Maxim Raevsky (1882?-1931) was born Lev Josifovich Fishelev in Nezhin, a city of the Russian Empire which is now in northern Ukraine. In the late 1890s he went abroad to Germany to study and soon became an anarchist. In 1906-1910 he was on the editorial board of Burevestnik [Stormy Petrel), a Russian anarchist journal published in Geneva and Paris, where he developed his anarcho-syndicalist positions, taking a strong stand against the "motiveless" terror popular among some of the Russian anarchists. In 1910-1914 he worked on a number of anarchist journals in Western Europe before moving to New York to become editor of Golos Truda [The Voice of Labour], a monthly newspaper for Russian-American anarchists which immediately became a weekly under his direction. Golos Truda was the organ of the Unions of Russian Workers of the United States and Canada, a confederation of Russian anarchist emigrant groups. The Unions were not workplace organizations, but rather associations or clubs providing welfare and educational services to their mainly working class members, who were encouraged to join the Industrial Workers of the World (which had Russian sections). During Raevsky’s time as editor (1914-1917), Golos Truda acquired a strongly anarcho-syndicalist orientation. In 1917 he returned to Russia, but soon withdrew from political and trade union activity.
—From Black Cat Press's print of Raevky's essay, "Anarcho-Syndicalism and the IWW" (1917).