Shadows in the Struggle for Equality: The History of the Anarchist Red Cross

From Cop City to the Dakota pipelines and Jane’s Revenge to numerous struggles worldwide, anarchist organizers are relentlessly targeted by the state today as they have been for over a century.

Shadows in the Struggle for Equality is the firsthand account of Boris Yelensky, an activist of the Anarchist Red Cross (later the Anarchist Black Cross), during the Russian revolutionary movement from 1905 through 1917, and the subsequent Leninist/Stalinist repression.

Written with great humility and compassion, Yelensky recalls his fifty years of tireless organizing to aid victims of state oppression and injustice, beginning with a vivid sketch of the history of the Russian revolutionary movement and the critical role played by anarchists. He then provides the rich history of the Anarchist Red Cross spanning the time from the Revolution to his settling in the US where he dedicated his life and his book “to the Fighters for Freedom, Humanism and Justice, to those who endeavored to help these fighters by applying the principle of mutual aid.”

In telling why an anarchist relief organization became necessary, he calls attention to a neglected aspect of revolutionary history—the sabotage and discrimination of many social-democrats against their fellow-prisoners and in the outside relief organizations. Of the vast sums collected all over the world, from czarist times up through the 1950s when the book was written, very little reached the anarchist prisoners.

With newly translated material, and over a dozen beautiful illustrations by N.O. Bonzo, this stunning edition of Shadows in the Struggle for Equality will serve to inspire a continuation of solidarity and support for those who are incarcerated in the struggle for freedom, humanism, and justice.

About the Contributors

Boris Yelensky (1889–1974) was a Russian anarchist propagandist who took part in the 1905 Russian Revolution. Due to czarist repression, he was forced to flee the country in 1907, eventually landing in the US. He helped to establish the Philadelphia and Chicago chapters of the Anarchist Red Cross. Yelensky later returned to Russia to participate in the 1917 Revolution. With Lenin’s rise to power and the increased repression against anarchists, Yelensky once again left his native country, settling permanently in the US. Once he returned to the US, he continued to provide support for imprisoned anarchists through his work in the Alexander Berkman Aid Fund, a section of the Anarchist Red Cross. For over fifty years he was an important figure in Chicago’s Free Society Group and active in the Anarchist Red Cross.

Matthew Hart is an educator and labor activist from the greater Los Angeles area. His participation in the political movement began with Whittier Food Not Bombs and the antiglobalization movement in the mid-1990s. In 1998, he helped to establish the Los Angeles chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross. Throughout the years, he has engaged in extensive research and archiving of the Anarchist Black Cross history. Hart has spent several decades in the labor movement as a rank-and-file activist and staff and teaches labor studies courses at Los Angeles Trade Technical College.

N.O. Bonzo is an anarchist illustrator, printmaker, and muralist based in Portland, OR. They are the illustrator of Mutual Aid: An Illuminated Factor of Evolution and creator of Off with Their Heads: An Antifascist Coloring Book for Adults of All Ages; Beneath the Pavement the Garden: An Anarchist Coloring Book for All Ages; and The Beautiful Idea.

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