Boris Yelensky
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Introduction

By Arthur Topham
Editor & Publisher
©RadicalPress.com

It’s hard to believe that ten years have passed by since the Radical Press first began publishing Boris Yelensky’s anarchist memoirs of the Russian Revolution back in July of 1998. The plan then was to run the complete text in serial form but due to the demise of the monthly hard copy edition of The Radical in June of 2002 I was only able to print up to the first half of Chapter 24 thus leaving the final seven chapters unpublished and regular readers of the tabloid hanging in the air suspended. The eventual aim was to publish the book in hard copy but that too has not happened due to financial restrictions.

Later on, after the newspaper folded, I was able to get the completed text of the book online in the forum section of my website but that also came to a sudden halt back in the fall of 2007 when my server was forced by B’nai Brith Canada and their “League for Human Rights” to cease hosting my site thanks to threats of “racism” and “anti-Semitism” and “hate” literature being alleged against myself and my website.

Since November of 2007 when I was formally charged by the Canadian Human Rights Commission with allegedly publishing articles of a discriminatory nature contrary to section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act I have been literally in an all-out battle with B’nai Brith Canada and the CHR Commission and had little time to reformat and repost this amazing historical document.

In retrospect the timing of its reappearance may be most appropriate. Today Canada and the whole of Western civilization is facing a very real and present threat from the very same mindset that Boris Yelensky describes in his memoirs of the 1917 coup d’etat euphemistically called by the Zionist media the “Russian Revolution.” Yelensky, a Russian Jew born in Krasnodar, southern Russia in 1889, had emigrated to the United States after having been involved in the unsuccessful revolutionary activities of 1905. He remained in the states until word arrived of the successful overthrow of Tzar Nicholas II in 1917 at which time, like many other Russians who had left the country, he returned to his home country to help create what he believed to be a new beginning for the Russian people and for the world in general.

Yelensky’s story, told from a fundamentally different perspective than most known historic recordings of the period, reflects the views of the anarchist movement as it existed during the early years of the 20th Century. Told in a prosaic, yet detailed fashion, unadorned by romanticism (which the anarchists argued for and against endlessly), Yelensky’s account of his time spent during the turbulent period leading up to and following the successful take-over of the former Russian monarchy by Lenin and the Bolshevik forces, provides history with an alternative viewpoint and an important third position with respect to how the events of that momentous period were viewed by a segment of the political dramatis personae known to the world as the anarchists.

In the Social Storm: Memoirs of the Russian Revolution is an attempt by the anarchist Boris Yelensky to try and discern the modus operandi of the Bolsheviks and the reasons for why they willingly sacrificed the one great opportunity to truly implement the socialist ideals that had been fleshed out over the previous half century or more and now were given the opportunity to be realized. But it is a whole lot more than merely an analysis of the mindset of the Bolsheviks. Yelensky provides the reader with vivid examples of how the anarchist movement was a living and vital part of the forces that were at play during the period. His accounts of the anarchists’ struggles and the contributions by men such as Nestor Makhno and his army of partisans who played a crucial role in the struggles during the period of civil war following the coup are both highly instructive and a necessary aspect of the history of the time in order for students of today to grasp the numerous nuances of intrigue that permeated the overall dynamics which necessarily come into play during periods of massive political and social upheaval.

Along with Yelensky’s descriptions of the unfolding events of the time are his own accounts of how the anarchists living and struggling within this maelstrom of sudden change were doing their utmost to live and exemplify their ideas by manifesting the anarchist perspective in everyday life. The experiments in actual anarchist projects which Yelensky was a part of and which he describes in detail and in which he played a vital role are positive examples of redefining social organizations so as to make them fair and liberating to those who were fortunate enough to have been able to partake of them. It was a window for the anarchists and a time, short as it was, where they were able to illustrate the positive aspects of their philosophy and how by example it held promise of exemplifying an alternative manner of social and industrial organization to those of the Bolsheviks who represented a repressive, totalitarian, brutal state dictatorship and that of the capitalists who likewise used a strong and centralized authoritarian government system disguised as “democracy” to fulfill similar ends.

