The World That Never Was (94 page)

23
Agents Unmasked

The notion that Rachkovsky’s life was saved by Kropotkin in 1900 emerges from Confino’s study of his letters, while the causes of his dismissal from his Paris post, including his antagonism to the tsarina’s favourite ‘Master’ Phillipe Vachot and his maverick press campaign for the ‘League for the Salvation of the Russian Fatherland’, are detailed in
Byloe’s
account of his career, in 1918. Yet the meticulous care with which Rachkovsky had once vetted his agents, dismissing many recommendations from his superiors, is drawn out in Fischer; my sense of the police department at this time is informed by Ruud and Stepanov, Peregudova and Zuckerman, and of its involvement with the extreme right in particular from Lauchlan. Azef’s biography is drawn largely from Rubinstein and Geifman, who disagree substantially on the extent to which he betrayed his police paymasters, with the latter arguing that where possible he remained loyal; on this, bearing in mind the testimony of figures close to Azef, including Savinkov, who Geifman deems less reliable than police sources, I tend to favour Rubinstein. That the anarchists in the West increasingly looked to Russia for encouragement is apparent long before the revolution of 1905, with Most urging the readers of
Freiheit
in 1903 to ‘Let your models be comrades in Russia. Their example glows like an ember in the anthracite of anarchist achievement’: at the time of his death the newspaper that Marx and Engels had predicted would survive only six months was approaching its third decade. For Most, Trautman is the source, for Michel’s last years, Thomas. It is in letters of 1902 to Guillaume that Kropotkin dismisses Marx as ‘A German pamphleteer’; Miller and Woodcock both discuss his eagerness to return to Russia, and Reclus’ regrets about his ‘asthmatic puffs’ are expressed in a letter to his old friend found in his own collected correspondence. I regret that narrative logic prevented a closer consideration of the ironies that clustered around Reclus’ declining years. Among these are the characterisation of him as Kaw-djer in Verne’s
The Survivors of the Jonathan
, which creatively conflates the wreck of the Commune, Reclus as an early guru of South American colonies, and his perceived status as a benign seer: the ‘arch-Druid’ as his friend the educationalist and pioneering urban planner Patrick Geddes described him, while secretly negotiating for none other than Andrew Carnegie, with whom Kropotkin refused all contact, to fund Reclus’ globe. The latter information comes largely from Dunbar, the former from Fleming. Gapon’s activities abroad are illuminated by his APP file, with a sidelight from Madox Ford; Rachkovsky’s near escape when Gapon was entrapped and hanged and Azef’s taunting of his handler come from Gaucher, with information about his renewed career in Russia from Brachev, as well as sources mentioned above. It is Porter who reveals that Special Branch saved Lenin from a lynching as a spy in the East End during one of his five visits to London, Walter who suggests that Kropotkin intervened to secure his release from custody in 1907. The irony that Lenin used the same cover name as Rachkovsky, ‘Richter’, is picked up by R. Henderson while Deacon discusses the revolutionary counter-espionage outfit in the East End, similar perhaps to the ‘Revolutionary Police Department’ set up by Bakai in Paris, who attempted to track down and execute Harting after his exposure. Rubinstein explores the connection between the Okhrana and Lenin’s Bolsheviks, through its agent Malinkovsky, Brackman the recruitment of Stalin, then known as Koba, as an informant by Harting. The sources for the Jury of Honour are substantially covered in the notes for the Prologue. Regarding Harting’s later career, Fischer was useful on surveillance of ports, and Futrell on Harting’s interdiction of arms smuggling, Chaikovsky’s fund-raising for which is found in Budd. The most fascinating detail, however, emerges from AGR, in particular folders SA 126, 32762 and 302: the protection he was accorded by the Belgian Sûreté, and his role in Manchuria during the war against Japan, on the way to which, on board the
Esmeralda
, he targeted the British fishing fleet. The best source for the drama of his exposure, however, on the very day the Versaillais butcher General Gallifet died, are the AN files. Harris sheds light on the phenomenon of the Apache gangs, Porch quotes Jaures on the affront of Russian agents active in Paris. It is in
Misalliance
that one of Shaw’s characters observes that ‘anarchism is a game’.

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

Books and Articles

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Souvenirs d’un préfet de police
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Bertall (pseud.)
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Brissac, duc de
La Duchesse d’Uzès, 1847–1933
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Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Proved Fraud
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Chasing Agents Provocateurs
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My Days and Dreams: Being Autobiographical Notes
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Channing, W. ‘The Mental State of Czolgosz: The Assassin of President McKinley’,
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Cherep-Spiridovich, A. I.
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Under Western Eyes
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Cyon, E. de
Nihilisme et anarchie
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Les Plaisirs de Paris. Guide pratique et illustré
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Dubois, F.
Le Péril anarchiste
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Fawcett, E. D.
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Posle Shlissel’burga
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Ford, F. M.
Return to Yesterday: Reminiscences, 1894–1914
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Ancient Lights and Certain New Reflections: Being the Memories of a Young Man
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Garin, J.
L’Anarchie et les anarchistes
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Garnett, D.
The Golden Echo
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Garnett, O. both ed. Johnson, B. C.
Tea and Anarchy! The Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett, 1890–1893
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Garnett, R.
Constance Garnett: A Heroic Life
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Goldman, E.
My Disillusionment in Russia
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Paris Under Siege, 1870–1871: From the Goncourt Journal
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