charlie mowbray
The Enforcer
Excuse quick and crude translation...
Following a long illness, on Wednesday 23 December our friend, our companion Alexandre Skirda passed away at the age of 78 years. ...
His interest in this region and his knowledge of the language had enabled him to get to know the revolutionary peasant movement in southern Ukraine, heir to several centuries of direct democracy practice. In books like Nestor Makhno, the libertarian Cossack, the struggle for free Soviets in Ukraine 1917-1921, he shows how in this period the creation of free municipalities aimed to establish a stateless society, then the way in which the Bolshevik State destroyed them, after having eliminated the Ukrainian insurrectionary Revolutionary Army, which had nevertheless made it possible to defeat the armies white.
Even today the name of Alexander Skirda winds up the majority of Trotskyist militants, who do not forgive him for having revealed the way in which the Red Army, sent by Trotsky, had crushed the Municipality of Kronstadt, which wanted for the Russia a direct, federalist democracy, and declared on March 8, 1921: "It is here in Kronstadt that the first stone of the Third Revolution opposed to the bureaucratic order of the Bolsheviks was laid, leaving behind the dictatorship of the Communist Party, the chekas and state capitalism ”. By publishing Kronstadt 1921: Free Soviets Against Party Dictatorship , He granted long after the wish of Stépan Pétrichenlo, president of the Kronstadt Provisional Revolutionary Committee: " They can shoot the Kronstadians, but they will never be able to shoot the truth of Kronstadt ".
His research has enabled him to write several books on this historical event, which have been the subject of translations in various countries and numerous re-editions, enriched by new documents. He recently translated and presented Kronstadt in the Russian Revolution by Efim Yartchouk, previously unpublished. This one, one of the principal animators of the anarchists of Kronstadt, describes what he lived and dedicates his work "to those who shed their blood during the revolution of 1905 for the complete emancipation of the proletariat from the yoke of capital and authority. To those who fought in February and July 1917 against the masters of the world. Those who let themselves be deceived by the slogans of the proletarian state soon raised their arms against the new masters, the Bolsheviks. In memory of those who perished on the road leading to the Society of Free Men: Anarchy ”.
Having had the opportunity to approach the mountain of documents feeding his books, those mentioned here being only a part, we were able to measure the importance of his historical work in revealing what has long been hidden - as well by the "whites" than by the "reds" - on a revolution which had consequences, for decades, on the workers' movement in many countries.
We will not forget Alexandre Skirda, the essential historian of the Russian revolution, and also the anarchist activist who, from the 1960s, led the Anarchist Study and Action Group.
Following a long illness, on Wednesday 23 December our friend, our companion Alexandre Skirda passed away at the age of 78 years. ...
His interest in this region and his knowledge of the language had enabled him to get to know the revolutionary peasant movement in southern Ukraine, heir to several centuries of direct democracy practice. In books like Nestor Makhno, the libertarian Cossack, the struggle for free Soviets in Ukraine 1917-1921, he shows how in this period the creation of free municipalities aimed to establish a stateless society, then the way in which the Bolshevik State destroyed them, after having eliminated the Ukrainian insurrectionary Revolutionary Army, which had nevertheless made it possible to defeat the armies white.
Even today the name of Alexander Skirda winds up the majority of Trotskyist militants, who do not forgive him for having revealed the way in which the Red Army, sent by Trotsky, had crushed the Municipality of Kronstadt, which wanted for the Russia a direct, federalist democracy, and declared on March 8, 1921: "It is here in Kronstadt that the first stone of the Third Revolution opposed to the bureaucratic order of the Bolsheviks was laid, leaving behind the dictatorship of the Communist Party, the chekas and state capitalism ”. By publishing Kronstadt 1921: Free Soviets Against Party Dictatorship , He granted long after the wish of Stépan Pétrichenlo, president of the Kronstadt Provisional Revolutionary Committee: " They can shoot the Kronstadians, but they will never be able to shoot the truth of Kronstadt ".
His research has enabled him to write several books on this historical event, which have been the subject of translations in various countries and numerous re-editions, enriched by new documents. He recently translated and presented Kronstadt in the Russian Revolution by Efim Yartchouk, previously unpublished. This one, one of the principal animators of the anarchists of Kronstadt, describes what he lived and dedicates his work "to those who shed their blood during the revolution of 1905 for the complete emancipation of the proletariat from the yoke of capital and authority. To those who fought in February and July 1917 against the masters of the world. Those who let themselves be deceived by the slogans of the proletarian state soon raised their arms against the new masters, the Bolsheviks. In memory of those who perished on the road leading to the Society of Free Men: Anarchy ”.
Having had the opportunity to approach the mountain of documents feeding his books, those mentioned here being only a part, we were able to measure the importance of his historical work in revealing what has long been hidden - as well by the "whites" than by the "reds" - on a revolution which had consequences, for decades, on the workers' movement in many countries.
We will not forget Alexandre Skirda, the essential historian of the Russian revolution, and also the anarchist activist who, from the 1960s, led the Anarchist Study and Action Group.
