Russia: Feb: Assassination of Minister of Education Bogolepov; formation of police-sponsored trade unions
Britain:
Other European: 6 Sept: Assassination of President McKinley
United States:
Other:
Date: 1902
France: Emile Zola dies, asphyxiated in bed in suspicious circumstances; Rachkovsky recalled to Russia after displeasing tsarina
Russia: Assassination of Interior Minister Sipiagin
Britain: Kropotkin writes to Guillaume: ‘The time is coming when Marx will be put in his place’; Cloudsden Hill commune closes
Other European: Azef sent abroad to disrupt émigrés
Belgium: Rubini, Italian spy in London, attempts to kill Emperor Leopold; anarchist mutinies among cadets in Belgian Army
United States:
Other:
Date: 1903
France:
Russia: 6 April: Kishinev pogrom; publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Black Hundreds newspaper
Britain: Pageant of Letchworth; Fanny Stepniak involved in creating the garden city
Dec: Melville retires abruptly from Special Branch
Other European:
Belgium: July–Aug: Congress of Russian Social-Democratic Party; split between Menshevik and Bolshevik factions
United States: Most tells anarchists to look east for inspiration: ‘Let your models be comrades in Russia.’
Other:
Date: 1904
France: Verne publishes The Master of the World; Sebastian Faure founds La Ruche, The Hive, a centre for libertarian education at Rambouillet
Russia: 4 Feb: Russo-Japanese War begins with Japanese attack on Port Arthur
March: Anti-Anarchist Conference in St Petersburg
15 July: Assassination of Plehve
Britain:
Other European:
Switzerland: Kropotkin suspects agent provocateur among émigrés there
United States:
Other:
Date: 1905
France: Jan: Death of Louise Michel; death of Elisée Reclus; Libre Parole claims Rothschild funded and controlled the Commune
Russia: 22 Jan: ‘Bloody Sunday’ in St Petersburg
June: Mutiny on battleship Potemkin
13 Oct: St Petersburg soviet established
17 Oct: Tsar Nicholas II signs October Manifesto drafted by Witte
Dec: Moscow uprising suppressed
Britain: 5 Aug: Aliens Act passed; John Grafton sails for Finland with arms for Russian revolutionaries
Other European:
Switzerland: In Geneva, Lenin formulating theories of revolutionary warfare, with reference to the Commune
United States: March: Chaikovsky visits for fund-raising to buy guns for Russia
Other:
Date: 1906
France: Bomb explodes in Bois de Vincennes; Kropotkin mistakenly blames agents provocateurs; groups of delinquent youths known as ‘Apaches’ roam Paris; Burtsev moves to Paris on a personal mission: to expose Azef; as minister of interior, Clemenceau deploys troops against strikers
Russia: Murder of Gapon, intended murder of Rachkovsky
16 April: Witte resigns; Stolypin becomes prime minister in July
27 April: First Duma opens; civilian courts martial introduced
Britain: Okhrana agent Farce reports that Scotland Yard would appreciate chance to show their muscle
Other European:
Netherlands: Amsterdam Anarchist Congress, disagreements over links between anarchism and syndicalism
Spain: Teacher at Ferrer’s Escuela Moderna throws bomb at Alfonso XIII; Ferrer arrested, sentenced to death but later released
United States: March: Death of Most; Gorky visits US and, amidst sex scandal, alienates support for Bolsheviks
Other:
Date: 1907
France: Burtsev gathers evidence against Azef as high-placed provocateur in Social Revolutionaries
Russia: March: Stolypin reform programme
Britain: Publication of Conrad’s The Secret Agent
Other European:
United States:
Other:
Date: 1908
France: Dreyfus shot and wounded by Action Française member during transfer of Zola’s ashes to Panthéon; Reuss and Encausse meet as leading Gnostics and exchange honours
Oct: Jury of Honour exonerates Burtsev; Azef guilty
Russia:
Britain: Publication of Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday
Other European:
Switzerland: Nov: Kropotkin working on The Great French Revolution
United States:
Other:
Date: 1909
France: Jan: Committee votes death sentence on Azef
June: Exposure of Harting/ Landesen
Russia:
Britain: Finally freed from prison, Fred Charles moves to Oxford to set up cooperative society
Other European:
Spain: Francesco Ferrer, founder of the Escuela Moderna, is executed
United States:
Other:
Date: 1910
France: Death of Rachkovsky; apparent disappearance of Harting
Russia:
Britain: 16 Dec: Houndsditch affair; Vera Figner campaigns in Trafalgar Square
Other European:
United States:
Other:
Date: 1911
France:
Russia: Sept: Assassination of Prime Minister Stolypin
Britain: 3 Jan: Sidney Street Siege; Conrad publishes Under Western Eyes, rejecting utopian belief that revolution can reveal pure human nature
Other European:
United States:
Other:
Date: 1912
France:
Russia: Final split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
Britain: May: Malatesta arrested for libel and sentenced to deportation, but protests led by unions prevent; medical conferences at which Kropotkin speaks against eugenics
Other European:
United States:
Other:
Date: 1913
France: Charles Péguy: ‘The world has changed less since Jesus Christ than it has in the last thirty years'; death of Rochefort at Aix-les-Bains
Russia:
Britain:
