The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents

by Alex Butterworth

  24 War and Revolution

  For Malatesta’s detestation of Lloyd George, as for the campaign against his deportation in 1912 and much else that followed, Levy is my main source. Nettlau offers a somewhat partisan account of his various forays back to Italy and his contact with Mussolini, whose praise for the Houndsditch shoot-out and translation of Kropotkin’s memoirs are discussed by Joll in Anarchists, which also contains a fascinating survey of the diverse backgrounds of those who joined the colony of Aiglemont, established by Emile Henry’s brother, Fortune. Malatesta’s rebuke for Kropotkin’s support of the war appeared in the Russian’s old newspaper Freedom in November 1914. Tsuzuki quotes the letter from Kropotkin to Carpenter; it is a bitterly ironic companion piece to that from W. T. Stead only a week before he sailed on the Titanic, held by SCL. Far from vanishing forever, Harting contributed to the Belgian war effort, as AGR 32762 reveals. Miller is the source for the fears Kropotkin expressed over the effect of German victory on Russia and his return in 1917, Fischer for Burtsev’s past employment by Lenin, MacMillan for the Peace Conference, including the concern over anarchists in Geneva and the attempted assassination of Clemenceau. Walter remarks that Kropotkin refused even to stand for the royal toast at the Royal Geographical Society dinners in London, but his approval of the British constitutional arrangement is echoed in the old anarchist encountered by Arthur Ransome on his visit to the anarchist headquarters in St Petersburg in March 1918 who averred that ‘England before the war was an almost perfect expression of an anarchist state’. The cursory account of the October Revolution and the Terror are drawn from Pipes and Figes; the latter refers to Goldenburg’s misplaced belief that the Bolshevik leader was Bakunin’s heir, Chaikovsky’s role in the civil war, the arrest of Kropotkin’s daughter and his angry letter to Lenin. Wilson alludes to the importance of the bread supply in revolution as the one area on which Kropotkin and Lenin could agree, while Merriman quotes the former’s rebuke of the latter’s attack on ‘every honest feeling’. Otherwise, the story of Kropotkin’s sad final days, hoping that the storm will soon pass while working on his Ethics, draws on Miller and more on Woodcock; Wexler describes the visit of Goldman and Berkman, which like that of President Wilson’s envoys is scarcely covered.

  25 Coda

  It was in January 1881 that Michel expressed her transcendent view of anarchism to Le Gaulois. Files in AGR reveal that the Belgian casino owned in later life by Harting was in Blankenberge, where Rochefort had gambled in the early 1890s: the co-owner, perhaps coincidentally, had the same name as the Dutch police official who had been involved in the Ungern-Sternberg case after the Liège bombings, but had kept silent at the trial. Even in 1927, the director of the police judiciate in Belgium was writing the barefaced lie to the procureur of the French Republic that his organisation held no file on Harting. Carey alludes to Hitler’s admiration for Kock; Hagemeister questions the widely propounded account of Rachkovsky’s role in authoring the Protocols, but does not dismiss it.

  Select Bibliography

  PRIMARY

  Archives

  AN Archives Nationales, Paris

  AGR Archives Générales du Royaume, Brussels

  APP Archives of the Prefecture of Police, Paris

  GARF State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow

  HI Hoover Institute, Stanford University

  IISH International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam

  SCL Sheffield City Library

  TNA The National Archives, Kew, London

  TsGALI Central State Archive of Literature and Art, St Petersburg

  Books and Articles

  Anderson, R. A Defence of the Book of Daniel against the ‘Higher Criticism’: Being the preface to the fifth edition of ‘The Coming Prince’ (London, 1895); The Lighter Side of My Official Life (London, 1910)

  Andrieux, L. Souvenirs d’un préfet de police (Paris, 1885)

  Bax, D. and Morris, W. A Short Account of the Commune of Paris (London, 1886)

  Bernstein, E. My Years of Exile: Reminiscences of a Socialist, trs. Miall, B. (London, 1921)

  Bertall (pseud.) The Communists of Paris 1871. Types-physiognomies-characters (Paris, 1874)

  Brissac, duc de La Duchesse d’Uzès, 1847–1933 (Paris, 1950)

  Brust, H. I Guarded Kings: The Memoirs of a Political Police Officer (London, 1931)

  Burgoyne, A. G. The Homestead Strike of 1892 (Pittsburgh, 1979)

  Burtsev, V. Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Proved Fraud (Paris, 1938); Chasing Agents Provocateurs (Moscow, 1991)

  Carpenter, E. Towards Democracy (London, 1895); et al. Forecasts of the Coming Century (Manchester, 1897); My Days and Dreams: Being Autobiographical Notes (London, 1916)

  Channing, W. ‘The Mental State of Czolgosz: The Assassin of President McKinley’, American Journal of Insanity (Utica, 1902)

  Cherep-Spiridovich, A. I. The Secret World Government; Or, ‘The Hidden Hand’… 100 Historical Mysteries Explained (New York, 1926)

  Conrad, J. The Secret Agent. A simple tale (London, 1907); Under Western Eyes (London, 1911)

  Cyon, E. de Nihilisme et anarchie (Paris, 1892)

  Debans, C. Les Plaisirs de Paris. Guide pratique et illustré (Paris, 1867)

  Dubois, F. Le Péril anarchiste (Paris, 1894)

  Fawcett, E. D. Hartmann the Anarchist (London, 1893)

  Figner, V. Memoirs of a Revolutionist, trs. Daniels, C. and Davidson, G. (New York, 1927); Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 6 vols. (Moscow, 1929); Posle Shlissel’burga (Leningrad, 1925)

  Ford, F. M. Return to Yesterday: Reminiscences, 1894–1914 (London, 1931); Ancient Lights and Certain New Reflections: Being the Memories of a Young Man (London, 1911)

  Garin, J. L’Anarchie et les anarchistes (Paris, 1885)

  Garnett, D. The Golden Echo (London, 1954)

  Garnett, O. both ed. Johnson, B. C. Tea and Anarchy! The Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett, 1890–1893 (London, 1989); Olive and Stepniak: The Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett, 1893–1895 (Birmingham, 1993)

  Garnett, R. Constance Garnett: A Heroic Life (London, 1991)

  Goldman, E. My Disillusionment in Russia (New York, 1923)

  Goncourt, J. and E. Paris Under Siege, 1870–1871: From the Goncourt Journal, ed. Becker, G. J. (London, 1969)

  Goron, M. F. Les Mémoires de M. Goron, ancien chef de la Sûreté, 4 vols. (Paris 1896, 1897)

  Griffith, G. The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror (London, 1893)

  Grousset, P. L’Affaire Dreyfus et ses ressorts secrets (Paris, 1899)

  Guillaume, J. L’Internationale. Documents et souvenirs, 1864–1878 (Paris, 1905)

  Hamon, A. La Psychologie de l’anarchiste-socialiste (Paris, 1895)

  Hansen, J. L’Alliance Franco-Russe (Paris, 1897); Ambassade à Paris du Baron de Mohrenheim (Paris, 1907)

  Hart, W. C. Confessions of an Anarchist (London, 1906)

  Hodgson, W. E. A Night with a Nihilist (Fife, 1886)

  Hugo, V. Carnets intimes, 1870–1871 (Paris, 1953)

  Hyndman, H. A Commune for London (London, 1887)

  Jefferies, R. After London, or Wild England (Oxford, 1980)

  Kennan, G. Siberia and the Exile System (New York, 1891)

  Korolenko, V. Bez yazyka – Matvei Lozinskii (Moscow, 1895)

  Kropotkin, A. Petr i Aleksandr Kropotkiny. Perepiska, ed. Lebedev, N. (Leningrad, 1932)

  Kropotkin, P. La Conquête du pain, preface by Reclus, E., third edition (Paris, 1892); Fields, Factories and Workshops (London, 1899); Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (London, 1902); The Great French Revolution (London, 1909); Ethics, ed. Lebedev, N. (Moscow, 1922); Correspondence (Moscow, 1932); Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, ed. Baldwin, R. (New York, 1970); Selected Writings of P. A. Kropotkin, ed. Martin, M. A. (Cambridge, Mass., 1970); Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York, 1971); The Essential Kropotkin, ed. Capouya, E. and Tompkins, K. (New York, 1975)

  Lane, J. An Anti-statist Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, 1985)r />
  Le Bon, G. The Crowd: A study of the popular mind (Marietta, 1982)

  Lenin, V. ‘Lessons of the Commune’, Zagranichnaya Gazeta (Foreign Gazette), 2, 23 March 1908; ‘Street Fighting (The Advice of a General of the Commune)’, Forward!, 11, 23 March 1905

  Littlechild, J. G. The Reminiscences of Chief Inspector Littlechild (London, 1894)

  Lissagaray, P. O. History of the Commune of 1871 (London, 1886)

  Lombroso, C. Les Anarchistes (Paris, 1897)

  Mace, G. P. La Police parisienne, aventuriers de génie (Paris, 1884)

  Machtet, G. A. Preriia i pionery (Moscow, 1986)

  Mackay, J. H. The Anarchists (Boston, 1891)

  Malatesta, E. ‘Pietro Kropotkin – ricordi e critiche di un vecchio amico’, Studi Sociali, April 1931; ‘Kropotkin, Malatesta e il congresso internazionale socialista rivoluzionario di Londra di 1881’, ibid., April 1934

  Malato, C. Les Joyeusetés de l’exil (Paris, 1897)

  Marx, K. and Engels, F. Collected Works, 47 vols. (Moscow and London, since 1975); Selected Letters: The Personal Correspondence, 1844–1877 (Boston, 1981)

  McMillan, M. The Life of Rachel McMillan (London, 1927)

  Meredith, I. A Girl Among the Anarchists (London, 1903)

  Michel, L. Les Microbes humains (Paris, 1886); Le Monde nouveau (Paris, 1888); Mémoires de Louise Michel, écrits par elle-meme (Paris, 1886); ‘Je vous écris de ma nuit’: Correspondance générale de Louise Michel, ed. Gauthier, X. (Paris, 1999); Souvenirs et aventures de ma vie (Paris, 1983); La Commune (Paris, 1898)

  Mirbeau, O. and Grave, J. Correspondance (Paris, 1994)

  Morris, W. Chants for Socialists (London, 1885); News from Nowhere (London, 1891); Letters of William Morris to his Family and Friends, ed. Henderson, P. (London, 1950); The Collected Letters of William Morris, ed. Kelvin, N., 4 vols. (New York, 1984–1996); Journalism: Contribution to Commonweal, 1885–1890 (Bristol, 1996); The Collected Works of William Morris, 24 vols. (London, 1910–1915, reprinted 1966)

  Most, J. The Science of Revolutionary Warfare (New York, 1885); The God Pestilence (New York, 1883)

  Nettlau, M. A Short History of Anarchism, trs. Pilat, I. (London, 1996); Errico Malatesta: The Biography of an Anarchist (New York, 1924)

  Nicoll, D. V. Life in the English Prisons: The Walsall Anarchists (London, 1894); The Greenwich Mystery (Sheffield, 1897)

  Nordau, M. The Conventional Lies of Our Civilization (London, 1895); Degeneration (London, 1895)

  Pain, O. Henri Rochefort (Paris, 1879)

  Paleologue, M. An Ambassador’s Memoirs (Paris, 1923)

