Anarchism in Transnistria

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Such as it is, anarchism in Transnistria has short but certainly extant history. Numerous historical anarchists have been linked to the region, primarily the capital of Tiraspol.

Anarchism is an anti-authoritarian political philosophy that advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary, cooperative institutions and the rejection of hierarchies those societies view as unjust. These institutions are often described as stateless societies, although several authors have defined them more specifically as distinct institutions based on non-hierarchical or free associations. Anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful..

Transnistria de facto unrecognized state in Eastern Europe that has declared independence from Moldova

Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, is an unrecognised state which split off from Moldova after the dissolution of the USSR and mostly consists of a narrow strip of land between the river Dniester and the territory of Ukraine. Transnistria has been recognised only by three other mostly non-recognised states: Abkhazia, Artsakh, and South Ossetia. The region is considered by the UN to be part of Moldova.

Tiraspol Municipality in Transnistria, Moldova

Tiraspol is internationally recognised as the second largest city in Moldova, but is effectively the capital and administrative centre of the unrecognised Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Transnistria). The city is located on the eastern bank of the Dniester River. Tiraspol is a regional hub of light industry, such as furniture and electrical goods production.

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Control of the territory that is today Tranistria (also called Trans-Dniestr or Transdniestria) has switched hands between a number of different historical entities, among them the Thracian and Scythian tribes, the ancient Roman Empire, the Goths, the Ulichs, the Tivertsi, the Cumans, the Pechenegs, the Kievan Rus', the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Mongol Empire, the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union, the Transnistria Governorate of the Kingdom of Romania, and the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Thracians Indo-European people

The Thracians were a group of Indo-European tribes inhabiting a large area in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. They spoke the Thracian language – a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family. The study of Thracians and Thracian culture is known as Thracology.

Scythians historical ethnical group

The Scythians, also known as Scyth, Saka, Sakae, Sai, Iskuzai, or Askuzai, were Eurasian nomads, probably mostly using Eastern Iranian languages, who were mentioned by the literate peoples to their south as inhabiting large areas of the western and central Eurasian Steppe from about the 9th century BC up until the 4th century AD. The "classical Scythians" known to ancient Greek historians, agreed to be mainly Iranian in origin, were located in the northern Black Sea and fore-Caucasus region. Other Scythian groups documented by Assyrian, Achaemenid and Chinese sources show that they also existed in Central Asia, where they were referred to as the Iskuzai/Askuzai, Saka, and Sai, respectively.

Roman Empire period of Imperial Rome following the Roman Republic (27 BC–395 AD)

The Roman Empire was the post-Roman Republic period of the ancient Roman civilization. It had a government headed by emperors and large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. From the constitutional reforms of Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, the Empire was a principate ruled from the city of Rome. The Roman Empire was then divided between a Western Roman Empire, based in Milan and later Ravenna, and an Eastern Roman Empire, based in Nicomedia and later Constantinople, and it was ruled by multiple emperors.

Since 1990, Transnistria, while internationally recognized as part of the Republic of Moldova, is a breakaway state. It is governed as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR, also known as Pridnestrovie), and has a limited independent political climate.

Moldova republic in Eastern Europe

Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The capital city is Chișinău.

History

One individual proposed by some to be Jack the Ripper, the man behind the notorious Whitechapel murders, was Nikolay Vasiliev, a religious radical born in Tiraspol in 1847 and educated at Odessa University. He is said to have emigrated to Paris in 1876, where he began suffering from "monomania". Vasiliev is said to have been arrested for several murders in Paris and interned in an asylum, before being released and leaving for London shortly before the first Whitechapel murder. Numerous contemporary news sources and books dubbed Vasiliev an anarchist. [1] [2] [3]

Jack the Ripper unidentified serial killer

Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer generally believed to have been active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. In both the criminal case files and contemporary journalistic accounts, the killer was called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.

Whitechapel murders 1880s East End of London serial murders

The Whitechapel murders were committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. At various points some or all of these eleven unsolved murders of women have been ascribed to the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.

Odessa University university

Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University, located in Odessa, Ukraine, is one of the country's major universities, named after the scientist Élie Metchnikoff, a Nobel prizewinner in 1908. The university was founded in 1865, by an edict of Tsar Alexander II of Russia reorganizing the Richelieu Lyceum of Odessa into the new Imperial Novorossiya University. In the Soviet era, the University was renamed Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University.

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), often seen as the most important theorist of anarchist communism, wrote in his seminal scientific work Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution , published in 1902 while Kropotkin was exiled in London, briefly about the region. In Chapter 7 of the book, he mentions how the " Bulgares in the district of Tiraspol, after having remained for sixty years under the personal-property system, introduced the village community in the years 1876–1882", thus reintroducing a communal type of society after the abolition of serfdom in Russia. [4]

Peter Kropotkin Anarcho-Communist philosopher

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian activist, revolutionary, scientist, geographer and philosopher who advocated anarcho-communism.

