursuing their own selfish interests, and then "Goodbye anarchism!"33 A year and a half later, Malatesta's sympathizers completely dismissed the notion that the trade unions could act as the basic cells of the new society; the unions, as "the offspring of the capitalist system,"34 were fated to be swept away by the social revolution.

Among the large number of Russians who shared Malatesta's anti-syndicalist views, the most trenchant critic was Abram Solomonovich Grossman, a Chernoznamenets known in the anarchist movement as "Aleksandr." A former Socialist Revolutionary, Grossman had spent two years in prison before the outbreak of the 1905 Revolution. After his release, he went to Paris, where he became a regular contributor to the anarchist journal Burevestnik (The Stormy Petrel), using the signature of "A -- " (presumably for "Aleksandr"). In 1907, Grossman returned to Russia and became a leader of the Anarchist-Communist "battle detachment" in Ekaterino-slav. The following February he was cornered by the gendarmes in the Kiev railway station and shot to death while resisting arrest.35

In a series of articles published in Burevestnik in 1906 and 1907, Grossman made an unsparing assault upon the syndicalist position. He charged that the Khlebovol'tsy had been bewitched by the French labor movement and were falsely equating syndicalism with anarchism. French syndicalism, he maintained, was "the specific product of specific French conditions," and more often than not inapplicable to the revolutionary situation in Russia.36 Instead of preparing for the social revolution, Grossman wrote, the French union leaders seemed far more interested in carrying on a struggle for partial reforms; the unions had abandoned their revolutionary duties and were becoming a conservative instrument for the "mutual accommodation of the proletarian and bourgeois worlds."37 "All reforms," Grossman declared, "all partial improvements carry a threat to the revolutionary spirit of the working masses, carry the germ of political seduction."38 What Russia needed was not the respectable and law-abiding type of labor movement found in the Western countries, he asserted, but "a direct, illegal, revolutionary means of warfare."39 The French syndicalists talked endlessly about the general strike, and yet "the essence of the revolution is not a strike, but mass expropriation."40 The doctrine of syndicalism, Grossman went on, was replete with "poetry" and "legends," the most fanciful of which portrayed the "glowing prospects" of the workers' unions in the unenslaved realm of the future.41 Obviously, the syndicalists were forgetting that the anarchist holocaust would annihilate the existing social structure with all its institutions, the trade unions not excepted. "The strength of anarchism," Grossman concluded, "lies in its total and radical negation of all the foundations of the present system."42

After his brother's untimely death, Iuda Solomonovich Grossman (alias Roshchin) took up the anti-syndicalist banner. Writing in the Geneva journal Buntar', of which he was an editor, Roshchin charged that the Russian syndicalists in West European exile had lost sight of the specific needs of the Russian labor movement. Their demands for higher wages and a shorter working day, he said, could benefit the organized forces of skilled labor only, while callously neglecting the plight of the Lumpenproletariat and vagrants, the unskilled and unemployed. To ignore society's outcasts was, in Rosh-chin's view, to destroy the solidarity of the downtrodden majority.43

The anti-syndicalists did not all go as far as the Grossman brothers in criticizing their adversaries. A more temperate approach was taken by a young Anarchist-Communist named German Karlovich Askarov (Iakobson)44 in a series of articles appearing between 1907 and 1909 in Anarkhist, a journal he edited first in Geneva and then in Paris. Writing under the pseudonym of Oskar Burrit, Askarov drew a sharp distinction between the reformist trade unions (profsoiuzy) of England and Germany and the revolutionary syndicats (sindikaty) of France. While the former were "striving towards a reconciliation of labor and capital," he said, the latter were carrying on the radical tradition of the First International.45 The syndicats were not selfishly seeking only to improve the lot of their own members, but were bent on the total destruction of the state and private property, with the general strike as their principal weapon.46 Nevertheless, said Askarov, the syndicats were falling into the same error that had earlier sealed the doom of the First International. By opening their ranks to workingmen of all political stripes rather than maintaining anarchist homogeneity, they were bound to succumb to the machinations of politicians and the blandishments of union officials.47 In Askarov's judgment, trade unionism in any form contained the seeds of authoritarian centralism. Therefore, he urged his fellow anarchists to shun the "eloquent orators" of the Marxist parties and to depend solely on "the black force and power from the life of the working class." Organize underground anarchist unions, he told them, and "declare an unrelenting war against authority, always and everywhere."48

