Life in Soviet Russia
In 1917 Fleshin returned to Russia to take part in the Russian Revolution, where he had an affair with Louise Berger, another of Goldman's Mother Earth employees who had voluntarily decided to return to Russia, and who had accompanied him on the voyage. Fleshin was soon in conflict with the Bolshevik government; Berger eventually left him and went to Odessa to join a group of naletchiki (armed bandits) carrying out 'bank expropriations'. When Fleshin wrote an article criticizing Bolshevist government policies, he was arrested and imprisoned.
Soon after being released he met Molly Steimer, an anarchist who had been deported from the United States. Angered by the communists' suppression of the Russian anarchist movement, Senya and Mollie organized the Society to Help Anarchist Prisoners, traveling about the country to assist their incarcerated comrades. On 1 November 1922, the two were themselves arrested by the Soviet secret police on charges of "aiding criminal elements in Russia" (i.e. assisting other anarchists) and "maintaining ties with anarchists abroad" (they had been corresponding with Berkman and Goldman, then in Berlin).
Sentenced to two years' exile in a Siberian labor camp by Soviet authorities, Fleshin and Steimer declared a hunger strike on November 17 in their Petrograd jail, and were released the next day. They were forbidden, however, to leave the city and were ordered to report to the authorities every forty-eight hours. Before long, the couple had resumed their efforts on behalf of their imprisoned comrades. On July 9, 1923, police raided their apartment and they were again placed under arrest, charged with propagating anarchist ideas, in violation of Art. 60-63 of the Soviet Criminal Code. Sequestered from their fellow prisoners, Fleshin and Steimer again declared a hunger strike. Protests to Leon Trotsky by foreign anarcho-syndicalist delegates, including Emma Goldman, who wrote a personal letter of protest to a congress of the Red International of Trade Unions (Profintern) eventually brought about their release. This time, however, they were notified of their impending expulsion from the country. On September 27, 1923, Fleshin and Steimer were officially deported, and placed aboard a ship bound for Germany.
Read more about this topic: Senya Fleshin
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