Peter Arshinov

Peter Arshinov was born in Yekaterinoslav.[2] In 1904 he become involved with the revolutionary movement. In 1905 he worked as a locksmith in the railway workshops of Kizyl-Arvat (now Serdar in Turkmenistan), where he joined the Bolshevik section of the Russian Social Democratic Party.[3] From here he led the organization of the RSDLP and was the editor of the illegal Bolshevik newspaper Molot. Hiding from the police, he soon returned to Ukraine where he joined the workers at a factory in Ekaterinoslav.[3] In December 1906, after the autumn defeat, he united the militant anarchist survivors of Ekaterinoslav into a terrorist group and organized a series of attacks - including the assassination of a ruthless railroad boss and the bombing of a village police station on 23 December 1906, in which several Cossacks and police officers were killed.[3]

On 9 March 1907 he was arrested and condemned to death by hanging by a military tribunal. In 22 April 1907 he escaped from prison. Arshinov then found refuge in France, venturing to Russia two years later. In the autumn of 1909 he was arrested for spreading anarchist propaganda.[3] He would escape before sentencing and would go onto to participate in underground propaganda work.[3] In May-July 1910 he performed a robbery with fellow anarchists on a wine depot in the village of Filopovo. This would soon lead to his arrest in Austria and subsequent trial in Russia.[3] In October 1911 he was again imprisoned for a 20-year sentence in Moscow's Butyrka prison.[3] There he met fellow convict and anarchist leader Nestor Makhno. They were released seven years later, in 1917, during the February Revolution. While Makhno returned to Ukraine, Arshinov joined the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups.[3] Arshinov returned to Ukraine to participate in Makhno's 1919 Makhnovist insurrection, which lasted until 1921.[3]

Arshinov emigrated to Germany in 1922, later moving to France and the United States. In 1923 he published his History of the Makhnovist Movement.[1] In 1931, Arshinov left the anarchists for the Bolsheviks, likely based on personal ties.[4] While in exile in Paris, the Communist leader Sergo Ordzhonikidze promised Arshinov help if he formally broke all ties with anarchism.[5] Arshinov produced two anti-anarchist pamphlets, "Anarchism and the dictatorship of the proletariat" in 1931 and "Anarchism in our age", in 1933, which both gained him notoriety in anarchist circles. Camillo Berneri remarked that Arshinov "had not left the movement quietly and with dignity, but had slammed the door behind him like a drunk".[3] In light of deportation from France and his wife's desire to return to Russia with their son, Arshinov returned to Moscow in 1933. He was executed in 1937, accused of seeking to restore anarchism in Russia.[4]

• History of the Makhnovist Movement (1921)
• The Two Octobers (1927)

• Peter Arshinov, History of the Makhnovist Movement (1918-1921), 1923.