>There actually is a small but noticeable anarchist movement in
>contemporary
>Russia.
<snip>
> I
>get the feeling that they come mainly from the middle classe and the
>intelligentsia; the working class is much more likely to be Stalinist,
>assuming they have a political vision that's more developed than vahue
>resentment and dissatisfaction.
For what it's worth, my one and only visit to Russia happened to take in the 1994 May Day celebrations (it was a work-related trip, with a colleague who is a devoted Stalinist).
After the Moscow Trades Council event in the morning we went on to the CP-based event in the afternoon (with some trepidation; the year before someone had got shot (dead) on this demo, and of course the liberal press were busy talking up the alleged "red-brown" nature of the event).
As it turned out the demo was entirely peaceful (and huge -- as my mate put it, referring to the super-wide Moscow streets, we'd been on demos shorter than this one was wide..)
Moreover, not only did we spot a Christian socialist who would presumably have stayed away if there was anything dodgy about the event, we came on a group of young people whose banners (and dress!) made it clear that they were anarchists.
It turned out that they only had a few words of English -- in fact the sum total we could make out of their remarks was "Makhno very good! Lenin very good!".
We thought that this revealed either an implausibly comprehensive ignorance of history or a remarkable degree of tolerance of past differences.
But the point which bears particularly on Chris's comment is that (we concluded) the youngster's lack of English suggested that they came from working-class backgrounds rather than the intelligentsia.
Any comments?
Julian