The Tragic Procession: Alexander Berkman and Russian Prisoner Aid

Berkman, Alexander and Rudolf Rocker. The Tragic Procession: Alexander Berkman and Russian Prisoner Aid. Alexander Berkman Social Club and Kate Sharpley Library: 2010. 96 p.

Bulletin of the Joint Committee for the Defense of Revolutionists Imprisoned in Russia & Bulletin of the Relief Fund of the International Working Men’s Association for Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists Imprisoned or Exiled in Russia

Reprinted here for the first time, this collection of bulletins—edited through the years by Alexander Berkman, Mark Mratchny, Milly Witcop-Rocker, Rudolf Rocker, et al.—chronicle the gradual slaughter of a whole generation of Russian anarchists and revolutionists. They also illustrate the astonishing effort of small groups of radicals who, living often in appalling conditions themselves, attempted to both highlight the vicious reality of the Bolshevik government and alert a wider public to the awful situation its prisoners found themselves in. Imprisoned, tortured, driven mad, and exiled to places so remote no contact with the outside world was possible, the prisoners disappeared into a totalitarian darkness. Each recorded name or initial printed here signifes a life that often had been spent in revolutionary commitment, a life systematically and carefully destroyed by erstwhile “comrades.” To remember them is the least we can do.

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Another review: "The book is a valuable record both of the brutal repression the Bolshevik regime inflicted upon Russian revolutionaries, and of the valient efforts by our movement to sustain these comrades during their imprisonment and to work toward their freedom."
Anarcho-Syndicalist Review #54, Summer 2010, p.41
Martin H. review from Freedom http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/v9s61v
Paul Petard review from Black Flag http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/9p8f2n
Phil Ruff review from KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/v9s65j

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