Pavel Kolobushkin was born into a peasant family in the village of Vasilyevo, in the Mologsky district of the Yaroslavl province in Russia in 1888. The village now lies at the bottom of the Rybinsk reservoir.
In 1902, at the age of fourteen, while working in St. Petersburg as a clerk in a toy store, he joined a workers’ circle, then became a Bolshevik. Among his acquaintances were Nikolai Uglanov (then also a clerk from the Yaroslavl peasants) and Nikolai Krylenko, later important figures in the Communist regime (amazingly, he survived them both, as they were executed in the 1930s).
In 1906, Kolobushkin was sent to prison for handing out revolutionary literature (at the same time as selling newspapers on the street)and for taking part in a strike.
He was then involved in the Socialist Revolutionaries, storing weapons and explosives for them. In spring 1907 he and 4 others were involved in a series of armed robberies of shops. He was arrested for these activities on April 25th, 1907, and sentenced to 13 years and 4 months of hard labour. Interestingly, Alexander Kerensky was involved in the defence at the trial, perhaps indicating the connections of the expropriators with the SRs.
He received two more sentences for possessions of bombs, explosives , and revolutionary literature during 1907-1908.
In 1909 he was sent to the Shlissel'burg prison on outskirts of Petrograd. In the transit prison there he took part in a protest, refusing to address the authorities as “your Excellency.” In 1912 he took part in a mass protest against the flogging of prisoners. He was in solitary confinement at least ten times, and wore leg irons for three years. Whilst in prison, Pavel Kolobushkin, undertook rigorous self-education.
In 1916 he worked for three months in a mine at Kizel, and ended up in a prison hospital. HE was released from the Perm provincial prison under the March amnesty in 1917.
By now, he was a convinced anarchist communist. Upon release, he headed for Petrograd. In April, he was briefly arrested for speeches against the war.
Already in April 1917, Kolobushkin was briefly arrested "for speeches against the war". He gave speeches almost daily in the garden of the Durnovo villa occupied by the Petrograd Federation of Anarchist Communists. In one such speech on the afternoon of June 19th, he accused the Kerensky government of causing bloodshed on the front, with an offensive that was defeated, the death of the anarchist Shlema Asnin and the arrest of other anarchists.
On the afternoon of July 2nd, Kolobushkin took part in a meeting of the Petrograd Anarchists at the Durnovo villa, at which it was decided to launch an armed uprising under the slogans “Down with the Provisional Government!”, “Anarchy and self-organisation!”.
The next day, Kolobushkin, Iosif Bleikhman, Nikolai Pavlov, Dmitry Nazimov, and Alexander Fedorov, spoke for the Petrograd anarchists at a rally of the 1st Machine Gun Regiment, where there was much sympathy for anarchist communist ideas.
This resulted in the march on Petrograd by the machine gunners, which initiated the abortive July Days. Kolobushkin was arrested on July 26th for his part in these events. He insisted that: "I did not take any part in the days of the rebellion of July 3-6 of this year, I did not drive around the city in armed cars; I, as an anarchist-communist, called for a social revolution". Several witnesses confirmed this, although the alibi they gave him is dubious, with one witness, later marrying Kolobushkin! During the hearings Koluboshkin stated that in his convictions he is an anarchist-communist, and has nothing in common with the “Bolsheviks.”
In September 1917, Kolobushkin was released on bail and continued his activities with the Petrograd anarchist communists as an organiser and orator.
During the Civil War, Kolobushkin worked in the Council of National Economy of the Northern Region, in Petrotop, (Petrograd Fuel Department) and other fuel organizations. Alexander Berkman wrote that Felix Dzherzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, said that Petrotop was an “Anarchist nest.” Berkman reported that one anarchist who had worked there said: “but everyone knows the city would have frozen to death last winter if it wasn’t for Kolobushkin. He is an Anarchist and the whole brains of that place, but they talk of arresting him. An old Schlüsselburg man at that; spent ten years in the dungeons there.”
