Shadows In The Struggle For Equality [Book review]

Boris Yelensky’s book was published in 1958 under the title In the Struggle for Equality: The History of the Anarchist Red Cross. This edition not only restores Yelensky’s original title but contains notes and a long foreword by Matthew Hart and illustrations of Anarchist Red Cross (and Black Cross) members by N.O. Bonzo (the Portland Walter Crane). The first edition was an essential source for information on anarchist prison solidarity (and not just by ARC groups, and not just with prisoners of the tsarist and later bolshevik Russian state). Hart builds on Yelensky’s work with a 70 page foreword discussing prison solidarity from the Anarchist Red Cross to today and a set of appendices filling out parts of the story to 1958 (including the Latvian ARC).

In 2017 Barry Pateman asked ‘What type of movement, what type of fighters for a world of individual freedom and mutual aid would we be if we left undiscovered those who shared similar beliefs but perished in the most desperate and tormented of circumstances?’[1] This book rightly suggests we should not forget those who reached out in solidarity, either. 

It’s a shame Leah Feldman doesn’t get a mention in the foreword as she’s a direct connection between Albert, Stuart and the ‘old’ Anarchist Black Cross. But we can let Hart know Yelensky and Christie did meet: ‘I met Yelensky only once; think it was soon after we reformed the Black Cross (that’s when he gave me a copy of his book and, I believe, a copy of The Guillotine At Work, the one we typeset from, the first section anyway), but to be honest I have little recollection of the details of the talk we had.’[2]

Shadows in the Struggle for Equality: The History of the Anarchist Red Cross by Boris Yelensky, Edited by Matthew Hart, Illustrated by N.O. Bonzo. PM Press, 2025 ISBN 9798887440873
https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1725 

Hart did an interesting interview with The Final Straw Radio. Unfortunately he repeats the untrue story that Stuart Christie wore a kilt on his 1964 journey, but, among other things, he does cover some of the friction between the Anarchist Black Cross Federation and Anarchist Black Cross Network.

Listen (or read) via https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2025/06/08/a-history-of-anarchist-prisoner-support-with-matt-hart-june-11-2025/ or https://archive.org/details/tfsr-20250608-MattHartOnAnarchistPrisonerSupport 

Notes

1, p.255 ‘Cries in the Wilderness: Alexander Berkman and Russian Prisoner Aid’ in Bloodstained : One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution edited by The Friends of Aron Baron https://www.akpress.org/bloodstained.html 
2, email from Stuart Christie, July 2014.