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Ada-Kaleh: the Balkan Island Where People Once Featured

Lived with no State or Masters
Posted By
free_demos
Nov 25 2020 12:46

Tags The price of power; cops gun down strikers

Petar Mandzhukov, in Bangladesh
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Bangladeshi power plant and its context within
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The neighborhood is the new factory

An article by Liz Mason-Deese on the
unemployed movement in Argentina since 2001.
Petar Georgiev Mandzhukov (1878–1966) was a Macedonian
Bulgarian revolutionary and anarchist, member of the Internal
Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization and of the
Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee. The following is an
excerpt from Mandzhukov’s memoir ‘Harbingers of Storm’ (Sofia:
FAB, 2013):

As soon as it leaves the Iron Gates [1], the Danube river spills widely to the
east. Approximately 3 km east of the Iron Gates, about two km southeast of
the town of Orshova, and just south of the Romanian border town of The unemployed workers’ movement -
Varchiorova, there is a fairly large island that divides the course of the Danube Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward
Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward give a
into two almost identical high-water branches, which afterward rejoin. At the
detailed account and analysis of the militant
western end of this island, there is a town surrounded by three belts of
movement of unemployed American workers
bastions with high ramparts. This is the town of Ada-Kaleh, a former first-class
during the Great Depression, how it developed
Turkish fortress.
and how it was...
Comments (4)
According to the Treaty of Berlin from 1878 [2], the border between Hungary
and Romania on the one hand, and Serbia and Bulgaria on the other, runs
along the Danube, i.e. along its course, which serves for shipping; and
because ships sailed equally on both sides of Ada-Kaleh, under the treaty the
island was left outside the borders of the neighboring states of Hungary, Working Class …
Serbia, and Romania. According to the same treaty, all fortresses on the banks Like Page
of the Danube were to be demolished. One fine day in 1878, after the Turks
had lifted their artillery, their garrison, and police from the island, Ada-Kaleh - Follow @wrkclasshistory 104K followers
left outside the borders of the neighboring states, - dawned without any
authority.
libcom.org
I visited this island in April of the present 1898 year. The island is about three
Like Page
kilometers long from west to east and about one kilometer wide from north to
south. Its entire area outside the fortress is workable land - fields and orchards, Follow @libcomorg 57K followers
well cultivated and maintained. The inhabitants of the town of Ada-Kaleh are
Turks, numbering 3500-4000 people; their livelihood is mainly based on
providing coffee and services to Danube’s passing ships, as well as to the
boatmen from the port of Orshova, and the rest - partly farmers, partly
merchants; all, without exception, are smugglers. The settlement is a typical Info
old Turkish town, with narrow and crooked streets covered with cobblestones;
the market is a Turkish bazaar - with low shops that close with shutters; the The libcom library contains nearly 20,000
shops are filled with goods that are sold at very low prices because they articles. If it's your first time on the site, or
haven’t been subject to customs duties and tolls. The streets of the town and you're looking for something specific, it can be
those of the bazaar are swept and kept extremely clean. difficult to know where to start. Luckily, there's a
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Apart from the school and the mosque, there was no other institution in town. to suit your needs, from casual browsing to
There is no mayor, no governor, no bureaucrats, no army, no police, no researching a particular topic. Click here for the
customs officers, no prison, no court, no taxes. All inhabitants decide on the guide.
needs of their town at a general assembly; the decided monetary sums are
collected from those present at the assembly; the latter is the place where If you have an ebook reader or a Kindle, check
disputes between inhabitants - something that happens extremely rarely – are out our guide to using ebook readers with
being resolved. libcom.org.

As would happen everywhere in such circumstances, in the first few days after If you'd like to upload content to the library
the sudden withdrawal of the Turkish military and civic authorities from the which is in line with the aims of the site or will
island, some of the inhabitants resorted to looting. The population, however, otherwise be of interest to libcom users, please
gathered and brought the robbers before the general assembly, which check out our guides to submitting
compelled them to return the plundered things; this seemed so disgraceful to library/history articles and tagging articles. If
the robbers that there has been no theft, robbery or arson on the island ever you're not sure if something is appropriate for
since. the library, please ask in the feedback and
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The people of Ada-Kaleh are very helpful, hospitable, kind, and cautious. post content yet, just request it here.
Private property exists as it existed before, without however to interfere with
the free and respectful relations between the inhabitants.

There are 427 years between the time of Sultan Mohammed II, when the Log in for more features
ancestors of the present-day Ada-Kalehans settled on the island, and 1878
when the Turkish military and civic authorities left it; generation after Click here to register now. Logged in users:
generation, the people of Ada-Kaleh lived and died with the idea of the
necessity of authority and the State, ready to sacrifice themselves for the latter ▶ Can comment on articles and discussions
at any moment; most of the current inhabitants of the island lived in privileged ▶ Get 'recent posts' refreshed more regularly
conditions under Turkish rule. But after living only twenty years of truly free life, ▶ Bookmark articles to your own reading list
they were unable to understand what authority and the State are needed for. ▶ Use the site private messaging system
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In July this year, a Hungarian army landed on the island and captured it. Now in more...
Ada-Kaleh, there is a municipal government, there are officials, officers, a
mayor, a governor, a commandant, there is a police station, a court, a prison.
Now the residents want permission for everything, they pay fees and taxes for
everything, the government collects fines from them for everything. The
inhabitants of Ada-Kaleh are no longer free people, but Austro-Hungarian
subjects.

Thus the freedom of Ada-Kaleh was suffocated quietly, with the tacit approval
of neighboring countries, because Ada-Kaleh - this small island town - posed a
great threat to all countries and all authorities: there people were not
developing theories on antiauthority, no books and pamphlets were written to
explain how the life of a free society will be arranged in the future; there
freedom was practiced in the present, in the most natural way, by ordinary
people.

Notes from the Translator:

[1] The Iron Gates is a gorge on the river Danube. It forms part of the boundary
between Serbia (to the south) and Romania (north).

[2] The Treaty of Berlin was signed in the aftermath of the Russian victory
against the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, with the
major powers restructuring the map of the Balkan region.

The island of Ada-Kaleh was submerged underwater in 1970 during the

construction of the Iron Gates hydroelectric plant, the largest dam on the
Danube river, and one of the largest hydropower plants in Europe.

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