  Reclus, E. Evolution et révolution (Geneva, 1880); ‘An Anarchist on Anarchy’, Contemporary Review, May 1884; Correspondance, ed. Dumesnil, L. 3 vols. (Paris, 1911–1925)

  Richards, V. (ed.) Malatesta, Life and Ideas (London, 1965)

  Robida, A. Le Vingtième siècle, la vie électrique (Paris, 1892)

  Rochefort, H. De Nouméa à Newcastle (Australie): récit de son évasion (Paris, 1874); The Adventures of My Life (London, 1896)

  Schaak, M. J. Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe (Chicago, 1888)

  Stead, W. T. The MP for Russia: Reminiscences and Correspondence of Madam Olga Novikova (London, 1909)

  Stepniak, S. Underground Russia: Revolutionary Profiles and Sketches from Life (London, 1883); Russia Under the Tsars (London, 1885); ‘What Americans Can Do for Russia’, North American Review, 153, November 1891, pp. 596–609; Nihilism As It Is (London, 1894)

  Stieber, W. J. C. E. The Chancellor’s Spy: The Revelations of Bismarck’s Chief of Secret Service (New York, 1980)

  Sweeney, J. At Scotland Yard (London, 1914)

  Thomson, B. The Story of Scotland Yard (London, 1935)

  Webster, N. World Revolution: The Plot Against Civilisation (London, 1921)

  Wilde, O. The Soul of a Man Under Socialism (London, 1891)

  Yarros, V. Anarchism: Its Aims and Methods (Boston, 1887)

  Zola, E. L’Assommoir (Paris, 1877); Paris, trs. Vizetelly, E. A. (London, 1898)

  Periodicals

  Byloe (Paris, 1909; St Petersburg, 1917); Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung; Commonweal; Le Cri du peuple; Daily Graphic; Le Décadent; L’Echo de Paris; L’Eclair; Freiheit; Freedom; Le Figaro; Le Gaulois; Golos minuvshago; Hansard; Harper’s New Monthly Magazine; L’Intransigeant; Le Journal Officiel de la Commune; Justice; Katorga i ssylka; La Libre Parole; Mercure de France; Morning Advertiser; Morning Leader; Na chuzhoi storone; New Review; Obzor; Osvobozhdenie; Pall Mall Gazette; Paterson Labor Standard; Le Pays; Le Peuple (Liège); Probuzhdenie; Le Révolté (Geneva, 1879–1885; Paris, 1885–1887); La Révolte (Paris, 1887–1894); Reynold’s News; Science; Le Soir; Le Temps; Les Temps Nouveaux; New York Times; The Times; Westminster Budget

  SECONDARY

  Unpublished Dissertations

  Bantman, C. ‘Anarchismes et anarchistes en France et en Grande-Bretagne, 1880–1914: Echanges, représentations, transferts’, PhD thesis, Université de Paris 13, 2007

  Clutterbuck, L. ‘The Progenitors of Terror: Russian Revolutionaries or Extreme Irish Terrorists?’, PhD thesis, University of Portsmouth, 2002

  Dipaola, P. ‘Italian Anarchists in London (1870–1914)’, PhD thesis, University of London, 2004

  Henderson, R. ‘Vladimir Burtsev and the Russian revolutionary emigration: surveillance of foreign political refugees in London, 1891–1905’, PhD thesis, University of London, 2008

  Manfredonia, G. ‘L’individualisme anarchiste en France, 1880–1914’, PhD thesis, IEP de Paris, 1984

  Martinez, P. K. ‘Paris Communard refugees in Britain, 1871–1880’, DPhil thesis, University of Sussex, 1981

  Books and Articles

  Adamic, L. Dynamite: Class Violence in America (New York, 1934)

  Agafonov, V. K. Parisian Secrets of the Tsarist Okhrana (Moscow, 2004)

  Anderson, B. Under Three Flags (London, 2005)

  André, M. S. and Beaufils, C. Papus, la belle époque d’occultisme (Paris, 1995)