A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion: Once upon a time, there was anarchist federalism By ANGEL MALATESTA (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The history of anarchist federations and confederations allows us to 
review different past experiences that have practiced one of the basic 
elements of anarchism: federalism. This tool aims to ensure the 
autonomous functioning of the union of self-governing communities. This 
federative principle was established by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as a form 
of social organization, and later, Mikhail Bakunin further defined it as 
a form of political organization. It has been embraced as one of the 
indisputable anarchist principles that has transcended theory and has 
found widespread practice. In this article, we will review four European 
federative examples that may provide clues for anarchist revolutionary 
organization today.

Jura Federation, the exact time of the Swiss anarchists.

The First International, from 1864 to 1872, was composed of various 
workers' federations from different European territories. The most 
important at that time was the Jura Federation, composed primarily of 
watchmakers from the mountains north of the Swiss Alps.

They played a very active role in the development of anarchist politics, 
the most prominent of which was the libertarian James Guillaume. He was 
the son of a Swiss republican who owned a watch business in London in 
the mid-19th century. However, he studied in Switzerland where he became 
familiar with anarchist ideas, and he was a professor in the canton of 
Neuchâtel. He was an editor of the newspapers "Progrès" and "Solidarité" 
between 1870 and 1871. He was also in charge of the "Bulletin de la 
Fédération Jurassiene" in 1871, and took an active role in the creation 
of the Saint-Imier Anarchist International in 1872. This was the time 
when the Jura Federation was expelled from the First International, 
along with other anarchist sections.

Piotr Kropotkin was visiting the Swiss mountains in 1877 and wrote the 
following words in his work Memoirs of a Revolutionary:

The egalitarian relationships I found in the Jura Mountains, the freedom 
of action and thought I saw develop among the workers, and their 
boundless devotion to the cause, appealed strongly to me; and when I 
left the mountains, after spending a week with the watchmakers, my views 
of socialism were established. I was an anarchist...

This anarchist organization began in the late 1860s, initially as an 
association of watchmakers with socialist and anti-authoritarian 
beliefs, later influenced by French Communards. Later, local 
associations would meet in a federal committee; their headquarters were 
often in workplaces, acting as unions, organizing workers. They 
collectively read revolutionary circulars, received news of 
international strikes and corresponded, and held parties and theatrical 
performances for resistance funds. This extensive and consolidated 
mutual aid network acted as insurance for workers' health and welfare, 
created production cooperatives accessible to broad sectors of the 
proletariat, and also wielded the weapons of the strike and 
revolutionary struggle with uncompromising skill.

Despite many material resource limitations, these Swiss anarchists took 
advantage of all the technological advances of their time, such as the 
telegraph, to send correspondence to various parts of the world. Their 
various experiments in social practices and their organizational 
strategy made it the European anarchist federation with the greatest 
stability and potential for social integration among the working class. 
They also created a fairly extensive network of international 
correspondents.

They were also consolidated by the presence of Mikhail Bakunin in 
Switzerland, and were established as a participating federation of the 
First International, strongly supporting the Bakuninist revolutionary 
spirit. Following the Hague Congress in September 1872, this Jura 
Federation urgently called for a new meeting to be held in the Swiss 
town of Saint-Imier. Collaborators in the Jura Mountains included some 
of the most prominent Italian, German, and French anarchists of that 
time, many of whom had passed through the territory as exiles and 
persecutors.

Order, punctuality, and discipline were values that the anarchists of 
the Jura Mountains embraced, and for anarchism to take root, they saw 
the need for this mentality as well. The records of the federation's 
debates reveal a heightened sense of precision and collective 
discipline. This watchmaking industry offered excellent conditions for 
addressing political struggles and forging a social consciousness and a 
better understanding of its reality.

The restructuring of the watchmaking industry due to mechanization and 
the emigration of James Guillaume to Paris in 1878 accelerated the 
demise of the Jura Federation, which held its last congress in 1880 
before dissolving.

Nabat Confederation of Ukraine, the organization of the territory of the 
Mahknovia.

Between 1918 and 1920, a vast territory in southern Ukraine was 
liberated under the control of anarchists fighting in the Russian Civil 
War against bourgeois and reactionary forces. This territory was known 
as Mahknovia, named after one of its main leaders, Nestor Mahkno, who 
led the Black Army, a military self-defense force of the libertarian 
socialist revolution. The organization of this territory necessitated 
the coordination of all political, economic, and social life through 
popular power entities.

