[2] They argued that a centralized "dictatorship of the proletariat" was necessary for the transition to a stateless communist society,[3] and advocated for Russian anarchists to collaborate with the Bolsheviks, ceasing all hostile activity in opposition to the Soviet government.
[4] Their policy was noted by Paul Avrich as being similar to that of the Maximalists, a radical faction of the Socialist Revolutionaries, which split off and later joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
"[9] A wave of repression against the anarchist movement soon followed,[13] with the Universalist organizations being broken up by the Cheka,[7] and replaced by the more obedient "Anarcho-Biocosmists", which pledged not to launch a social revolution on "Soviet territory" but instead in "interplanetary space".
[15] In the wake of Joseph Stalin's rise to power, a number of Universalists were let out of prison under police surveillance, and Askarov was later arrested on charges of anti-Soviet agitation before disappearing during the Great Purge.
[7] The anarchist-turned-Bolshevik Victor Serge later praised the Universalists for condemning "the past errors of the Russian anarchist movement", advocating "participation in the Soviets", recognizing "what the revolution owes the Red Army", not wanting "to demonstrate any hostility toward the Communist International", and seeking "practical, immediate, and peaceful methods of work within the socialist state".