Russian Anarchism and the Bolshevization of Bakunin in the Early Soviet Period (Mikhail Bakunin) (Critical Essay‪)‬

The rise of anarchism, in its many different currents and doctrinal manifestations, became one of the distinctive characteristics of the Russian Revolution. Although recent research has shed new light on the fate of the anarchists under Soviet rule, the nature and extent of anarchist activity after 1921, as well as the Bolsheviks' struggle against it, remains beyond the scope of most studies. (1) Despite systematic repression by the state and its security organs, anarchist thought and propaganda continued to survive during the first decade of Soviet power in the pamphlets of the Voice of Labor (Golos truda) Publishing House as well as within legal institutions, principally the Kropotkin Museum. It saw its boldest expression in the anarchists' defense of their most legendary representative, Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76). Notwithstanding its fierce opposition to Marxian state socialism, the ideological legacy of Bakunin survived in the early Soviet period thanks not only to the anarchists but also to the need within early Soviet culture to elevate the Revolution's romantic, promethean impulse. Thus, at the same time that Bakunin inspired the anarchists with passionate rhetoric against authoritarianism, his words and deeds also provided official Soviet culture with an exemplary model of unrelenting libertarian struggle. In their efforts to appropriate Bakunin's legacy throughout the early 1920s, however, Bolshevik publicists had to seek strategies to commemorate Bakunin without implicitly challenging the notion of proletarian dictatorship. As I seek to demonstrate here, the publications and events surrounding Bakunin's 50-year jubilee in 1926, in particular, laid bare the contradiction inherent in the Bolsheviks' celebration of an anarchist legacy within an ever-strengthening state.