Although the controversy between the syndicalists and anti-syndicalists continued to brew for more than a decade, it was clear that the heyday of the terrorists had passed. As government reprisals against terrorism mounted, the need for organization and discipline became painfully evident. The aftermath of the revolution saw a rapid shift from the romanticism of terroristic deeds to a pragmatic strategy of mass action. More and more anarchists turned to the quiet work of dispensing propaganda in an attempt to consolidate the foothold they had gained in the labor movement in 1905. During the years between the suppression of the revolution and the outbreak of the First World War, the majority of anarchists who had fled to the West applied their energies to the practical matters of organization. Of the members of Chernoe Znamia and Beznachalie who survived the counterrevolution, the more fanatical persisted in their opposition to trade unionism, retaining their faith in the Lumpenproletariat and the unemployed, though there were a few, most notably Grossman-Roshchin, who moderated their position considerably. Taking a new stand which he called "critical" syndicalism, Roshchin accepted the view of the Khlebovol'tsy that the labor unions, if free from the manipulation of socialist politicians, constituted a valuable weapon in the revolutionary struggle. He even agreed that the anarchists might take part in the unions, so long as they endeavored to convert the other workers to anarchism.49

The schism in the anarchist camp caused by the thorny issues of terrorism and syndicalism was in keeping with the fissiparous tendencies displayed by every radical movement in Russia since the Decembrist revolt of 1825. Indeed, the drift from Anarchist-Communism towards Anarcho-Syndicalism resembled the defection a generation before of Plekhanov and his confederates from Populism to Marxism. Like the early Russian Marxists, the Anarcho-Syndicalists considered the ris- I ing proletariat the revolutionary wave of the future. They too placed class struggle at the center of all things, and yet -- once again like the early Marxists -- eschewed terrorism in favor of marshaling the workers for the approaching conflict with the bosses and the government. For these reasons, their terrorist antagonists branded the syndicalists as "legal" anarchists,60 analogous to the "legal Marxists" of the 1890's. The label acquired a measure of validity after the Tsar's censors began allowing the syndicalists to publish large quantities of books and pamphlets, which were widely read by workers and intellectuals both inside Russia and abroad.51

The anti-syndicalists deplored this legal activity. In their judgment, the syndicalists were rapidly sinking into a quagmire of economic reform, bureaucratic organization, and quasi-Marxist ideology. The Beznachal'tsy and Chernoznamentsy felt certain they could detect in their opponents the same disdain for the simple peasantry and the unwashed Lumpen-proletariat that Bakunin and the Populists had seen in their Marxist rivals. They continued to oppose any organization of labor on a large scale, even a loose federation of trade unions, afraid that an organized body of skilled workers, together with its "conscious minority" of leaders, might become a new ruling aristocracy. As Bakunin had taught, the social revolution had to be a true revolt of the masses, waged by all the oppressed elements of society rather than by the trade unions alone; the daily pressures of the syndicalists to ameliorate labor conditions merely threw cold water on the revolutionary fires of the dispossessed. According to the zealots, what was needed was the immediate demolition of the old regime amidst terror and fury of all sorts -- -"mere anarchy loosed upon the world." Nor would the final outcome be a society of massive industrial complexes managed by trade unions. The anti-syndicalists deprecated the unions as being integral components of the capitalist system, outmoded institutions of a dying era, hardly suitable to become the fundamental units of the anarchist Utopia. They envisioned, rather, a free federation of territorial communes, embracing all categories of the common people, in which manufacture would be carried on in small workshops. In the light of these beliefs, it is understandable that the artisans and semiskilled workers of Bialystok, threatened as they were by the rapid growth of modern enterprises, were more likely to lean towards the Anarchist-Communist Chernoe Znamia group than towards the Anarcho-Syndicalists, who made their best showing in Odessa, a major port and a center of large-scale industry.

