1 A Distant Horizon
The description of Reclus’ early life is drawn largely from his own correspondence and from Fleming; Heath informs my evocation of his time in London, Nord his involvement in the Peace League, Rykwert the background of French socialist thought in Saint-Simon, Fourier and Proudhon. Dunbar’s article introduced me to Reclus’ fascination with Wyld’s Globe, while Sennett and Welter illuminated the influence of Etienne-Louis Boullée. The letters from Reclus to Nadar during the period of the siege suggest a significant involvement by Reclus in the aerostatic experiments to which both Ishill and Kropotkin allude in their obituaries of the geographer, rather than the more cautious interpretation in Dunbar. The scene of Reclus’ balloon flight is nevertheless imagined, the aeronaut’s experience drawing on Fisher, whose research into the imaginative struggle to maintain communication links from Paris was informative, as was his evocation of the ballooning events at the Expo. The extraordinary snails, however, are found in Horne’s incomparable history of the war and Commune, while the revolutionary resonance of ballooning, and the Montgolfier tradition, is from Schama. Costello makes the connections between Verne and Nadar, the anagrammatic hero Ardan in From the Earth to the Moon, and explores the cultural importance of the submarine. In light of the uncertain reliability of Stieber’s memoirs, corroboration of his claims from secondary sources has been sought, both in the writings of his near contemporaries such as Tissot, in the Byloe article ‘Count Bismarck’, and in more recent scholarly works by Höhne, Wilms and Schoeps. Stieber’s perspective on the meteorological tests is also an invented vignette; Deacon informs my sense of Stieber’s early foray to London, while Wheen gives Marx’s side of the story. Marx’s antipathy to Proudhon and Bakunin and his attempt to counter their influence is apparent in his letters; Engels’ notion of Reclus as contaminated by their influence is reported in W. O. Henderson as is Engels’ role in reporting the Franco-Prussian War and the fact that he filed reports for the Pall Mall Gazette from London, out of fear of how Stieber might treat him were he in Versailles; from Henderson is also the glee that he and Marx felt at the fate of France. Avineri explores Marx’s original attempts to avert the Paris insurrection. Williams contextualises and often subverts Rochefort’s own account of the autobiographical Adventures of My Life, whose extraordinary appeal to France in what Flaubert called its ‘abnormal mental state’ is explored by Christiansen. Molnár is referred to for the socialist reaction to the birth of the republic; Bury for the overheated Vatican Council on infallibility on the very eve of the outbreak of war, where cardinals were accused by the Pope of revolutionary tendencies; Jellinek for the social effects of the war and the fumigation after the victory parade.
2 Communards
Despite the somewhat adulatory tone of her biography of Louise Michel, Thomas provides the core source for her career, embroidered by Michel’s own autobiographical writings and correspondence, while Guillemin’s interpretation of the code of Hugo’s Carnets Intimes offers insights into their relationship. Sources for Michel’s involvement in resisting the seizure of the Montmartre guns include Jellinek; Edwards, who surveys the grass-roots enthusiasm for the Commune and its educational imperatives; Christiansen, whose discussion of the Joan of Arc phenomenon in France during the war casts the Red Virgin in an interesting light; and Williams for his account of the murder of the generals. The Official Journal and Le Mot d’Ordre offer a powerful sense of the internal life of the Commune while Horne and Tombs afford a more considered overall appraisal, the latter evoking the excitement of the Commune and its social reforms, but questioning the reality of the final armed resistance by women. Gildea quotes Edmond Goncourt thanking God for civil war, in words identical to those Horne assigns to Thiers: it has been assumed that their response was indeed shared. Boime conveys Courbet’s unreasonable optimism and explores the iconography of the destruction of the Vendôme column; Pernicone presents Costa’s bewildered reaction to the sense of unreality surrounding the Commune’s impending demise; Costello quotes Verne’s impression of Daumier’s cartoon. Although the paradox of Marx’s minimal and largely unsupportive role in the Commune and the excessive credit he would later be accorded is only touched upon, W. O. Henderson and Avineri suggest a murky cynicism, due in part to letters perhaps forged by Stieber, while Verdes offers an account based on French police reports from London; Dmitrieff’s role is discussed by McClellan. The letters of Elie Reclus recount details of the tragic sortie, while Elisée’s own describe the circumstances of his capture; Rochefort’s autobiography considers Thiers’ role in the original construction of the forts. The English response to events in Paris is largely drawn from Martinez, while my sense of the utopian and dystopian fiction of 1871 is from T. Clark and Beaumont; Beaumont and Tombs both allude to the vicious attitude adopted towards the Communards by the Church: from the Pope down to the priest at Versailles.
