Alexei Alexeyevich Borovoi (1875–1935) was a Russian individualist anarchist writer, orator, teacher and propagandist[1][2].
Borovoi was born on October 30, 1875 in Moscow[1]. Starting from 1906, Borovoi lectured on anarchism in different Russian cities[1].
He moved to France in late 1910 to escape state persecution for anti-state propaganda[1]. After returning to Russia "Borovoi got a job teaching political economy and history at the Russian Popular University and at the Free College of Social Sciences, the latter of which was founded by French anarchists"[1]. From their influence Borovoi became interested on French syndicalism. "In his lectures Borovoi has now claimed support for revolutionary syndicalism which denied parliamentarism and aimed for the reconstruction of the society via social revolution[1]. He publishes the book Revolutionary Creativity and Parliament in 1917[1].
On April 1917 Borovoi co-organised the syndicalist Federation of Unions of Workers of Intellectual Labour which united teachers, doctors etc, and also edited their paper Klich (The call)[1]. On 1918 he publishes Anarchism[2] and on it for him "the chief importance is given not to Anarchism as the aim but to Anarchy as the continuous quest for the aim"[1]. He manifests there that "No social ideal, from the point of view of anarchism, could be referred to as absolute in a sense that supposes it’s the crown of human wisdom, the end of social and ethical quest of man."[1]
In the spring of 1918 Borovoi founds the Union of Ideological Propaganda of Anarchism and its printed organ, daily newspaper Zhizn (Life)[1]. This newspaper was closed by the Soviet authorities in the Summer of 1918 along with other organs of anarchist propaganda[1]. "As late as 1922 he organised lectures on the history and theory of anarchism, and participated in publishing classic anarchist literature"[1]. In 1921 he publishes Individual and Society in the Anarchist Worldview[1]. On Autumn 1922 he was stripped of his status as a professor and banned from teaching. On May 1929 Borovoi was arrested by the OGPU and On July 12 the Special Conference of the OGPU sentenced him to three years’ exile to Vyatka[1]. "He spent the last years of his life in Vladimir working as an accountant, in isolation and poverty"[1] . Borovoi died on November 21, 1935[1]