Lev Chernyi’s Anarchistic Sociometry

Abstract

Anarchist teachings have become popular in the modern world. Due to this fact, it is necessary to examine the history of this movement, because many important anarchists of the past are hardly known today. This article focuses on the ideas of Lev Chernyi (Pavel Dmitrievich Turchaninov), who was a Russian anarchist in the early 20th century. The author analyzes his program work “A New Direction in Anarchism: Associational Anarchism”, first published in 1907. The goal of the analysis is to introduce Chernyi not only as a dedicated anarchist, but also as a social scientist, familiar with the traditions of European sociology. Such a perspective is possible due to the terminology used by Turchaninov. In particular, the Russian anarchist divides social sciences into sociology and sociometry, defining the subject area for each field of knowledge. To reach the goal, it is necessary to answer several key questions of social sciences, namely, how Chernyi explains action, social order and social changes. The author claims that answers to these questions very well might be found in the work of Turchaninov. The conclusion is that Chernyi’s ideas are interesting not only for researchers of anarchism, but also for social scientists and philosophers, since Turchaninov has several concepts similar to the ideas of the classics of sociological thought.