Other European:
United States:
Other:
Date: 1914
France: 31 July: Jaurès assassinated
Russia: Aug: Germany declares war on Russia; invading Russian armies crushed in East Prussia
Britain: Kropotkin and minority of anarchists support war against militarist Germany; Malatesta replies with Anarchists have forgotten their principles
Other European:
Italy: June: Malatesta foments failed insurrection in Ancona
Bosnia-Herzegovina: 28 June: Princip assassinates grand duke
Belgium: Aug: Fortresses around Liège hold up German advance for crucial fortnight
United States:
Other:
Date: 1915
France:
Russia: Withdraws from Poland; tsar assumes personal command of armies
Britain:
Other European: May: Italy joins Entente and declares war on Austro-Hungary; Germany in 1916
United States:
Other:
Date: 1916
France:
Russia: Bread shortages foment social unrest
Dec: Murder of Rasputin
Britain:
Other European:
United States:
Other:
Date: 1917
France: Closure of La Ruche; Bint, Paris Okhrana agent and later for Cheka, reveals to Savinkov that he paid Golovinsky for Protocols forgery
Russia: Feb: Bread shortage, demonstrations, violent confrontation and garrison mutiny in St Petersburg/Petrograd
March: Provisional Government forme
d under chairmanship of Lvov; Tsar Nicholas agrees to abdicate; police department abolished
April: Lenin arrives in Petrograd by train, having considered balloon; April Theses’
June: Kropotkin returns
July: Kerensky becomes prime minister;
Oct: Armed seizure of power in Petrograd by Bolsheviks
Nov: Bolshevik troops raid state bank, avoiding mistake of Communards; Russia and Central Powers agree armistice
Britain:
Other European:
United States: 6 April: Declaration of war on Germany
Other:
Date: 1918
France: Nov. Armistice signed with Germany
Russia: April: Japanese land at Vladivostok
June: British at Archangel
July: Uprising by Savinkov in Iaroslav defeated amid civil war in countryside; Chaikovsky heads anti-Soviet Government of Northern Russia
July: Murder of Nicholas II and family in Ekaterinburg
Sept: beginning of Red Terror, with Bolshevik massacres of prisoners and hostages
Britain:
Other European:
United States:
Other:
Date: 1919
France: Versailles Conference
Russia: April: Meeting between Kropotkin and Lenin in Moscow; civil war
Britain:
Other European:
Germany: Jan: Suppression of Spartacist uprising marks end of two-month-old German Revolution; Liebknecht murdered
Italy: Dec: Malatesta returns to adulatory welcome from 100,000 socialists
United States:
Other:
Date: 1920
France:
Russia: Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman visit Kropotkin on their return to Russia; Kropotkin works on his Ethics (that will remain unfinished) in village of Dmitrov
Britain:
Other European:
Italy: Autumn: Soviets established across north of country during general strike
United States:
Other:
Date: 1921
France:
Russia: 8 Feb: Death of Kropotkin
Britain: Nester Webster publishes World Revolution, The Plot Against Civilisation
Other European:
Italy: July: Malatesta on trial in Milan, defended by Merlino
United States:
Other:
Date: 1922
France:
Russia:
Britain:
Other European:
Italy: Oct: Mussolini’s march on Rome
United States:
Other:
Date: 1926
France:
Russia: Lenin wrapped in Commune flag for his obsequies
Britain:
Other European:
United States:
Other:
Date: 1930
France: Suitcase of Rachkovsky’s papers sighted in Paris but then disappears
Russia:
Britain:
Other European:
United States:
Other:
Date: 1932
France:
Russia:
Britain: Fred Charles retires to Whiteway Colony
Other European:
Italy: Death of Malatesta
United States:
Other:
Introduction
In the early years of the twenty-first century, a British Home Secretary recommended that those wishing to understand what at that time was still termed the ‘War on Terror’ should look back to the 1890s. Parallels were widely drawn with the wave of bombings and assassinations that had swept Europe and America at the end of the nineteenth century, perpetrated by anarchists and nihilists for whom London and Switzerland had provided refuge. Then as now, it was remarked, disaffected young men from swollen immigrant communities had been radicalised by preachers of an extremist ideology and lured into violence. Some commentators wrote of ‘Islamo-anarchism’, while others remarked that Al-Zawahiri, the ‘brains’ of Al-Qaeda, had studied the revolutionary writings of the godfather of anarchism, Michael Bakunin.
The parallels were persuasive and the comparison of the new threat to western civilisation with one long since vanquished appeared almost comforting. Yet, such references are largely misleading when detached from any sense of the circumstances that moulded the revolutionaries of the nineteenth century, impelling them to seek an alternative and better future. When their world is viewed from the position they occupied at society’s margins, whether by choice or ill fortune, an era named for its glittering surface as a belle époque or Gilded Age is thrown into stark relief. The effect is uncanny, for many features of that landscape do indeed echo those of our own times but in ways that should shame us as well as causing deeper disquiet.
