Author: Murray Bookchin

Ida Mett was born as Ida Markovna Gilman on July 20th, 1901 in Smorgon in the Russian Empire (now Smarhon”, Belarus). Predominantly Jewish, the small industrial town was a hotbed of radicalism. Ida became an anarchist while studying medicine in Moscow. She was soon arrested for “anti-Soviet activities” and was expelled from the country in 1924. In Paris she became involved with the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, which included the great fighter Nestor Makhno, his sometime collaborator Peter Arshinov, and fellow anarcho-syndicalist Nicolas Lazarévitch, who she later married. As well as editing the journal, Dielo Truda (Workers” Cause), Mett was one of the co-authors of the Group”s controversial but influential “Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)” – the Platform. Ida served as secretary of the local gas workers” union, all the time writing and agitating, being arrested many times. After the Fall of France in 1940, Mett was briefly interned by the Vichy regime in Rieucros camp. She spent the rest of the war in La Garde-Freinet, a quiet mountain village near the Côte d”Azur. During the events of May 1968, she and her husband could be found on the streets of Paris discussing her experiences with a new generation of radicals. She died on June 27th, 1973, aged 71.