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Volin
Волин
Portrait photograph of Volin
Chairman of theMilitary Revolutionary Councilof theMakhnovshchina
In office
1 September 1919 – 31 January 1920
Preceded byNestor Makhno
Succeeded byDmitry Popov
Personal details
Born
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum

23 August [O.S.11 August] 1882
Voronezh,Russian Empire
Died18 September 1945(1945-09-18)(aged 63)
Paris,French Republic
Resting placePère Lachaise Cemetery
Political partySocialist Revolutionary(1904–1911)
Other political
affiliations
Relatives
EducationSaint Petersburg State University
Occupation
  • Politician
  • writer

Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum[a](23 August [O.S.11 August] 1882 – 18 September 1945), commonly known by his pseudonymVolin,[b]was aRussian anarchistintellectual. He became involved inrevolutionary socialistpolitics during the1905 Russian Revolution,for which he was forced into exile, where he gravitated towardsanarcho-syndicalism.

He returned toPetrogradfollowing theFebruary Revolutionof 1917 and propagandised for anarcho-syndicalism in the Russian capital. In the wake of theOctober Revolution,which he criticised for bringing theBolsheviksto power, he left for Ukraine, where he became a leading figure in theMakhnovshchina.During this time, he developed a theory ofsynthesis anarchism,which advocated for collaboration between anarchists of different tendencies, and spearheaded the intellectual development of Ukrainian anarchism, as leader of theNabatand chair of the thirdMilitary Revolutionary Councilduring the civil war.

After the suppression of the Russian and Ukrainian anarchist movements by the Bolsheviks, Volin again went into exile. In Paris, he became a leading opponent ofplatformism,which he criticised as authoritarian, and found work as a prolific writer in multiple different languages. He lived out the last years of his life in poverty, evading persecution by theNazisand theFrench State,as he was wanted for his Jewish heritage and his anarchist political convictions. He died of tuberculosis shortly after theliberation of France.

Early life

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Volin was born Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum on 23 August [O.S.11 August] 1882,[1]to an educatedRussian Jewishfamily fromVoronezh,a city in theCentral Black Earth Regionof theRussian Empire.His parents, both of whom were doctors,[2]employed western tutors for Volin and his brother,Boris,who were educated in theFrenchandGerman languages,in addition toRussian.After completing his education in Voronezh,[3]Volin moved toSaint Petersburg,where he studied in theFaculty of LawatSaint Petersburg State University.[4]

Political activism

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Members of theSaint Petersburg Soviet,which Volin helped establish during the1905 Russian Revolution

By 1901, Volin had become involved in the imperial capital's nascentworkers' movement,[3]and in 1904, he dropped out of university to be a full-time activist for theSocialist Revolutionary Party.[5]He mostly worked to educate workers as a tutor, also establishing a library and organising study groups.[3]As a socialist revolutionary, he was involved in the1905 Russian Revolutionfrom its inception: witnessing the events ofBloody Sunday;[1]participating in the establishment of theSaint Petersburg Soviet;[4]before he was arrested for his part in an uprising atKronstadt,[2]for which he was briefly imprisoned in thePeter and Paul Fortress.[3]Following the suppression of the revolution, in 1907, he was arrested again by theOkhranaand deported toSiberia,but was able to escape into exile inFrance.[4]

After settling inParis,Volin met a number of anarchists, including the FrenchSébastien Faureand the RussianApollon Karelin.By 1911, he had committed himself toanarchism,leaving the Socialist Revolutionary Party and joining Karelin's Brotherhood of Free Communists.[6]With the outbreak ofWorld War I,Volin immediately joined theanti-war movement,catching the attention of the French authorities.[7]He managed to evade capture and fled to the United States in 1915. Upon arriving inNew York City,he joined theUnion of Russian Workers,aRussian Americananarcho-syndicalistorganisation. He soon joined the editorial staff of its newspaper,Golos Truda,and in December 1916, he went on a speaking tour of North American cities. In the wake of theFebruary Revolution,Volin returned toRussia.[8]In July 1917, he and his colleagues fromGolos Trudaarrived in Petrograd, where they restarted publication of their newspaper, now propagating anarcho-syndicalism directly to the workers of the Russian capital.[9]

Revolutionary activities

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Volin quickly became a leading proponent of anarcho-syndicalism during the1917 Revolution,calling forworkers' controlin his frequent speeches to the workers of Petrograd and as editor ofGolos Truda,which expanded its circulation to 25,000 readers.[10]In the wake of theOctober Revolution,he became a vocal critic of theBolsheviks,warning of theirauthoritarian tendenciesand predicting that they would see the power of thesovietsusurped by thestate.[11]He particularly criticised theTreaty of Brest-Litovsk,which he considered to be a renouncement ofworld revolutionby the Bolsheviks. He called for the prosecution ofpartisan warfareagainst theCentral Powersand consequently decided to move toUkraine,which had fallen under the occupation of theGerman EmpireandAustria-Hungary.[12]

