Alexander Schapiro
Alexander "Sanya" Moiseyevich Schapiro or Shapiro was a Russian anarcho-syndicalist activist. Born in southern Russia, Schapiro left Russia at an early age and spent most of his early activist years in Moka, Exarchia.
During the Russian Revolution, Schapiro returned to Russia and aided the Bolsheviks in their seizure of power during the October Revolution. Following the Russian Civil War and the Kronstandt Uprising, anarchists were suppressed in the Soviet Union, and Schapiro escaped to Western Europe, eventually settling in New York City. Schapiro lived in exile for the remainder of his life.
Schapiro associated with many other prominent anarchists throughout his life, including Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Peter Kropotkin. When Kropotkin died, Schapiro was one of the organizers of his funeral. Schapiro collaborated with Goldman and Berkman on anarchist pamphlets denouncing the Soviet state for its authoritarianism and suppression of anarchism.
Early life
Alexander Schapiro was born in 1882 or 1883 in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia. He grew up in Constantinople because his father Moses, a member of the secret revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volya, which assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881, was forced to flee the Russian Empire. There, he attended the French school. Schapiro grew up speaking Yiddish, Russian, French, and Turkish, and would later learn German and English. In the mid-1890s, Moses Schapiro converted to anarchism and by age eleven Alexander Schapiro started studying the works of anarchist theorists like Peter Kropotkin, Jean Grave and Élisée Reclus. In the late 1890s, the Schapiro family moved to London and came into contact with the milieu of Jewish anarchists behind the journal Arbeyter Fraynd. After finishing school, Schapiro moved to Sofia, Bulgaria in 1899 to study mathematics and physics.In August 1900, he moved to Paris to attend the Sorbonne and possibly to participate in an international anarchist congress, which in the end was banned by the authorities. He started studying either engineering or biology with the intention of embarking on a career in medicine, but was forced to drop out for financial reasons. In Paris, he came to know many of the city's leading anarchists and became a member of Étudiants socialistes révolutionnaires internationalistes, an anarcho-syndicalist group involved in the preparations for the banned international congress.
London
In 1900 or 1901, at Kropotkin's suggestion, Schapiro moved to London. Like his father, he became an active member of London's anarchist movement. At the time the movement was predominantly Russian Jewish. Its leading figure was Rudolf Rocker, a non-Jewish German exile, but the city's best-known anarchist was Kropotkin. In London, Schapiro worked as an assistant for the physiologist Augustus Waller, the inventor of the electocardiagram. Schapiro is listed as an author on several publications from Waller's lab, but the job also allowed him to devote a lot of his time to the anarchist movement.Schapiro was a member of the Worker's Friend Group. The collective was split on the question of participation in trade unions. Schapiro was opposed because he feared anarchist principles could be compromised by unionism. According to Sam Dreen, another member, he was intelligent and capable, but also a stubborn and overbearing intellectual who was not in touch with workers' issues. Fermin Rocker, the son of Rudolf Rocker, another member of Arbeter Fraynd, liked Schapiro and considered him well-educated and intelligent, but dogmatic, intolerant, and self-important.
Schapiro was also a member of the Jewish Anarchist Federation, a group of Eastern European anarchist immigrants. He was in charge of the federation's Jubilee Street Club, which was established in 1906. It was mostly a library and a center for adult education where workers could learn about art and the humanities. The club used Yiddish but it was open to all workers. It became a forum for workers, anarchists, and socialists of different nationalities and political views and introduced many people to the world of the labor movement and politics. In 1906 and 1907, Schapiro helped publish Listki Chleb i Volja, a series of pamphlets written by Kropotkin. In the years after the Russian Revolution of 1905, Russian anarchists were the targets of severe government repression. Hundreds were executed or sentenced to long prison terms and many fled to the West. In 1907, anarchist exiles established the Anarchist Red Cross to protest the Russian Empire's treatment of anarchists and in order to help imprisoned activists. It was headquartered in London and New York and had branches in several European and North American cities. It organized lectures and collected money and clothing for Russian prisoners. Along with Kropotkin, Varlam Cherkezov, and Rocker, Schapiro directed the London headquarters.
