Maksim Rayevsky

Maksim Rayevsky[1] (Russian: Максим Раевский) (died 1931 in Moscow) was a Russian-Jewish anarcho-syndicalist.

Rayevsky was born L. Fishelev in Nizhyn, Russia, into a well-to-do Jewish family. He was educated at the gymnasium in Nizhyn and attended university in Germany.[2]

After university, Rayevsky became an anarcho-syndicalist and moved to Paris, where he and Nikolay Rogdayev founded Burevestnik ("The Stormy Petrel"),[2][3] which has been described by anarchist historian Paul Avrich as "the most important anarchist journal of the postrevolutionary period" (i.e., the period after the Russian Revolution of 1905).[4] The two men published Burevestnik from 1906 to 1910.[5] In its pages, Rayevsky criticized anti-syndicalists and anarchist practitioners of propaganda of the deed.[2]

When World War I began, Rayevsky was living in New York City, where he served as editor of Golos Truda ("The Voice of Labour"). Golos Truda was the official newspaper of the Union of Russian Workers in the United States and Canada, whose membership exceeded 10,000.[6]

Not long after the February Revolution in Russia, Rayevsky left New York and traveled to Petrograd. By chance, he sailed on the same ship as Trotsky in May 1917.[2] Two months later, he was joined by the rest of the Golos Truda staff, who had decided to move to Russia en masse.[7]

In Petrograd, Rayevsky edited the first issue of Golos Truda. Shortly thereafter, he suddenly left the anarchist movement.[8] Trotsky helped Rayevsky get a non-political job in the new Soviet government.[9] In the late 1920s, Rayevsky is reported to have been arrested for printing a Trotskyite publication.[10]

Rayevsky died of a heart attack in Moscow in 1931.[11]