Fanya Baron - Biography

Fanya Anisimovna Baron (Фаня Анисимовна Барон) (? - September 1921) was a Russian anarchist revolutionary who is rumoured to have assassinated the head of the Okhrana (tsarist secret police). She lived in America from 1915 to 1917 when she returned to her homeland to build a post-revolutionary society. In 1921, she was executed by the Cheka.

A life lived in thirty-six months

Nabat and the Makhno movement

Fanya was involved in the Nabat Ukrainian Anarchist Confederation (active 1919-1920) who published a paper also called Nabat ("The Alarm"). The Nabat confederation had links with the Makhno movement. Several Nabat members (among them Fanya's husband Aaron Baron, Voline and Peter Arshinov) were active in the Cultural-Educational Section of the Makhno movement.

Voline and Aaron Baron were among anarchists who were arrested in a Cheka crackdown on anarchism at the end of 1920 (Avrich, 1973). It is likely that Fanya Baron was also arrested at this time.

Escape from prison

In early July 1921, Fanya escaped from Ryazan prison. She planned to help her husband Aaron Baron escape from prison in Moscow. Aaron's brother, a Bolshevik communist, offered to help with the plan, and then betrayed her. Fanya was arrested by the Cheka later that same year.

Capture and execution

Fanya Baron was among 13 anarchists held at Taganka prison without charges. In July 1921, they went on hunger strike, attracting the attention of visiting French, Spanish and Russian syndicalists who argued for their release. Leon Trotsky remarked at the time "We do not imprison the real anarchists, but criminals and bandits who cover themselves by claiming to be anarchists".

Ten of the 13 anarchists were released and deported on 17 September 1921: Voline, Vorobiov, Mratchny, Michailov, Maximoff, Ioudine, Iartchouk, Gorelik, Feldman and Fedorov. Fanya Baron and the poet Lev Chernyi were detained, to be executed later that month. Her execution was personally ordered by Lenin himself.

Fanya was shot by the Cheka on 29 September, 1921, her death becoming symbolic of the barbarity of bolshevik governance. Aaron Baron was spared execution until 1940, after spending 18 years in Taganka.

Eulogy

Emma Goldman wrote about the execution of Fanya Baron in My Further Disillusionment in Russia:

Fanya Baron in contemporary culture

An Australian anarchist bookshop, Jura Books, has named their library collection The Fanya Baron Library in honour of her courage and sacrifice for anarchist revolution.

Sources

Avrich, Paul (Editor), 1973, The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution
Berkman, Alexander, 1922, The Bolshevik Myth
Goldman, Emma My Further Dissillusionment in Russia
Goldman, Emma Living my Life (Volume 2)
Serge, Victor, July, August 1920, The Anarchists and the Experience of the Russian Revolution
Voline, The Unknown Revolution, Black Rose Books 1974 (originally published 1947)
Woodcock, George, 1944, Socialism from Below: A History of Anarchism