Alexander Bukovetsky
Biography
Alexander Bukovetsky was born 1886 in Born , Ekaterinoslav, Russia (present-day Dnipro, Ukraine). Worked as a metalworker.
Joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party as a youth and participated in the 1905 Russian Revolution. Migrated with his wife Frances and their daughter to Canada, where a son was born. Became an anarchist in Ontario; moved between the United States and Canada repeatedly for work. Arrested in March 1918 after giving radical speech in Timmins, Ontario, but the charges were dropped. Migrated to the US with family the following year, and employed as a machinist at the Ford Motor Company. Active in the Union of Russian Workers in Detroit and organized URW branches in Jackson and Kalamazoo, Michigan. Arrested in Detroit in January 1920 and detained at Fort Wayne, where on one occasion guards beat him bloody in front of his visiting wife and children. During his detainment, Frances was diagnosed with tuberculosis and the family was “dependent upon the charity of friends for support.” At their request, the entire family was deported February 26, 1921 (Frances being deported as an immigrant who entered the US illegally and was “likely to become a public charge”).
After arrival in Soviet Russia he immediately spoke out against the Communist dictatorship and was arrested as a Makhnovist supporter. Frances obtained his release with the assistance of anarchists including Emma Goldman, and the family emigrated to Germany and then Windsor, Canada, where they remained active in the Russian-speaking anarchist movement. Frances died in 1935; Alexander (under the name “Felix Konosevich”) died in 1954.
Adapted from Kenyon Zimmer, Red Scare Deportees (kenyonzimmer.com), compiled from INS deportation case files.
Photograph: Alexander Bukovetsky (also Bukhovetsky/Felix Konosevich), Windsor, circa 1940s; published in Delo Truda-Probuzhdenie, January-April 1954. Reproduced by Kenyon Zimmer. The source image is preserved unaltered.
Date review: The source distinguishes the dismissed 1918 Canadian case from the January 1920 Detroit arrest and Fort Wayne detention. Month precision is retained. February 26, 1921 remains the deportation endpoint.
