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Anarchist newspaper circulation

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Saved by PBworks
on April 12, 2007 at 1:08:36 pm
 

I have been thinking about the circulation of anarchist newspapers and magazines.I know that Mother Earth had a circulation of about 3.000 at its highest point.Liberty's highest circulation was around a thousand. Does anyone else out there have any figures??

 

Just reading 'Sacco and Vanzetti the anarchist background' - I think Avrich gives figures for some of the Italian-american papers. now i know you're interested i can look for numbers. john

 

According to Maximoff in The Syndicalists in the Russian Revolution: "Newspapers were published not only in the large administrative and industrial centres, like Moscow and Petrograd, which had several Anarchist newspapers (in Petrograd the circulation of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Golos Trouda and the Anarchist Burevestnik was 25,000 each; the Moscow daily Anarchia had about the same circulation), but also in provincial cities, like Kronstadt, Yaroslavl, Nizhni-Novgorod, Saratov, Samara, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok, Rostov on Don, Odessa and Kiev. (In 1918, Anarchist papers were coming out in Ivanovo-Vosnesensk, Chembar, Ekaterinburg, Kursk, Ekaterinoslav, Viatka.)"

 

Also Green Anarchy claims their current circulation is between 8000-9000. Ha! Nicole

 

How come I've seen the figure of 10,000 for Mother Earth's peak circulation? i.e. in the introduction to Peter Glassgold's anthology, and I'm sure in a couple of other sources. I've actaully been working on a database of US anarchist newspaper circulations (you stole my idea!); I've got about 29 figures so far (but some are estimates from authorities or historians, and this includes the 10,000 number for ME) and I'll post the results once they're in a more managable form.  --Kenyon

 

Yes.I have seen that.The figure 10,000 comes from Rebel In Paradise and Drinnon offers no source for it.The only figure I have seen EG mention is 3,000, but I'll go and do some counting of subscribers.A couple of other newspapers.According to Marcelino Garcia in "Anarchist Voices"  .." the top circulation of Cultura Proletaria" which I edited from the 1930s till it closed in 1952, was 4,000" (p392) Meanwhile  Frank Brand (Enrico Arrigoni) states that "Eresia" ( 1928-1932) had a print run of 2,000.(pp174) Database eh? Fucking students

 

You know I wouldn't be surprised if  those numbers for GA were correct.Does anyone have any sense of  circulation of other current publications?

 

Another general point,I guess,is the number of subscribers papers had/have.From my own experience, there was a  clear relatioship between number of subscribers to the paper and how long it existed!!

 

This also relates to the question of subscribers vs. circulation (i.e. print run)--I think often the two are conflated. Then of course estimating readership is a whole other question. In addition, there's the fact that anarchist publications knew no borders--papers published in the US went all over the world, while anarchists in the US regularly read foreign, wrote for, and funded papers like Freedom, Der Arbeter Fraynd, Studi Sociali, etc. --Kenyon

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