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Paul Avrich ca. 1980

Paul Avrich (August 4, 1931-February 16, 2006) was a professor and historian. He taught at Queens College, New York for most of his life and was vital in preserving the history of the anarchist movement in Russia and the USA.

As the son of a Jewish family originally from Odessa, Avrich was able to travel to the USSR as an exchange student in 1961 after Nikita Khrushchev's 1959 US visit. While there working on his thesis, The Russian Revolution and the Factory Committees, he researched the Kronstadt rebellion and the role of anarchists in the Russian Revolution. This information allowed him to produce pioneering and important works on this subject.

As a teacher at Queens College, he sought to pass to his students an "affection and sense of solidarity with anarchists as people, rather than as militants" and was described as a "trusted friend" to many older anarchists whom he had met and interviewed, saving their stories for history.

He wrote extensively on topics related to anarchism, including books on Sacco and Vanzetti, the Haymarket Riot, and the Kronstadt rebellion. Other important works include a biography of Voltairine de Cleyre, The Modern School Movement and Anarchist Portraits. He also edited the important oral history collection, Anarchist Voices. He was nominated several times for the Pulitzer Prize for History. He also spoke regularly at the Libertarian Book Club in New York.

Dr. Paul Avrich donated his collection of nearly twenty thousand twentieth-century American and European anarchist publications and manuscripts to the Library of Congress.

From the Centre International de Recherches sur l'Anarchisme.

• The Russian anarchists Princeton University Press, 1967; re-edition 1978 (Les Anarchistes russes; translated by Bernard Mocquot. Paris: Maspero, 1979; other translations in Japanese, Spanish and Italian).
• Kronstadt, 1921 Princetown: Princetown University Press, 1970 (La Tragédie de Cronstadt, 1921; translated by Hervé Denès. Paris: Seuil, 1975; other translations in Spanish and Czech).
• Russian Rebels, 1600-1800 New York: Schocken Books, 1972.
• The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution New York: Cornell University Press, 1973 (Gli anarchici nella rivoluzione russa; translated by Michele Buzzi. Milano: La Salamandra, 1976).
• An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre 1978.
• The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States 1980
• The Haymarket Tragedy 1984
• Anarchist Portraits 1988
• Sacco and Vanzetti, The Anarchist Background 1991
• Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America 1995

• Russian anarchists and the civil war by Paul Avrich
• Paul Avrich Obituary from Infoshop with selected bibliography
• Obituary by Marianne Enckell from CIRA via anarkismo.net (source of quotes above)
• Obituary from the Kate Sharpley Library
• Re-published Paul Avrich books on anarchism, AK Press
• Paul Avrich page Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia