The World That Never Was (91 page)

11
The Holy Brotherhood

‘From above a hidden hand pushes the masses of people to a great crime’ wrote Simon Dubrow, the historian of the Jewish people, to the government-appointed Pahlen Committee in 1883. The question of whose the hand was behind the pogroms – and it existed – is a vexed one. Most have blamed reactionary elements, though Alexander III himself thought them ‘the work of anarchists’
(Russkii Evrei
, 12 May 1881) and there was indeed anti-Semitism within the People’s Will, and even more a desire to exploit the chaos to revolutionary ends; Poliakov traces, in nascent form, the correlation between anti-Semitism and those who rejected modern life, as vegetarians, anti-vivisectionists and back-to-nature cultists. Klier presents the most persuasive argument, for genuinely spontaneous violence, which Plehve sent urgent telegrams in an attempt to quell; nevertheless, Berk’s suggestion that many stationmasters on the railway were members of the Holy Brotherhood identifies a possible mechanism for the persistent spread of the pogroms. Peregudova presents her findings from the GARF archive, F. 1766.OP.1.D.1–5za (1881–1883) concerning the Brotherhood and offers a useful introduction to it, though it is quite thoroughly examined by Talerov and by Lukashevich who maps the Brotherhood’s structure, alludes to Tchaikovsky’s involvement and considers Sudeikin’s criticisms of it. ‘Sviashchennaia druzhina (Pis’mo v redaktsiiu)’ was Kropotkin’s insurance, to be disclosed by
The Times
should any ill fate befall him. An entry in the APP file on Loris-Melikov, BA 1162, for June 1881 makes clear the scorn in which the Brotherhood was held throughout western Europe. Marx and Engels, in the preface to the 1882 Russian edition of
The Communist Manifesto
, refer to the new tsar as ‘a prisoner of war of the revolution’, while in Russia he was known simply as the ‘Gatchina prisoner’; ‘K biografii Aleksandra III’ in
Byloe
, however, reveals his letters of 1885 demanding that the military follow his orders to slacken restrictive security around him. Footman is among the sources for Kibalchich’s pleas for scientific validation for his rocket design. Pipes is the source for much of Degaev’s double-dealing, Tidmarsh for Sudeikin’s intended power grab, Brachev for his engagement with the Holy Brotherhood and recruitment of Rachkovsky, and ‘Degaevshchina’ in
Byloe
, April 1906, for the post-mortem after his murder. Lemke examines Sudeikin’s operational innovations, which contributed to the capture of Figner, and considers Semiakin’s report that compared the Paris office unfavourably with the activities of the consuls in Vienna and Berlin; the career of Korvin-Krukovsky is largely reconstructed from his APP file, BA 881. The scene of Rachkovsky’s arrival in Paris is imagined, referencing fumigators described in Pemble; Kantor reveals Duclerc’s opening of police files on the émigrés to Zhukov, presumably including APP BA 196, which identifies the flat of the author L’Isle Adam as a focal point for those planning attacks in Russia. Zvoliansky’s support of Rachkovsky and the recruitment of Hekkelman draws on Agafonov and Fischer, who pinpoints the student friendship between Hekkelman and Burtsev that the latter in
Chasing Agents Provocateurs
appears eager to obscure. Daly reveals the Holy Brotherhood’s previous employment of Bint, from the Barlat Brigade, while Kennan suggests that Juliette Adam’s St Petersburg visit in January 1882 included private dinners with Paul Demidov, a prime funder of the Brotherhood. Rachkovsky’s polite dismissal of de Mohrenheim’s interference is taken from Svatikov, his letter to Fragnon quoted by Johnson. Yarmolinsky and Biriukov are the source for Frey in Russia, Frey’s letter of 2 July 1886 for his lobbying of Kropotkin and Kravchinsky in London on the ‘religion of Humanity’.

