Read Online The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror by John Merriman - Free Book Online
Authors: John Merriman
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Philadelphia—a site Marx had selected because he knew that European anarchists could not afford the passage across the Atlantic. "Let us not become the leaders of a new religion," Bakunin warned his rival, not long before Bakunin died that same year. The Russian who once said that to be a true revolutionary, one had to have the devil in the flesh, continued to influence the development of anarchism from the grave, above all in Spain and Italy. In France, the break between anarchists and socialists became final in 1881. The anarchists defiantly went their own way, rejecting electoral politics because they saw it as a means of propping up the bourgeois state. They adopted the black flag as their symbol and in France rejected the "Marseillaise," which represented the bourgeois republic.
A different kind of anarchist led the charge after Bakunin's death. Peter Kropotkin was a geographer and a prince, the son of a Russian army officer of the nobility. Convicted of sedition because he had written a manifesto describing the structure of a future anarchist society, Kropotkin spent two years in prison before escaping Russia in 1876. After first going to London, he spent time living in Switzerland in the Jura Mountains, where watchmakers seemed to live in perfect harmony without the intrusion of the state. Moreover, Switzerland was federalist, and the original home of the Red Cross, the kind of voluntary association that the anarchists believed would spontaneously emerge following the destruction of the state. Kropotkin became convinced that local organizations were both a means to a better life and an end in themselves, infused with the morality of individuals left to their own devices. In the end, ownership of property would become superfluous: everyone would have enough to get along. This was the basis of Kropotkin's anarchist communism. (Proudhon, on the other hand, believed that the revolution would not eliminate all private property.) Kropotkin's optimism was contagious, respect for him enormous, even among those who did not agree with him, and his influence, like his vision, was international. The British writer Oscar Wilde once said that Kropotkin lived one of the only two perfect lives he had ever seen.
How was the revolution to be made? Bakunin believed that the rebellious passion of the peasants would bring about the revolution. Kropotkin believed in the necessity of a vanguard of heroic anarchists who would spread the word and lead the downtrodden masses toward revolution. In
Catechism of the Revolutionary
(1869), the Russian nihilist Sergei Nechaev described the revolutionary as "a doomed man," without even an identity: "he has no personal interests, no affairs, no sentiments, attachments, property, not even a name of his own. Everything in him is absorbed by one exclusive interest, one thought, one passion—the revolution ... To him whatever aids the triumph of the revolution is ethical; all that hinders it is unethical and criminal." Although he was not an anarchist, Nechaev helped shape the future image of the anarchist, anonymously putting together his bombs and depositing them before disappearing into the night. Nechaev founded a terrorist organization: People's Will (Narodnaya Volya). But it was not an anarchist group. People's Will was a socialist organization that was hierarchically organized and demanded universal suffrage and political liberties, as well as land for all people. Its members planned the assassinations of state officials and political personages in the hope of increasing public awareness of the plight of the masses. Bakunin, as well as other revolutionaries, eventually turned against Nechaev, concluding that he was a murderer and a disreputable fanatic who could not be trusted.
Martyrdom played an important part in the struggle of these Russian revolutionaries. It became part of revolutionary lore that as Vera Figner, a leader of People's Will, awaited execution (the sentence was commuted at
A different kind of anarchist led the charge after Bakunin's death. Peter Kropotkin was a geographer and a prince, the son of a Russian army officer of the nobility. Convicted of sedition because he had written a manifesto describing the structure of a future anarchist society, Kropotkin spent two years in prison before escaping Russia in 1876. After first going to London, he spent time living in Switzerland in the Jura Mountains, where watchmakers seemed to live in perfect harmony without the intrusion of the state. Moreover, Switzerland was federalist, and the original home of the Red Cross, the kind of voluntary association that the anarchists believed would spontaneously emerge following the destruction of the state. Kropotkin became convinced that local organizations were both a means to a better life and an end in themselves, infused with the morality of individuals left to their own devices. In the end, ownership of property would become superfluous: everyone would have enough to get along. This was the basis of Kropotkin's anarchist communism. (Proudhon, on the other hand, believed that the revolution would not eliminate all private property.) Kropotkin's optimism was contagious, respect for him enormous, even among those who did not agree with him, and his influence, like his vision, was international. The British writer Oscar Wilde once said that Kropotkin lived one of the only two perfect lives he had ever seen.
How was the revolution to be made? Bakunin believed that the rebellious passion of the peasants would bring about the revolution. Kropotkin believed in the necessity of a vanguard of heroic anarchists who would spread the word and lead the downtrodden masses toward revolution. In
Catechism of the Revolutionary
(1869), the Russian nihilist Sergei Nechaev described the revolutionary as "a doomed man," without even an identity: "he has no personal interests, no affairs, no sentiments, attachments, property, not even a name of his own. Everything in him is absorbed by one exclusive interest, one thought, one passion—the revolution ... To him whatever aids the triumph of the revolution is ethical; all that hinders it is unethical and criminal." Although he was not an anarchist, Nechaev helped shape the future image of the anarchist, anonymously putting together his bombs and depositing them before disappearing into the night. Nechaev founded a terrorist organization: People's Will (Narodnaya Volya). But it was not an anarchist group. People's Will was a socialist organization that was hierarchically organized and demanded universal suffrage and political liberties, as well as land for all people. Its members planned the assassinations of state officials and political personages in the hope of increasing public awareness of the plight of the masses. Bakunin, as well as other revolutionaries, eventually turned against Nechaev, concluding that he was a murderer and a disreputable fanatic who could not be trusted.
Martyrdom played an important part in the struggle of these Russian revolutionaries. It became part of revolutionary lore that as Vera Figner, a leader of People's Will, awaited execution (the sentence was commuted at
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