Latvian anarchists ( Latvian. Latviešu anarhisti ) - the movement of anarchists in Latvia.
The start of the revolutionary events of 1905 in Latvia is considered to be the shooting of a peaceful procession of workers who showed their solidarity with the victims of St. Petersburg " Bloody Sunday ". The day after the start of the strike of the Riga workers, on January 26 (January 13 according to the old style) in Riga, near the railway bridge over the Daugava, soldiers and policemen opened fire without warning on those who took part in the demonstration. About 70 people were killed and seriously injured.
The Latvian poet Janis Akuraters wrote the poem “With a military appeal on the lips”, which became a revolutionary anthem.
In September 1905, a group of militants, led by Pyotr Pyatkov, known as Pyotr Malyar, attacked the Riga Central Prison. In January 1906, an even more daring attack on the secret police occurred, which resulted in the release of Fritis Swars and his five comrades.
At the beginning of 1909, Latvian refugees created the anarchist organization Liesma (Flame), which had a rather informal type and an international structure. Of the twenty-eight members of the organization, only five were Latvians.
The baptism of fire of the Latvians who settled in London took place on January 23, 1909. That day, two activists based in the British capital, the Latvian anarchist group Liesma (Flame) - Jacob (Jekab) Lapidus and Paul Hefeld attacked a car with an accountant from the rubber products factory in Tottenham, London, who carried a wage to her worker.
Content
- 1 Battle of Sydney Street
- 2 Irish events
- 3 Latvian anarchists in Russia
- 4 Sources
- 5 Links
Battle of Sydney
On the eve of the new 1911, the UK Department of the Interior, then led by Sir Winston Churchill , announced a £ 500 reward for any information about Pyatkov, Swars and Vatel. On the evening of January 1, 1911, the same informant Tsugarman-Orlov appeared at the headquarters of Scotland Yard with the police inspector Friedrich Wensley, who headed the search for the police killers, and reported that the criminals were sitting in the apartment of apartment building No. 100 in Sydney Street, where she lived a certain Betty Gershon is Sokolov’s lover. About 200 police officers armed with revolvers arrived in Sydney Street.
By Churchill’s personal order, Orlov-Zugarman, who passed the gang of anarchists to the police, received 163 pounds sterling (1630 tsar rubles or 15,000 current US dollars) - that is, a third of the award promised for the capture of Pyatkov and two of his assistants who were not found, which failed take it alive. The absence of witnesses from the gang’s core allowed Latvian lawyers, previously arrested by Scotland Yard on suspicion of involvement in a criminal group, to justify their clients “for insufficient evidence”. In May 1911, they were all released - except for their friend Dumnieks Vasilyeva, sentenced to 2 years in prison, but released after appeal after 6 weeks.
Irish Events
Lettered Latvians became very popular with London youth. So, Jacob Peters , a cousin of Swars, soon became a welcome guest in the student group, where she met the “fatal Latvian”, fell in love and soon married the young daughter of the banker May Freeman. To which her father responded in a letter to a friend: “My little Macy is now married ... My brother-in-law - a terrorist, anarchist and communist - escaped from a Latvian prison in order to get into English in the case of Hounsdwich. God, how do you allow this ?! My daughter said that they will live their work and give up their servants. "
But Peters did not live up to his father-in-law’s hopes, becoming involved in the 1916 Irish events . Then, in the midst of World War I, the radical group Irish Republican Brotherhood , adjacent to the legal party of Sinn Fein, tried to raise an uprising in Ireland, having received weapons and money from the Germans - the main opponents of the British. On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, 1,500 Brotherhood volunteers led by its leader Patrick Pearce and 200 secret Irish Civil Army militias James Connolly seized several buildings in downtown Dublin and issued the Proclamation for the Establishment of the Republic of Ireland.
Latvian Anarchists in Russia
In Russia, the terrorist department of the Union for the Defense of the Homeland and Freedom was created. It was created in April 1918 and reported directly to Savinkov. The department participated "in all kinds of gang raids, sorties and robberies." Its members monitored V.I. Lenin for the purpose of killing him (Savinkov personally supervised this operation), planned in November 1918 to launch a gas attack on the Congress of Soviets, and at the same time to attack various institutions with the help of “shockmen”, intended to blow up the train with members of the Soviet government (at the time of their alleged flight from the Germans from Moscow), for which they mined the bridge on the Nizhny Novgorod railway. They also resorted to individual terror, they killed a member of the Union in Yaroslavl, Lieutenant Soloviev, who was trying to prevent an impending rebellion.
Sources
- Liesma, No. 1, Moscow, July 1918
Links
- Website of Latvian Anarchists
- Latvian anarchists in Moscow in 1918. Direct action No. 29, fall 2008
- Jānis Krēsliņš, Sr. LATVIEŠU ANARHISTI LONDONĀ PIRMS 100 GADIEM , Jaunā Gaita nr. 264. pavasaris 2011
- Piemin Latvijas anarhistu apšaudi Londonā 12/17/2010 LETA
- Lielbritānija piemin 100.gadadienu kopš Latvijas anarhistu izraisītās dramatiskās apšaudes Londonā