3 From Prince to Anarchist
Along with Kropotkin’s own Memoirs of a Revolutionist, two biographies have been of particular assistance in describing Kropotkin’s early life: those by Woodcock and Avakumovic, and Miller, to which I have returned for specific investigations. Information on the Fell railways comes from Pemble, Byrnes’ biography of Pobedonostsev explores the residue of French intellectual life left behind by the Grand Armée, while the letters between Kropotkin and his brother Alexander chart their political development. Complemented by Meijer, Figner’s memoirs provide a moving account of the everyday life in the community of émigré Russian students in Switzerland, as do Engel and Faure, who contextualise their studies, in intellectual and political terms. Gaucher examines the appeal to Russia’s youth of Peter Lavrov, who must regrettably remain a background figure in this story, and the compelling charisma of Nechaev, though it is Hingley who quotes Nechaev’s calls to arms: ‘Now, friends, let us start the drama.’ Avrich and Morris have both examined the relationship between Bakunin and Nechaev, while Leier has recently provided an effective survey of Bakunin’s wider career. Wheen, with a biographer’s sympathy for Marx, is unsparing in his attack on Bakunin’s anti-Semitism, which held the Jews to be ‘a single exploiting sect’ and insisted that ‘every popular revolution is accompanied by a massacre of Jews: a natural consequence …’; Jensen lays bare Bakunin’s equally reprehensible belief that all progress must be ‘baptised in blood’. The account of life among the members of the Jurassian federation, ‘the last Mohicans of the International’ according to Bakunin, derives in part from material in Guillaume and from Enckell, with the culture of watchmaking taken from Jaquet and Chapuis. Titov was useful on the origins of the Chaikovsky Circle, as were others concerning the mission ‘to the People’, and Venturi on the naïvety of the idealistic youths in their mission and on Kropotkin’s Manifesto. Tikhomirov’s memoirs of his attempts at propaganda at the time are found in his Conspirateurs et policiers. Fleming was once again an important reference point for Reclus’ biography, prompting further research regarding agents’ reports in the AN, Papiers Elisée Reclus, and the APP, folders BA a/1502 and 1237.
4 Around the World in 280 Days
Rochefort’s own Adventures provides the main source for my description of his circumnavigation of the globe, tempered by Williams’ eagle eye for his subject’s manifold hypocrisies, as for example in the rumours that his escape from Paris had been betrayed by Grousset. Jellinek, however, is the major source for the activities of the tribunal operated by the council of war. Similarly, Thomas’ biography of Louise Michel, and Michel’s own writings provide the mainstay for Michel’s journey to New Caledonia, supplemented by additional sources for the digressions along the way. The correspondence of Engels and of Reclus illuminate perceptions of the Spanish uprising, while Anderson in Under Three Flags affords a useful summary of the situation in that country, as part of a far wider history of Hispanic anarchism at the time. The imaginary sharks between Prato and the Catamans are inevitably the work of Jogand-Pages, or Taxil, and form part of his own account of his hoaxes
, delivered to the Paris Geographical Society in 1897, but appear too in his APP files. Costello considers contemporary myths of the sea and its monsters, as transformed by Verne’s imagination; Day examines the suggestions that Michel was the original author of 20,000 Leagues, dismissing her candidacy in favour of George Sand; the world tours are Pemble’s subject. As for the anarchist ideas discussed on board La Virginie, Rykwert is helpful; the key document regarding anarchism from the time of the French Revolution is the Babouvist Manifeste des Egaux. Pain’s memoir of Rochefort, along with the accounts of other escapees, gives a colourful picture of New Caledonia, as does Gauthier, but the indispensable work is Bullard’s exceptional study of the deportee’s life. The account of the escape is largely taken from Rochefort’s own From Nouméa to Newcastle, though corroborated by others: his companions recorded his souvenir-hunting en route to America. I would have liked to quote Whitman’s Oh Star of France at length, but it can be found in Boime, who expertly distils the impact of the Commune in America, as well as its aftermath in an amnesiac France, through the transformation of the Parc Monceau. An old doctoral thesis by Martinez remains the definitive source for the Communard emigration to London, evoking the Charlotte Street colony and its inhabitants’ antipathy to Rochefort’s hauteur, with further information from Kellet. Madox Ford sheds light on growing up with Communard domestic staff, Bertall on the contemporary belief that ‘the actors have but retired behind the scenes’. Porter examines British policing at the time, for which documents in Home Office files 9335 29553 and 45 9303 11335 at TNA are essential reading.