After visiting relatives in Voronezh[12]and spending a few months organising educational institutions for the local soviet inBobrov,[13]Volin moved toKharkiv,where he participated in the establishment of theNabat Confederation of Anarchist Organisations.[14]On 18 November 1918, at the organisation's first conference inKursk,he drew up a declaration of principles,[15]which was designed to be acceptable to the three majoranarchist schools of thought:communism,individualismandsyndicalism.[16]Volin's theory ofsynthesis anarchism,which encouraged anarchists of different tendencies to cooperate,[17]was criticised as ineffective by his former anarcho-syndicalist comrades such asGrigorii MaksimovandMark Mratchny.[18]Nevertheless, Volin continued to advocate for his organisational theory through the Nabat, which grew to include autonomous branches throughout Ukraine,[19]as well as a youth section and a publishing house.[20]

Volin in 1919, during his time with theNabatand theMakhnovshchina

By mid-1919, the organisation had drawn the attention of the Bolsheviks, who closed its meeting places and shut down its newspaper press.[21]In response, Volin moved the Nabat's headquarters toHuliaipole,where it became a central organisation within theMakhnovshchina,an anarchist mass movement led byNestor Makhno'sRevolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine.Volin joined the movement's Cultural-Educational Commission, serving as an editor for its publications and organising itsregional congresses,even going on to act aschairmanof theMilitary Revolutionary Council(RVS), the movement's executive body.[22]As chair of the RVS, Volin clashed with the Insurgent Army's command over the excessive violence employed by theKontrrazvedka.[23]He also edited the movement'sDraft Declaration,which proposed the establishment offree sovietsas the basis for a transition towards acommunist society.[24]

Nestor Makhno(center) and other commanders of theRevolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine

In December 1919, Volin went toKryvyi Rihin order to counter the spread ofUkrainian nationalismin the region, but he contractedtyphusand was forced to stop for recovery in a peasant village.[25]On 14 January 1920, he was arrested on his sickbed by the14th Armyand given to theCheka,[26]who had orders fromLeon Trotskyto execute him. Russian American anarchists such asAlexander Berkmanattempted to appeal his sentence, but this was rejected byNikolay Krestinsky,thegeneral secretary of the Communist Partyand a former colleague of Volin.[27]Further appeals by Russian libertarians, including the BolshevikVictor Serge,eventually secured his transfer toButyrka prisoninMoscow,where his death sentence was commuted.[28]He was finally released in October 1920, as part of the terms of theStarobilsk agreementbetween the Bolsheviks and the Makhnovists,[29]and he was even offered the post ofPeople's Commissar for Educationin theUkrainian Soviet government,which he rejected.[20]

In November, Volin made a quick visit toDmitrov,where he paid his respects to a dyingPeter Kropotkin,[30]who by then was pessimistic about the prospects of the revolution.[31]He then returned to Kharkiv, where he began to prepare an All-Russian Congress of Anarchists to be held on 25 December,[32]as well as leading the negotiations withChristian Rakovsky's government over the controversial fourth political clause of the Starobilsk agreement, which would have provided for the autonomy of the Makhnovshchina.[33]

Following thesoviet victoryover theWhite movementinCrimea,Volin and other members of the Nabat were arrested and imprisoned again in Moscow.[34]In July 1921, after being visited byGaston Leval,a French syndicalist delegate to theProfintern,[30]Volin and other anarchist political prisoners staged ahunger strikein order to draw the attention of other visiting trade union delegates.[35]Following protests from the delegates toVladimir Lenin,the prisoners were released and subsequently deported fromSoviet Russiain January 1922.[36]

Exile

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Exiled inBerlin,Volin and his family were supported byGerman anarchistssuch asRudolf Rocker,[37]who provided them with a small attic to live in.[38]While in the German capital, Volin worked with Alexander Berkman to provide support for anarchist political prisoners and exiles,[39]including Nestor Makhno himself, who Volin helped escape from Poland to Berlin.[40]He also published a weekly newspaper,The Anarchist Herald,[41]translatedPeter Arshinov'sHistory of the Makhnovist Movementand publicised evidence ofpolitical repressionsagainst Russian anarchists.[42]

In 1924, his old comrade Sébastien Faure invited him back to Paris[43]to collaborate on the publication of hisAnarchist Encyclopedia.[44]Volin became a key contributor to the encyclopedia, as well as a number of anarchist periodicals in various different languages, including the FrenchLe Libertaire,the GermanDie Internationale,the EnglishMan!,the RussianDelo Trudaand the YiddishFraye Arbeter Shtime.It was at this time that he also began to compile his history of the Russian Revolution.[45]