12
A Great News Tide

Martinez is the source for Hyndman’s visit to the Commune, together with a young Conservative barrister who found ‘much in it to deserve… the admiration of an intelligent and practical statesman’, Hulse for his decision to found the Democratic Federation to ‘undertake the propaganda that Marx and Engels were neglecting in England’. It was Hulse’s prismatic account of the lives of five diverse socialists in England – Kropotkin, Morris and Kravchinsky among them – that helped crystallise the structure of this book, as well as furnishing much pertinent detail concerning the relationships between them. It is primarily Tsuzuki’s account of Carpenter’s life that informed his appearances, in combination with research in SCL, and Rowbotham’s earlier writings: sadly, her magisterial biography of Carpenter was published too late to figure in my research. Noteworthy in the appendix of Carpenter’s
My Days and Dreams
, the foremost of his own works to be used, is his explanation that his opposition strength of conviction stemmed from being born at what he regarded as the zenith of commercialism. Reclus’ warning against withdrawal to the life of the small community is found in ‘An Anarchist on Anarchy’; Rykwert discusses the irony that although Ruskin’s books had a wide readership, they failed to rouse the British middle class to social action; while Kinna discusses how Morris’ purpose in 1883 was ‘to reconcile Marx with Ruskin’. Her work together with that of Thompson and, above all, McCarthy’s masterful biography of Morris have informed my sense of the origins and development of his socialism, with Morris’ own
How I Became a Socialist
and
Collected Letters
the obvious autobiographical point of reference. For a grass-roots perspective on the tensions in the movement, the ‘bloodthirsty resolutions’ that had earlier concerned Scheu and the part played by Lane in the schism, Quail is once again invaluable, as is Shipley for Kitz’s sense of the socialist tradition and his relationship with Morris. In many respects, Kravchinsky remained something of a mystery even to his close friends, Kropotkin reflecting in the commemorative pamphlet
Vospominaniia o Kravchinskom
of 1907, ‘We know about the external occurrences in his life, we possess his works, but we know too little about his interior life: it slips away from us.’ BA 1133 and 196 in the APP reveal the extent of confusion at this time in France over his true identity, something which Olga Novikoff attempted to resolve in Britain by the insinuations about the murderer of General Mezentsev in her
Pall Mall Gazette
article of July 1886. Whyte considers her role in British life and the propagandist value of her brother’s death; Szamuely, British attitudes to Russia more generally. Hollingworth, Hulse and Senese all contributed to my sense of Kravchinsky’s propaganda strategies and his place in the British socialist movement; the Russian’s use of the words ‘toy revolutionaries’ comes from Shaw, whom Kravchinsky alone could argue into silence, quoted by Senese, Maudsley and intellectual degeneracy are discussed in Pick, while Beaumont’s survey of British utopian writing has been of great assistance.

13
The Making of the Martyrs

The far-flung network of imperial German police agents informed Berlin, according to Hohne, that Most ‘promises to kill people of property and position and that’s why he is popular’. From the arrival of the ‘king-killer’, through his tour speaking to audiences that included, by
Freiheit
‘s reckoning, 5,000 in the Cooper’s Union Great Hall, to his evasive manoeuvres after Haymarket, Most’s American career is closely tracked by Trautmann. Lingg’s association with Reinsdorf and others that upstaged Most, is revealed by the
Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung
of 30 April 1885. Three historians have provided the bulk of the information deployed in the chapter after the economic and social conditions of Chicago, of which Green’s well-contextualised account of the bombing and martyrdom of the convicted men is the most recent. Nelson and d’Eramo both discuss the parties for the Commune and the Dawn of Liberty: the former explores the organisation of the socialists and the basement paramilitaries; the latter is illuminating on the addresses at Pittsburgh in 1883, the subject of the Red Squads, the industrialists’ purchase of a Gatling gun and, latterly, the planting of bombs at Chicago’s anarchist headquarters in the wake of the Haymarket debacle. Victor Dave’s torn letter of resignation from the Socialist League was found in file 1205/1 at the IISH, a tangible artefact of the ‘Bruderkrieg’ explored by Carlson, who considers the intrigues of the elusive figure of Reuss, and Neve’s smuggling operations, and Quail, who additionally discusses Lane’s organisational success, Morris’ excitement at the idea of imminent revolution, and Engels’ concern about the anarchists of the Socialist League. Abraham Cahan wrote of Eleanor Marx’s ‘brilliant words’ to a gathering of 3,000 in New York in protest against the persecution of the Haymarket Martyrs, Oliver of the previous South Place meeting she addressed, alongside Kravchinsky and Kropotkin.

