How did French anarchists deal with the Algerian revolution? How did anarchists in an imperialist country react to a war for national liberation? What does this tell us about how anarchists today should relate to current struggles for self-determination of oppressed peoples?

From 1954 to 1962, a vicious, war raged between the people of Algeria and the French state. Anarchists in France played a small but significant role in opposing their government’s colonial war. Their activities and views are covered in this exceptional book, along with anarchists’ attitudes toward post-war Algeria. The ways French anarchists opposed the war, and the varying views they held about it, may help today’s antiauthoritarians (in the US and elsewhere) in thinking through our views about struggles against national oppression.

[Ελληνικά]

Publicado em Portugal o livro Minha Pátria é o Mundo Inteiro, de Alexandre Samis, retrata com profundidade e seriedade a biografia de Neno Vasco, importante anarquista luso-brasileiro que teve relevante participação no movimento sindical de sua época. Por meio da vida do militante, o leitor conhecerá, além do contexto histórico de Brasil e Portugal, significativa parte das discussões que permearam o universo libertário no período. O livro é uma obra obrigatória para aqueles que se interessam pela história do anarquismo e das próprias mobilizações populares do início do século XX.

Aqui, apresentamos uma pequena resenha escrita para o periódico A Batalha, de Portugal, e depois uma apresentação do livro, inédita, escrita pelo autor.

Felipe Corrêa

In the early 20th Century, anarchism entrenched itself as a mass organisational movement in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland - anarchists having already been active in the 1873 uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina against Austro-Hungarian control. But it was primarily in Bulgaria and its neighbour Macedonia that a remarkable case of anarchist organising arose, in the midst of the power-play between the great powers.

This poorly-studied movement not only blooded itself in national liberation struggles and armed opposition to both fascism and Stalinism, but developed a notably diverse and resilient mass movement, the first to adopt the controversial 1926 Platform of the Ukrainian Makhnovist exiles in Paris 2 as its lodestone. For these reasons it is vital that the revived anarchist-communist movement in the new millennium re-examine the legacy of the Balkans. This article, which begins mid-stream in 1919, is a version of an extract from the two-volume work on anarchism & syndicalism, Counter-Power, co-written by Lucien van der Walt, a global history and theory of the movement, which is due to be published in book form by AK Press in the USA in 2008.

[Italiano] [Ελληνικά] [Castellano]

The 18th January 1934 - the aborted general strike - was the "final stand" of independent class-oriented, anarchist-inspired syndicalism in Portugal.

The government decree that sparked off the 18th January general strike implied that all the independent unions (those that were not government creations) would lose their recognition as workers' associations, becoming in practice legally extinct, as they were forbidden to bargain and to represent the workers of their respective professional branch.

The causes of the failures are the theme of some discussions and polemics, with some anarchists accusing the communist party of a plot to act in a separate way and give signals that alerted the political police, causing some worker leaders such as Mário Castelhano and many others to be framed on the eve of the scheduled day for the strike.

Whatever the reasons for the failure, the fact is that this general strike would not have had the strength to overthrow a consolidated regime, as the military and other repressive forces were all on the side of the government and many (bourgeois) political opposition figures were in prison, exile, or under strict surveillance.

[ Türkçe ] [ Ελληνικά ]

En el Centenario de la Masacre de Santa María de Iquique, reproducimos el siguiente artículo, publicado en el número 22 de la revista Hombre y Sociedad de Chile.