Grigorii Maksimov | |
|---|---|
Григо́рий Макси́мов | |
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| Born | (1893-11-10)10 November 1893 |
| Died | 16 March 1950(1950-03-16) (aged 56) Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Resting place | Waldheim Cemetery |
| Occupation(s) | Agriculturalist,journalist |
| Years active | 1917–1950 |
| Organization(s) | Golos Truda Delo Truda |
| Notable work | The Guillotine at Work |
| Movement | Anarcho-syndicalism |
Grigorii Petrovich Maksimov (Russian:Григо́рий Петро́вич Макси́мов; 1893–1950) was a Russiananarcho-syndicalist. From the first days of theRussian Revolution, he played a leading role in the country's syndicalist movement – editing the newspaperGolos Truda and organising the formation offactory committees. Following theOctober Revolution, he came into conflict with theBolsheviks, who he fiercely criticised for theirauthoritarian andcentralist tendencies. For his anti-Bolshevik activities, he was eventually arrested and imprisoned, before finally being deported from the country. In exile, he continued to lead the anarcho-syndicalist movement, spearheading the establishment of theInternational Workers' Association (IWA), of which he was a member until his death.
In 1893, Grigorii Petrovich Maksimov was born into a peasant family inSmolensk. He studied at aseminary of theOrthodox Church inVladimir, but ultimately decided not to become a priest and instead moved toSaint Petersburg, where he studied to become anagriculturist. During his time at the Agricultural Academy, he became acquainted withanarchism, through the works ofMikhail Bakunin andPeter Kropotkin.[1]
After graduating in 1915, he was immediately drafted into theImperial Russian Army and deployed to theEastern Front. He returned to Petrograd during theFebruary Revolution and participated in the workers' strikes that overthrew theRussian Empire.[1] He quickly became a prolific speaker in factories and at workers' rallies.[2] By June 1917, he had been elected to the city's central council offactory committees and became one of its most active members, as part of a rising tide ofanarcho-syndicalism in the Russian capital.[3]
In August 1917, he joined the editorial staff of the anarcho-syndicalist newspaperGolos Truda and became one of its main contributors.[4] In the articles he penned for the paper, Maksimov spoke in favour of thefactory committees as a model forworkers' control, while he criticised mainstream Russiantrade unions, which he considered to be a relic ofcapitalism.[5] He also criticised theanarcho-communists for their advocacy of the immediateexpropriation of factories by workers, instead believing in the need for a transitional stage for workers to be trained for the tasks ofself-management.[6]
Following theOctober Revolution, Maksimov participated in theFirst All Russian Congress of Trade Unions, where delegates of theBolsheviks andMensheviks resolved to integrate the anarcho-syndicalist factory committees into the state-controlled trade unions.[7] Maksimov objected, crediting the factory committees for the overthrow ofcapitalism and theTsarist autocracy, and citedKarl Marx's appeals for apermanent revolution against thestate, even declaring himself a better Marxist than the Marxists themselves.[8] Maksimov rebuffed the claims ofDavid Riazanov, who favoured the trade unions, dismissing him as a "white-handed intellectual who had never worked, never sweated, never felt life."[9] But despite Maksimov's objections, the Bolshevik-majority Congress voted to dissolve the factory committees and to convert them into organs of the state's trade union apparatus.[10]
InGolos Truda, Maksimov denounced thecentralisation of industry by the Bolshevik party and declared that Russian anarchists should oppose theSoviets, as they were by this time under the control of the state.[11] When there was a subsequent flare-up ofterrorism by the anarcho-communists, he condemned their violent tactics, arguing that they shifted revolutionary energy away from organised action.[12]Political repression followed soon after, with the Bolshevik government closing downGolos Truda in May 1918.[13]
In August 1918, Maksimov participated in the First All-Russian Conference of Anarcho-Syndicalists, which was held inMoscow.[14] The conference was fiercely critical of the Bolshevik government, which it denounced as a regime of "state capitalism".[15] To express the anarcho-syndicalist critique, the conference also established a new newspaper,Volny Golos Truda, which was edited by Maksimov.[16] But the critical articles published in this paper quickly resulted in it being shut down.[17] Despite this setback, in November 1918, the syndicalists were able to convene a second congress, which resolved to form a nationwide anarcho-syndicalist confederation.[18] The conference elected Maksimov as secretary of an Executive Bureau that would form this confederation.[19]
During the subsequent period, Maksimov attempted to organise food workers into underground factory committees, which he hoped would form the nucleus of a nationwide General Confederation of Labor. In March 1920, Maksimov spoke at the Second All-Russian Congress of Food-Industry Workers, which adopted his resolution that denounced the Bolshevik's "dictatorship over the proletariat" and called for the establishment of free soviets.[20] Although his own organising efforts resulted in little success on this front, Maksimov's idea for a decentralised workers' confederation was taken up by theworkers' opposition, led byAleksandra Kollontai.[21]
In November 1920, during a wave of political repression against the anarchist movement, Maksimov was arrested by theCheka and held in custody for weeks.[22] Following the outbreak of theKronstadt rebellion, the10th Bolshevik Party Congress declared aban on factions, suppressing the workers' opposition and imprisoning Maksimov.[23] In order to draw the attention of visiting European syndicalists, who had arrived in Moscow for the first congress of theProfintern, Maksimov and his fellow anarchist inmates inTaganka prison staged ahunger strike.[24] The resulting protest forced the Soviet government to release the prisoners,[25] on condition that they immediately leave the country. In January 1922, Maksimov left forBerlin.[26]
In their German exile, the anarcho-syndicalists founded a new newspaper calledRobochii Put (English:The Workers' Way), printed using the presses of theFree Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD).[27] Out of a reaction to the disorganisation of the Russian anarchist movement,[28] Maksimov and his fellow emigrants resolved to establish an international syndicalist organisation, together with their foreign comrades.[29] In December 1922, they established theInternational Workers' Association (IWA).[30]
After a brief stay in Paris, in 1925, he moved to theChicago, where he hung wallpaper and editedGolos Truzhenika, theRussian language organ of theIndustrial Workers of the World (IWW).[31] FollowingPeter Arshinov's defection to theSoviet Union, Maksimov also took up editingDelo Truda, which took a notedly more syndicalist stance under his stewardship.[32] During his time in the United States, Maksimov attempted to reconcile the syndicalist and communist factions of the anarchist movement. In 1933, he published a "Social Credo" that synthesised the two tendencies, drawing from the works ofPeter Kropotkin.[33] He called for the IWA to formagricultural cooperatives and factory committees in order to transform the economy, as part of a transition towardscommunism.[34]
In 1940, he mergedDelo Truda with the Detroit-based journalProbuzhdenie, which kept him busy as its editor. During the 1940s, he also wrote a history of Soviet political repression and compiled a collection of the Mikhail Bakunin's works.[35]
In 1950, Grigorii Petrovich Maksimov died of a heart attack.[35] He is interred inWaldheim Cemetery, near other Chicago anarchists.[36]
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