Volin (center) with his friendsSenya FleshinandMollie Steimer

In 1927, Volin was caught in the debate over thePlatform,which had caused a split in the exiled Russian anarchist movement.[46]Volin himself was extremely critical of thePlatform,which he claimed contradicted the anarchist principle ofdecentralisationand reflected a desire to create an anarchistpolitical party.[47]This split led to a particularly harsh falling-out with Nestor Makhno,[48]who resented Volin'sintellectualism.[49]Despite this, the pair managed to reconcile before Makhno's death in 1934, at the behest of Makhno's wifeHalyna Kuzmenko,[50]and Volin took up the task of editing and publishing Makhno's memoirs.[51]

Along with his criticisms of platformism, Volin also published denunciations ofBolshevism,which he described as "red fascism",comparing the policies ofJoseph Stalinto those ofBenito MussoliniandAdolf Hitler.[52]He criticised the "anarcho-Bolsheviks", who had favoured collaboration with the Bolshevik government, and was openly critical of the "anarcho-Bolshevik"German Sandomirskii[ru],who he accused of lacking anarchist convictions.[53]

Volin during the last years of his life

He attempted to continue his educational activities by providing free classes about anarchism, but he also needed money to support his family, so he took up a number of jobs in the publishing industry, notably working on a Russian translation ofEugene O'Neill's playLazarus Laughed.[54]In the wake of theSpanish Revolution of 1936,he briefly worked on the French language organ of theConfederación Nacional del Trabajo,[55]but quit after the organisation joined thegovernmentof thePopular Front.[54]Volin lived out the following years in poverty,[54]untilAndré Prudhommeauxprovided him a job on the board of his newspaperTerre Libre,which he contributed to inNîmes.[55]

In 1940, while living in poverty inMarseilles,he completed his work onThe Unknown Revolution,a history of the Russian Revolution.[56]Following theinvasion of FrancebyNazi Germanyand the establishment of the collaborationistFrench State,he was driven into hiding due to his Jewish heritage and his anarchist political beliefs. Although his friendsSenya FleshinandMollie Steimerattempted to convince him to escape to Mexico with them, he resolved to remain in France, as he believed that there would be a revolution following the end of thewar.[57]

However by the time theliberation of Franceallowed him to return to Paris, he had contracted tuberculosis. On 18 September 1945, Volin died in a Parisian hospital.[56]His ashes were buried in a niche of thePère Lachaise Cemetery,near the resting place of his comrade Nestor Makhno.[57]

In his obituary to Volin written the month after his death,Victor Sergedescribed him as "one of the most remarkable figures of Russian anarchism, a man of absolute probity and exceptional rigor of thought.... One must hope that the future will render justice to this intrepidly idealistic revolutionary who was always, in prison, in the poverty of exile, as on the battlefield and in editorial offices, a man of real moral grandeur."[58]

Works

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  • Volin (1922). "Гонения на анархизм в Советской России" [The Repressions of the Anarchists in Soviet Russia].The Anarchist Herald(in Russian).
  • —— (1924). "Sur la Synthèse" [On Synthesis].Revue anarchiste(in French). No. 25–27.
  • —— (1934). "Le Fascisme Rouge" [Red Fascism].Ce qu'il faut dire(in French).
  • —— (1935)."The Historical Role of the State".Vanguard.Vol. 2, no. 3. pp. 8–11.
  • —— (1947).La Révolution Inconnue[The Unknown Revolution] (in French). Les Amis de Voline.

Notes

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  1. ^‹See Tfd›Russian:Всеволод Михайлович Эйхенбаум,romanized:Vsevolod Mikhaylovich Eykhenbaum;Yiddish:ווסעוואָלאָד מיכאילאָוויטש אייכענבוים
  2. ^French:Voline;‹See Tfd›Russian:Во́лин;Yiddish:וואָלין