The hostilities of the Bolshevik Party, which led the October Revolution 
of 1917, and all the instrumentalization that favored its 
bureaucratization, made Ukraine a suitable territory for defending the 
anarchist revolutionary achievements. They demonstrated relentless 
prowess on the military battlefield through the insurgent Black Army of 
Mahkno, but they also recognized the importance of creating their own 
entities with a socialist political and economic program. Thus, in the 
fall of 1918, the Confederation of Anarchist Organizations, Nabat, 
emerged, which literally means "The Alarm Call" in Russian.

The anarchist movement was strong in Ukraine, and it began to welcome 
other anarchists from Moscow and Petrograd fleeing Bolshevik repression, 
establishing the nerve center of this confederation in the city of 
Kharkiv. A powerful youth movement quickly grew throughout the country, 
and taking as its basis the Revolutionary Peasant Union of Guliai-Pole 
(Mahkno's hometown), the Insurgent Council was created, a popular 
authority in the territories liberated by the Black Army. It was 
composed of the leading anarchist political cadres in Ukraine, who were 
also combatants, as they also formed the military cadres of the Black 
Army regiments.

The Nabat Confederation aimed to unify a common revolutionary program 
that encompassed practical issues for organizing life within libertarian 
socialism. Volin was responsible for coordinating communications, 
cultural, and educational work; he promoted talks and conferences; and 
also drafted some of the basic resolutions summarizing the currents of 
anarchism. Its fundamental approach was to achieve libertarian communism 
by abolishing private property. However, the war situation prevented 
this goal from being broadened, and small peasant holdings were 
maintained, although their production was supposed to contribute to the 
general community cause.

The relationship between this anarchist Confederation and the Bolsheviks 
was mediated by the circumstances of the common war against the 
bourgeois and imperial armies of Central Europe and, above all, by 
Nestor Makhno's admiration for Lenin, despite their ideological 
differences. The Ukrainian peasant considered himself uneducated and 
therefore excessively idolized the Bolshevik leader. Makhno displayed 
skill on the battlefield, but he failed to adequately analyze the 
betrayal that would befall the anarchists. Despite the military 
agreements reached between the Black Army and the Red Army in early 1919 
to jointly defend the revolutionary achievements by force of arms, the 
first conflicts began in the spring of that year. The Insurgent Council 
was declared counterrevolutionary and outlawed by Soviet Commander Pavel 
Dybenko. And from that moment on, all political, economic, and military 
decisions would be made by the Revolutionary Military Soviet of 
Insurgent Workers and Peasants, which responded directly to executive 
orders sent from Moscow. Although the main enemy of both was the White 
Army, there were numerous skirmishes and open conflicts between 
Bolsheviks and anarchists in the following months of 1919 until the 
signing of a second alliance. This was motivated by the loss of 
territory by both armies to the offensive of Baron Wrangel of the White 
Army. As soon as much of the lost territory was recovered, and despite 
the military and political agreements reached, the Red Army fiercely 
attacked the Black Army in Guliai-Pole and the Crimean Peninsula, and 
hundreds of anarchists were arrested, including Volin, who was in Kharkiv.

The Nabat Confederation had a deep organizational structure that sought 
to consolidate currents of anarchist thought. It was organized as a 
federation to maintain the free association of its regional members, 
which, during the period of the Russian Civil War, was quite fluid due 
to the advances on the war front. It had an executive Secretariat, but 
also an anarchist ideological guide for the Confederation that 
administered the economy and ideological propaganda, as well as the 
publication of the newspaper of the same name. The Nabat also 
accumulated significant revolutionary and federalist experience, 
achieving a common program for Ukrainian peasants and workers as a 
political self-defense against the bureaucratic and authoritarian 
pretensions of the Bolsheviks.

Tactical issues were widely debated according to the current needs of 
the moment; however, the anarcho-syndicalist movement represented by 
Volin ultimately had reservations about the formula of "single 
anarchism," a precursor to the need for strategic and ideological unity 
later mentioned by Makhno. Volin, as a synthesist, insisted that no 
single anarchist movement should stand out from the others, and this 
proved to be a major weakness for the Nabat, which had to develop 
cohesive positions against the multiple enemies it had to confront on 
the battlefield of war and politics. This also influenced the Nabat 
Confederation's inability to develop an economic and political program, 
as it lacked a more profound formulation of a theory of revolution.

Iberian Anarchist Federation, almost a platform that remains in summary.

