These currents have developed principally in Ukraine, and even the anarchists of Ukraine accept this or a very similar program, so that all these movements differ only in their shadings, but not in principle. They are all decentralist, anti -parliamentarian, anti-state and federalist.
The Anarchists
Besides the above mentioned movements there is still another group which belongs to the socialist world in Russia, namely the anarchists. If we disregard single personalities, such as Bakunin and Kropotkin and the Russian anarchists in foreign countries, we can trace the definite establishment of the anarchist movement in Russia to the year of 1903.
As among the social-democrats and the narodniks, there are also many currents among the anarchists. The Individualist
Anarchists have no movement worth mentioning. The Communist Anarchists and the Anarcho-syndicalists , on the contrary, had at the outbreak of the revolution in 1917, and later, a mass movement. But as they did not want to conquer power but only destroy it, in accordance with their principles, they have to-day again lost their importance. The anarcho-syndicalist tendencies are stronger among the working people, and the anarchist ideas gain a footing among the peasantry of Ukraine.
There was. and is now, in Russia, anarchist-narodniks, that is, the native movement of the people, and the anarchist-emigrants. The ideas of the anarchists are the same as in other countries. Of importance here is only the position taken by the anarchists to the revolution. .The Tolstoyan Anarchists were in the minority. The revolutionary anarchists have taken a very active part in the revolution and played a prominent role, particularly in the beginning of the revolution, in its destructive period against czarism and Kerensky. They were, self-evidently, against the Constituent Assembly, according to the formula: All power to the Soviets; and all this before the bolsheviks adopted these mottoes. In many places the anarchists began the revolution. For instance, in Jekaterinburg in the Ural the anarchists had carried out the revolution earlier than the workers of Petrograd. Already on June 5, 1917, the workers demonstrated under the leadership of anarchists in Moscow and Petrograd against the Kerensky government with the motto: All power to the Soviets.
The credit for dissolving the constituent assembly does not belong to the bolsheviks, but to the anarchists. It was the anarchist Anatol Gregorevitch Zelesniakoff who, in January, 1918, at the head of the Kronstadt sailors, broke into the session of the Constituent Assembly and told the gentlemen representatives that they had now talked enough and that they could now go home, or the sailors would help to get them started on the road. First after they, through the direct action of the workers and soldiers with anarchist leanings, were faced with a fait accompli (an accomplished fact), the parties accepted the situation, and subsequently Lenin also gave this fact his approval. Zelesniakoff fell in the fight against Denekin's white guardists at Jekaterinoslav on July 26, 1919, after Denekin had put a price on his head of 400,000 rubles.
The Syndicalists
The position of the Anarcho-Syndicalists is best explained by their resolutions. In their first congress after the revolution, on August 25, 1918, the following decisions were adopted by the Congress of the Confederation of the All-Russian Anarcho-Syndicalists :
1. To battle against the power of state and capitalism.
2. To co-ordinate according to federalist principles the independent Soviets and to break way for uniting the independent productive organizations of workers and peasants.
3. To recommend to the workers the forming of free Soviets and to combat the institutions of the Councils of Commissars of the People, as this is an organization that is injurious to the workers.
4. To dissolve the military armies and arm the workers and the peasants ; at the same time making clear to them the absurdity of the idea of a "socialist vaterland"; for the workers and the peasants can only have the world for their country.