16 Facts About Ida Mett

Ida Mett was a Belarusian Jewish anarcho-syndicalist, physician and writer.

Ida Mett then went on to participate in the anarcho-syndicalist movements in Belgium, Spain and France, before repression by the fascist Vichy regime forced her to cease her activities.

Ida Mett spent the final decades of her life working as a nurse and publishing history books.

Ida Mett fled first to Poland and then to Paris, where she took the pen-name "Ida Mett" and co-edited the Russian anarchist magazine Delo Truda.

Ida Mett reported on the meetings in which The Platform was discussed, noting the objections of French and Chinese anarchists.

Ida Mett herself defended the provisions in The Platform for the "ideological direction of the masses", arguing it to be necessary for anarchists to make their ideas predominate within the workers' movement and distinguishing the tactic from party political aspirations to take state power.

Ida Mett was quickly struck by Makhno's oratory talents at these meetings, and for three years, she helped edit his memoirs, but would end up falling out with him over the process.

Ida Mett worked as a correspondent for the International Institute of Social History and returned to writing for the syndicalist newspaper La Revolution Proletarianne, although she eventually broke with the latter after it published an antisemitic article.

Ida Mett wrote a book on the Soviet healthcare system, in which she outlined the rise of antisemitism in the Soviet Union.

Ida Mett served as a key primary source for biographies on Nestor Makhno by Michael Malet, Victor Peters, and Alexandre Skirda.

Ida Mett disputed Volin's characterisation of Makhno as an alcoholic, although Peters noted that Volin knew Makhno better than she did.

Meanwhile, Ida Mett depicted Makhno's widow Halyna Kuzmenko in a very negative light.

Ida Mett alleged that Kuzmenko had attempted to kill her late husband, had an affair with Volin and that they together stole Makhno's diary while he was dying.

Ida Mett fabricated a story about Kuzmenko marrying a Nazi officer and getting killed in an allied air raid on Berlin.

When pressed on these allegations by Makhno's biographer Alexandre Skirda, Ida Mett failed to provide further details, leading him to dismiss them as hearsay.

Ida Mett died in Paris on 27 June 1973, at the age of 71.