The Anarchist-Communists saw their image of the millennium in a romantic mirror that reflected a pre-industrial Russia of agricultural communes and handicrafts cooperatives. On the other hand, the Anarcho-Syndicalists (as well as their pro-syndicalist cousins in the Khleb i Volia circle) seemed to be looking simultaneously into time past and time future. The Prospect of a new world centered around industrial production did not repel them in the least; indeed, at times they exhibited an almost futuristic devotion to the cult of the machine. Theirs was the Westernizers' admiration of technological progress, in contrast to the Slavophile longing of the Anarchist-Communists for an irretrievable age that perhaps had never existed in the first place.52 At the same time, however, the Anarcho-Syndicalists did not yield to an uncritical worship of mass production. Deeply influenced by Bakunin and Kropotkin, they anticipated the danger that man might become trapped in the gears and levers of a centralized industrial apparatus. They too looked backward for a way out, to a decentralized society of labor organizations in which the workers of the world could truly be the masters of their own fate. But the Golden Age of local self-determination was not destined to be realized. For in the end, the centralized state and centralized industrialism, the two most powerful forces of modern times, would crush the anarchist dissenters in their path.


Notes

1 Mikhailu Bakuninu, pp. 327-328.

2 James Guillaume, L'Internationale: documents et souvenirs (1864-1878) (4 vols., Paris, 1905-1910), I, 205; Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-syndicalism (London, 1938), pp. 71-72.

3 For able discussions of French syndicalism, see Louis Levine, Syndicalism in France (2nd edn., New York, 1914); Val R. Lorwin, The French Labor Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), pp. 15-46; and Paul Louis, Histoire du mouvement syndical en France (2 vols., Paris, 1947-1948), I, 129-212.

4 Khleb i Volia, No. 1, August 1903, p. 5.

5 Ibid., No. 2, September 1903, pp. 1-3. Cf. ibid., No. 7, February 1904, pp. 1-4.

6 Ibid., No. 23, October 1905, pp. 1-3.

7 M. Korn, Revoliutsionnyi sindikalizm i anarkhizm; Bor'ba s kapitalom i vlast'iu (Petrograd and Moscow, 1920), pp. 10n, 116. Cf. M. Korn, "Vseobshchaia stachka," Listki "Khleb i Volia," No. 7, 25 January 1907, pp. 1-4; and Korn, Bor'ba s kapitalom i vlast'iu; Nashi spornye voprosy (London, 1912).

8 M. Korn, "Na sovremennye temy," Khleb i Volia (Paris), No. 1, March 1909, p. 30. Cf. Korn, "Chto takoe nash sindikalizm?," Rabochii Mir, No. 1, February 1914, pp. 3-5; and Listki "Khleb i Volia," No. 1, 30 October 1906, p. 8.

9 K. Orgeiani, "Organizatsionnyi printsip revoliutsionnogo sindikalizma i anarkhizm," Burevestnik, No. 14, January 1909, pp. 2-7.

10 K. Orgeiani, "O rabochikh soiuzakh," Listki "Khleb i Volia," No. 14, 10 May 1907, pp. 2-4. This article was one of a series later collected as a pamphlet with the same title, O rabochikh soiuzakh (London, 1907). Also see Orgeiani's small book, Kak i iz chego razvilsia Revoliutsionnyi Sindikalizm (n.p. [London], 1909), which has an interesting preface by Kropotkin.

11 D. N. (Novomirskii), "Pis'mo iz Rossii," Listki "Khleb i Volia," No. 17, 21 June 1907, pp. 4-5. Novomirskii's group in Odessa adopted the name "Anarcho-Syndicalists" rather than the French term "revolutionary syndicalists" partly to emphasize their distinctly Russian character, partly to indicate that their members were all anarchists (many of the revolutionary syndicalists in France had Marxist, Blanquist, and other radical affiliations), and partly to distinguish themselves from the Anarchist-Communists, who were not as exclusively concerned with the labor movement as they were.

12 Novomirskii, Iz programmy sindikal'nogo anarkhizma, p. 191.

13 Novyi Mir, No. 1, 15 October 1905, pp. 4, 10.

14 Novomirskii, Iz programmy sindikal'nogo anarkhizma, pp. 178-191; Listki "Khleb i Volia," No. 5, 28 December 1906, p. 9.

