by Motega R

The following is Part 1 of the 3 part series on Comrade Artyom and Paul Freeman

One of the major impediments to the advancement of socialism in Australia is that, both as individuals and party formations, we have inflicted on ourselves a profound historical amnesia. We do not know who or what came before us—and consequently can neither learn lessons from the past nor draw inspiration from it. Rather than engaging with Bolshevism as a real historical movement to be studied and understood, we treat it akin to a heroic spectacle. Australian socialists sit in the colosseum of history, watching the Bolshevik gladiators from afar, marvelling at their victories but never studying their tactics, and certainly never stepping onto the sand themselves.

Yet history cares little for admirers; the world has never belonged to those who admire history correctly, but rather to those who interrogate history effectively.

Few are the Australian communists who are today aware of the fact that two pioneers of the socialist movement in Australia are buried at the Moscow Kremlin Wall Necropolis—a high state honour afforded only to revolutionaries of peerless distinction. The first is Fyodor Sergeyev (better known as “comrade Artyom”), a Bolshevik veteran and leader of the Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. The second is Paul Freeman, a militant trade unionist, international man of mystery, and one of the very few people confirmed to have been a member of both the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). 

Their presence in the Necropolis speaks volumes, resting alongside revolutionaries like Inessa Armand, John Reed, Bill Haywood, and Felix Dzerzhinsky. But our rediscovery of Comrade Artyom and Paul Freeman is not motivated by a desire to dust off some relics and collect a few interesting stories.¹ To tell their stories is to uncover a method, not a monument. These men were not observers of history but actors in it.

By studying their lives, we study the socialist movement of their era, and through this medium the Bolshevik Revolution and Soviet Union emerge in a different light to the caricatures and idealised forms to which we are usually subjected. For Australian communists, these lives uncover the direct lineage of a movement that once shook the foundations of this continent. We study them not to collect lost trophies, but to recover lost weapons. The symbolic value and panache of these revolutionaries is peripheral; their tactics, alliances, strategies, missteps, and victories are central.

The Bolshevik Revolution was not a marvellous thing because it was flawless, but because it was tested through the heat of class struggle, propaganda, wrecking, and war. What makes the stories of Paul Freeman and Comrade Artyom so valuable is that they were real humans who struggled in a concrete historical moment, and only by approaching them as such does it become possible to elucidate a usable history—one that not only informs but illuminates the present—an essential task for revolutionaries in all times and places. As one of the great Marxist historians of the twentieth century wrote, “a history that serves as a guide to the people in perceiving present reality is itself a liberating factor.”²

The worst betrayal of any revolutionary is to enshrine them as an icon, flawless and frozen, instead of recognising the realness of their struggle and its proximity to our own. This series aims to take on that task, to situate Sergeyev and Freeman in their historical moment and trace how they navigated class struggle, war, and ideological conflict. Before doing so, however, it is necessary to confront the overwhelming silence of Australian socialist history—why our history has been buried and why its recovery matters.

Socialist History in Australia and Australian Socialist History

Australian society often subjects itself to a peculiar historical amnesia, manifesting as a tendency to imagine ourselves as existing outside of history. This is not only a departure from historical materialism but is ironically most apparent in the subject of Australian socialist history. It is reflective of a broader issue which affects Australian society, a phenomenon referred to by anthropologists as cultural cringe: the ingrained sense that real ideas, real politics, and even real struggles must come from somewhere else, usually Britain or the U.S.

The struggle for socialism in Australia is the epitome of this problem. Most active socialist groups in Australia are direct imports: these include British franchises like Solidarity and Socialist Alternative, and U.S. exports such as Socialist Alliance, the Spartacists, the Socialist Equality Party, and the Freedom Socialist Party. Indeed, it was once quipped that Australian Socialism was more American than even American Socialism. ³ The exceptions prove the rule—except for the old Communist Party of Australia (now Search Foundation) and its cold war era splinters⁴, the only formations that have attempted to root themselves in Australian conditions are Red Ant and the Revolutionary Communist Organisation.

This situation—in which the Australian socialist movement is dominated by groups whose political consciousness and imaginary is not rooted in the concrete context in which they find themselves—serves to obscure the fact that Australia is a unique society with a complex history, both positive and negative, from which there is a great deal to learn. An understanding of this history is vital if we want to establish a strong communist movement in this society—to go forward we must know what is behind us.

Part of this history includes the fact that Australia had a stronger socialist movement in the 20^th century than either Britain or North America. Australia had the largest Communist Party per capita amongst the Imperial Core Anglo countries, having at its height a membership of 24,000, from a starting point of just twenty-four people (nineteen men and three women) in 1920. As Australian communist Len Fox mentions in his memoir, in the 1940s more Australians were members of the Communist Party than any other Party.⁵

While this fact requires further discussion and analysis, there is no doubt that it is one of the major reasons why Australia currently possess a much stronger (albeit rapidly decaying) social democratic welfare state than the United States or even Britain. The Australian welfare state is historically more akin to those found in Western European states, countries which historically (and even presently) possessed Communist Parties that were major social forces. 

The two men buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, Fyodor Artyom Sergeyev and Paul Freeman, serve as useful entry points into the origins of the Communist Party of Australia. By understanding them we can understand what the Party was.

But these two men are also important for another reason. While Paul Freeman was a foreign dignitary in the USSR and a notable intermediary for the Comintern and the Communist Party of Australia, Artyom’s life provides us a way into the background of the current conflict in Ukraine. Artyom was an important old Bolshevik who, as previously mentioned, led an autonomous Soviet Republic in Donetsk prior to its reintegration into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Prior to his exile in Australia, he had been the primary organiser of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in Eastern Ukraine prior to the revolution, having established a network he was easily able to tap into following his return in 1917.

We do not live outside of history. Artyom’s legacy is especially relevant at a time when the Australian Labor Party, under the leadership of Anthony Albanese (who is nominally Labor Left), is following British Labour Party leader Keir Starmer in adopting a policy on NATO and the Ukraine that is further right than even the right-wing of U.S. politics. Indeed, Artyom’s legacy looms large over Ukraine, for better or worse. The pro-Russia separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine, in forming the Donetsk People’s Republic, stated the following: 

“We confirm historical connection of state formations the Donetsk-Krivoy-Rog Republic and the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic. The Donetsk-Krivoy-Rog Republic (DKR) was established on February 12, 1918, at the IV Congress of the Soviets of the Donetsk-Krivoy-Rog Basin on the basis of the concept of economic integration. The founding father of the multinational people’s state was Fedor Sergeyev (Artem).”.⁶

The politics of the Donbas separatists are complex and far beyond the scope of this article. But, as currently imprisoned left-wing Russian dissident Boris Kagarlitksy remarked, in reference to the Donbas separatists as opposed to the Euromaidan protestors, “at least you could carry red flags in Donbas.”⁷ This he stated in contrast to the ideology of decommunisation which existed in the coalition of liberals and fascists—an alliance which may seem odd in Australia, but is common in parts of the world with strong socialist movements. ⁸

Fyodor becomes Artyom: the origins of a Bolshevik

Fyodor “Artyom” Sergeyev was born to a peasant family in Kursk Oblast, a region otherwise known as a flashpoint in the current Russia-Ukraine conflict.⁹

In many ways, Comrade Artyom serves as a guide to the geopolitical complexities of eastern Ukraine and its relationship with Russia. When Artyom was five years old, the family relocated to the city of Yekaterinoslav (known as Dnipropetrovsk in the Soviet period, currently known as Dnipro).

This city was a rapidly rising urban and industrial centre which would go on to comprise an essential role in Soviet heavy industry alongside the Donbas. It was already rapidly expanding when Artyom was born, and Artyom’s father was employed in its flourishing construction trade. It is interesting to note that, as a Russian-speaking peasant from Kursk who was raised in what has always been an overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city, Artyom’s political activities before and after his exile were always centred on Eastern Ukraine. 

Moving to Yekaterinoslav allowed young Fyodor to attend school, at which he excelled, and receive a scholarship to attend the Imperial Moscow Technical School. It was during that time he first made contact with Marxist circles and heard the story of Artyom; the story of a mine worker who was injured during a mine collapse, fired by the boss, and then became a Robin Hood figure taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

After only a year in Moscow, Artyom was arrested and imprisoned for leading a student strike in solidarity with a group of students from the University of Kiev who had refused to be drafted to serve in the Russian Military. After serving his prison sentence Artyom briefly lived in Paris, where he met Lenin for the first time. When Lenin encouraged him to return to the Ukraine, Artyom did so and established a regional RSDLP section. It is of note that Artyom was not a permanent revolutionary, but organised workers by getting jobs as a railway worker and a miner in the heavy industry that was developing in eastern Ukraine. Despite the years spent in exile in Australia, the time and effort spent building socialist networks in eastern Ukraine allowed him to easily reconnect with the miners and railway workers who would then form the base of the Bolsheviks’ Ukrainian front during the Russian Civil War.

Although Artyom would be forced into exile following a failed rebellion in 1906, Artyom spent some years in prison before again being sentenced to exile in Siberia. He escaped but was soon recaptured, and this time he was sent overseas, first to China and then Australia. 

Given the fact that they were both later friends and close political allies, it is telling how similar the lives of Stalin and Artyom were. Both were born in remote villages to peasant families. Both had fathers who were amongst the wave of new proletarians moving to places that were growing rapidly from small towns to major cities, which in turn afforded the sons educational opportunities that would not have otherwise been possible for people of their class background. It was via educational institutions that both men became involved in the Marxist study circles that served as feeder organisations into the RSDLP. Both men became Bolsheviks immediately at the time of the split within the RSDLP and would travel abroad to do party work. Both men, prior to their political exiles, were embedded in the Russian Working class: among miners, railway workers and the broad industrial proletariat, whom they organised and with whom they worked. When they were forced into exile, they embedded themselves in the labour struggles of the local community, and it was because of this that when both men sought supporters, they found them among the people of their regions: eastern Ukraine and the Caucasus, respectively. 