14
Decadence and Degeneration

The sentiment unleashed at Hugo’s funeral is described by Robb, who also examines the myth surrounding the republican author, of whom Zola wrote that he had ‘become a religion in French letters, by which I mean a sort of police force for maintaining order’; Shattuck quotes Barrès on the erotic sublimation of grief, and his work informs my sense of much about Paris during the period. Bullard discusses the memories and myths of the savagery at Satory that haunted the Communards. Freud’s letters convey his impression of the uncanny city; Pick surveys the state of French psychiatry, considering Charcot’s ideas of visual derangement as a symptom of mental degeneracy, from which he thought the ‘roaring colourists’ of post-Impressionism, as Nordau refers to them, might be suffering. Anderson, B. describes the second exhibition of the Salon des Indépendants, at which Seurat and Signac burst upon the scene, while Roslak’s sensitive study of Signac traces a thread through artistic and anarchistic theory and Reclus’ understanding of the world as a geographer; Hutton puts their work in a social and cultural context. I am gratified to find my own interpretation of
La Grande Jatte
roughly coincides with that of Robert Hughes. While promoting the pair of artists, Félix Fénéon found time to edit the mess of Rimbaud’s extraordinary poems into the exquisite shape of
Illuminations
, as I discovered in Halperin’s biography. The ballad to Louise Michel by the young poet’s lover, Verlaine, which appeared in
Le Décadent
in December 1886, compares her to Joan of Arc and says she is ‘far’ from Leo Taxil. Expelled from the Freemasons five years earlier for publishing the salacious
Secret Love Life of Pope Pius IX
, Taxil aka Jogand-Pages had recently rediscovered Catholicism; the claim in the APP report of 25 July 1885 that ‘nobody, absolutely nobody believes in the sincerity of this conversion’ was misguided, as the coming decade would amply prove. On the demi-monde of nightclubs and cults, Shattuck, Sonn, Casselle and Varias all offer fascinating detail, the last quoting Crueul’s ‘a thing to be mocked’; Costello describes the Robida projection shows and Jouan explores his images; Debans cites the Russian’s desire to annex Paris; Brachev, in
Foreign Secret Service
, quotes Encausse on Rachkovsky’s liking for Parisian girls. André unpacks the tangled world of mysticism and details Encausse’s other life as Charcot’s hypnotist; Osterrieder makes the links between d’Alveydre, Danish royalty, the Pandit and the conspiracy with the maharajah. The story of the Boulanger phenomenon is derived from many sources, but best diagnosed by Gildea as what happened when the ‘republican concentration’ broke down. The general’s interest in the Decazeville miners comes from Barrows, that of Rochefort in those at Anzin and in the soldiers sent to Tonkin from Williams, who also recounts the marquis’ suspicious ability to predict the steps to a coming conflict with Bismarck, and his demands for a dictatorship; the gossip about Pain and the Mahdi is from Rochefort’s
Adventures
. Boulanger’s friend, Captain Hippolyte Barthélemy, published
Avant La Bataille
at the time of the Schnaebele Incident, insisting that any rapprochement with Germany be through force of arms. Reclus, in his letters to Groess, expected war, while one agent’s report in APP BA 75 claims he was preparing ‘a seditious movement…to thwart the efforts of the French armies’; at the same time, Engels was warning Germany that any war would draw in the continent, cause destruction equal to the Thirty Years War and ‘be followed by the collapse of countless European states and the disappearance of dozens of monarchies’. Rochefort in his
Adventures
blamed the whole incident on ‘German financial Jewry’ yet, as Williams remarks, took Jewish money for the Boulangist campaign. Kennan reveals General Bogdanovich’s attempt to orchestrate a Franco-Russian alliance as early as January 1887. Mace expresses his frustration with the organisation of the police in his memoirs, while Stead describes its factionalism and inefficiency, and Longoni the waiting room. Agafonov, Vakhrushev and Zuckerman are among the sources for Rachkovsky’s Okhrana operation in Paris, Gaucher for the Moscow disguise wardrobe, and
Byloe
of July 1917 for the details of the printing-press raid. The APP file on de Mohrenheim records France’s anxieties about his movements,
Le Temps
for 2 December 1887 the packed meeting at Salle Favie addressed by Michel, and the dynamite threats made there. Barrows quotes the conservative Mazade on the ‘decisive crisis’; she also considers how psychologists of crowd activity such as Taine and Le Bon analysed the Boulanger phenomenon and socialist protests. The letters written by Michel after her shooting are published in the collection
Je vous écris de ma nuit
.