Anarchist Portraits

337 Pages·1988·25.857 MB·English

by  Paul Avrich

Anarchist Portraits
PAUL AVRICH
P R I N C E T ON U N I V E R S I TY P R E SS
Copyright © 3988 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Avrich, Paul.
Anarchist portraits.
Includes index.
1. Anarchists—Biography. I. Title.
HX830.A96 1988 335'.83*0922 [B| 88-9889
ISBN 0-691-04753-7 (hardback)
ISBN 0-69 L-00609- L (paperback)
"V.M.Eikhenbaum (Volin): Portrait of a Russian Anarchist" appears
in Imperial Russia, 1700-1917: Stale, Society, Opposition,
edited by Ezra Mendelsohn and Marshall S. Shatz. © 1988 by
Northern Illinois University Press. Used By
permission of the publisher.
7 9 1 0 86
In Memory of Ahrne Thorne
1904—1985

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Preface xi
PART I : RUSSIA
One. The Legacy of Bakunin 5
Two. Bakunin and the United States 16
Three. Bakunin and Nechaev 32
Four. Kropotkin's Ethical Anarchism 53
Five. Kropotkin in America 79
Six. Stormy Petrel: Anatoli Zhelezniakov 107
Seven. Nestor Makhno: The Man and the Myth in
Eight. V. M. Eikhenbaum (Volin): The Man and His Book 125
PART II : AMERICA
Nine. Proudhon and America 137
Ten. Benjamin Tucker and His Daughter 144
Eleven. C. W. Mowbray: A British Anarchist in America 153
Twelve. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Italian Anarchist Background 162
Thirteen. Jewish Anarchism in the United States 176
Fourteen. Alexander Berkman: A Sketch 200
Fifteen. Ricardo Flores Magon in Prison 208
Sixteen. Mollie Steimer: An Anarchist Life 214
vii
CONTENTS
PART III : EUROPE AND THE WORLD
Seventeen. The Paris Commune and Its Legacy 229
Eighteen. Paul Brousse: The Possibilist Anarchist 240
Nineteen. The Martyrdom of Gustav Landauer 247
Twenty. Brazilian Anarchists 255
Twenty-one. An Australian Anarchist: J. W. Fleming 260
Notes 269
Index 303
vm
Illustrations
(following page 80)
Michael Bakunin (Library of Congress)
Peter Kropotkin (Library of Congress)
William B. Greene (Labadie Collection, University of Michigan)
Nestor Makhno, around 1920 (Library of Congress)
Anatoli Zhelezniakov, around 1917 (Library of Congress)
Benjamin R. Tucker, Boston, around 1887 (Labadie Collection,
University of Michigan)
Benjamin R. Tucker, Pearl Johnson Tucker, and Oriole Tucker, Monaco,
June 1, 1914 (courtesy of David Sachs)
Luigi Galleani (courtesy of Sebastiano Magliocca)
Sixtieth anniversary banquet of Fraye Arbeter Shtime, New York, 1950
(Bund Archives, New York)
Jewish anarchists: M. Spanier and S. Yanovsky, 1910 (Bund Archives,
New York)
Alexander Berkman addressing May First rally, Union Square, New
York, 1908 (University of California, Riverside)
Emma Goldman delivering eulogy at funeral of Peter Kropotkin,
Moscow, February 13, 1911; Berkman, in white scarf and glasses, is
standing in front of her (courtesy of Ida and Reuben Radosh)
Alexander Berkman in Paris, around 1927, photograph by Senya
Fleshin; note picture of Emma Goldman on wall (International Institute
of Social History, Amsterdam)
ILLUSTRATIONS
Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magon (International Institute of Social
History, Amsterdam)
Mollie Steimer, around 1918 (courtesy of Hilda Adel)
Nestor Makhno and Alexander Berkman, Paris, arounti 192.7
(International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam)
Gustav Landauer, around 19:1:7 (Library of Congress)
The Frayhayt Group, New York, 1918; includes Hyman Lachowsky
(seated, third from left), Jacob Schwartz (standing, top, second from left),
and Jacob Abrams (seated, right of center, mouth and chin obscured)
(courtesy of Hilda Adel, in picture, seated, third from right, behind
newspaper)
Senya Fleshin, Volin, and Mollie Steimer, Paris, around 1926
(International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam)
Preface
"THE NEW LEFT today," proclaimed a libertarian broadsheet in
1970, "comes upon Anarchy like Schliemann uncovering Troy." Until
the Vietnam War, anarchism had seemed a moribund and half-forgot-
ten movement. Since the defeat of the Spanish Revolution of the
1930s, its groups had been scattered and ineffectual, its membership
shrinking, its literature drying up. Some historians, indeed, had begun
to write the movement's epitaph, when the social ferment of the 1960s
and 1970s saw it gain a new lease on life. Anarchist groups revived
and multiplied, their adherents taking part in many forms of social
activity, from the campaigns for racial equality and nuclear disarma-
ment to resistance to the draft and the war. New anarchist journals
made their appearance, as well as pamphlets, books, and manifestoes,
which provided a fundamental criticism of state power and questioned
the premises of virtually all other schools of political thought.
In the wake of this activity came a spate of scholarly works on an-
archist themes—histories, biographies, anthologies, bibliographies—
of which the essays in the present volume form a part. Written over a
twenty-year period, they focus chiefly on Russia and the United States,
my primary areas of specialization, although, anarchism being an in-
ternational movement with contacts all over the globe, other countries
are also included, ranging from Germany and France to Australia and
Brazil. One of the longest essays ("Jewish Anarchism in the United
States") was written specifically for this collection. The rest have been
revised, expanded, and brought up to date, so extensively in some
cases as to constitute new texts.
As in my previous writing on anarchist history, my approach has
xi