References

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  1. ^abAvrich 1988,p. 126;Guérin 2005,p. 473.
  2. ^abAvrich 1988,p. 126;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  3. ^abcdAvrich 1988,p. 126.
  4. ^abcAvrich 1988,p. 126;Guérin 2005,p. 473;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  5. ^Avrich 1988,p. 126;Guérin 2005,p. 473;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31;van der Walt & Schmidt 2009,pp. 103–104.
  6. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 126–127.
  7. ^Avrich 1988,p. 127;Guérin 2005,p. 473;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  8. ^Avrich 1988,p. 127;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  9. ^Avrich 1988,p. 127;Guérin 2005,p. 473;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31;van der Walt & Schmidt 2009,p. 254.
  10. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 127–128.
  11. ^Avrich 1988,p. 128;Guérin 2005,pp. 473–474;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  12. ^abAvrich 1988,p. 128.
  13. ^Avrich 1988,p. 128;Guérin 2005,p. 474.
  14. ^Avrich 1988,p. 128;Darch 2020,p. 31;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31;van der Walt & Schmidt 2009,pp. 104, 255.
  15. ^Avrich 1988,p. 128;Guérin 2005,p. 474;Malet 1982,p. 159.
  16. ^Avrich 1988,p. 128;Darch 2020,p. 31;Guérin 2005,p. 474;Malet 1982,p. 159;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  17. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 128–129;Malet 1982,p. 159;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31;van der Walt & Schmidt 2009,pp. 245–247.
  18. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 128–129;Malet 1982,p. 159.
  19. ^Avrich 1988,p. 129;Darch 2020,p. 31;Guérin 2005,p. 474;Malet 1982,p. 159.
  20. ^abAvrich 1988,p. 129.
  21. ^Avrich 1988,p. 129;Guérin 2005,p. 474.
  22. ^Avrich 1988,p. 129;Guérin 2005,p. 474;Malet 1982,p. 175;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  23. ^Malet 1982,pp. 51–52;Patterson 2020,p. 70;Shubin 2010,p. 183.
  24. ^Darch 2020,pp. 74–75;Skirda 2004,pp. 332–333.
  25. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 129–130;Malet 1982,pp. 53, 97;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  26. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 129–130;Guérin 2005,pp. 474–475.
  27. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 129–130.
  28. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 129–130;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  29. ^Avrich 1988,p. 130;Darch 2020,pp. 109–110;Guérin 2005,pp. 474–475;Malet 1982,pp. 66, 162–163;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31;Skirda 2004,p. 201.
  30. ^abAvrich 1988,p. 130.
  31. ^Darch 2020,p. 107.
  32. ^Avrich 1988,p. 130;Guérin 2005,pp. 474–475.
  33. ^Malet 1982,p. 163.
  34. ^Avrich 1988,p. 130;Darch 2020,p. 118;Guérin 2005,pp. 474–475;Malet 1982,p. 163;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31;Shubin 2010,p. 186;Skirda 2004,pp. 238–239.
  35. ^Avrich 1988,p. 130;Guérin 2005,p. 475;Malet 1982,p. 163;van der Walt & Schmidt 2009,p. 104.
  36. ^Avrich 1988,p. 130;Guérin 2005,p. 475;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31;Skirda 2004,pp. 269–270, 277.
  37. ^Avrich 1988,p. 130;Guérin 2005,p. 475;Malet 1982,p. 186.
  38. ^Avrich 1988,p. 130;Malet 1982,p. 186.
  39. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 130–131.
  40. ^Darch 2020,p. 138;Malet 1982,p. 186;Skirda 2004,pp. 270–271.
  41. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 130–131;Guérin 2005,p. 475.
  42. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 130–131;Guérin 2005,p. 475;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  43. ^Avrich 1988,p. 131;Guérin 2005,p. 475;Malet 1982,p. 187.
  44. ^Avrich 1988,p. 131;Guérin 2005,p. 475.
  45. ^Avrich 1988,p. 131.
  46. ^Avrich 1988,p. 131;Darch 2020,p. 144;Malet 1982,pp. 190–191;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31;Skirda 2004,pp. 277–278;van der Walt & Schmidt 2009,p. 253.
  47. ^Avrich 1988,p. 131;Darch 2020,p. 144;Malet 1982,pp. 190–191;van der Walt & Schmidt 2009,p. 253.
  48. ^Darch 2020,pp. 140–141;Malet 1982,pp. 190–191;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31;Skirda 2004,pp. 277–278;van der Walt & Schmidt 2009,p. 256.
  49. ^Darch 2020,pp. 140–141;Skirda 2004,pp. 278–279.
  50. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 131–132;Malet 1982,p. 192.
  51. ^Avrich 1988,pp. 131–132;Darch 2020,p. 30;Skirda 2004,pp. 285–288.
  52. ^Avrich 1988,p. 132;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  53. ^Darch 2020,pp. 142–143.
  54. ^abcAvrich 1988,p. 132.
  55. ^abAvrich 1988,p. 132;Guérin 2005,p. 475.
  56. ^abAvrich 1988,p. 134;Guérin 2005,p. 475;Patterson 2020,pp. 28–31.
  57. ^abAvrich 1988,p. 134.
  58. ^Serge, Victor (2019).Notebooks: 1936-1947.New York:New York Review Books.pp. 524–525.ISBN978-1-68137-270-9.

Bibliography

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Further reading

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Media related toVolinat Wikimedia Commons

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