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February 13th 1921 Fanya Baron stepped out of a Bolshevik prison dirty, unkempt, starved, and beaten.

She along with her husband Aron and five other anarchists moved to their mournful task of carrying Pyotr Kropotkin’s casket to its final resting place in Novodevichy Cemetery.

Five days earlier Kropotkin had died. Returning to his home country as a result of the February Revolution after a long exile , he arrived only to see the dreams of revolution crushed by the brutality of the Bolsheviks.

His funeral would be the last “legal” anarchist event in Russian for sixty seven years. In Moscow at the news of his death anarchists set immediately to organize his funeral procession.

The movement in Russia had been experiencing intense repression from the Bolsheviks for a number of years and one of their immediate demands was the release of their comrades in the Moscow gulags to attend the procession. Their initial appeals were met with refusal, so they escalated.

Two days before the funeral a black banner reading “Freedom to imprisoned anarchists who fight for the ideas of Kropotkin-Anarchy” was placed at the Moscow Hall of Commons. The Cheka demanded it be removed, which it was, for a short time. Then right back up it went now accompanied by guards with Zora Gandlevskaya holding one of the poles. Chekists began bad faith negotiations and demanded anarchists give themselves as hostages if the paroles were to flee.
Universities began to compile names of anarchists students willing to take their place, to which Chekists then claimed they couldn’t find a single anarchist to release as their gulags only held “bandits.”

The ever trickling and mounting anarchist presence in Moscow was beginning to shift Cheka perception on how much they would be able to avoid mass revolt and riot if they continued to deny the request for parole.

When Alexandra Kropotkin announced she supported the anarchist organized Funeral Commissions’ threat to demonstratively remove the wreaths and flags of Russian Communist Party from the procession, they relented and released seven to attend.

Aron and Fanya Baron, Aleksandr Guevsky, David Kogan, Mark Mrachny, Aleksey Olonetsky, and Olga Taratuta would leave prison and be taken to the House of Unions where Kropotkin’s casket lay, met by cheers from the immense crowd of over 50,000 people.

The procession left, carrying the man to his final resting place. Black flags and banners trailed them emblazoned with white words. “There is no power more villainous than power over people!” “Where there is power there is violence!” The last of the funeral speeches came from Aron Baron who cried out defiant till the last against the Red Terror who trampled revolution under their boots and worked as butchers in their cellars and dungeons.

The next day a little after noon they returned to their prisons.