For anarchists and political researchers Yelensky’s book is a revealing account of anarchism in action and a first-hand description of the lives and the efforts of those who went to Russia in good faith believing that positive changes were at hand only to come to the sudden and grim realization that instead of a new utopia, Russia had fallen into the hands of a powerful cabal of Marxist warlords who, along with their dreaded cheka terror squads, were hell-bent on gaining total power and control over one of the largest empires on earth and in the process murdering anyone who stood in the way of achieving their heinous ambitions.

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In the Social Storm: Memoirs of the Russian Revolution

By Boris Yelensky

Author’s Preface

I was born February 17th, 1889, in the city of Yekotirenodar (the gift of Catherine the Great), now known as Krasnodar, located in the province of Kuban, in the northern part of southern Russia.  I was the fourth child of a middle-class family.  My father had a shop that manufactured fur hats for the Cossacks.

When I was five years old we moved 125 miles south to the city of Novorossiysk on the shores of the Black Sea.

It was my parents’ ambition that I should become a doctor.  My mother particularly, who could neither read nor write, was prepared to make any sacrifice to fulfill this dream.  Since only a very small percentage of Jewish children were accepted at the Gymnasium, I was tutored privately to prepare me for examinations. My parents’ ambitions for me were to remain only dreams though for from an early age my thoughts were concerned mainly with the simple questions of why the majority of the people had nothing while the few had so much.

In Russia, the transfer of prisoners from one city to another in large groups was called Etap. Since Novorossiysk was a port city, groups of these prisoners were continually coming through town, transferring from ships to trains.  They would come in by ship, spend the night in the city, and the next day be marched up the main street to the train station.

The picture of these worn-out groups of human beings, chained hand and foot, and the clink of their irons were with me all of my childhood as a continual reminder of oppression.

When I was twelve years old I accidentally found a handful of underground revolutionary literature. I brought it home innocently enough and nearly got a beating from my father when he saw it.  The fear in the faces of my parents and the few pages that I read started my mind working, and within a year I was involved in the underground revolutionary movement in our city.

I continued studying with my tutor but my thoughts were too deeply involved with the revolutionary movement and I made little progress.  With every pamphlet or book that I read in the underground I got  further away from any possibility of becoming a doctor.  Within a few months, after a bitter fight with my parents, I finally told them I had no intention of becoming a doctor and that I would run away from home if they insisted that I continue with my studies.  The work with my tutor and two years of grammar school was the extent of my formal education but I continued to educate myself by reading world literature.

I was 16 when revolution began in Russia in 1905.  Novorossiysk was the second city in Russian (after St. Petersburg) to organize a Soviet Republic, which existed for six weeks and in which I took an active part.

Naturally, when the repressive general reaction of the Tsarist government reached Novorossiysk, I had to leave the city in a hurry to escape arrest.  I hid out in various parts of Russia and finally decided to look for better luck outside the country.  In 1907, after stopping in Germany, Switzerland and France, I was on my way to the United States.

The dark side of immigrant life in the United States in those days is a story in itself.  Suffice it to say we were not treated then as the Cuban Catholics are now, with government subsidies.  An immigrant from Europe considered himself lucky if he could get $3.00 a week for 48 hours of backbreaking labor.  We were often hungry, but also often happy, for we had certain inner values that gave us the hope to go on with our poor lives. We all kept our free time filled with activity and there was always the hope and dream that some day we would be able to return home.

Filled with this dream I did manage to return to Russia in 1910 but after ten months I had to flee for my life and returned again to the United States.

In the following years economic conditions improved slightly for the immigrants and the edges of their dream of returning home were dulled.  Many of them married and settled down to raise families and began to regard their dream as an illusion.

Then, in the early months of 1917 the immigrant community was suddenly wakened from their lethargy when the shattering news of a revolution in Russia came through.  The Tsar was ousted and the illusion became a possible dream again.

The immigrant colony came back to life with the electrifying news of a General Amnesty for all political prisoners and political immigrants and, at least for a time, even the animosity between some of the socialist groupings disappeared and warm human relations established themselves in the happy holiday atmosphere of going home.

On June 16th, 1917, we left the U.S. on the way to the new Russia, and, after more than a month of travel, my family and I arrived in Novorossiysk on July 18th, 1917.  This book is my own story of that time; of my own active participation in the great Russian social revolution.