Founded in Valencia in July 1927, it operated throughout the Iberian 
Peninsula, although its greatest political impact was within Spain. It 
arose from the need to unite efforts to maintain anarchist political 
organization in the Iberian Peninsula at a time of the dictatorship of 
Miguel Primo de Rivera in Spain and the National Dictatorship in 
Portugal. However, its practical internationalism was forged by the fact 
that hundreds of Iberian anarchists were in exile during the 1920s. Many 
anarchists sought refuge in Latin America, North Africa, and France due 
to these dictatorships. They formed a federation specifically focused on 
anarchist ideas and significantly influenced the development of 
anarchism in the 1930s, ultimately leading to a social revolution in 1936.

The FAI was born from the conjunction of three previous organizations: 
the Portuguese Anarchist Union, the National Federation of Anarchist 
Groups of Spain, and the National Federation of Spanish-Speaking 
Anarchist Groups in Exile. They established a strategy of relationship 
with the labor movement and the CNT organically, operating from a 
Peninsular Committee through various revolutionary action groups, 
prisoner support, international relations, and the press. A broad 
organization with a revolutionary horizon was formed that sought to 
unite all these unitary agreements in its first two years, and from 1930 
onward, it grew significantly with the collapse of the dictatorship in 
Spain. They did not propose the simple overthrow of the monarchy, but 
rather a revolutionary and emancipatory objective for all of society as 
a whole.

Some ten thousand members would eventually make up the FAI, a solid base 
of militant anarchist cadres connected with mass anarcho-syndicalism. 
From the beginning of the Second Spanish Republic, the CNT saw a dual 
political path: that marked by the FAI, fully revolutionary but with a 
broad diversity of strategies that transformed it into a federation of 
synthesis rather than a platform. On the other hand, there was also the 
path of Treintismo, an ideological current and movement within 
anarcho-syndicalism that led to conciliation with bourgeois forces, the 
creation of Ángel Pestaña's Partido Sindicalista, and its parliamentary 
path.

It's not true that they were more violent or radical, as has always been 
the shadow that has been cast over the FAI, and which has much to do 
with punitive logic and attacks from the reformist current. The FAI 
specifically analyzed a theory of social reproduction, and concluded 
that those years of intense union and political activity were an ideal 
time to decisively escalate struggles using direct action and 
revolutionary gymnastics as methods. They were the most advanced 
committees of the anarchist revolutionary struggle, balancing the use of 
armed self-defense and self-defense through advanced political 
positions. However, the beginning of the Spanish Social Revolution of 
1936 and the fight against fascism caused the FAI to modify its 
structure as an informal organization, officially registering in 1937. 
Already a political organization, it lost, along the way, like the CNT, 
the revolutionary potential it would have had to carry out a fully 
revolutionary program in the fields of political, economic, and military 
action.

The FAI was formed by affinity groups, but this should not be confused 
with simple insurrectionalism, as these groups were coordinated 
territorially, developed a stable and complex organization, and made 
decisions on how to act in the social and union context alongside the 
CNT, providing the union with a revolutionary and anarchist path. The 
FAI participated in the Alt Llobregat uprising in 1932, the Zaragoza 
uprising in 1933, and even the Asturian Revolution of 1934.

Furthermore, FAI members affiliated with the CNT formed self-defense 
groups in the spring of 1936, armed militias that already anticipated a 
military coup and the necessary workers' response that would take the 
offensive. The realities of each group specifically and its composition 
were very varied, so they built a synthetic organization, rather than a 
federation with a clear strategy. And had this been realized, the 
potential in 1936 to accomplish what the CNT hadn't dared to do would 
likely have been greater and more successful.

Bulgarian Anarchist Communist Federation; dual organization and mass 
uprising.

It's sometimes surprising how far-reaching social processes, such as 
organized mass movements in Europe in the past, have been ostracized in 
our memory. This is the case with the experience of the Bulgarian 
Anarchist Communist Federation between the 1920s and 1940s. This 
experience is crucial to understand because of the legacy that Bulgarian 
platformism has bestowed on anarchism internationally.

In 1903, the Macedonian Revolt took place, in Thrace, in southern 
Bulgaria, where the Strandzha Commune had been proclaimed against the 
Ottoman Empire. This was a process of emancipation and self-management 
of a small territory temporarily under the principles of libertarian 
communism. This defeat later led to the emergence of some anarchist 
publications in Bulgaria; however, the First World War imprisoned many 
anarchists who refused to participate in the national army. The 
immediate interwar period saw a strengthening of nationalism and the 
bourgeois reactionary offensive. However, in 1919, the Anarchist 
Communist Federation of Bulgaria (ANCB) was founded, which carried out 
important experiments involving urban and rural unionism, cooperatives, 
guerrilla movements, and youth organizations.

