Anarchist Bank Robbery (1915)

Fri Aug 20, 1915

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Image: William Juber, shown alongside a handwritten note visually describing him

On this day in 1915, three anarcho-communists entered the Home Savings Bank in San Francisco and committed an armed robbery, taking more than $2,400, reportedly to help the revolutionary movement in Russia. During the robbery, a gun battle ensued and one of the robbers was shot, however all three still managed to escape.

The three men - Gregory Chesalkin, Charles Boutoff (later thought to be an alias for Vladimir Osokin), and William Juber (shown) - were members of the Union of Russian Workers of the United States and Canada (UORW), an anarcho-communist federation founded in New York in 1908 that promoted armed warfare against the capitalist state.

On September 11th, police arrested William Juber after he sought treatment for a wound and were able to find Chesalkin’s location. When they attempted to arrest him, Chesalkin initiated a shootout and died. Juber was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Boutoff was never found, although evidence later surfaced that this may have been an alias for Vladimir Osokin, a Russian anarchist who was shot and killed by San Francisco police after he engaged in a shootout to resist arrest for passing counterfeit money.

While dying from his wounds, Osokin wrote an apologetic letter to his mother, as well as another statement that ended with “I am not a bandit, but an anarchist communist.”