15 Mikhailu Bakuninu, p. 264.

16 Ibid., pp. 252fl; Gorev, Anarkhizm v Rossii, pp. 64-16 Obshche-stvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii, III, 477.

17 Mikhailu Bakuninu, p. 264.

18 Burevestnik, No. 10-11, March-April 1908, pp. 28-30; Al'manakh, pp. 47-59; Buntar', No. 1, 1 December 1906, p. 29.

19 Listki "Khleb i Volia," No. 18, July 1907, p. 6.

20 Peterburzhets, Ocherk peterburzhskogo rabochego dvizheniia 90-kh godov (London, 1902), pp. 41-42, 61-62; A.M. Pankratova, Fabzavkomy v Rossii v bor'be za sotsialisticheskuiu jabriku (Moscow, 1923), pp. 94-171; Fabzavkomy i profsoiuzy (Moscow, 1925), pp. 21-22; la. Fin, Fabrichno-zavodskie komitety v Rossii (Moscow, 1925), p. 5; Oskar Anweiler, Die Ratebewegung in Russland, 1905-1921 (Leiden, 1958), pp. 27-28, 45-49.

21 The pro-syndicalists of Khleb i Volia also likened the 1905 Petersburg Soviet -- as a nonparty mass organization -- to the central committee of the Paris Commune of 1871. Listki "Khleb i Volia," No. 2, 14 November 1906, p. 5.

22 Gorev, Anarkhizm v Rossii, p. 85.

23 Burevestnik, No. 4, 30 October 1906, p. 13.

24 Kropotkin, ed., Russkaia revoliutsiia i anarkhizm, pp. 12-13.

25 Ibid., p. 14.

26 Listki "Khleb i Volia," No. 2, 14 November 1906, p. 5. The Khleb i Volia group discussed the question of syndicalism at two meetings in London (December 1904 and October 1906) and one in Paris (September 1905). For reports of these conferences, see Kropotkin, ed., Russkaia revoliutsiia i anarkhizm; Korn, Revoliutsionnyi sindikalizm i anarkhizm; Bor'ba s kapitalom i vlast'iu; Korn, Revoliutsionnyi sindikalizm i sotsialisticheskie partii (London, 1907); and Listki "Khleb i Volia," No, 1, 30 October 1906, pp. 6-9.

27 Nikolai Rogdaev and Vladimir Zabrezhnev were among the five Russian delegates to the Amsterdam Congress. Representing the Jewish Anarchist Federation of London was Alexander Schapiro, who was later to play a major part in the Russian anarchist movement.

28 The Charter of Amiens is in Louis, Histoire du mouvement syndical, '. 262-263.

29 Congris anarchiste tenu d Amsterdam Aotit 1907 (Paris, 1908), pp. ■'-71; N, Rogdaev, Internatsional'nyi kongress anarkhistov v Amster-

dc"ne (n.p., 1907), pp. 20-21. 80 Congres anarchiste, p. 81.

31 Ibid., pp. 82-83; Rogdaev, Internatsional'nyi kongress anarkhistov, p. 20.

32 Rogdaev, Internatsional'nyi kongress anarkhistov, p. 18.

33 Congris anarchiste, p. 82.

34 A. Liubomirov, "Neskol'ko slov o znachenii professional'nykh soiuzov," Trudovaia Respublika, No. 2, February 1909, p. 8-12.

35 Burevestnik, No. 10-11, March-April 1908, pp. 1-2; No. 19, February 1910, pp. 15-16; Knizhnik, Krasnaia Letopis', 1922, No. 4, p. 39; Anisimov, Katorga i Ssylka, 1932, No. 10, pp. 134-135.

36 A----------, "Anarkhizm i revoliutsionnyi sindikalizm," Burevestnik, No. 6-7, September-October 1907, p. 2.

37 Ibid., p. 3.

38 A---------, "Nash sindikalizm," ibid., No. 4, 30 October 1906, p. 3.

39 Ibid., p. 4.

40 Ibid., No. 6-7, pp. 4-5.

41 Ibid., pp. 5-6.

42 Ibid., p. 3. Cf. A. Ivanov, "Zametka o revoliutsionnykh sindikatakh," lftM., No. 16, May 1909, pp. 6-10; and Pereval, Bezgosudarstvennyi kommunizm i sindikalizm (n.p., n.d. [191?]). Also see Maksim Raevskii's reply to the anti-syndicalists, "Antisindikalisty v nashikh riadakh," Burevestnik, No. 8, November 1907, pp. 3-6.

