Simon Radowitzky 1936
Source: Originally in Revista futuros no. 7, Spring 2004-2005. Also at http://www.elortiba.org/simon.html;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org.
Translator’s note: The Russian-Jewish anarchist Simon Radowitzky, served twenty years in the worst of Argentina’s prisons for his part in the assassination of Ramon Falcon, police chief of Buenos Aires responsible for the 1909 massacre of workers at a demonstration. He was expelled from Argentina to Uruguay in 1930, where he continued his anarchist activities, for which he was arrested in Montevideo. While imprisoned there he wrote this open letter. He would later fight in the Spanish Civil War and die in poverty in Mexico in 1959.
To the Communist Party and the National Confederation of Labor
I have learned of your propaganda and posters, in which my name figures demanding my freedom.
As an anarchist I say to you: I declare that I don’t wish to be the propaganda instrument on any political party, including the Communist Party, whose support of the policies of the Russian government is absolute.
In the name of the anarchists prisoner in prisons and Soviet Siberia; in the name of the destroyed anarchist groups whose propaganda is prohibited in Russia; in the name of the comrades executed at Kronstadt; in the name of our comrade Petrini who was handed over to Italian fascism by the Soviet government; in the name of the Argentine Regional Workers Federation and the Uruguayan Regional Workers Federation; in the name of our comrades killed in prison by the Bolshevik government; and in protest against the calumnies and defamation against our comrades Kropotkin, Malatesta, Rocker, Fabbri, Makhno, etc, etc, I declare that as an anarchist I reject all of your support, which represents an unworthy exploitation on the part of the Bolshevik leaders of the party and the CGT of the generous sentiment of solidarity shown me by the working class.
Simon Radowitzky, Montevideo