Until the coup d'état of 1923, its activities were public. The fifth 
congress held in Yambol brought together more than one hundred 
delegates, with almost ninety local organizations and an influence of 
some ten thousand anarchists in Bulgaria. The Federation had four 
publishing houses and published its own newspaper, "Misal Rabotniceska" 
(Workers' Thought), with thousands of copies. In reaction to this coup, 
many anarchists participated in the September uprising against the 
ultranationalist government of Aleksandar Tsankov. Again, in the 
anti-government revolts of 1925, numerous anarchists were executed 
without trial. Despite this fascist surge, the Bulgarian anarchist 
movement continued to grow in the following decade due to the 
underground organization of the peasant movement, although the main 
militants went into exile and even fought in the Spanish Revolution and 
Civil War.

Due to the Bulgarian labor movement, organized around anarchist 
communism and deeply embedded in the working class, Bulgarian anarchists 
were not attracted to the Bolshevik idea of revolution, unlike Hungarian 
or Czechoslovak anarchists. Bulgarian anarchists in exile were 
influenced in France by the debate on the Platform proposed by Nestor 
Makhno, with a Bulgarian delegate, most likely Georgi Grigoriev, and in 
1927 the FACB adopted the platform as its strategic line. Some of these 
anarchists returned to Bulgaria and created guerrilla groups that 
supported the agrarian and cooperative unionism that spread throughout 
the country, heavily influenced by communist anarchism. These same 
guerrilla groups operated during the alliance between the Bulgarian 
government and the Nazis beginning in 1941, and many of these 
clandestine anarchist organizations saved thousands of Jews.

In September 1944, the Bulgarian fascist regime fell, the People's 
Republic of Bulgaria was established with the support of the Soviet 
Union. The Bulgarian Anarchist Communist Federation (BFAC) was 
reestablished and began to form numerous local groups. However, from the 
outset, the new regime of the Fatherland Front (of Marxist tendency) was 
relentless in its repression of the powerful anarchist movement. In 
March 1945, the anarchist communists decided to develop a common program 
based on organizational dualism: their own anarchist political 
organization and a mass movement in the cities and the countryside. 
Before this congress could take place in the Knjashvo district of Sofia, 
the eighty anarchist delegates were arrested by the authorities and 
confined in internment camps.

Eventually, the international solidarity movement forced the release of 
some members of the FACB, and the organization continued its political 
activities, greatly increasing its popularity and also defending itself 
against the repression of the Bulgarian government, which banned its 
magazine in 1946. Prior to the 1948 Congress of the Bulgarian Communist 
Party, nearly six hundred anarchists were imprisoned to prevent any 
libertarian communist stance from being expressed at the political 
gathering. Anarchism was officially outlawed, and anarchists were 
condemned to exile or imprisonment in detention centers. Manol Vassev, 
one of its most prominent syndicalist activists, was imprisoned for 
several years, and the day before his release in 1958, he was poisoned 
in prison.

The relentless repression of the pro-Soviet regime led to the virtual 
disappearance of the organized anarchist movement in Bulgaria during 
those decades, which had nearly three thousand militant cadres according 
to Bulgarian state security. In 1952, a publishing house called "Our 
Path" was founded in Paris, which held a key position in maintaining 
Bulgarian anarchism and connecting through the Union of Bulgarian 
Anarchists in Exile, but it would never again achieve the social support 
it had enjoyed years before. Beginning in 1989, with the fall of the 
Todor Zhivkov regime and the establishment of bourgeois democracy, the 
Federation of Bulgarian Anarchists emerged as a simple insurrectionist 
group advocating for the abolition of the state and the creation of free 
communes. However, the Bulgarian anarchist movement during the two 
decades of the 20th century when it became a mass movement is an event 
worthy of close study. They managed to break down the urban-rural 
divide, developed syndicalist and social lines of struggle, and with 
great ideological clarity managed to penetrate broad strata of Bulgarian 
society, organizing against capital and fascism.

Ángel Malatesta, member of Liza, Anarchist Platform of Madrid

https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/08/29/erase-una-vez-el-federalismo-anarquista/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en