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Anarchism and the Working Class: the Union of Russian Workers in the North American Labor Movement, 1910S

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Anarchism and the Working Class: the Union of Russian Workers in the North American Labor Movement, 1910S Anarchism and the Working Class: The Union of Russian Workers in the North American Labor Movement, 1910s by Mark Grueter M.A., New School for Social Research, 2004 B.A., University of New Hampshire - Durham, 1999 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences © Mark Grueter 2018 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Summer 2018 Copyright in this work rests with the author. Please ensure that any reproduction or re-use is done in accordance with the relevant national copyright legislation. Approval Name: Mark Grueter Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Title: Anarchism and the Working Class: The Union of Russian Workers in the North American Labor Movement, 1910s Examining Committee: Chair: Jeremy Brown Associate Professor Ilya Vinkovetsky Senior Supervisor Associate Professor Mark Leier Supervisor Professor Stephen Collis Internal Examiner Professor Department of English Kenyon Zimmer External Examiner Associate Professor Department of History University of Texas at Arlington Date Defended: August 27, 2018 ii Abstract Thousands of Russian anarchist immigrants, organized by the Union of Russian Workers (URW), took part in a surging union movement and strike wave that broke out across North America in the 1910s. However, they have received scant attention from historians, and no account of the URW exists. My dissertation fills in this gap by detailing the activity of the URW against the background of the rising labor movement, and it considers the question of anarchism's relationship to the working class. Historians have traditionally situated anarchism outside of the labor movement, yet the Russian anarchists in North America joined both radical and mainstream unions, and URW leaders recruited migrants explicitly by appealing to their class interests as foreign workers exploited by American capitalism. The study highlights the anarchists’ involvement in labor organizing, and it centers their perspectives to help narrate a history of the period. It first traces a history of the international anarchist movement along with migration patterns to North America in order to contextualize the research and shed light on the origins of the URW and why their story matters. Utilizing anarchist publications, local English-language newspapers, government surveillance files, and archival materials, the study finds that URW members made a wide array of contributions to the emerging industrial union movement in the United States and developed a critique of American capitalism that ranged beyond the immediate strikes. It argues that alongside the Industrial Workers of the World, the URW helped to push labor to the left and prepare the ground for the rise of major industrial unions with socialist leanings in the 1930s. Simultaneously, the study shows how the URW harnessed its strength in North America to make substantial material contributions to the anarchist movement in Russia, in the lead up to the 1917 revolution, while developing an anti- Bolshevik critique also echoed by subsequent movements on the left. By locating Russian anarchism and the URW in the labor movement, this study challenges historiographical claims which deny anarchism's working-class character. Thus, it contributes to a growing body of newer research which finds the anarchist movement rooted in labor and working- class organizing. Anarchism; Working Class, Russian; North America; IWW iii Table of Contents Approval .......................................................................................................................... ii Abstract .......................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... iv Chapter 1. Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2. Setting the Scene: From Russia to North America .............................. 13 Chapter 3. The URW’s “Workers’ Socialism” ......................................................... 43 Chapter 4. Anarcho-Syndicalism and the Rise of Industrial Unionism .............. 104 Chapter 5. Religion, Mutual Aid, and Culture ....................................................... 173 Chapter 6. Conclusion ........................................................................................... 189 References ................................................................................................................. 194 iv Chapter 1. Introduction “The theoreticians of communist anarchism (Bakunin, Kropotkin, & others) based their theories on the experience of the labor movement and considered [them] valuable only insofar as the masses…recognized in these theories the systemization of their own hopes and aspirations.” - Maksim Raevsky, editor of New York-based Russian anarchist newspaper Golos Truda (Voice of Labor), 1917.1 In the 1910s, Russian anarchists worked as longshoremen in Erie, meatpackers in Sioux City, shirtmakers in Brooklyn, and weavers in Paterson. They took part in dozens of strikes, from New York City docks to brass and munitions factories in Connecticut, steel mills and coal mines around Pittsburgh, and shoe workshops in Detroit. Many of these strikes occurred in collaboration with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and other North American unions, and they were coordinated through the Union of Russian Workers (URW), an anarchist federation that recruited Russian migrants and facilitated their engagement with labor organizing.2 This study details the activity of the URW and argues that the thousands of Russians organized in this anarchist federation made diverse and widespread contributions to the insurgent labor movement in the United States that exploded over the course of the decade. These contributions have not been acknowledged by historians, yet they helped develop a critique of North American capitalism that ranged beyond the immediate strikes. The URW, alongside organizations like the IWW, offered a vision for the labor movement that was more radical, militant, and inclusive than the craft unions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Anarchist organizers called attention to injustices in the workplace and society to stimulate rebellion and persuade other workers on the merits of their ideas. The URW was part of what historian David Montgomery has called the “militant minority,” which he defined as the “men and women who endeavored to wield their workmates and neighbors into a self- 1 Golos Truda, February 2, 1917, 2. 2 The full title was the “Federation of the Unions of Russian Workers of the United States and Canada”—a group of federated Russian organizations (“unions”) spread across the continent. Hoping to avoid confusion, I use the singular “Union of Russian Workers” or URW when referring to the federation as a whole. 1 aware and purposeful working class.”3 By promoting radical direct action and by “boring from within” mainstream unions, the URW helped push labor to the left and prepare the ground for the rise of major industrial unions with strong socialist currents in the 1930s, led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). At the same time, the URW built an organization in North America that provided real material support for the anarchist movement in Russia in 1917, while developing an anti-Bolshevik critique that was also echoed by later movements on the left. This study examines Russian anarchism in North America in the context of the rise of the labor, socialist, and syndicalist movements during the early twentieth century. In addition to the expansion of the IWW, which formed in 1905, the Socialist Party of America had been founded in 1901 and grew steadily into the 1910s. These new mass, left-wing movements, which included anarchist immigrants from many countries, reflected the emergence of broader progressive forces in response to the excesses of Gilded Age capitalism. Russian immigrant anarchist activities and views are centered here to help narrate a history of the period that offers a critical perspective of the Progressive era in the United States. The thesis draws attention to the working-class character of the Russian anarchist movement in the 1910s. The URW, for example, recruited Russian migrants by explicitly appealing to their class interests as foreign workers exploited by American capitalism. E.P. Thompson wrote that class formation evolves from common experience when people “feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.”4 The formation of a working class is revealed “in the growth of corresponding forms of political and industrial organization.”5 Class formation, in other words, is driven by the workers themselves, emanating from their experiences on the job. Most Russians who joined the URW had been peasants from the southwestern part of the Russian Empire and anarchists recruited and organized them around the issue of class. The Russian workers’ class enemies in 3 David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The workplace, the state, and American labor activism, 1865-1925 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 2. 4 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1963), 9-11, 194. 5 Thompson, English Working Class,
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