Even though I eventually had to leave the shores of the beautiful Black Sea again, and several times brushed closely with death, I am not sorry that I returned when I did.  Even now, at 82, I would do it again if the opportunity arose.

Much has been written on the history of the various colonies, communes and co-operatives which experimented with new social orders but I consider the experiment I have presented in this book the first serious large-scale attempt to create a nucleus for a free society based on the foundation of full equality and human dignity.

I have attempted to present my own appraisal of everyday life, from my viewpoint as a private citizen and an anarchist activist, with as little personal bias and prejudice as possible. I have tried to present the reality I saw, a reality one can only live through once in a century.

Prologue

It is impossible to forget that winter night in March, 1917, when we came out of the Chicago Opera House and heard the newsboys shouting loudly: “Revolution in Russia!  Tsar Nicholas abdicates!”  Each one of us bought a paper and we rushed into a restaurant where we read every word twice and then looked for the news between the lines.  We saw that the Romanoff dynasty had come to an end, yet our minds were still full of suspicion, and we couldn’t get used to the idea that our long fight to liberate Russia from the Tsar and his corrupt government had at last been successful.  We were skeptical and thought that it might be merely an attempt to depose the Tsar which would have no lasting effect. But the next day brought more and fuller news and our doubts began to vanish.  The Russian colonies all over the United States began to celebrate and high-spirited political meetings were held by every political group. In the joy of the moment every radical seemed to feel it was his duty to attend the functions of other parties and groups and it was in every way a time of brotherly feeling.

As soon as the first news of the Russian Revolution reached them the vast majority of the political refugees then living in the United States thought immediately of returning to Russia to help build a new society and to help defend the new freedoms which had been won with so much suffering.  At first these desires seemed far from fulfillment, partly because the great majority had no financial means and also because of the massive disruption of transportation facilities incurred by the first World War.  However, the dream of returning came true when Kerensky came into power and the Provisional Government decided that it would pay all the expenses for political refugees and their families who wished to return to Russia.

The first small group, which included Leon Trotsky, left immediately.  It was detained for a while in Halifax, Canada, but was set free and allowed to go on as a result of representations by Kerensky’s government.

Soon afterwards a special committee of representatives of all the Russian political groupings was formed in New York, and this committee, working in co-operation with the Russian consul, became the clearinghouse for those who were entitled to a free passage home. A similar committee was later formed in Chicago to represent the political refugees in the mid-Western states; in a few weeks it approved several hundred applications, and soon the first group was ready to leave Chicago, accompanied by a contingent from Detroit.

Since the Atlantic was a dangerous place to cross at this time it was decided that all the political refugees would leave from the Pacific coast and go through Siberia to whatever point in Russia they wished to reach.

The departure of the first group from Chicago was a sight never to be forgotten.  It seemed as though the whole Russian and Jewish radical colony had come to the station to see their friends go home.  Later, during April, May and June, 1917, contingents from the Eastern States were constantly passing through Chicago and each arrival became the excuse for another celebration.

The first months of the Russian Revolution brought a feeling of brotherhood between the various political groups, but this spirit didn’t last long.  The well-known Bolshevik, Bukharin, came to Chicago to give a few lectures on the revolution, predicting that a “proletarian” revolution would soon take place in Russia.  After his lectures, the small Bolshevik group in Chicago began to act as if they would soon take over affairs, and their representatives on the Political Refugee Committee began to claim that they were the only real representatives of the Russian people and that, for this reason, they alone had the right to decide who could go back to Russia.

Their declarations resulted in a bitter fight, which lasted through one meeting of the committee until past midnight.  When the rest of the members saw that it was impossible to reach an understanding with the Marxists they decided to go to another hall to terminate the business on the agenda. Accordingly, at 3 a.m., all the members of the Committee, except the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, went to the Russian I.W.W. hall on Roosevelt Road.  [The Bolsheviks (majority) and the Mensheviks (minority) were the two aspects of the once Russian Social Democratic Party that divided up in 1903. Lenin then became the supreme leader of the Bolsheviks or Maximalists who were socialists opposed to class conciliation and “peaceful coexistence” with the bourgeoisie. Ed.]   The first question discussed there was the election of a special committee that would go next day to the Russian Consul and explain to him what had happened.  About 5 a.m., a certain Mr. Berg, later to become more famous under the name of Borodin, came to us and proposed that we should not be hasty but should find a way to work with the Bolsheviks.  His proposal wasn’t accepted and we told him that we’d let the Russian Consul decide the matter.