<i>Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution</i> book by Peter Kropotkin on the subject of mutual aid

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution is a 1902 essay collection by Russian naturalist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin. The essays, initially published in the English periodical The Nineteenth Century between 1890 and 1896, explore the role of mutually-beneficial cooperation and reciprocity in the animal kingdom and human societies both past and present. It is an argument against theories of social Darwinism that emphasize competition and survival of the fittest, and against the romantic depictions by writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who thought that cooperation was motivated by universal love. Instead Kropotkin argues that mutual aid has pragmatic advantages for the survival of human and animal communities and, along with the conscience, has been promoted through natural selection.

Bulgarians are a South Slavic ethnic group who are native to Bulgaria and its neighboring regions.

In September 1906, the anarcho-syndicalist South Russian Group of Anarcho-Syndicalists (SRGAS) was formed in Odessa by among others Daniil Novomirsky. The SRGAS favored revolutionary unionism over the propaganda of the deed, popular with many other anarchists. [5] For a few years, the group attracted large numbers of members and sympathizers in the large cities of the region, before facing immense police repression. One anarcho-syndicalist branch was established in Tiraspol. [6]

Anarcho-syndicalism branch of anarchism

Anarcho-syndicalism is a theory of anarchism that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and with that control influence in broader society. Syndicalists consider their economic theories a strategy for facilitating worker self-activity and as an alternative co-operative economic system with democratic values and production centered on meeting human needs.

Propaganda of the deed is specific political action meant to be exemplary to others and serve as a catalyst for revolution.

The Jewish anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard, mainly known for his Yiddish-language poetry and for his assassination of Symon Petliura, fought in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War as part of the politically mixed Red Guards (1917–1920). His first campaign was from February to May 1918, serving with a group thrown together from anarchist volunteers in Odessa called "Otriad Rashal", after a young Bolshevik leader who had been killed in Romania a short time before. The unit formed to defend the Ukrainian frontier against Romanian invasion near Tiraspol, but it was soon chased eastward by attacking German and Austrian troops.

Likewise during the Russian Civil War, Lev Zadov and his brother Daniel were members of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine of Nestor Makhno, after first having served in the Red Army and anarchist militias. The elder brother Lev soon became the Black Army's chief of military intelligence, and a member of Makhno's inner circle in the Free Territory. In August 1921, after the movement's defeat Zadov organized the escape of some Makhnovist guerilla forces to Romania, where the two brothers were later recruited by Romanian intelligence to enter the USSR as anti-Soviet agents. Upon entering Ukraine they surrendered themselves, becoming agents of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU, a predecessor of the KGB) instead. While Lev worked in Odessa, Daniel was active in the city of Tiraspol. Together, they ran an agent network in Romania, using Makhnovists in exile. They served the USSR until 1938, when on 25 September they were convicted of collaboration with foreign secret services after a fifteen-minute trial and executed by firing squad, as part of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. [7]

Zamfir Arbore (1848–1933) was a prominent Romanian political activist, initially active as an anarchist in the Russian Empire before entering self-exile in Switzerland, joining the International Workingmen's Association, and briefly becoming a disciple of the prominent anarchist theorist Mikhail Bakunin. After returning to Romania in 1877 Arbore abandoned anarchism, becoming a moderate socialist and proponent for the independence of Bessarabia (part of which is now located in Transnistria). His daughter Ecaterina Arbore, a prominent member of the Romanian Communist Party, was executed on charges of Trotskyism in Tiraspol in 1937, as part of the Great Purge. [8]

See also

References

  1. Poberowski, Stepan (November 2003). "Nikolay Vasiliev: The Ripper from Russia". Ripperologist.
  2. "none". Journal de Geneve (in French). Geneve, Switzerland. 2 December 1888.
  3. Fox, Richard K (1888). The history of the Whitechapel murders: A full and authentic narrative of the above murders, with sketches. New York City.
  4. Kropotkin, P. A. (27 May 2014). Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Indo-European Publishing. p. 165. ISBN   160-444-476-2.
  5. Goodwin, James (2010). Confronting Dostoevsky's Demons: Anarchism and the Specter of Bakunin in Twentieth-century Russia. Peter Lang. p. 44. ISBN   143-310-883-6.
  6. Avrich, Paul (2006). The Russian Anarchists . Stirling: AK Press. ISBN   1-904859-48-8.
  7. Azarov, Vyacheslav (2009). Kontrrazvedka: The Story of the Makhnovist Intelligence Service. Edmonton: Black Cat Press. ISBN   097-378-272-2.
  8. Maria Lidia, Martin Veith, "Memoirs of an Anarchist in Romania. Zamfir C. Arbure (Ralli)", in KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library , No. 57, March 2009