1931–2006
○ Natural causes
Historian who pioneered the history of Russian and American anarchism
Named a distinguished professor in 1982, his announcement quoted him: 'Every good person deep down is an anarchist.'
Born in Brooklyn to Jewish immigrant parents from Odessa, Avrich was a pioneering historian who spent his entire career teaching the history of Russian and American anarchism at Queens College. His Kronstadt, 1921 (1970) demolished the Bolshevik claim that the rebellion was a White-Guard conspiracy, and he later conceded that Getzler's muster-roll figures were more current than his own. He worked to recover anarchists as 'pioneers of social justice' rather than amoral and violent militants, and bequeathed a 20,000-item archive to the Library of Congress.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1931Born in Brooklyn, New York
- 1952Graduated from Cornell University
- 1950년대 초Served in the US Air Force during the Korean War
- 1961PhD from Columbia; appointed instructor at Queens College
- 1967Published The Russian Anarchists, his first book
- 1970Published Kronstadt, 1921
- 1984Won the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award for The Haymarket Tragedy
- 1999Retired from Queens College
Related historical events
Collecting and preserving anarchist sources
Alongside his scholarship, Avrich collected and preserved primary sources on anarchist movements in the United States and Europe. The Library of Congress records that he began donating materials in 1986 and that a bequest in 2006 further enlarged the collection. It includes more than 2,800 books and pamphlets, as well as serials, manuscripts, correspondence, newspaper clippings, audio and video materials, and other ephemera. Its holdings include published and unpublished materials relating to anarchists such as Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, records of the Libertarian Book Club from 1945 to 1985, materials concerning the Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeṭer Shṭime, and records of anarchist communities in the United States. The collection thus preserves a research basis not only for individual anarchist writers, but also for the movement's publishing, organizational, and communal activity.