A film about Kropotkin's funeral

Pyotr Kropotkin's funeral took place from 10th to 13th of February 1921, and it was documented by "Section of social chronicles of all-Russian cinema and photo publishing". This footage has now been made available in youtube.

From 0:33 onwards you may see commission for organisation of the funeral, which included a number of most known anarchists at the time - Sandomirskyi, Perovskyi, Lebedev, Yarik (0:49), Askarov, Pavlov, Atabekyan (01:00), T. Shapiro, A. Shapiro, Alexey Borovoy, Piro (01:11), Gogelio, Maximov, Markus, Anosov, Chernyi (1:31) and Aleksandr Berkman (01:45).

Following is the funeral procession in Dmitrov, special procession train to Moscow, and farewell in house of the trade unions, where at 6:40 you may see Emma Goldman and Alexandr Berkman
.

Perhaps the most touching moment of the documentary is at 7:40, which has footage on anarchist political prisoners temporarily released in order to attend funeral
. A number of them never had another free day in their lives. Kropotkin's funeral was also to be the last public demonstration of anarchists in Moscow until 1988.

Finally, from 9:36 there is footage of speakers 13th of February at Novodevichy cemetery. These are Sandomirsky in behalf of anarchist organisations, Schteinberg in behalf of left-wing socialist revolutionaries, Pavlov in behalf of anarchists, Mostovenko in behalf of the Communist party (official authorities could not ignore such event), Ermansky in behalf of Social democrat - mensheviks, Rosmer in behalf of communist international, Emma Goldman in behalf of American anarchists, Pevin in behalf of Moscow students and Baron in behalf of Ukrainian anarchist federation "Alarm".

Author columns

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