Revolutionary Personality - Lenin, Trotsky and Gandhi

Anarchism arose in Russia as a protest against the autocratic rule of Nicholas II and the impact of industrialization on a peasant and artisan society. The anarchists yearned for the life of simplicity and virtue which they supposed had existed before the centralized state and large-scale industry began to transform human beings into robots. Calling for social revolution that would abolish all political and economic authority, and focusing their attack on government and capitalism as the chief institutions of domination and exploitation, they armed themselves with bombs as well as leaflets and sporadically attacked the organized injustices of the old regime in a futile attempt to usher in a decentralized society based on the voluntary cooperation of free individuals. 

Professor Avrich records the history of the anarchist movement from its Russian origins in the nineteenth century, with a full dis- cussion of Bakunin and Kropotkin, to its upsurge in the 1907 and 1917 Revolutions and its decline and fall after the Bolshevik seizure of power. While analyzing the role of the anarchists in these fateful years, he traces the close relationships between the anarchists and the Bolsheviks and reveals that the revolutions were conceived in spontaneity and idealism and ended in cynical repression. The Russian anarchists saw clearly the consequences of a Marxist "dictatorship of the proletariat" and, though they had no single cohesive organization, repeatedly warned that the Bolsheviks aimed to replace the tyranny of the tsars with a tyranny of commissars. They refused to accept anything less than full liberty and equality that would put an end to political power of any sort and eliminate for all time every manner of coercion and privilege. Their prophecies  about the Communist system came true, and ultimately they were stamped out or driven into exile.