Senya Fleshin - Voline - Mollie Steimer

Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum ([[August 11]], [[1882]] – [[September 18]], [[1945]]), known in later life as ”’Voline”’ (Волин), was a leading Russian [[anarchist]].

He was born in the [[Voronezh]] district of [[Central Russia]], where both his parents were doctors, and after finishing college there he went to [[Saint Petersburg]] to study jurisprudence. In [[1904]] he left the university, joined the [[Socialist-Revolutionary Party]] and became involved in the revolutionary labor movement. He was engaged in cultural and educational activity among the workers of the city when he met [[Father Gapon]] and joined his petition movement; on [[Bloody Sunday (1905)]] he was with a group that was turned back by soldiers before it could reach the [[Winter Palace]]. During the ensuing strikes he took the lead in creating the first [[St. Petersburg Soviet]] in order to coordinate aid and information for the workers; although quiescent much of the year and finally suppressed in December after the [[Russian Revolution of 1905]], the Soviet was revived during the [[February Revolution]] of [[1917]].

After his escape from arrest in [[1907]] he fled to [[France]], where he came under the influence of Russian [[anarchist|anarchists]] and joined that movement, a small group of [[Apollon Karelin]], in 1911.

He took part in the [[Russian Civil War]], at first in the Ukrainian anarchist organization [[Nabat]], then (from August [[1919]]) in the army of [[Nestor Makhno]]. Arrested by the Bolsheviks in January [[1920]], he was released from prison along with other anarchists in October because of a treaty between the [[Soviet Union]] and Makhno’s army, rearrested a month later, and thanks to the intervention of the [[Red Trade Union International]], during its Congress Съезд Красного Профинтерна) held in Moscow in the summer of [[1921]], he was finally expelled from the country.

Admitted to [[Germany]] despite lack of proper documents, he and his family lived in [[Berlin]], where he wrote (in German) an 80-page pamphlet called ”The Persecution of the Anarchists in Soviet Russia”, translated P. Arshinov’s История махновского движения (”History of the Makhnovist Movement”) and wrote a long biographical preface for it, and edited a Russian anarchist magazine. After two years he received an invitation from [[Sebastian Faure]] to help him prepare the ”Encyclopédie Anarchiste”, so he moved to [[Paris]], where he wrote for the ”Encyclopédie” and other publications.

The death of his wife affected him severely, and [[World War II]] forced him to move from one hiding place to another; he returned to Paris after the war, but developed incurable tuberculosis and died in a hospital in September [[1945]], leaving his account of his experiences in the revolutions and civil war, ”La Révolution inconnue” (”The Unknown Revolution”), to be published posthumously.__NOTOC__

==External links==
====In English====
*[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/voline/biography.html Rudolf Rocker’s introduction to Voline’s ”The Unknown Revolution”]
*[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/voline/index.html Voline archive]

====In Russian====
*[http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/volin_vm.html Волин Всеволод Михайлович]
*[http://vintovka.ruserv.com/books/22.htm П. П. Аршинов “История махновского движения” (with preface by Voline)]

====In French====
*[http://kropot.free.fr/Voline-revinco.htm Voline, La Révolution inconnue]

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