Volin

Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum (Russian: Все́волод Миха́йлович Эйхенба́ум, French: Vsevolod Mikhaïlovitch Eichenbaum; 11 August 1882 – 18 September 1945), known in later life as Volin or (the spelling he used himself) Voline (Во́лин), was a leading Russian anarchist who participated in the Russian and Ukrainian Revolutions before being forced into exile by the Bolshevik Party government. He was a main proponent of the anarchist organizational form known as synthesis anarchism.

Biography

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.