Later in the morning, when our committee arrived at the Consul’s office, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were already there.  Our Chairman and Secretary explained what had happened the previous night. The Consul was shrewd enough to understand what the Bolsheviks were driving at, and he said that he would acknowledge no one committee and would deal only with our present Chairman and Secretary, giving passports and money solely on their recommendations. So, in the end, the Bolsheviks had to come to our Committee and to accept the common decisions.

When the last group of returning refugees left Chicago in June, 1917, the activities of the Anarchist Red Cross which we had worked on for so long, seemed to have reached an end; neither those who left for Russia nor those who remained in the United States dreamed that in a few years they would have to organize another Anarchist Red Cross to help the new political prisoners in Russia.  We could not foresee that the brutalities of the Tsar’s government would seem like child’s play in comparison with those that the new despots of Russia would initiate.  The whole thinking world imagined that Russia was on the way to becoming one of the most democratic countries in the world.

However, before we come to the new tragedy of Russia, it’s appropriate to trace the adventures of those who returned in that year of 1917.  More than ninety percent of those who went back were later to die in the Bolshevik terror.  From those of us who escaped, we’ve managed to collect the following information on the trip back to Russia.

We journeyed by train from Chicago to Vancouver, B.C. where the Russian Consul was waiting for the train. He had made arrangements ahead of time for our hotel accommodations.  A large group of other refugees was already there, and two days later the whole contingent crossed to Victoria, on Vancouver Island, and there boarded the liner Empress of Asia.

The ten-day voyage across the Pacific was an experience in itself.  The whole second-class portion of the ship was occupied by the political refugees.  It looked like a small, happy Russian community.  Among the passengers were many outstanding personalities, including the anarchist writer Voline, whose two important books were published in the 1950’s.  John Reed, author of Ten Days That Shook the World, was with us.  At that time he was a follower of Emma Goldman but later became a Bolshevik.  William Shatov and many other writers and speakers were also passengers.

As soon as we had settled down on the ship an educational committee was elected and, since a mimeograph was available, a daily paper was published under the title The Float, which commented on life in the ship’s community and contained articles on the Russian revolution, satirical writing, and many cartoons by John Reed.  Voline gave a series of lectures on the history of the Russian revolutionary movement, others spoke on different subjects, and there were musical and other entertainments, so the passengers were constantly busy in one way or another and the voyage passed like a dream.

When we arrived in Yokohama there were already so many returning Russians that the passengers aboard the Empress of Asia had to stay in native Japanese hotels.  The reason for the congestion was the relative backwardness of Japanese transportation facilities at this time.

There were two ways of getting from Japan to Russia; one was a short sea trip to Korea and then by train through Korea and Manchuria and the other was by small boat to Vladivostok that involved a longer and usually rough and unpleasant sea voyage.  Except for one very small group, everyone decided to go by train, and a party was sent off each day according to the number of tickets that could be obtained from the railroad.

Shortly after our party arrived some unpleasant rumors began to spread in Yokohama about a clash between returning refugees and the Russian authorities in Harbin.  What had actually happened nobody knew, but the tale scared a few families and they decided to remain for the time being in Japan.  This was the first crack in the holiday spirit with which the party had set out and now everyone began to think about what might happen when they reached the Russian border.

The Chicago party crossed the border at a small station where they had to change to a Russian train. Not far from the station the Russian border guards were walking around so some of the returning refugees started talking with them.  They found out that all the poor soldiers actually knew was that there was no longer a Tsar in Russian; but they were quite happy about being able to impart this news to us.

