iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

My little girl is 40 today - proud to be her Dad! 🥰

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

RIP, Barry Pateman - even Valhalla needs a librarian! 💔 #absentfriends

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The fabulous film "A Fistful of Dynamite" (1972) features James Coburn as a wanted Irish Republican explosives expert caught up in the Mexican revolution. One scene sees him reading a book by anarchist theoretician Michael Bakunin. 💣

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Max Nomad (born Maximilian Nacht, 1881-1973) is largely forgotten today. At various times an Anarchist, a Syndicalist and a Bolshevik, Nomad is best remembered for his association with Jan Wacław Machajski and the ideas of The Workers' Conspiracy (1908). theanarchistlibrary.org/library/edmu...

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Anarchist artist Gerhard Seyfried (born in Munich, 1948). He became a prominent figure in the 1970s among the alternative and underground comic scenes of Berlin-Kreuzberg.

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I hate to kick a 97-year-man when he's down and in poor health, but sometimes truth must out...

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

You didn't want to be a Russian cop if these guys walked into your office. By the end of January, 1906, the Riga municipal police lost 110 officers to urban guerrilla attacks, more than a quarter of the entire police force. Jēkabs Dubelšteins, Ģederts Eliass, Jānis Žākle, Jānis Čoke.

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

30 August, 1918: Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan shot and seriously injured Lenin in Moscow. Kaplan considered Lenin a traitor to the revolution for disbanding the Constituent Assembly. She was shot by Kremlin Commandant Pavel Malkov on 3 September.

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Anarchist air force? Nestor Makhno’s Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (1918-1920) captured and flew around 20 Nieuport and Sopwith aircraft on reconnaissance operations against the Bolsheviks and White Russian armies.

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Me, Mum and Dad, Big Brother and Sister - and the prefab we lived in until I was five-years-old. The prefabs, on the Bells Farm Estate, Druids Heath, Birmingham, were built by German POWs in 1945, assembled from sheets of asbestos. No "Health & Safety" in the 1950s!

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

"I want to thank Looby-Loo and Teddy, who have always been there for me" Just to be clear, a leadership election with only one candidate is called a COUP.

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Today in 1789, the French Revolution began - 900 revolutionaries and a regiment of French Guards stormed the Bastille in Paris, the symbol of Royal oppression. Poster: a celebration of Bastille Day organised by French anarchist exiles in London, Friday 14 July, 1893.

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Happy 250th Birthday, America! 🦝 Celebrating a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic white males who didn't want to pay their taxes.

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

#OTD 1 July 1876, Michael Bakunin died in Bern, Switzerland, aged only 62. It was Bakunin, in his arguments with Marx, who first defined anarchism as a separate political movement, and not just part of the package-deal-left. I wish more "anarchists" would bother to read him. 🏴

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

"Līgo" / "Jāņi" is the Midsummer festival, celebrated in Latvia on 23-24 June. In pagan times, Jānis was the God of Summer, fertility, and the Summer Solstice. Christianity demoted him to "Saint John". But the ancient pagan rituals remain in the modern celebrations. Priecīgus Līgo svētkus!

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Celebrating the Latvian midsummer festival in Sigulda, 1935. #Latvia #Baltics 🍻

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

I need to start a new campaign - to keep me out of bookshops! 🧐

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

And on Bakunin's birthday, don't forget the anarchist fighters in Ukraine who are still resisting Russian military occupation. 🌻

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Happy birthday Michael Bakunin, father of modern anarchism, born 30 May, 1814. 🏴

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

John Lennon on the cover of the Rolling Stone, 21 January, 1971.

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Ansis Cīrulis, “Jaunsaimnieks" (The New Farmer, 1928. Latvian National Museum of Art). Starting in 1920, Latvia adopted a sweeping post-independence land reform. Baltic German and Russian aristocratic estates were nationalised and redistributed to Latvia's landless peasantry. #Latvia #Baltics

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

In memoriam: Andrejs Ritins Born, Hamburg, Germany, 14 September, 1946 Died, Canada, 10 May, 2026 RIP 🍃

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Happy Mothers' Day, Mum - Winifred Mary Ruff (nee Holloway, 19 June, 1921/ 25 December, 2001) - and to all mums out there. 🌹🥂

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Наслаждайтесь, товарищи!

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

"They STILL haven't finished the damn thing!" - Albert Meltzer 🏴

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

A very merry Beltane to all! Vasaras sveicieni visiem! ☀️

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Me outside an exhibition of Stalinist kitsch, Riga, 21 June, 1989 (Photo: David Campbell).

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Older but arguably no wiser, outside what used to be the almost historic Centro Iberico (June 1973 - September 1976), 23 April 2018. Miguel Garcia in the kitchen, Albert Meltzer giving-forth in the meeting room and me as the third Musketeer, 1975. #AnarchistBlackCross #BlackFlag

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Nav miris Lāčplēša gars - The spirit of Bearslayer is not dead (Rihards Zariņš, 1934). Lāčplēsis is an epic poem by Andrejs Pumpurs (1888), set during the Livonian Crusades, about the mythical hero "Bearslayer" - a symbol of Latvian resistance to foreign occupation. #Latvia #Baltics

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Soviet poet, body-builder & futurist Vladimir Goltzschmidt hypnotizing a chicken, 1930s 🐓

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

In 1882, Karl Marx visited Algiers. Because of the heat, he had his hair cut and beard trimmed. But please don't ask me to tell that story about him getting drunk afterwards and waking up two days later with a camel tattooed on his bum. It's bad for my image as a serious historian. 🐫

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

The Confession, written by Bakunin in solitary confinement in the Peter & Paul Fortress, 1851. From his arrival in Berlin in 1840 to his arrest by the Saxon police in May 1849 for his part in the Dresden uprising. And Penal Servitude and Exile (about Bakunin), Moscow, 1926.

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

April 2025, JD Vance shakes hands with Pope Francis - the Pope dies. April 2026, JD Vance shakes hands with Viktor Orban - Orban is voted out of office after 16 years in power. Who's next? 🤔

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Priecīgus Lieldienas svētkus!

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Lidojošā Varde (The Flying Frog) is my secret headquarters in Riga. When I die a brass plaque will be screwed to the wall inscribed: "An old anarchist who loved Latvia schemed schemes here." Ja jūs to redzat, paceliet glāzi, laipnie biedri. Photos: 2008, 2019, 2025

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Oh dear, Peter Mandelson has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office - and on #PinocchioDay too! 🧐

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

"The little Baltic nations", as seen in the USA in 1939, on the eve of the first Soviet occupation.

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

"The Queens", Crouch End Broadway, London N8 - I often used to have a liquid lunch there during the 1970s (I worked around the corner); also a popular watering hole of Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer (photo, 1968).

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Philip Ruff @ruffphilip.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Hitler's pet Otto Skorzeny always kept an ace up his sleeve - The Strange Case of a Nazi Who Became an Israeli Hitman www.motl.org/the-strange-...

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