In this way, Artyom’s background contrasted sharply with many of the better-known figures of the movement such as Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kollontai, Trotsky and indeed Lenin himself. This cohort of leading RSDLP members were, unlike Stalin or Artyom, born into privileged or even outright aristocratic families. They often based themselves in exile, and their political activity revolved around intellectual work and networking with European socialist movements and intelligence and espionage circles, allowing them to develop much higher profiles than was the case with those Bolsheviks who were on the ground organising.

For this former group, abstract debates about theory and factional conflict mattered more than for those who were engaged in practical struggle. Historians often do not see, or choose not to see, people like Artyom, people who were actively organising the masses and developing deep ties to their communities. These were men like Artyom, as well as others like Lazar Kaganovich, Vyacheslav Molotov or Anastas Mikoyan, whose names might ring a bell for the reader as allies of Stalin. And this is indeed correct, for the true strata of support for Stalin, the basis for his victory in the Communist Party’s internal struggle, came precisely from this side of the old Bolsheviks, from those of humble backgrounds who remained in Russia, organising among the masses prior to the Revolution. 

Artyom’s distance from the party elite was demonstrated when he was finally forced into exile. He chose to flee not to London, Vienna, or New York, but first to Shanghai and then to Australia, two places where communities of working-class Russian emigres had begun to emerge, but which lacked any political leadership. Artyom, who had created the organised RSDLP presence in Eastern Ukraine, set out to organise workers elsewhere in the world. Lenin (who corresponded with Artyom, although much of it is now lost) wanted to have someone in the Russian communities in the east. But Artyom’s decision is best understood through a slogan which constituted a principle of his life: “I hate to see a working class unorganised.”

End of Part 1

Bibliography

Fox, Len. Broad Left, Narrow Left. 1 Jan. 1982. Page 8

Knowbysight.info. (2020). 01102. [online] Available at: http://www.knowbysight.info/AAA/01102.asp 

Boris Kagarlitsky on Eastern Ukraine: The Logic of a Revolt.” Links, 2025, links.org.au/boris-kagarlitsky-eastern-ukraine-logic-revolt.

Archer, Robin. “Chapter 8 Socialism”. Why is there no labor party in the United States?. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

The DPR Became a Legal Successor of the Donetsk-Krivoy-Rog Republic.” Novorossia Today, 2025, novorossia.today/the-dpr-became-a-legal-successor-of-the-donetsk-krivoy-rog-republic/. 

Barker, Tom (November 1921). “Paul Freeman” (PDF). The Industrial Pioneer. Vol. 1, no. 6. p. 24.

Windle, Kevin. A Troika of Agitators: Three Comintern Liaison Agents in Australia, 1920-22. Vol. 52, no. 1, 1 Mar. 2006, pp. 30–47, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8497.2006.00406a.x. Accessed 12 June 2023.

1.  Although interesting stories certainly do exist. For example, the most prominent recent coverage that either man has received in English has come in the form of Tom Keneally’s 2009 novel entitled The People’s Train. Although reviews of this work of fiction were written in major Australian socialist publications, Artyom’s biography was touched upon only loosely, and in a form that merely reproduced his Australian Dictionary of Biography profile. Reviewers did not even notice the fact that his associate in the novel, Paddy Dykes, is not an invented character, but a fictionalized Paul Freeman. ↩︎
2. Renato Constantino, A History of the Philippines: From the Spanish Colonization to the Second World War (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 7. ↩︎
3. Archer, Robin (2008). “Chapter 8 Socialism”. Why is there no labor party in the United States? Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691149349. ↩︎
4. These are the Socialist Party of Australia (today’s CPA), the CPA-ML, and the Australian Communist Party. ↩︎
5.  Fox, Len. Broad Left, Narrow Left. 1 Jan. 1982. Page 8 ↩︎
6.  “The DPR Became a Legal Successor of the Donetsk-Krivoy-Rog Republic.” Novorossia Today, 2025, novorossia.today/the-dpr-became-a-legal-successor-of-the-donetsk-krivoy-rog-republic/. ↩︎
7. “Boris Kagarlitsky on Eastern Ukraine: The Logic of a Revolt.” Links, 2025, links.org.au/boris-kagarlitsky-eastern-ukraine-logic-revolt. ↩︎
8. To cite another example, one of the most significant battles in the current conflict was that of the Battle of Bakhmut, widely regarded as the most brutal infantry battle in Europe since WW2, but which played a key role in shifting the conflict in Russia’s favour. As the name suggests, this battle took place in the city of Bakhmut, which until 2016 (when the name was changed to Bakhmut in line with post Euromaidan Decommunization laws) was named Artemivsk in honour of Comrade Artyom. ↩︎
9.  Kursk was the location of the most serious Ukrainian military operation inside of Russia. ↩︎