As we approached Harbin where the train would connect with the main Vladivostok-Moscow line the refugees began to feel some uncertainty in view of the rumors they had heard earlier in Japan.  They could see the blaze of lights in the station and then, as the train slowed down, a military band struck up the Marseillaise and a crowd of people ran towards the carriages.  The refugees couldn’t understand what was happening or why the music was playing but soon men and women started crowding into their cars and hugging them.  They introduced themselves as members of the Reception Committee for Political Refugees; afterwards, as they got down from the train, all the people who had gathered at the station greeted the newcomers enthusiastically.  We were astonished and moved by this reception, which seemed to us a manifestation of the warmth of the Russian people, and of the effects of the great change that had taken place in our homeland.

Nevertheless, we were still puzzled by the rumors that had been circulating in Japan, and so on the second day we mentioned these to the Harbin Reception Committee, who gave the following account of the actual incident.  A group of refugees from Pittsburgh, including some rather violent individuals, arrived in the city and demanded that they should be sent immediately to Central Russia.  The Reception Committee explained that before this could happen each of them would have to be checked by a special committee to establish the authenticity of his revolutionary activities in Russia; the main object of this investigation was to detect any former spies or provocateurs from the old Tsarist police who might be trying to return to Russia.  The Pittsburgh group refused to agree to this and went to see the manager of the railroad who happened to be a former Tsarist General. He refused to give them the traveling permits but, being an old reactionary, he saw an opportunity to stir up the feelings of those who were still against the revolution and so one evening a group of these stalwarts went to the carriage where the Pittsburgh group was staying and tried to burn it.  The incident could have ended tragically, but fortunately, at that moment a train full of sailors from Vladivostok happened to arrive and they interfered in the matter.  After this experience the Pittsburgh group realized the need for vigilance and thus submitted to the committee’s investigation.  In a few days they were allowed to leave.

While we were in Harbin we could already feel the spirit of renewal that was in the Russian air at this time and this feeling continued as we traveled on through Siberia towards our various destinations.  Everywhere the words “Political Prisoners” or “Refugees” acted like magic potions and at every large station committees of young men and women met the trains and provided us with food and any other help that we needed.  Constantly, in this atmosphere of brotherly love, one felt the gratitude that the people showed towards those who had sacrificed their years and their freedom to help in the liberation of Russia.  In these idyllic early months of the revolution there appeared among the Russian people that intensity of human feeling towards each other that occurs rarely - perhaps not more than once in a century - in the history of any people.

In Siberia, where the majority of political prisoners and exiles were concentrated, the news of the revolution had been received with profound emotion.  In the city of Krasnoyarsk, a center from which the Tsarist government sent exiles to the remote corners of the Siberian wilderness, the Governor received a telegram from the Provisional Government in Petrograd, informing him of the change of regimes.  He was in no hurry to tell the people of the liberation but the telegraphist who had received the message passed the news to a few of his friends and it quickly spread among the resident exiles.  Excitement ran high and in the evening a large deputation went to the city hall to see the Mayor and ask him to call on the Governor in order to find out the text of the telegram.  The people who’d gathered outside city hall were so excited that the Mayor decided to take out a copy of the telegram which had been given to him and to read it to them.  At first the news was so surprising that nobody knew whether or not to believe it but before long their joy was unbounded and all through the night the celebrations went on in the streets of the city.

A few days later the exiles began to arrive from the remote places to which they’d been banned.  They walked as free men in the city but there was still the shadow of fear in their faces - the fear of the dark past from which they had just emerged.  Their clothing was ragged, their shoes were worn out, and most of them were half-starved, so a committee was organized to take care of them.  It had no funds but here too the new spirit of free Russia was made manifest for the merchants of the city offered to provide, without payment, whatever was needed to help the exiles.  Even the noblewomen of Krasnoyarsk came to the committee and offered their help.

Yes, a social revolution can produce a miracle of brotherhood, and if the political parties which were busy fighting for power had turned their attention to keeping up these miracles, Russia and the whole world might now be far advanced on the road towards real freedom.  Instead however, we must now consider the bitter reality of what the politics of power actually brought about in Russia.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Editor's Zone, Anarchism, Conspiracy, Political Zionism, Arthur Topham/ Contributor, International Banking Syndicate, Christianity, Jews Behind Bolshevik Revolution, Alternative Media, Zionist Jews in Russia, Jews, New World Order, Jewish Banking Cartel, Socialism, Communism, Ukrainian Holocaust, Jewish Media Monopoly, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.