Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

An indefatigable propagandist for the anarchist cause with an uncanny gift for languages, Augustin Souchy, in the words of his friend Abe Bluestein, “had a knack to be at the centre of historic developments.” As a young man, Souchy joined Gustav Landauer's Sozialistischer Bund (Socialist Federation) after hearing him speak in Berlin in 1911 and helped to campaign against the European powers' growing drive to war. This first serious political commitment–which would see him flee to Sweden in 1914 to escape conscript tion–deeply marked his beliefs thereafter. Like Landauer (whose biography he wrote in prison), he never ceased to conceive of anarchism in terms of non-violence, and he brought a distinctly anti-militarist sensibility to the German anarchosyndicalist movement. Returning to Germany after World War I, Souchy joined the anarchosyndicalist movement , becoming a member of the Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschland (Free Workers' Union of Germany, or FAUD), a contributor to its journal, Der Syndikalist , and the journal's editor from 1922 to 1933. In 1920, as a delegate of the FAUD to the Second Congress of the Third International Workers' Association (the Communist International or “Comintern”) in Moscow and Petro-grad, Souchy confirmed his earlier suspicions concerning the dictatorial tendencies of the Bolsheviks . Consequently, at a conference of syndicalists in Berlin in ... log in or subscribe to read full text