Victor Serge in his memoirs also refers to Kolobushkin, as "one of the organisers of the republic's fuel supply.” He also mentions Kolobushkin’s show of mercy for two captured Whites, which saved them from execution by the Cheka. The Petrograd Club for the Propaganda of Anarchist Ideas organised a partisan detachment to defend the city from the attack of the White general Yudenich. The Bolshevik leaders armed the anarchists because they had a shortage of regular troops, and turned to the anarchist and workers’ militias.
This did not stop Kolobushkin being arrested in 1921 "as an anarchist in the Kronstadt uprising". He was again arrested om March 7th, 1922, "for anarchist activity", as a result of which he was exiled to the Orenburg province for 3 years, on January 15th, 1923.
There, in April 1923, Kolobushkin joined the protest against the violence committed by the Orenburg GPU (new name for the Cheka) and the Red Army against political exiles. He signed a statement denouncing "the attempt by the local authorities to deprive us of the right to basic comradely communication with each other, sanctified by decades of Russian political exile and recognised even in the worst times of tsarism."
In spite of the harassment and arrests, Kolobushkin continued his economic activities during the period of the New Economic Policy. As Ivanov notes: “As the special representative of Petroblastop for commodity exchange, he and his agents concluded "a fairly large number of contracts, for a colossal amount of goods and for a huge sum of money, and no restrictions or limitations were experienced."
Towards the end of the 1920s , someone called Kolobushkin organised four artels. This is probably Pavel Nikolaevich, as the Petrograd anarchist Pavel Gerasimchik mentions Kolobushkin’s plans to collect recyclable materials in Karelia in a letter in the early 1930s, and in testimony after his arrest in 1933, he referred to an attempt to set up a chemical production plant to help political exiles.
Returning to Leningrad in 1926, Kolobushkin applied to join the Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiled Settlers. When asked about his party membership in the questionnaire, he replied: “I was an anarchist, but am currently outside the party.” This was not really the truth, as he continued to sign political documents as a “St. Petersburg anarchist.”
He was arrested again in 1929 and spent three years in a concentration camp inn Kem. Released in May 1933, he did not go to his assigned place of exile, but went underground. He travelled around the Soviet Union trying to establish links with what was left of the anarchist movement. He was arrested in Leningrad on November 22nd 1933. . At his first interrogation, he asserted that he remained true to his anarchist ideals and refused to testify about his activities and his contacts. In 1929 he was arrested by the OGPU and spent three years in a concentration camp in Kem.
After his release in May 1933, he did not go to the place of exile, but went underground and travelled around the USSR for several months, trying to re-establish ties with the remnants of the anarchist movement. On November 22, 1933, Kolobushkin was arrested in Leningrad. At the first interrogation, the “very active illegal anarchist” stated “that he remains in his previous positions” and refused to testify about his activities and connections .
He remained in prison until 1938, and between 1949 to 1954 was exiled to the Kustanai region as “socially dangerous element”.
Nothing more was heard of him until 1962, when he conducted correspondence about rehabilitation from Kustanai. However, no documentation about him exists in the state archive of the Kustanai region, and here the trail of this fearless anarchist communist grows cold.
Photo: July Days demonstration
Nick Heath
Sources:
Ivanov D. I. Shlisselburg political prisoner P. N. Kolobushkin and the anarchist movement in Russia
Ivanov, D. I. Can the subaltern have a biography? Anarchist Pavel Nikolaevich Kolobushkin, and sources about his life
www.academia.edu/118041561/Д_Иванов_Могут_ли_угнетенные_иметь_биографию_Анархист_Павел_Николаевич_Колобушкин_и_источники_о_его_жизни_D_Ivanov_Can_the_subaltern_have_a_biography_Anarchist_Pavel_Nikolaevich_Kolobushkin_and_sources_about_his_life_
Berkman, A. The Bolshevik Myth.
Serge, V. Memoirs of a Revolutionary.
https://ru.openlist.wiki/ Калабушкин_Павел_Николаевич_(1886)