The main topic of the autumn issue of the anarchist revue Existence is the Great October Revolution, as around this time we remind ourselves of its anniversary.

Even though it didn’t end particularly well this is not a reason to turn away from it and not remember it. At its beginning stood the anarchists among others and in the first years many of them tried to fight against the expansion of Bolshevik terror. The result of the Bolshevik victory was the elimination of any opposition and the creation of a system which gave rise to the new ruling class and strengthened state power in all instances. For anarchists this all meant a painful confirmation of their earlier critique of authoritarian currents in the labor movement.

In an interview with Alexander Shubin we bring a contemporary view of this historian and left-wing activist on the revolutionary year 1917 in Russia. Max Shchur analyses Lenin’s State and Revolution, which foretold the impact of his authoritarian politics. Dmitry Rublev talks about to which extent were different currents of the Russian radical left present during the revolutionary events of 1917. In the memoirs of the anarchist Fedor Drugov the reader can find a realistic description of the famous storming of the Winter palace. In a sample from the book I lived in the cruelest land… Memoirs of an anarchist Anna Garaseva describes the post-revolutionary events connected to the repression of the non-Bolshevik left. Emma Goldman, who met both Kropotkin and Lenin, also wrote down her experiences with the new regime. Goldman left Russia together with Alexander Berkman, from whom we bring a recounting of the Kronstadt uprising. Finally we added a story of the anarchist sisters who were born in imperial Russia and died after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The theoretical section belongs in this issue to Rudolf Rocker’s essay about the differences between social democrats and anarchists. Later, we introduce to our readers Spanish anarchist Alejandro Campos Ramírez, who is considered to be an inventor of table football. And we did not forget about 90th anniversary of the tragic death of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.

To show you, that we do not only care about the past, we will take a look to present-day Greece and we will describe life and struggles in Athens borough of Exarchia. We will continue with interview with a local rapper who calls himself Javaspa about the situation in Greece and about the development on local underground hip-hop scene.

We couldn’t forget our regular overview of Czech anti-authoritarian movement and his activities. Special attention is paid to climate camp, which took place in the Czech Republic for the first time.

One page is dedicated to Anarchist federation, other to texts from the last three issues of the wall paper A3, which focused on G20 summit, deadly conditions of the capitalist regime and big electoral fraud. Last, but not least we remind the recently departed sociologist Zygmund Bauman with a review of his last book Strangers at Our Door.

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16.10.2017 Nakladatelstvi AF

Historie AF/IFA Publikace