Iosif Solomonovich Bleikhman (; 1868–1921) was a Belarusian Jewish anarchist communist revolutionary. He was the leader of the Petrograd Federation of Anarchist-Communists at the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, organising a series of demonstrations against the Russian Provisional Government that culminated in the July Days. Following the October Revolution, he also began to agitate against the new Bolshevik government, which resulted in him being arrested and sentenced to periods of penal labor a number of times. During one of these periods, he contracted tuberculosis, which he succumbed to shortly before the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921.
Biography
In 1868, Bleikhman was born into a petty bourgeois family in the Belarusian city of Vidzy, in the Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire. Bleikhman began work as a tin-smith, then as a shoemaker.
Revolutionary activism
By the turn of the 20th century, he had joined the revolutionary movement and moved to the United States, where he became an anarchist communist. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he moved to the Latvian city of Daugavpils, where he was active in the local revolutionary movement. In September 1913, he moved to Saint Petersburg, where he joined the local anarchist communist group and agitated within various trade unions. In July 1914, he was arrested during a strike action and sent to Siberia, but he managed to escape and lived clandestinely for a period.
Following the February Revolution, Bleikhman was released from his sentence and moved to Petrograd, where he quickly became leader of the local Anarchist-Communist Federation and edited its newspaper Burevestnik. In the pages of Burevestnik, Bleikhman called for the broad-based expropriation of private property, whether houses or factories, specifically calling on unhoused people to squat privately-owned residential buildings. He also agitated among factory workers, who elected him to the Petrograd Soviet. Another member of the Soviet, the Georgian Menshevik Irakli Tsereteli, described him as a "comical figure" with an unarticulated understanding of anarchism.
During the April Crisis, Bleikhman organised mass demonstrations in which workers and soldiers called for the Russian Provisional Government to be overthrown and Russian participation in World War I brought to an end. The following month, he published a series of articles in which he called for an alliance of far-left groups with the goal of establishing anarchist communism, through the socialisation of industry, expropriation of private land and the establishment of communes. In early June, he was delegated to a conference of Petrograd's factory committees, following which he led anarchists in seizing the offices and printing press of the Russkaya Volya newspaper and organised a mass demonstration that secured the release of anarchist and Bolshevik political prisoners from Kresty Prison. He later moved to the island of Kronstadt, where he became secretary of the local inkeepers' union, was elected to the Kronstadt Soviet and joined the Central Bureau of Trade Unions of Kronstadt.
July Days
By July 1917, the workers, soldiers and sailors of Kronstadt were already beginning to move against the provisional government, in order to bring an end to Russian participation in World War I. In what was to become the July Days, leading anarchists of the Kronstadt Soviet gave speeches in Anchor Square, encouraging the island's garrison to rise up against the provisional government. Bleikhman himself exhorted Kronstadt's 1st machine gun regiment to revolt against the Russian Provisional Government, which he denounced for carrying out political repression against Russian anarchists. While downplaying their lack of support from any political parties or the Petrograd Soviet, he also called on workers to seize control over their workplaces, finally dissolve the state and abolish the capitalist system. Bleikhman was subsequently elected as chairman of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, which brought together delegates from Petrograd's factory and military committees.
Bleikhman then led the 1st machine gun regiment to Petrograd, where they held armed demonstrations calling for the soviets to seize power from the provisional government. But the Petrograd Soviet would ultimately refuse to endorse the uprising, which it considered premature. The insurrection was quickly repressed by the government, which arrested leading anarchists and Bolsheviks. The Petrograd Federation would later claim the July Days as an anarchist uprising. Bleikhman himself became a fugitive, as he was wanted for arrest by the provisional government.