On the Tenth Anniversary of the Russian Revolution

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. The editors have discovered that this article is more than a translation but less than an original essay. It shares a structure and some paragraphs from an extant original typewritten letter by Berkman by the same title, now in the archives of the International Institute for Social History in the Netherlands and reprinted by the Pitzer Anarchy Archives at http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/berkman/iishberkman/ABandEGtoFitzi/10thanniverRR/tenthanrusrev.html.Ba Jin’s version could be based on another letter or on a combination of letters by Berkman sent out at the same timebecause Berkman, along with Emma Goldman and other anarchists, sent out many fundraising appeals for Russian prisoners of conscience between 1923 and 1931. In fact, they even created whole subscription journals for this purpose: the Bulletin of the Joint Committee for the Defense of Revolutionists Imprisoned in Russia and the Bulletin of the Relief Fund of the International Working Men’s Association for Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists Imprisoned or Exiled in Russia. For a reprint of these bulletins, see Alexander Berkman and Rudolf Rocker, The Tragic Procession—Alexander Berkman and Russian Prisoner Aid, 1923–1931 (Berkeley, CA: Kate Sharpley Library & Alexander Berkman Social Club, 2010). See a review of this reprint edition by Paul Petard in Black Flag 235 (2012): 32–33, reprinted online at https://libcom.org/library/not-forgotten-then-or-now-review-book-russian-anarchist-prisoner-support-bulletins-keeps and at http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/9p8f2n. An incomplete version of Berkman’s essay, “On the Tenth Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution,” appeared in issue no. 3 (June 1927) of the Bulletin of the Relief Fund, reprinted on p. 34 of the Tragic Procession. This version includes only the first two pages of Berkman’s original typewritten essay, without any new material, and thus Ba Jin’s translation again either adds original points or is based on some other lost or unknown version.2. Sergius Stepniak was the pseudonym of the nineteenth-century Russian revolutionary Sergey Mikhaylovich Stepnyak-Kravchinsky (1851–1895), a member of the group Land and Liberty who edited that party’s journal of the same name and published a series of books, including Underground Russia (1882) and Russia Under the Czars (1886). In 1878, he carried out an assassination of General Nikolai Mezentsov, the head of Russia’s secret police; thereafter, he lived the rest of his life in exile in London.3. George Kennan (1845–1924) was an American explorer and war correspondent, distant cousin of the American diplomat George F. Kennan. He was especially noted for his writings and lectures about his travels in Siberia and the Kamchatka peninsula of the Russian empire. He became a critic of Russian autocracy, including in his Siberia and the Exile System (New York: Century, 1891), and became a friend of many Russian exiled revolutionary intellectuals, including Kropotkin and Stepniak.