5 To the People
The activities of the Chaikovsky Circle are well represented in Venturi and Footman, with Kravchinsky’s Revolutionary Russia providing a propagandist account that reveals much about how the radical youth of Russia understood their mission, including the assertion that ‘in 1870 the whole of advanced Russia was anarchist’, and his Career of a Nihilist gives a fictional interpretation of similar experiences; Taratuta draws on a mass of Russian material for her narrative of his life. Billington examines the positive beliefs that impelled the radical movement, whose sense of intellectual suppression fuelled its drift towards violent tactics, and the role of the journal Znanie, as does Coplestone, with his interest in Pisarev. Suvin and Fetzer explore the Russian science fiction of the period and its utopian content, Fetzer as editor of a useful anthology. Doskoevsky’s visions of a utopian society on another planet corrupted by a lie, in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and of the proto-blogging habits of a future society are particularly intriguing. In light of the many deaths of radicals while held in prison without charge, Florovsky’s discussion of the belief held by the Comtean, Nicholas Fedorov, that ‘the new age of science would make possible even the resurrection of the dead’, is plangent. The descriptions of Cyon’s confrontation with the St Petersburg students in Kennan and Fox are complementary; my sense of the reactionary backlash to such ideas derives from Byrnes and Berglund; Figner, Hingley, and Daly are, with ascending degrees of critical distance, informative regarding the police crackdown on the activists. Dr Veimar’s insistence on retaining some independence and that ‘I cannot join any circle’, whilst facilitating prison breaks and assassinations – an interesting position – comes from Miller who, once again together with Woodcock and Avakumovic, supplies the core of Kropotkin’s story.
6 Forward!
The Manual of Guerrilla Warfare that Kravchinsky was said to have written remains a tantalising notion on which his impressive biographer Taratuta, uncharacteristically, sheds little light: it is mentioned by Guillaume, who published Kravchinsky’s letter from Santa Maria Capua Venere prison, and the manual is said by Nettlau to have circulated in manuscript form until at least the mid-1890s, but is not preserved in GARF or TsGALI. My account of Kravchinsky’s Bosnian adventures, improbable as certain incidents may seem, are drawn from Taratuta’s thorough research, as are details of the letter sent by Klements to Chaikovsky. The writings of Pick and Gould on Lombroso and criminal anthropology form the basis of my discussion of this theme, the former also alluding to the contemporary perception of southern Italy as being almost African in temperament. Bakunin’s insistence that ‘we must make unceasing revolutionary attempts’, which I imagine being repeated by Malatesta, was written to Debagory-Mokrievich in 1874. The narrative of the Matese expedition, from the availability of the Puglia cache of arms to its ultimate failure, is constructed from the research of Masini and Ravindranathan: the latter noted the mysterious aristocrat for whom marriage to Kropotkin was the price of her financial support, as though she were akin to Bakunin’s patroness Princess Zoe Obolensky, without supplying the accurate but more mundane explanation. Pernicone too contributes to my evocation of the Matese expedition, while Bakunin’s powerful first impressions of Malatesta after his Alpine crossing are taken from his work, which is also interesting on the marriage of Cafiero to the Russian radical Olympia Kutuzov before the Italian consul in St Petersburg in 1874. It is Vakhrushev, however, who reveals that the same consul, in the pay of the Third Section, betrayed her presence in Russia to the police in 1877; he also exposes the patron of Lavrov’s propaganda work in London, Balashevich-Pototsky, as another Third Section agent. Kimball