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The Tragic Procession: Alexander Berkman and Russian Prisoner Aid
by Alexander Berkman Social Club and Kate Sharpley Library
We're starting to get in the multiple boxes of books we shipped back from California during our recent trip to the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, so there's lot of exciting new titles filling the shelves, with many more to come. Already on the shelves is new stuff like the pocket-sized Chelsea Green guides to sustainable living, a number of exciting vegan cookbooks we've never carried before, more books in Spanish, and the Feminist Press' The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science.
But perhaps most exciting is the brand new book The Tragic Procession: Alexander Berkman and Russian Prisoner Aid. Thanks to the great folks from the Alexander Berkman Social Club and the Kate Sharpley Library (one of the foremost grassroots research centers into the history of anarchism anywhere!), The Tragic Procession reproduces, in fascimile form, the Bulletin of the Joint Committee for the Defense of Revolutionists Imprisoned in Russia & the Bulletin of the Relief Fund of the International Working Men’s Association for Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists Imprisoned or Exiled in Russia.
The pages of these bulletins, published by anarchist luminaries like Alexander Berkman and Rudolph Rocker, shine a light on the early years of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and the complete betrayal of the ideals of the Revolution of 1917. Alongside the vital and nearly forgotten testimonies of imprisoned and exiled anarchists, who in many ways were the first vicitms of the purges, show trials, gulags, and judicial murder that would characterize the worst years of the Soviet state, the bulletins also provide a fascinating glimpse into the composition of a transcontinental network of anarchist prisoner support.
Certainly not cheerful reading, but then again, if history was always happy we'd have no use for it!
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