The obscene discrepancies of wealth between the rich and the poor were painfully obvious in the last decades of the nineteenth century, existing cheek by jowl in cities such as London, but they are scarcely less troublesome now, and still more extreme in the global village. Back then, the industrial exploitation of labour and the greed of the few generated social injustice and economic instability; the unwillingness of politicians to confront malign corporate and financial powers led to disillusionment, even in purported democracies; and all was set against a background of economies staggering from crisis to crisis, uncertain how to tame a rampant, savage capitalism. Organised religion, discredited by science, flailed against its loss of authority, while others saw the greater spiritual threat in the nascent consumer culture and intrusiveness of advertising. Mass migration challenged the resilience of national cultures and created a strong cross-fertilised internationalism. Meanwhile, in a multi-polar world shaped by Great Power geopolitics, shifts in the balance of economic dynamism threatened peace, with alliances wrangled in the hope of averting or retarding the dance towards the precipice.
Extreme caution should be exercised in supposing that history ever even rhymes, let alone repeats itself. Nevertheless, the news headlines during the years that I have spent researching and writing this book have time and again left me with the impression that the intervening century has in some strange way folded back upon itself. We must sincerely hope that we too are not unknowingly caught up in such a deadly dance, and that the most extreme consequences of the flaws in that world are not to be repeated. Throughout the period in question a silent, secret clockwork of intrigue and manipulation was in operation to protect the status quo, just as it is today, yet then as now the risk of unforeseen consequences was not to be underestimated.
Framed by two revolutions, beginning with the Paris Commune of 1871 and ending with that staged by the Bolsheviks in October 1917, these are years tormented by the constant fear and possibility of violent upheaval. It was an age characterised by many contemporary social commentators as decadent or degenerate, a moment of crisis, perhaps even for the human species as a whole. The anarchists, seen as advocates of destruction and promulgators of terror, were often posited as the most shocking symptom of the malaise. The control, suppression and ultimate demonisation of their fiendish sect appeared to many a moral imperative, and was clearly as much a pleasure as a duty for many official defenders of law and order. For them ‘anarchism’ was a useful shorthand for the subversive threat posed by revolutionaries of all hues. Nor could the anarchists rely on the solidarity of their supposed brethren on the political left, to whom their liberal critique of state socialism was almost as intolerable as their socialist critique of capitalism was to those who wielded political power. With anarchism exposed to enemies on all sides, the violence perpetrated in its name by a few headstrong young men was more than enough to confirm the movement’s pariah status in perpetuity.
It was a fate scarcely deserved by the leading ideologues of the movement, some of them figures of international standing as scientists, who had vied with the dogmatic Marxists for the claim to champion a form of ‘scientific socialism’. Variou
sly derided as utopian dreamers and reviled as desperate conspirators, with hindsight they emerge instead as plausible visionaries. Even the social democratic heirs of their fiercest critics would be hard pressed to deny that history has vindicated many of their remedies: female emancipation with state support for the care and education of children, collective social security, sustainable communities with power devolved as far as possible, with a federal United States of Europe to prevent the continent-wide wars that they foretold. The human spirit was to be celebrated against the dead hand of centralisation, and self-fulfilment would be achieved through creative work rather than material gain: the essence of the political agenda of ‘well-being’ now in vogue. Even their espousal of autonomous federated communities as the basis for a new form of society prefigures the ideas of localism and sustainability that many believe must now be implemented to preserve the health of the planet.
Peter Kropotkin’s theory of Mutual Aid, which asserted an evolutionary argument that cooperation rather than competition was the natural state of human relations, has received support from recent discoveries in the field of genetics. All that was required for mankind’s best instincts to flourish, he and his colleagues argued, was for the accreted institutions, hierarchies and privileges that had corrupted society to be swept away; left to their own devices, people would quickly and surely create a cooperative paradise. And yet it was this naïve optimism that left the movement so vulnerable to attack and manipulation.
Judged by the standards of political pragmatism, the position adopted by Kropotkin and others was catastrophic on many counts. At a time when many other socialist factions were busily marshalling their troops and handing executive power to conspiratorial elites, anarchism eschewed formal organisation or leadership of any sort, recoiling from coercion and central control. By placing such deep faith in the individual conscience and allowing validity to every honestly held opinion, consensus was inevitably elusive, while the movement left itself defenceless, almost on principle, against both malicious infiltration and co-option by those who sought to use political idealism as a cover for criminal intent. And whilst the anarchist philosophers’ hopes that the social revolution might come to pass with little or no bloodshed was doubtless sincere, it is hard to excuse their failure to forestall the extremes of violence to which their acolytes were driven by frustration at the absence of any popular appetite for a more creative apocalypse. A dangerous credulity, though, was not the exclusive preserve of those who awaited Utopia.
The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents Page 5
