Paul Avrich

Paul Avrich (August 4, 1931-February 16, 2006) was a professor and historian. He taught at Queens College, New York for most of his life and was vital in preserving the history of the anarchist movement in Russia and the USA.

Life & Work

As the son of a Jewish family originally from Odessa, Avrich was able to travel to the USSR as an exchange student in 1961 after Nikita Khrushchev's 1959 US visit. While there working on his thesis, "The Russian Revolution and the Factory Committees", he researched the Kronstadt rebellion and the role of anarchists in the Russian Revolution. This information allowed him to produce pioneering and important works on this subject.

As a teacher at Queens College, he sought to pass to his students an "affection and sense of solidarity with anarchists as people, rather than as militants" and was described as a "trusted friend" to many older anarchists whom he had met and interviewed, saving their stories for history.

He wrote extensively on topics related to anarchism, including books on Sacco and Vanzetti, the Haymarket Riot, and the Kronstadt rebellion. Other important works include a biography of Voltairine de Cleyre, "The Modern School Movement" and "Anarchist Portraits". He also edited the important oral history collection, "Anarchist Voices". He was nominated several times for the Pulitzer Prize for History. He also spoke regularly at the Libertarian Book Club in New York.

Dr. Paul Avrich donated his collection of nearly 20,000 twentieth-century American and European anarchist publications and manuscripts to the Library of Congress.

Bibliography

From the [http://www.anarca-bolo.ch/cira/ Centre International de Recherches sur l'Anarchisme] .
* "The Russian anarchists" Princeton University Press, 1967; re-edition 1978 (Les Anarchistes russes; translated by Bernard Mocquot. Paris: Maspero, 1979; other translations in Japanese, Spanish and Italian).
* "Kronstadt, 1921" Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970 (La Tragédie de Cronstadt, 1921; translated by Hervé Denès. Paris: Seuil, 1975; other translations in Spanish and Czech).
* "Russian Rebels, 1600-1800" New York: Schocken Books, 1972.
* "The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution" New York: Cornell University Press, 1973 (Gli anarchici nella rivoluzione russa; translated by Michele Buzzi. Milano: La Salamandra, 1976).
* "An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre" 1978.
* "The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States" 1980
* "The Haymarket Tragedy" 1984
* "Anarchist Portraits" 1988
* "Sacco and Vanzetti, The Anarchist Background" 1991
* "Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America" 1995

External links

* [http://www.deadanarchists.org/contemporaries/Avrich.html Love and Anarchy: A Profile and Interview with Paul Avrich]
* [http://libcom.org/library/russian-anarchists-civil-war-paul-avrich Russian anarchists and the civil war by Paul Avrich]
* [http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20060220094433788 Paul Avrich Obituary from Infoshop with selected bibliography]
* [http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=2461 Obituary by Marianne Enckell from CIRA via anarkismo.net (source of quotes above)]
* [http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/avrich_obit.pdf Obituary from the Kate Sharpley Library]
* [http://www.akpress.org/2006/items/2006paulavrichtitles Re-published Paul Avrich books on anarchism] , AK Press
* [http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/AvrichPaul.htm Paul Avrich page] Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia