“A quiet, pleasant, intelligent, man”. Morris Greenshner in Avrich, Anarchist Voices.

“a devoted anarcho-syndicalist,” Abraham Blecher in Avrich, Anarchist Voices.

August Rode-Chervinsky was born in the rural administrative unit (volost) of Linevskaya, in Grodno province of the Russian Empire, in what now lies in Belarus. He appears to have been of Polish and German origin.

He started work as a telegraph operator and worked in various parts of the Russian Empire, including in Bessarabia in 1894, and Smolensk in 1905. In autumn 1905, he took an active part in the general strike among post and telegraph workers. He was elected chairman of the Smolensk branch of the All-Russian Union of Post and Telegraph Employees, and took part in the All-Russia Congress of that union in Moscow in November , 1905.

Later that month, he was arrested as one of the organisers of the general strike, and remained in prison for two years. During this time, he received a wound to his ear.

Upon release, he emigrated to the United States, and established himself in New York. There he took part in the organisation of the Russian anarchists in America. He was one of the founders, along with Bill Shatov, of the Russian Labour Group, which was established in October 1910 in New York. Rode-Chervinsky became editor of its paper Golos Truda (Voice of Labour) which first appeared in March 1911. The Labour Group then became the Union of Russian Workers in New York.

This led on to the establishment of the Federation of Russian Workers’ Unions in the United States and Canada, which united several thousand workers who had their origin in the Russian Empire, and thus included Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Jews, and other groups. This group is known for short for convenience’s sake as the Union of Russian Workers (URW). It initially talked of ‘workers’ socialism’ and then moved to an anarchist communist position (there were later on disagreements between anarchist communist and anarcho-syndicalist positions). It had close relations with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and with the American Yiddish anarchist paper Fraye Arbeter Shtime.

Rode-Chervinsky was elected secretary and treasurer of the URW. He was also on the auditing committee of the Anarchist Red Cross, along with Saul Yanovsky and Alexander Berkman. He remained editor of Golos Truda until 1914, when he invited Maxin Raevsky to take over as editor. During his tenure, he invited the readers of Golos Truda to support the strike by silk workers in Paterson in 1913, and denounced Henry Ford’s $5 per worker per day. He described Ford as a “dexterous capitalist” and “ explained how free advertising accompanying the promotion had driven demand for Ford’s automobiles, while claiming that the new, high wage only increased pressure on workers, already doing intense labor, to both meet the demand and express gratitude to Ford for the pay raise—by working harder. Even with the new wage rate, workers were still producing “five times more than what they receive,” wrote Rode-Chervinsky and were still “slaves” to their now “benefactor” Ford.” (Mark Grueter)

At the end of May 1917, he and other members of Golos Truda moved to Russia, sailing on the same ship as the journalist John Reed. Rode-Chervinsky settled in Petrograd, and was one of the organisers of the Union of Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda, Golos Truda (CASP) and of its eponymous paper, which first appeared in August that year.

However, by that time he was suffering severely from the effects of tuberculosis, probably contracted in Russian prisons. As a result, he had to step back from active participation in the movement.

In August 1918, he, along with Volin, welcomed the First All-Russian Conference of Anarchist-Syndicalists, and expressed regret at his inability to participate., and called for the “correct organisation of our forces, “ the development of strong anarcho-syndicalist groups, and their federation.

In summer 1921, he was close to the new paper Volnyi Golos Truda (Free Voice of Labour) in Moscow. This had replaced Golos Truda, which had been shut down by the Bolsheviks.

At the beginning of 1921, he was in Kharkhiv, working as a teacher. He was arrested there on February 14th of that year, but released by the end of the month. He was again arrested on 18th April, and held in a Cheka prison until 1st June, after charges against him were dismissed the previous day.

He later managed to leave for Poland. The harassment and imprisonment must have aggravated his TB, and he died on May 9th, 1925 at Sopałki Grody.

Nick Heath

Sources:
Grueter, M. Anarchism and the working class: the Union of Russian Workers in the North American labor movement:
https://www.academia.edu/73202635/Anarchism_and_the_working_class_the_union_of_Russian_workers_in_the_North_American_labor_movement