«Grandmother of Anarchy». Olha Taratuta – the Phenomenon of Women in the Revolutionary Era (1903-1938)

The article examines the biography of the most famous anarchist of Ukraine Olha Taratuta, who was among the founders of Ukrainian anarchist organizations in 1903, and one of the last leaders of the anarchist underground in the USSR in the 1930s. O. Taratuta went through political «universities» in the party of Russian Social Democrats, was for some time in the Leninist group, but left Western Europe and moved to Odesa, where she became one of the leaders of a radical group of «irreconcilables» (followers of Jan Makhaisky). Taratuta began with the organization of workers’ strikes and high-profile terrorist acts, about which all the newspapers of the Russian Empire wrote («Liebman’s act of unmotivated terror» in Odessa in December 1905), later created the anarchist group «Rebel» and the «Battle Squad» of anarchists, which aimed at the assassination of the mayor of Odessa, commander of the Odesa military district, the Chairman of the Odesa Military District Court. Her position became the most radical among the «left» in Ukraine and the methods were considered the most brutal in the bloody revolutionary vortex of 1905-1907, O. Taratuta called for the mass physical extermination of members of the «exploiting class and imperial power». In 1917, when she returned from hard labor to Kyiv, she took care of anarchist dissidents persecuted by the Soviet and «White» regimes, she managed to «cooperate» with N. Makhno, and later tried to organize a labor movement against the «dictatorship of the proletariat». O. Taratuta’s «underground» activity in the anarchist structures of Kyiv, Odesa, and Kharkiv, which was directed against the Bolsheviks, is well known. Beginning in 1920, she was constantly subjected to repression by the Soviet Powers, and in 1938 she was shot for calling for an end to State violence. Considering the fate of O. Taratuta, the author makes a generalization about the phenomenon of women’s participation in the anarchist movement in Ukraine, in which «under the black flag» of anarchy thousands of women fought for their illusory ideals. The phenomenon is extreme radicalization and the transition to extremist forms of struggle among women revolutionaries in 1903-1908. Later, revolutionary terrorism itself evolved, and O. Taratuta and her comrades began to fight against state terrorism of the «red» dictatorship. The issue of women’s participation in the revolutions of the early XX century, in different countries, their gender goals and the desire to curb sexism remain relevant in the mo-dern/postmodern paradigm.

Source: Savchenko V. (2021). «Grandmother of Anarchy». Olha Taratuta – the Phenomenon of Women in the Revolutionary Era (1903-1938). Antiquities of Lukomorie. №2: 100-107

Source web-site: http://www.lukomor.mosk.mksat.net/index.php/lukomor/article/view/66/63