this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
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In reality, the majority of anarchists joined the Soviets just fine. A huge number of proletarian and peasant anarchists joined the Red Army and banded together with the rest of the proletariat and peasantry. The remaining anarchists were largely petite bourgeois, bourgeois, etc, and this makes sense, as the new socialist state worked in the interests of the working classes while it continued to work against the petite bourgeoisie. In other words, socialism was liberating for most anarchists, but continued to oppress the minority of anarchists that did not gain from socialism.
The narrative of Marxists stabbing anarchists in the back is meant to split the left. Of course there’s ideological disagreements, but the idea that the anarchists were so weak and ineffective that they got rolled completely makes anarchism entirely unconvincing. The reality is that the majority of anarchists didn’t actually fight back, they fought alongside the Marxists and generally came to Marxism over anarchism. They were fantastic comrades and their victories in defeating the Whites with the rest of the Reds is erased to keep leftist infighting going.
Thank you, this is good to know!
No problem! They were called the "Red Anarchists" by Lenin.
Nestor Makhno stans are crying
Wow, that's wonderfully crafted to have a mix of pertinent points and bended facts to get a tight leninist propaganda. You're completely occulting the fact that anarchists integrated the red army only because they were outnumbered, fought the red army itself when able to, that even anarchists truly loyal to bolshevik power were arrested and disbanded, and nicely playing along the underlying assumption that it's weird anarchists joined soviets : it's not, they were pro-soviets, they fought for soviets free of bolshevik control. Yes to left unity, no to rewriting history.
One thing about anarchism is that it goes against having tight discipline and a unified group. When anarchists joined the Soviets, they tended to drop the anarchist label and just became Marxists. That's why what remains are usually instances of conflict. Anarchists chose to be integrated into the Red Army, don't take away their agency.
From the Marxist perspective, anarchists that genuinely wanted to overturn the socialist state and replace it with anarchism were working to restore capitalism, unintentionally of course but from this respect in such a turbulent period they chose not to take chances. Again, though, many anarchists joined not just the Soviets but the Bolsheviks, and later the CPSU.
My goal here is to highlight that people tend to highlight the real conflict while ignoring that this conflict was against the remaining anarchists, and not the anarchists that had joined the Red Army and even the Bolsheviks unless they continued to press for anarchism. This isn't to say that these anarchists-turned-Bolsheviks were "fake" anarchists, they chose to join the socialists in establishing a socialist state and were helpful in doing so.