cites a letter from Lavrov’s chief assistant, Smirnov, that recounts how pressure from such agents in London had driven the émigré Sibiryakov to madness and expresses the fear that the same fate might befall Kropotkin. The edition of Forward! In which Frey’s letter appeared was published in August 1874. The tension between the Godmen and radicals forced to share overnight accommodation comes from Frolenko; the main narrative of Chaikovsky in America from Hecht and Yarmolinsky, the latter of whom quotes Faresov on Malikov’s disenchantment with Cedar Vale. Hoig captures the wild atmosphere of Wichita, while Miner sets out the painful history of the Wichita tribe and the ‘Happy Valley’. The idea that ‘the anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats’ is first articulated by Benjamin Tucker; Foner is the source for the scandalous circumstances of Hayes’ election as president and the terrible treatment of railroad workers, also in Stowell; d’Eramo for the military operations that saw soldiers deployed from ‘redskins’ to ‘reds’. Adamic and Schveirov throw light on the violent world of labour relations, Mackay on the Pinkerton Agency’s involvement in it.
7 Propaganda by Deed
Concerning both Jogand-Pages (aka Taxil) and Elisée Reclus the APP files for this period are revealing. In the case of the hoaxer, his scurrilous journalism, frauds and sale of aphrodisiac pills are all noted, along with the anti-Catholic sentiments he shared with Garibaldi in an extraordinary exchange of letters that refer to the priesthood as ‘black crocodiles’. In the case of Reclus, whose book La Terre had laid out his theory of the existence of a single landmass in the Jurassic period, the informer who progresses from describing him as a ‘dreamer’ to ‘most active’ appears to be Oscar Testut. However, it is hard to imagine how a man described by Christiansen as writing a book that claimed the Commune was a form of red Freemasonry with tentacles across the Continent could have gained Reclus’ trust. Again, Miller and Kropotkin’s own writings provide much of the detail of his life, but Cahm is the source for his claims to scientific socialism, and the anti-intellectualism that temporarily divided him and Reclus. Cahm’s work has also informed my understanding of the theoretical debates at the congresses of the period, though others too deserve much credit here: Jensen for his exploration of the idea and practice of ‘propaganda by deed’, Fleming for her insights into Guillaume’s resistance to the ‘distressing ambiguities’ of the term ‘anarchist’, and Taratuta on the attendance at Ghent of Costa as representative of the imprisoned Matese group. Kropotkin’s brief presence at the congress under the name ‘Levashev’ is traced from the AGR files, which also shed light on the true status of his ‘marriage’ to Sarah Rabinaria. Haekel’s eugenicist interests are discussed by Pick, his anti-Semitic nationalism by Weindling; the obsequies for Bakunin are from Ravindranathan. L
iubatovich, quoted by Eyel, testifies to Kravchinsky’s tutorship in coquetry in a letter to Anna Epstein; regrettably, Siljak’s biography of Zasulich, Angel of Vengeance, was not published in time to be consulted, nor was Matthias’ Im Geruch eines Bombenwerfers concerning Johann Most. Trautmann is my main source for the life of Most, along with his own Memoiren, his book Die Bastille am Plotzensee, and articles in Freiheit, while his comments concerning Reclus are taken from Ramus, in Ishill. My sense of the pressure brought to bear on Switzerland by her neighbours derives from Vuilleumier; of anarchist influence on the Egyptian nationalist movement from Vatikiotis and Un Vecchio; and of the curious origins of the financing of the Suez Canal from Rykwert. Lee offers an excellent critique of The Begum’s Millions, though I give more weight to Grousset’s role in the novel’s composition, while the social references examined by Chesneaux too are of interest.
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