Le deuxième livre de l'oeuvre majeure de Voline aborde l'histoire de la répression infligée aux mouvements anarchistes et aux révolutionnaires « dissidents » par le pouvoir bolchévique fraîchement installé, après la Révolution d'octobre.
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum (Russian: Всеволод Михайлович Эйхенбаум), known later as Volin or (the spelling he used) Voline, was a Russian anarchist who participated in the Russian and Ukrainian Revolutions before being forced into exile by the Bolshevik Party. He was a proponent of the anarchist organizational form known as synthesis anarchism