43 "Neskol'ko slov o sindikalizme," Buntar', No. 2-3, June-July 1908, pp. 12-14; Roshchin, "Pis'tno k tovarishcham" (leaflet, Geneva, November 1908), Columbia Russian Archive. Cf. A. Kolosov, "Anarkhizm ili j sindikalizm?," Anarkhist, No. I, 10 October 1907, p. 11. The syndicats, wrote Kolosov, ignored "the huge cadres of unemployed, vagrants, and unskilled workers." He added that the relatively peaceful evolution of anarchism since the era of dynamite in France was "a minus, not a plus" for the movement.

44 His brother Nikolai, an anarchist in Kiev, was executed for terrorism in 1906. Listki "Khleb i Volia," No. 3, 28 November 1906, p. 4; Anarkhist, No. 1, 10 October 1907, p. 1.

45 O. Burrit, "Anarkhizm i rabochaia organizatsiia," Anarkhist, No. 1, 10 October 1907, p. 5.

46 Ibid., p. 7.

47 O. Burrit, "Professionalizm, sindikalizm i Anarkhizm," ibid., No. 2, 1 April 1908, pp. 6-7.

48 Burnt, ibid., No. 1, p. 9. Cf. Burrit, "Printsipy trudovogo anarkhiche-skogo soiuza," ibid., No. 3, May 1909, pp. 8-12; and Burrit, "Po povodu °dnoi stat'i," ibid., No. 4, September 1909, pp. 14-18.

49 On the debate over the question of syndicalism during the early war years, see the four numbers of Rabochee Znamia, an Anarchist-Communist journal published in Lausanne in 1915. Of special interest are the articles by Roshchin, Orgeiani, Aleksandr Ge, and "Rabochii Al'fa" (Anikst). Also see M. Raevskii, Anarkho-sindikalizm i "kriticheskii" sindikalizm (New York, 1919).

50 Al'manakh, p. 19.

51 Among the more important works to appear in St. Petersburg and Moscow during the post-revolutionary period were the following: Fernand Pelloutier, Istoriia birzh truda (Histoire des bourses du travail) (St. Petersburg, 1906), and Zhizri rabochikh vo Frantsii (La Vie ouvriere en France) (St. Petersburg, 1906); Arturo Labriola, Sindilcalizm i reformizm (St. Petersburg, 1907); Hubert Lagardelle, Revoliutsionnyi sindikalizm (St. Petersburg, 1906); P. Strel'skii, Novaia sekta v riadakh sotsialistov (Moscow, 1907), containing chapters on Labriola, Lagardelle, Paul Delesalle, and other theorists and practitioners of revolutionary syndicalism; Svoboda i trud: anarkhizm-sindikalizm (St. Petersburg, 1907), a collection of articles by Labriola, Lagardelle, and others; N. Kritskaia and N. Lebedev, Istoriia sindikal'nogo dvizheniia vo Frantsii, 1789-1907 (Moscow, 1908); A. Nedrov, Rabochii vopros (St. Petersburg, 1906); L. S. Kozlovskii, Ocherki sindikalizma vo Frantsii (Moscow, 1907), and Sotsial'noe dvizhenie v sovremennoi Frantsii (Moscow, 1908), containing articles by Georges Sorel, Hubert Lagardelle, fidouard Berth, fimile Pouget, and others; and a series of books by the former "legal Marxist" V. A. Posse, published in St. Petersburg (1905-1906) under the general title of Biblioteka rabochego. In addition to these works printed inside Russia, numerous syndicalist books and pamphlets in the Russian language appeared in Western countries. Furthermore, the pro-syndicalist journals contained hundreds of passages and citations from the literature of revolutionary syndicalism, and many general studies of anarchism, appearing legally at this time, included sections on syndicalism.

52 It is noteworthy that those syndicalists who remained inside Russia (Novomirskii, for example) were more apt to decry the futility of blindly imitating Western models than their comrades who spent long years abroad.