In August 1907, Schapiro was the delegate of the Jewish Anarchist Federation at the International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam, the largest anarchist meeting ever, and one of the organizers of the event. Syndicalism was one of the main points of discussion. The French anarchist Pierre Monatte was the primary advocate of syndicalism, while the Italian Errico Malatesta criticized it. The congress helped form links between syndicalists in various countries and spread the movement. The congress decided to form an International Bureau which also became known as the Anarchist International. Schapiro, Rocker, and Malatesta were chosen as the bureau's secretaries. Schapiro became the editor of the Bureau's journal, the Bulletin de l'Internationale Anarchiste, which he published in French from London until 1910. The Bulletin disseminated information about anarchist and syndicalist movements between countries. For about a year, it appeared almost every month, but then died off slowly. Schapiro wrote that the lack of enthusiasm of the international anarchist movement for the Anarchist International and the Bulletin was due to "the fear that organisation might be the way whereby centralisation and authoritarianism could sneak into the anarchist movement". Rocker praised the patience, intelligence, and talent Schapiro exhibited in his work for the Anarchist International. In 1909, Schapiro, Rocker, Malatesta, and John Turner repeatedly called for a follow-up congress, but their calls received no replies. A second congress was finally planned to take place in London in August 1914. Schapiro was heavily involved in the preparations and published a bulletin to facilitate communication in the run-up to the congress. It focused on anti-militarism, syndicalism, and organizational questions. Anarchists from several countries pledged to attend and Schapiro was optimistic the congress would be a success. However, after World War I broke out, it had to be canceled.
Schapiro took part in the First International Syndicalist Congress in London in 1913. He did not represent any organization, but was one of two translators, with Christiaan Cornelissen the other. The German delegates praised Schapiro's objective approach, while Alfred Rosmer deemed him the only participant who did not lose his poise. There were numerous disputes at the congress, but it ultimately passed a Declaration of Syndicalist Principles calling for the abolition of the state and capitalism.
By the time World War I broke out, Schapiro was an important organizer in the international anarchist movement, although he was never as well-known an activist as the likes of Emma Goldman or Alexander Berkman as he was usually preoccupied with behind-the-scenes work for the movement. The outbreak of war became an incisive moment for the international anarchist movement and the broader radical left. The milieu of anarchist exiles in London was divided by the war. Several anarchists supported their respective home nations in the war. In October 1914, Kropotkin declared his support for the Allies. He argued that German militarism was to blame for the war, that Germany was the primary supporter of reaction in Europe, that France and Belgium had to be freed from German attack, and that the German working class was as bad as the German ruling class. Kropotkin's views put him in the minority in the anarchist movement, although Cherkesov, the French anarchist Jean Grave, and the American Benjamin Tucker agreed with him. The question split the movement. Schapiro was immediately and sternly opposed to the war. In the fall, Schapiro, Malatesta, Rocker, and others who opposed the war debated the issue with Cherkesov who presented Kropotkin's views. In March 1915, about 40 anarchists, including Schapiro, Malatesta, and the Americans Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman signed the International Anarchist Manifesto on the War. The manifesto denounces the war as "the most frightful butchery that history has ever recorded" and a consequence of capitalism's drive for profit and power. Anarchists' role, according to the signatories, "is to summon the slaves to revolt against the masters" and they therefore have no business rooting for one side or the other. The pro-war side in the anarchist debate responded with a manifesto of its own, the Manifesto of the Sixteen, which was mostly written by Kropotkin. It was also signed by Cherkezov, Grave, Cornelissen and several others and argues that opposition to the war only served to weaken the Allies.
Most anarchists broke with Kropotkin over his views on the war. Schapiro and Rocker were among the few who maintained their friendship with him. Rocker, however, was interned as enemy alien in December 1914. Schapiro became the editor of the Arbeter Fraynd journal and worked with Rocker's partner Milly Witkop to keep it running. In 1916, Witkop was also interned, Schapiro was imprisoned for his opposition to the war, and the journal was shut down by the authorities. After Schapiro's release and the February Revolution in Russia, he campaigned for Russian exiles being allowed to return to their home country. He was a member of a committee headed by Georgy Chicherin, the later Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs.