Chernoe Znamia

Chernoe Znamia (The Black Banner)
A meeting of the Chernoznamentsy in Minsk in 1906.
Dates of operation	1903 (1903)
Motives	Overthrow of governments; etablishment of an anarchist society.
Active region(s)	Western and southern regions of the Russian Empire.
Ideology	Anarchism (Anarchist communism)
Major actions	Various acts if robbery and assassination.

Chernoe Znamia (or Chornoe Znamia) (Russian: Чёрное знамя, English: The Black Banner), known as the Chernoznamentsy, was a Russian anarchist communist organisation. It emerged in 1903 as a federation of cadres.^[1] It took its name – "The Black Banner" – from the black flag,^[2] the use of which as a symbol of anarchism in Russia, according to An Anarchist FAQ, coincided with its founding.^[3]

Composition

The largest collection of anarchist terrorists in Imperial Russia, Chernoe Znamia attracted its strongest following in the western and southern provinces at the frontier of the Empire, including nearly all anarchists in Bialystok.^[2] Their ranks included mostly students, factory workers and artisans, though there were also peasants, unemployed labourers, drifters, and self-professed Nietzschean supermen.^[2] Ethnically, Jews predominated, and many members were of Ukrainian, Polish and Great Russian nationality.^[2] The typical age of the Chernoznamentsy was nineteen or twenty, and some of the most active adherents were as young as fifteen years old.^[2]

Tactics and ideology

We recognise isolated expropriations only to acquire money for our revolutionary deeds. If we get the money, we do not kill the person we are expropriating. But this does not mean that he, the property owner, has bought us off. No! We will find him in the various cafes, restaurants, theatres, balls, concerts, and the like. Death to the bourgeois! Always, wherever he may be, he will be overtaken by an anarchist's bomb or bullet.

The declaration of a Chernoznamenets in Odessa to the judges officiating at his trial.^[4]

Further information: anarchism and violence

With a history marked, in the words of historian Paul Avrich, by "reckless fanaticism and uninterrupted violence", the Chernoznamensty were the first anarchist group with a deliberate policy of terror against the established order.^[2] They saw merit in every act of propaganda by the deed, no matter how intemperate and senseless it appeared to the public, as evoking the lust of the underclass for vengeance against their tormentors.^[4] Along with the equally fanatical Beznachalie ("Without Authority"), Chernoe Znamia was the most conspicuous anarchist communist organisation in Russia.^[5]

Related topics

• Narodnaya Volya, a similar organisation of an earlier generation

References

1. ^ Geifman 1993, p. 127
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Avrich 2006, p. 44
3. ^ The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective (2008). "Appendix — The Symbols of Anarchy". In Iain McKay. An Anarchist FAQ. Stirling: AK Press. ISBN 1902593901. OCLC 182529204. http://www.infoshop.org/faq/append2.html. 
4. ^ ^{a b} Avrich 2006, p. 48
5. ^ Avrich 2006, p. 54

Bibliography

• Geifman, Anna (1993). Thou Shalt Kill. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691025495. 
• Avrich, Paul (2006). The Russian Anarchists. Stirling: AK Press. ISBN 1904859488. 

External links

• Chernoe Znamia at the Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia