My Anarchist Pilgrimage

A quiet 2011

2011-12-30T15:02:00.001-08:00

I've been reminded that there's eff all happening on this blog.
But the latest thing I did links - a tracing of some Luddite history not too far from my birthplace.
Nonetheless, the pilgrimage still needs to be stuck together and written, and I will have another stab in January.

Is the Belarus Chapter finished?

2011-02-14T06:16:00.000-08:00

I rushed to get the Belarus chapter ready for the meal fundraiser, but my favourite copier had a problem with his colour machine and so it's still in cut n paste form. And it's not that good. I mean, it's okay, but I kind've imagined it would make more sense, and have more flow, and make a bit more care to it and its not: it's just my usual rushed standard. Like the sample pages below.

So I'll leave it in a sleave and decide later whether or not to redo bits of it. The notebook entries (not pictured) are still the best, so it's just the 'adding bits on' that I need to improve. I'll see how the Germany chapter goes (redrawing it next week).

Belarus Chapter Launch!

2011-01-24T04:30:00.000-08:00

That title makes it sound very grand, doesn't it! Actually it's just the first 12 pages which I will print ready for the following low-key event.

Reading up on Belarus was getting me depressed, and the best antidote to that is to take action! If only a little social action. So my housemate & me are inviting you round for a bit of food and drink and whatever Belarussian music we can find. You'll also get a copy of the first bit of the zine, and you'll help me out by letting me share something of the situation for activists and idealists in Belarus.
I am also hopeful of doing something wonderful and creative in collaboration with the DIY film festival in Minsk in July.

2011-01-17T05:22:00.000-08:00

Video here of the lawyer for various attacked, imprisoned & murdered antifascists, with translation below. He himself has also since been murdered. There were flowers for him, and the young woman killed with him, when I was in Moscow.

A good blog with updates on recent murders of journalists, arrests of teenagers and environmental protesters, here.

Missed my first deadline, but fear not.

2011-01-16T10:03:00.001-08:00

I find I'm doing more reading than page-making. Like a longer review of Shtirbul's Russian-language book on the Siberian anarchist uprising:

"From a strictly military viewpoint, the anarchist contribution to the fight against the Whites was indispensable. This fact may explain why the eradication of anarchism as planned by Moscow had some difficulty getting under way in Siberia as the local Bolsheviks looked upon the anarchists primarily as decent revolutionaries.

The grave political economic and social crisis by which Siberia was hit in 1920 as it emerged from the war against the Whites was to have an impact on the CP in Siberia. Shtirbul does not place enough stress on the leninist “diktat from on high”. However, the appointment of outside leaders to the region and the appointment of former tsarist officers to command of the army (Vol. 2, p. 68) fully endorse the Siberian libertarians’ analysis of Bolshevik manipulation and the crucial need for the workers themselves to retain control of the revolution. The example of the IV Army of peasant partisans led by Marmontov provides quite a good illustration of the sensibilities of “genuine” revolutionaries. When commander M. V. Kozyr proposed in late 1919-early 1920 to organise soviet authorities without communists, the CP leadership stood him down and appointed a Bolshevik to replace him. Immediately, a meeting of the garrison passed this resolution: “The soldiers’ revolutionary committees elected by us have no power … No one should dismiss our representatives and replace them with folk who do not know us. We will not countenance that!” (Vol. 2, p. 70). Kozyr himself had stated: “Appoint your best men everywhere, pick the ones who have earned your trust and who understand your needs. Protect them against all who threaten them, even should they do so without a word.” Other clashes pitted the partisans against the CP’s leadership. A report concerning the Altai region and dating from January 1920 noted: ” The peasants had been hoping for ‘regional authorities’. When they ran up against centralised soviet authorities, they were suddenly assailed by mistrust.”

Resistance to the amalgamation of partisan units into the Red Army was organised around commanders like Novoselov, Rogov, Lubkov and Plotnikov in the Altai, Tomsk and Semipalatinsk regions. The anarchists lobbied for the creation of self-managing peasant collectives and for the release of Rogov, which was achieved in April 1920. The first of May that year was marked by a huge anarchist rally in the village of Zhulanikh, 120 kms northwest of Barnaul, at which the speakers paid tribute to the victims of the White terror. A thousand partisans participated and several thousand peasants attended, waving red-and-black banners. Two days later, the uprising came. A band of around 1,000 people mobilised by Novoselov moved that an Altai Anarchist Federation (AAF) be established and Rogov and seven of his commanders were part of this. Their forces swelled to a thousand fighters and received backing from thousands of peasants from the Pritchensk region. During the spring and summer of 1920, Rogov’s uprising spread, according to Shtirbul, thanks to AAF sympathisers within the army, the militia and the Cheka. The anarchist partisans occupied the area northwest of Barnaul plus the towns of Biiski, Kuznetzov and Novonikolayev.

Despite orders issuing from Moscow, the local Bolshevik authorities’ response seems initially to have been to adopt a wait-and-see line, probably fearing that disaffection might spread to other army corps. Once the Red Army did begin its offensive, Rogov’s troops split up into small groups which dispersed into the taiga. In June 19020, Rogov was captured and took his own life. Novoselov carried on the fight up until September 1920 before going into hiding with his partisans. At the same time, Lubkov triggered a fresh uprising in the Tomsk region. His partisans numbered between 2,500 and 3,000 men. Defeated, Lubkov tried to negotiate with the Bolsheviks before disappearing into the taiga himself with a few of his supporters. In January 1921, Novoselov was involved in a further uprising in Zhulianikh. His “peasant Army” numbered between 5,000 and 10,000 fighters. Unlike the earlier uprisings, this one canvassed for anti-communist support, regardless of where it might come from, even from the Whites. But the tide of battle soon turned against it."

But I have enough free time this month to make sure I do get my first 2 'chapters' done before January's out. And I keep thinking of going back to Siberia...

Brighton

2011-01-09T17:09:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to go the Brighton Zinefest on February 19th.

Kropotkin used to live in Brighton, and it turns out his name has been given to a local bus, which I now HAVE to add to my anarchist pilgrimage.

The bus company also tells me "He lived for many years at Chesham Street in Kemp Town and wrote some of his books there. Later he moved to Rottingdean." So maybe I can even find the houses?

Google street view shows us Kropotkin's old street.

A chapter per fortnight (more section planning)

2011-01-06T17:26:00.000-08:00

A new year and time to get cracking.

Rather than see the whole thing as a major undertaking to avoid avoid, I am trying to split it into little chapters which individually are smaller than the average zine (which when I'm not employed, as now, I usually find very easy to do). So I will attempt the easiest of these chapters next week, followed by the next easiest etc...

(amongst the details & dilemmas which follow, if I put P1 that means that bulletpoint is one planned page, P2 two pages etc.. & I have to warn the curious reader that this isn't going to be an interesting post for you, just for me!)

One decision I have made is that each page is going to be A5 landscape.

Chapters 1 & 2 Newcastle to London
- I only have one physical notebook page left from this part of the journey, so it's all to be redone from photos & pre-research.
- I would like to use my old 'wor diary' & 'secret anarchist history' research to add Newcastle links to the political tradition pursued on the journey (eg. Kropotkin's visits to Newcastle, weapons smuggled to the Bolsheviks etc..) but I think I will do this last.
P1 - Notebook page of train down to London plus photo & commentary on fellow passengers
P1 - Toothpaste & diary notes of hosts
Freedom Bookshop - historical intro / murals of Proudhon, Bakunin & Kropotkin / Mutual Aid & bothy zine on the shelves
P2 - The man reading Kropotkin (sketch+photo)
P1 - notebook of St Pancras then over the border

Chapters 3 & 4 Paris to Lyon
PARIS
- Might revisit to get a fuller experience of some locations : most is currently just notes from books
P1 - French Revolution development of anarchist themes by enrages etc.. (need locations)
- Paris as 19th century revolutionary centre of Europe - Blanqui & other traditions
- Visits & Meetings of Herzen, Bakunin, Marx etc..
- 1848+ attempts and recuperation (Louis Napoleon)
- Proudhon : Besancon beginnings; role in 1848; development of ideas (eg. federalism vs electoralism); development of Proudhonian movement; links to Lyons; funeral
P1 - Montmartre cannon episode by Louise Michel
P1 - Vendome Column badsketch & story of pulling it down & photos of being there
- 1871 Commune bloodshed/meaning to Kropotkin/Marx, and link to Emile Henry & terrorists
- Camus & French Resistance quotelinks
LYON
- COLOUR Hotel de Ville photo & explain how the pictured notebooks got lost
- diary 'is that H de V; no that is' & story of Bakunin's imprisonment & escape
- COLOUR flyposters & stencils in streets, + social centre
- plaque & history of 'live fighting or die fighting'
- links to early anarchist internationals
- assassination of president tale
- Kropotkin's imprisonment tale, & reading the Chronicle in prison

Chapters 5 & 6 Switzerland (still to plan)

Chapter 7 Dresden to Berlin [8 or 10 pages]
P1 - 1 Train mistake & early arrival
P1 - 2 YoungBakunin cartoon linked from Paris to Prague
P1 - 3 YoungBakunin cartoon Dresden
P1 - 4 YoungBakunin cartoon Dresden
P1 - 5 YoungBakunin cartoon prisons
p1 - 6 Tower pic & disappointing experience
p1 - 7 Berlin diary
p1 - 8 Street stickers
p2 -9+10 1848 history notes

Chapter 8 Berlin to St Petersburg journey [8 pages]
P1 - 1 diary 4th August
P1 - 2 photo & text - excited start to real journey
P1 - 3 diary about coffee
P1 - 4 Reading war & peace & hiding subversive literature
P1 - 5 COLOUR workmen on station photo
P1 - 6 COLOUR station photo & Belarus info
P1 - 7 diary of realisation alone
P1 - 8 wooden houses photo & Belarus info

Chapter 9 Arrival into St Petersburg
P1 - 1 place of St.P in anarchist history
P1 - 2 diary of 1st day wanderings
P1 - 3 Peter & Paul fortress
P1 - 4 Diary of day 2 including Peter & Paul sketches
P1 - 5 Mosquito cartoon (+arrests & letter)
P1 - 6 Hermitage (winter palace) cartoon
P1 - 7 Hermitage cartoon
P1 - 8 Train & adventure getting out
Also probably :
- more on Decembrists' attempt & execution/exile
- more on Nihilists, P1 communal shop & styles; P1 raids & assassinations
- more on Kropotkin's young life pre-Siberia
- P1 Nevsky Prospekt, memoir accounts & the horseback propagandist story
- Kazansky Cathedral photo with story

Chapter 10 Travelling East, to Kazan
Map of Siberia with Maria Volkonsky comments on places next to mine
Map of gulags
History of Russian expansion/exploitation/destruction of tribes/rivals
Cossacks - Yermak, Bakunin, Tolstoy versions
Train pictures (Isy, Sergei, etc..)
Train & Kazan diary/photos

Chapter 11 Ekaterinburg

Section Plans

2010-12-28T13:16:00.000-08:00

My return to Newcastle and people and more immediate life things meant I didn't get started on the write-up of the anarchist pilgrimage. And now in the break between Christmas and the New Year I'm idly thinking of returning to some of the places I visited to fill in some gaps - the Kropotkin volcano, Bakunin's family estate, black petrograd etc.. But money means that's pretty unlikely.

I have divided the journey write-up into smaller and more manageable sections, and in January I will start with the first of these sections: probably the Poland/Belarus journey and then Germany. So not in order as such, but in an order of manageability.

(One reason I haven't got the zine underway yet is because I built it up into being too big a thing, and I always shy away from big undertakings.)

The sections are (probably):

UK: Newcastle-London

France: Paris-Lyon

Switzerland (big section)

Germany: Dresden-Berlin: 8 pages, half = cartoon of young Bakunin

Belarus-Poland journey: 8 pages

St Petersburg 1

Journey across Russia: Kazan, Ekaterinburg, Decembrist journeys & other map-based intros to anarchist(ish) Russia.

Lake Baikal

Border

Chita

Irkutsk

Moscow

Dmitrov

St Petersburg departure

Finland & exile

Stockholm & Copenhagen

Amsterdam/Hague

Newcastle return & reflections

Each of these sections will be printed separately and bound, possibly by sowing, in such a way that they attach to each other as collections of pages rather than altogether. So I not only have extra reading about Bakunin & Kropotkin's life to do, but also a proper gen up on bookbinding.

Sampler for the Bookfair

2010-10-22T10:18:00.001-07:00

Newcastle upon Tyne

2010-10-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

After a week in Copenhagen, a train journey, an afternoon in Amsterdam and a ferry, I arrived home in Newcastle last week.

It has been 12 weeks of absence, so my thoughts have, since my return, been absorbed in this place that I know so well: the years of experience and adventures, and growing into a different person, and friends who have gone, and things forgotten but still lingering in the places I walk past. All that familiarity and nostalgia and working out what's going on this month and what I want to get involved with.

Gigs, collective endeavours, comics, the outdoors, meetings, agit-prop, groups like the newcastle philosophy group and the bothy association that I want to get back involved with.

(The Bothy Association are meeting the same day as the Bookfair, actualy, so I will have to miss them: I see their work as anarchist in both spirit and in effect. The Newcastle Philosophy Society brochure this autumn also speaks in terms that I rate:)

But for the last 2 days I've just been at home, digging out my old possessions and trying to cram everything into my room. Trying also to throw things out. As part of this I've linked with the Canny Little Library by collectivising some of my books.

I've printed off 2 short runs of zine/comics I made while on my anarchist pilgrimage, but they were not connected to the main aim and spirit of it so I've printed them off mainly to get them out of the way. Today, finally, I am re-focussing on the anarchist pilgrimage idea.

The London Anarchist Bookfair is this Saturday, and I want to have a 'sampler' or introduction ready for it. So right now I'm laying out the front-room table with all my notes, clippings and drawings from my journeys, in order to try and select some representative things to cut n paste and then print off on Friday as an 8-page mini-zine.

Now I am home, this blog will be kept up as a place to put in finished pages or work done for the final zine. I am, however, happily free of full time work now, so I will also be busy doing other zines, activities, and maybe even some actual politics. These will be updated on my main 'zine-it-yourself' blog, and may include a pornographic cartoon about Thomas Spence (a local radical from the 18th century) and a zine of band reviews called 'Opinionated Geordie Monsters'.

Copenhagen Street Art

2010-10-14T17:06:00.000-07:00

Stockholm Street Art

2010-10-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

I took these kind of photos of most places I passed through. But Russia was so barren, that it got quite depressing. Returning to the politically conscious graffiti and stickers and flyposters of the West was WONDERFUL.

Helsinki Street Art

2010-10-14T16:44:00.000-07:00

Losing the plot in Stockholm

2010-10-05T05:23:00.000-07:00

After spending 24 hours doing a comic (for 24 hour comic day) in Helsinki, the anarchist history stuff has kind of fallen out of my head a bit.
I'm off now to look at fanzines here [WHICH WERE NO LONGER THERE, THE OLD ZINE LIBRARY GONE], and then maybe an art gallery, but historical sites? Not sure, I'm just looking forward to heading homewards and keep thinking "I'll do it from the comfort of my room"...

But I'll try check one of these places out.

Bakunin and Stockholm:

"After three years in the underground dungeons of the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul, he spent another four years in the castle of Shlisselburg. It was here that he suffered from scurvy and all his teeth fell out as a result of the appalling diet. He later recounted that he found some relief in mentally re-enacting the legend of Prometheus. His continuing imprisonment in these awful conditions led him to entreat his brother to supply him with poison.

Following the death of Nicholas I, the new Emperor Alexander II personally struck Bakunin's name off the amnesty list. In February 1857 his mother's pleas to the Emperor were finally heeded and he was allowed to go into permanent exile in the western Siberian city of Tomsk. Within a year of arriving in Tomsk, Bakunin married Antonia Kwiatkowska, the daughter of a Polish merchant. He had been teaching her French."

Bakunin met up with his wife in Stockholm after his escape from Siberia.
His wife was called Antonia Kwiatkowska. There is a picture of them together here.

Bakunin wrote to Herzen & Ogareff from Stockholm on 17th August 1863 "I stayed in Sweden and I devoted myself to finding friends sympathetic to our Russian cause, who are ready to struggle with us. My efforts have been rewarded with success. From now on, Stockholm and all of Sweden will be a secure refuge for Russian revolutionary action and immigration. The Russian publicity and propaganda will find here solid footing, supporters and a wealth of resources. And with that nothing could be easier than communicating from Stockholm to St. Petersburg during summer. I learned to like the stalwart men who you can confide in and count on. Thanks to them and to the resources I have found here, I was able to spread throughout Northern Russia (the Arkhangelsk and Olonetzk governments) approximately 7,000 pamphlets of different proclamations"

And he gives his address as Stora Vagutton, which I now need to visit too.
[I TRIED TO FIND IT BUT COULD NOT. I DID, HOWEVER, FIND THE BEST LOOKING ANARCHIST SOCIAL CENTRE THAT I HAVE EVER FOUND]

Leaving Russia

2010-10-02T08:39:00.001-07:00

I was nervous on the train, just because of my slightly off registration form and the subversive literature in my bag, and the stories I had heard of anarchists in Russia. But it was nothing, just a boring journey.

Strange, but as soon as I entered the carriage (actually the platform, thinking about it now), it felt very different to Russia. Finns have very distinctive faces, for a start - several types of face but all very distinct from other countries. (I hope to find a cartoonist who captures them.) And the whispering! Women in Finnish whisper at amazing speed and with no pauses and this created a major sibillant susserance in the carriage, which at first was a very impressive, restrained thing, but then became bloody annoying after a couple of hours because it just never stopped and what on earth could be so exciting to talk about for so long?

Like a chinese water torture, as the saying goes.

As soon as we entered Finland itself the weather changed too, got much colder and with thin lines of hanging white mist 12 foot above the ground, in the leaf layer. Still lakes giving blue deep reflections of the sky and the trees with their leave on the water, and FROST! The first frost I've seen this year (except up in the distance on the mountains of Baikal), it was very exciting.

Arrived knackered in Finland. An extra hour got added to the day, which I'd not anticipated, and this made the journey feel even longer. Last night I was becoming a real pain for Dima because I was so tired, suffering from multiple days of postponed sleep which I never had chance to catch up on. He's so good natured he didn't seem to mind, but if he'd not had that profound russian patience we'd've got narky and ended on tense friendly terms like I used to with my old mate Ben.

I must admit, much as I will miss all the russian things of the last month or more (and looking at peoples' online photos of our time together is really emphasising this), I grinned with pleasure at being back in the western world. Not on principle, but on re-meeting things that I love, and value, and which are REALLY hard to find in Russia. Like comics, and art magazines, and free listings papers and NME-style magazines and gig posters and loads of quasi-bohemian art spaces. Just a border creates this difference, crazy. Political art stickers on lamp posts. People with innocently stupid London-style 'cool' haircuts and new york fashions, but scruffy so there's no stuffiness.

And there are, I have counted so far, 8 different small live music events I could (should) go to tonight. If only I wasn't so tired. And I found out about them by just walking round the streets. You don't find ANYTHING out by just walking around with your eyes open in Russia. And I must say the (customer service type) people I've met have been so much more friendly, chatty, and verbally intelligent than I got used to in Russia. And people stop at traffic lights and zebra crossings, actually they stop with an almost manic obedience, so you feel stressed by all their eyes on you if you walk over a 6foot lane when there's no cars even in sight. A bit repressive.

So I won't follow Kropotkin north, where he went (somewhere, lord knows exactly where) on his escape from Russia. I'll go the sensible, easy, cheap and fast way across the water east to west to Stockholm, and have a happy day bumming about, finding comics, cutting and sticking, and SLEEPING. Oh such a wonder is sleep. If God existed, I would thank him for the blessing. I reckon the odds are 8:1 on me actually making it out to a venue tonight.

Picture of anarchist Russian sailors in Helsinki.

St Petersburg in Autumn

2010-09-30T22:51:00.001-07:00

Hi, it's 2 in the morning and here is a post that I will return to and tidy up when the earth has rotated such that the sun is visible once more from my location.

But for now:

I arrived early in St Petersburg and was met by the lovely thoughtful Dima who got up even earlier to greet me, and had his first and traumatic experience of the commuter hour that every capital city suffers from.

We visited the gardens at Peterhof where naturally tame squirrels, great tits and treecreepers (check) come to eat from your hands. It was lovely. And then the fast boat home which was exciting and worth the tourist money we paid. Great skies, blue and dark grey with light shining through. Water reflecting in silver or deep blue.

(And by great tits I mean birds. Not THAT kind of bird. And anyway, it's more bottoms at Peterhof: I reckon Peter the babyface git First was a bottom man because all the half naked rumptious statues are facing out to the river, with their back ends facing his palace windows, where he would stand with his hand down his pants, or rather have a servant do it for him...)

We met up with Dima number 2 for beers in the evening at a trendy little downstairs spot. I gave him his fanzine and after walking towards home he remembered he'd left it on the table and we went back for it. Which I like, because it gives the paper+ink a history: "this was the fanzine that Dima forgot and ... so on" Dima number 1 was touchngly sad at leaving him.

Next day after an urgently needed sleep in Dima's soft bed I managed to get to Kronstadt to honour the rebellion and last attempt to save the revolution. I had an interesting, unplanned and almost-psychogeographical tour.

(After getting a bus to the island via the northern bridge, which still stands while the southern one is an archipelago of ruins:)

Wandering in ever-widening squares to find anchor square. Discovering it indeed full of anchors. And a public commemoration to those members of humanity who died fighting other human beings in the lost cause of freedom in 1921... The monument offers a sense of public anonymity for their struggles and suffering and dream.

Then I wandered over a footbridge through dangling yellow plane trees, bought a massively overpriced pack of purple pringles in a new flavour, saw a sign in russian with a picture of a boat and a time that was just 10 minutes away. So I wandered up and said "one please" in russian at the counter that I found. Followed a woman onto a boat, and so crossed over to, it turned out, the southern bank of the estuary. There I followed the small crowd onto a bus, which took us only 500 metres or so before everyone got off and I followed them again. Lovely golden sunlight the whole time, and the waters in the breeze. There the crowd dispersed and I saw a rather nice and unanticipated railway station in front of me. So I wandered into its half-shut corridors, found a ticket counter and again uttered those magical words: "zdrastvuytye, adin" (hello, one) and paid what i was asked.

Turns out I was at Oranienbaum, where I had a nice can of irn bru (tastes a bit odd in the plastic out here, so I was chuffed to get an aluminium one) and then I went to sit on the good wooden seats of a local train that I hoped, correctly as it turned out, would end up with me in St Petersburg. Read bits of Dostoyevsky (who goes on about nervous exhaustion and drifting back to consciousness too much) and, when on the arrival platform, got a call on my temporarily working phone asking where i was. "I don't know, some station in Petersburg".

Katja came to meet me. I didn't know what she'd look like, so she told me she was wearing black with a brown hat. I of course was wearing regulation black. A woman in black with a brown hat got off the escalator and smiled, I started to raise my hand in greeting, and so did an older man standing at my elbow. The woman greeted him warmly and they exited left, leaving me feeling a little stupid. I somehow knew what had happened, and waited only a minute before the man returned with some embarrassment (must be the place for blind dates - and there was a pleasant charge to the atmosphere when I was scanning possible katjas earlier, and felt they were all about to say hi- actually i SAY 'pleasant', but i find that kind of ambiguity unbearable).

Anyway, correction sorted, I drank coffee and beer with Katja and a Latvian comrade, and it's probably the first time I've ever used the word comrade in earnest. And all my frivolous experiences are just guilt-inducing when I hear the tales, the danger, the arrests, the knives...

Later, I get lost of course in the night of the south of the city. My phone has been used up in the old Russian style "to tell mother that her son is safely arrived" from latvia. So I just circle and retrace until I find the fire station that I know my way from. And back to a friendly flat. And night night.

Tomorrow it's to Finlandsky station where Kropotkin (not Lenin) made a notable return to Russia (and the anarchists refused to meet him, but the government sent a brass band...)
Then to Schlusselburg, another of the prisons that ravaged Bakunin's body but never touched his spirit. And not just Bakunin, of course.
Then I hope to see the spot where a Nihilist bomb knocked out the Tsar, and I have an anarchist tour guide lined up for the evening!

Last day in Moscow

2010-09-29T01:07:00.000-07:00

It rained, and the city was transformed.
I spent my morning coffee checking out locations on the internet and created a big list of places to try and see.
The two prisons and three monasteries on the list were left out (although I have walked past 2 of these accidentally, and so their stories will still appear in the zine.)

I finally found Kropotkin's grave monument, in the really wonderful Novodevichy cemetery (not convent - a different wall surrounds it...), and I re-visited the Palestine Embassy in Kropotkin alley, which is in what remains of his old aristocratic family's palace. I was still unclear how much of the pillared building was original - it was being renovated etc.. as I was there.

Past Tolstoy's house and the monument to the murdered (to which I added flowers) and down Kropotkin metro to get train tickets from the other side of town.

That done, and pretty wet now (both me and the city), I chose as my final destination the 'House of Anarchy'. This grand mansion is now the Lemkom theatre, with posters outside and performances about to start. At the time it was the merchants' club (important enough for the street itself to be called Club-skaya at one time) and the anarchists occupied it during the heyday of the 1917 events. I sat in a cafe over the street and tried to draw it from a funny angle through the windows, not with any particular success but it WAS peeing it down.

I'm so pleased to have finally left the trail of our renegade aristocrats (Bakunin, Tolstoy, Kropotkin with their mansions) and to the sites of the real bloody struggle of Russia. Of course it all ended badly, Trotsky, Lenin and the other political sadists sent in their secret police and armed lackeys. Some anarchists went underground to fight, some joined the new regime, others escaped. But I don't really know what happened to the rank and file real people of anarchism - just the most internationally famous intellectual types.

Also in Russia, especially, there were certainly 'anarchists' engaged in bloody and pretty fruitless pursuits at this time, who I wouldn't have liked to be anywhere near. Emma Goldman makes some pretty accurate comments about them. But even the anarcho-syndicalists who criticised the anarcho-communists' armed wings for bombings and expropriations disconnected to the popular movement, they too had their OWN armed wings. And meanwhile the adherents of 'purposeless' violence, aimed at the enemy class or whoever, especially in Odessa, Bialystok and places. The anarchists' history in Russia is certainly not all pure dreamers.
(it was to dissociate itself from this underground/terrorist side of russian 'wartime' anarchism that the resurrected groups of the 1980s & 1990s proclaimed their pacifism. I would too with the Russian legacy)

But the House of Anarchy rocked! WHAT a location to take over.

Emma Goldman's visits to Dmitrov, & Kropotkin's funeral.

2010-09-27T12:48:00.000-07:00

1. The Kropotkin cottage stood back in the garden away from the street. Only a faint ray from a kerosene lamp lit up the path to the house. Kropotkin received us with his characteristic graciousness, evidently glad at our visit. But I was shocked at his altered appearance. The last time I had seen him was in 1907, in Paris, which I visited after the Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam. Kropotkin, barred from France for many years, had just been given the right to return. He was then sixty-five years of age, but still so full of life and energy that he seemed much younger. Now he looked old and worn.

I was eager to get some light from Kropotkin on the problems that were troubling me, particularly on the relation of the Bolsheviki to the Revolution. What was his opinion? Why had he been silent so long?

I took no notes and therefore I can give only the gist of what Kropotkin said. He stated that the Revolution had carried the people to great spiritual heights and had paved the way for profound social changes. If the people had been permitted to apply their released energies, Russia would not be in her present condition of ruin. The Bolsheviki, who had been carried to the top by the revolutionary wave, first caught the popular ear by extreme revolutionary slogans, thereby gaining the confidence of the masses and the support of militant revolutionists.

He continued to narrate that early in the October period the Bolsheviki began to subordinate the interests of the Revolution to the establishment of their dictatorship, which coerced and paralysed every social activity. He stated that the coöperatives were the main medium that could have bridged the interests of the peasants and the workers. The coöperatives were among the first to be crushed. He spoke with much feeling of the oppression, the persecution, the hounding of every shade of opinion, and cited numerous instances of the misery and distress of the people. He emphasized that the Bolsheviki had discredited Socialism and Communism in the eyes of the Russian people.

"Why haven't you raised your voice against these evils, against this machine that is sapping the life blood of the Revolution?" I asked. He gave two reasons. As long as Russia was being attacked by the combined Imperialists, and Russian women and children were dying from the effects of the blockade, he could not join the shrieking chorus of the ex-revolutionists in the cry of "Crucify!" He preferred silence. Secondly, there was no medium of expression in Russia itself. To protest to the Government was useless. Its concern was to maintain itself in power. It could not stop at such "trifles" as human rights or human lives. Then he added: "We have always pointed out the effects of Marxism in action. Why be surprised now?"

I asked Kropotkin whether he was noting down his impressions and observations. Surely he must see the importance of such a record to his comrades and to the workers; in fact, to the whole world. "No," he said; "it is impossible to write when one is in the midst of great human suffering, when every hour brings new tragedies. Then there may be a raid at any moment. The Tcheka comes swooping inside out, and marches off with every scrap of paper. Under such constant stress it is impossible to keep records. But besides these considerations there is my book on Ethics. I can only work a few hours a day, and I must concentrate on that to the exclusion of everything else."

After a tender embrace which Peter never failed to give those he loved, we returned to our car. My heart was heavy, my spirit confused and troubled by what I had heard. I was also distressed by the poor state of health of our comrade: I feared he could not survive till spring. The thought that Peter Kropotkin might go to his grave and that the world might never know what he thought of the Russian Revolution was appalling.

2.
On two occasions were the Kropotkin apartments in Moscow requisitioned and the family forced to seek other quarters. It was after these experiences that the Kropotkins moved to Dmitrov, where old Peter became an involuntary exile. Kropotkin, in whose home in the past had gathered from every land all that was best in thought and ideas, was now forced to lead the life of a recluse. His only visitors were peasants and workers of the village and some members of the intelligentsia, whose wont it was to come to him with their troubles and misfortunes. He had always kept in touch with the world through numerous publications, but in Dmitrov he had no access to these sources. His only channels of information now were the two government papers, Pravda and Izvestia. He was also greatly handicapped in his work on the new Ethics while he lived in the village. He was mentally starved, which to him was greater torture than physical malnutrition. It is true that he was given a better payck than the average person, but even that was insufficient to sustain his waning strength. Fortunately he occasionally received from various sources assistance in the form of provisions. His comrades from abroad, as well as the Anarchists of the Ukraina, often sent him food packages. Once he received some gifts from Makhno, at that time heralded by the Bolsheviki as the terror of counter-revolution in Southern Russia. Especially did the Kropotkins feel the lack of light. When I visited them in 1920 they were considering themselves fortunate to be able to have even one room lit. Most of the time Kropotkin worked by the flicker of a tiny oil lamp that nearly drove him blind. During the short hours of the day he would transcribe his notes on a typewriter, slowly and painfully pounding out every letter.

However, it was not his own discomfort which sapped his strength. It was the thought of the Revolution that had failed, the hardships of Russia, the persecutions, the endless raztrels, which made the last two years of his life a deep tragedy. On two occasions he attempted to bring the rulers of Russia to their senses : once in protest against the suppression of all non-Communist publications ; the other time against the barbaric practice of taking hostages. Ever since the Tcheka had begun its activities, the Bolshevik Government had sanctioned the taking of hostages. Old and young, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, even children, were kept as hostages for the alleged offence of one of their kin, of which they often knew nothing. Kropotkin regarded such methods as inexcusable under any circumstances.

In the fall of 1920, members of the Social Revolutionist Party that had succeeded in getting abroad threatened retaliation if Communist persecution of their comrades continued. The Bolshevik Government announced in its official press that for every Communist victim it would execute ten Social Revolutionists. It was then that the famous revolutionist Vera Figner and Peter Kropotkin sent their protest to the powers that be in Russia. They pointed out that such practices were the worst blot on the Russian Revolution and an evil that had already brought terrible results in its wake : history would never forgive such methods.

The other protest was made in reply to the plan of the Government to "liquidate" all private publishing establishments, including even those of the cooperatives. The protest was addressed to the Presidium of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, then in session. It is interesting to note that Gorki, himself an official of the Commissariat of Education, had sent a similar protest. In this statement Kropotkin called attention to the danger of such a policy to all progress, in fact, to all thought, and emphasized that such State monopoly would make creative work utterly impossible. But the protests had no effect. Thereafter Kropotkin felt that it was useless to appeal to a government gone mad with power.

During the two days I spent in the Kropotkin household I learned more of his personal life than during all the years that I had known him. Even his closest friends were not aware that Peter Kropotkin was an artist and a musician of much talent. Among h is effects I discovered a collection of drawings of great merit. He loved music passionately and was himself a musician of unusual ability. Much of his leisure he spent at the piano.

And now he lay on his couch, in the little workroom, as if peacefully asleep, his face as kindly in death as it had been in life. Thousands of people made pilgrimages to the Kropotkin cottage to pay homage to this great son of Russia. When his remains were carried to the station to be taken to Moscow, the whole population of the village attended the impressive funeral procession to express their last affectionate greeting to the man who had lived among them as their friend.

Comrades of Kropotkin decided that the Anarchist organizations should have exclusive charge of the funeral, and a Peter Kropotkin Funeral Commission was formed In Moscow, consisting of representatives of the various Anarchist groups. The Committee wired Lenin, asking him to order the release of all Anarchists imprisoned in the capital in order to give them the opportunity to participate in the funeral.

Owing to the nationalization of all public conveyances, printing establishments, etc., the Anarchist Funeral Commission was compelled to ask the Moscow Soviet to enable it to carry out successfully the funeral programme. The Anarchists being deprived of their own press, the Commission had to apply to the authorities for the publication of the matter necessary in connection with the funeral arrangements. After considerable discussion permission was secured to print two leaflets and to issue a four-page bulletin in commemoration of Peter Kropotkin. The Commission requested that the paper be issued without censorship and stated that the reading matter would consist of appreciations of our dead comrade, exclusive of all polemical questions. This request was categorically refused. Having no choice, the Commission was forced to submit and the manuscripts were sent in for censorship. To forestall the possibility of remaining without any memorial issue because of the delaying tactics of the Government, the Funeral Commission resolved to open, on its own responsibility, a certain Anarchist printing office that had been sealed by the Government. The bulletin and the two leaflets were printed in that establishment.

In answer to the wire sent to Lenin the Central Committee of the All-Russian Executive of the Soviets resolved "to propose to the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Veh-Tcheka) to release, according to its judgment, the imprisoned Anarchists for participation in the funeral of Peter A. Kropotkin." The delegates sent to the Tcheka were asked whether the Funeral Commission would guarantee the return of the prisoners. They replied that the question had not been discussed. The Tcheka thereupon refused to release the Anarchists. The Funeral Commission, informed of the new development in the situation, immediately guaranteed the return of the prisoners after the funeral. Thereupon the Tcheka replied that "there are no Anarchists in prison who, in the judgment of the Chairman of the Extraordinary Commission, could be released for the funeral."

The remains of the dead lay in state in the Hall of Columns in the Moscow Labour Temple. On the morning of the funeral the Kropotkin Funeral Commission decided to inform the assembled people of the breach of faith on the part of the authorities and demonstratively to withdraw from the Temple all the wreaths presented by official Communist bodies. Fearing public exposure, the representatives of the Moscow Soviet definitely promised that all the Anarchists imprisoned in Moscow would immediately be released to attend the funeral. But this promise was also broken, only seven of the Anarchists being released from the "inner Jail" of the Extraordinary Commission. None of the Anarchists imprisoned in the Butyrki attended the funeral. The official explanation was that the twenty Anarchists incarcerated in that prison refused to accept the offer of the authorities. Later I visited the prisoners to ascertain the facts in the case. They informed me that a representative of the Extraordinary Commission insisted on individual attendance, making exceptions in some cases. The Anarchists, aware that the promise of temporary release was collective, demanded that the stipulations be kept. The Tcheka representative went to the telephone to consult the higher authorities, so he said. He did not return.

The funeral was a most impressive sight. It was a unique demonstration never witnessed in any other country. Long lines of members of Anarchist organizations, labour unions, scientific and literary societies and student bodies marched for over two hour s from the Labour Temple to the burial place, seven versts [nearly five miles] distant. The procession was headed by students and children carrying wreaths presented by various organizations. Anarchist banners of black and scarlet Socialist emblems floated above the multitude. The mile-long procession entirely dispensed with the services of the official guardians of the peace. Perfect order was kept by the multitude itself spontaneously forming in several rows, while students and workers organized a live chain on both sides of the marchers. Passing the Tolstoy Museum the cortege paused, and the banners were lowered in honour of the memory of another great son of Russia. A group of Tolstoyans on the steps of the Museum rendered Chopin's Funeral March as an expression of their love and reverence for Kropotkin.

The brilliant winter sun was sinking behind the horizon when the remains of Kropotkin were lowered into the grave, after speakers of many political tendencies had paid the last tribute to their great teacher and comrade.

Kropotkin's retirement.

2010-09-27T09:50:00.000-07:00

Today I got the local train to Dmitrov, where Kropotkin spent his last years back in post-revolution Russia. Due to his prestige, he wasn't arrested or killed or even interfered with when the other anarchists were being rounded up in 1918. So he wrote his book on ethics, criticised the dictatorial methods of the Bolsheviks, but urged workers around the world to support the Russian people as best they can. Because "all armed intervention necessarily strengthens the dictatorial tendencies of the government".
In May 1919 he met Lenin to discuss their differences, and kept it up in letters: from 1920 "Russia has become a Revolutionary Republic only in name ... it is ruled not by soviets but by party committees". And Lenin ran the party committees, so he wasn't about to give up his control for the sake of a revolution....

I got lost trying to find the wooden house Kropotkin lived in at this time, but did find the usual anarchy sign.

And finally!

Apparently there used to be a cat sitting next to Kropotkin on the bench. At some point it disappeared (which is good, because it means a passing stream of locals can now sit next to him and, beaming, get their photos taken). But I think I found the cat.

Dmitrov is full of odd statues. Here are some bears about to eat Kropotkin.

I left a note.

Kropotkin's missing grave and unknown woods

2010-09-26T07:25:00.000-07:00

I tried to find where Kropotkin was buried, walked along the route of the funeral procession, arrived at the Novodevichy cemetery where my book and wikipedia agree he was buried.

Apparently Emma Goldman spoke at the graveside, so there must have been a grave.

And flowers were left at the tomb, so there must have been a tomb.

But saying 'Kropotkin' to the attendants and scanning the list of graves did not reveal anything. It may be in part due to the speech implediment I have in Russia but not really at home. I cannot quite say my 'R's and certainly can't role them. In English it's enough to suggest one but in Russia they get confused. Also the books may be wrong, who knows?

Here are some pictures of the funeral, and note what it IS that Emma Goldman says at the grave.

Just after the Kropotkin metro stop, I accidentally came across something that got me quite emotional first thing in the morning. A genuine memorial to dead anarchists, but from this decade, not that. See the previous post.

I also tried and may or may not have succeeded in finding some of the woods where anarchists and SRs argued back in the day (before both groups were rounded up and killed).

I have a circled A for each city but Kazan that I've been through.

But only this city so far has a city centre Metro station named for Kropotkin.

Moscow, after Siberia.

2010-09-25T20:00:00.000-07:00

Early morning in Moscow (Kazanskaya station), the light just beginning to appear in the sky.
I will try to write about terrorism and uprisings today, but my mind is on love. Sometimes pursuing a thought-out project goes against what your heart's fixed on that day.

In 20 minutes I will head for the Kropotkin metro stop, and follow the route of his funeral in 1921, when thousands held up the flags of anarchism for one last time. I doubt I'll successfully find his grave/tomb/plaque, but I will then go up onto Sparrow Hills (much talked about in Tolstoy), where anarchists would argue with social revolutionaries (SRs) about parliamentarism and organisation. Before both the anarchists and the SRS were liquidated, that is.

The trigger for their extermination was the bombing of communist party headquarters on Leontiev street, so that is another location to try and find. Also various prisons (Taganka, Butyrki) and a couple more monasteries would be great too (Donskoi, occupied by armed anarchists from 1917; and the Nihilist-linked Monastery of the Trinity and St Sergius, a trip out of town).

But I'm realistic, and I don't promise to reach everywhere. The biggest prize would be the family homes of Bakunin and Kropotkin, and Kropotkin's last home too, but they're all outside Moscow so I'll see how I go with my transport options.

Fanzine pages - plan.

2010-09-21T20:10:00.000-07:00

Although it might not appear it from the random tales and photos I've been sticking up here, the main aim of this blog is to help me make a fanzine about the travels taken by Bakunin and Kropotkin. In this post I'm just going to list what I imagine the pages might be - most of these are not yet written/drawn as such, but I do have the information available for them, and usually I have a location drawn. The order and so on still needs to be worked on, and some will most certainly be dropped.

Russia:

St Petersburg (arrival)
Peter Paul fortress 1 = Bakunin's internment/intro to his midlife imprisonment
Peter Paul fortress 2 = Nechaev & Nihilists' correspondence/continuity
Nevsky Prospekt
Semyonov Square = Decembrists
Winter Palace 1 = Nihilist bomb attempts on the Tsar
Winter Palace 2 = 1905 Bloody Sunday and other convergences on it
Lady of Kazan Square & Remand Prison link to Semyonov Square = Nihilist hunger strike
Kamenny Bridge/Catherine Quay = assassination of Tsar

Kazan
Nihilist anecdotes

Yekaterinburg (Urals/Crossing W.Siberia)
Western Siberia map 1 revolts/anarchist manifestations
Western Siberia map 2 recent anarchist groups and statements
Volkonsky crossing Siberia paired with my crossing Siberia
Gulag map annotated with anarchist uprisings/statements

Lake Baikal
Polish Revolt = Kropotkin's account
Siberian anarchist fighters in 1920s

Mongolia/border crossings
Kropotkin crossing the border/travails

Chita
Decembrists
Kropotkin's first job
Bakunin's escape by ship
Amur and the Far East = things not explored

Irkutsk
Explorer = Kropotkin's volcano
Polish church = Polish revolt
Icebreaker = Newcastle link

Moscow
Bakunin's home = as a young man
Kropotkin's home = as a young man
1918 The 'House of Anarchy'
Anarchist newspapers & repression by Trotsky
1980s+ anarchist groups reappearing

St Petersburg (departure)
Vyborg/Finlandia Station = anarchist district/Kropotkin's return
Shlisselburg Fortress = Bakunin imprisonment plus anarchists taking the explosives from it
Kronstadt = 1917 and the Kronstadt Uprising (2 pages)
Kropotkin funeral
Quayside & Bookshop location = Lenin's expulsion of intelligentsia on 'the philosophy steamer'

Also: Railway double spread (revolutionary history/conditions/civil war)
Also: mindmap links between St.Petersburg/Siberia/Paris/New York etc... eg. with Voline, Mikhailov, Schapiro, Karelin.
Also: account of returns from Siberia, of Decembrist children?

Ilya Borodenko

2010-09-21T02:05:00.000-07:00

I've just been looking around the web and have re-realised how close to here the following lethal attempt was, in 2007. An anti-nuclear camp was attacked by armed fascists while people slept. Ilya Borodenko died from his injuries.

Irkutsk anti-fascist demo last year.

7 anarchists imprisoned in Belarus this month.

And from 2008, from Madrid:

"IN MEMORY OF THE RUSSIAN ANTIFASCISTS ASSASSINATED BY NEONAZIS

Olga Rukosyla was assassinated last October 8th in Irkutsk (Siberia). Two days after Feodor Filatov was killed in Moscow, and thus up to 71 fascist murders have happened along this year in Russia.

Other 268 people were seriously wounded in these brutal attacks, but the Russian authorities do not have any intention to stop these killers and to make them pay their crimes.

Olga was a child. She was 16 years old. Two weeks ago she lost her life because 3 neo-nazis decided to brutally beat her, to what she couldn't be recovered. Feodor was 27 and was stubbed with a knife the 10th of October by 4 neo-nazis who were waiting outside the door of his house to kill him by 7:30 in the morning.

Next November 11th it will be a year from the murder of Carlos Javier Palomino by a neo-nazi soldier. Us, his friends and comrades remember him and support the Russian comrades and their families.

We know they will be going through tough moments, but we want to show them our support and our force so the fight against racism and fascism doesn't decay.

THE BEST TRIBUTE, CONTINUE FIGHTING"

Audio for Siberian punk is available here.

Returning a tent and a rollmat.

2010-09-21T01:26:00.000-07:00

Travelling through Autumn.

2010-09-21T01:15:00.000-07:00

I didn't realise how early Autumn would appear here. It's going to be fantastic travelling back because now instead of just green against green, there will be reds and golds and all that diversity of autumn.
The larches were already yellow and dropping their needles in Mongolia, but crossing the border and getting to Chita really brought it home. These birch are from just above Chita, where I did some cross-country hiking to escape the city.

There's a chill in the air now in Irkutsk and I won't be going out again in just a T-shirt, perhaps for another 6 months or so ...

Autumn is also the season of good gigs and what I most look forward to in Newcastle. However, I am still dithering over whether or not to delay my ticket a few days in order to see a punk gig here.

Autumn is also mushroom season back home. To honour this, I bought some actually pretty fantastic mushroom-shaped biscuits on the chita-irkutsk train. I don't think I'll be home in time to do the annual mushroom hunts with Gordon Beakes, but I certainly look forward to an autonomous one.

Irkutsk Punk Rock

2010-09-20T09:02:00.002-07:00

I was met off the train by Zach from the Baikal camp, which was lovely.
I was wearing my anarchy t-shirt, which I bought from a kiosk at chita station for two pound fifty. It meant I could not stink for a leg of the journey and also adds a cartoon realism to my travels.

We got on a tram up the hill, and a lad in front of me had drawn the anarchy circled A on his knapsack. He'd also written 'pank's not dead' on it. So missing our stop by 2, I made Zach ask him in russian if there was any punk rock gigs in Irkutsk. He had an interesting face, looked american indian or perhaps japanese, so i wondered if he was from one of the older native tribes near-wiped-out by the cossacks and vodka.

He took us to a downstairs basement bar to ask his mate behind the counter. This lad then phoned around, asking for underground and punk rock gigs. Apparently there's something on the 24th, but my ticket out of here is for the 22nd. I'm tempted to delay it, if this gig indeed does exist.

Anyway, thanks random people, and respect for wearing the circled A in country where that's enough to get you knifed. The chinese market here has seen a spate of arson recently - the latest perceived 'invaders' to target for intimidation. The telly's not sure if it's a mafia/protection racket thing or a clear-cut racist thing, but the gangs doing it are organised enough to have lookouts to send anyone with a camera packing when it happens.

And I'm proud to be a 34 year old wearing the kind of t-shirt i would have thought naff already at 14.

love
Mike

Ulan Ude one last time

2010-09-20T09:02:00.001-07:00

From a Buddhist medical chart thingy, which I had to photograph covertly. Fantastic cartoons all over the old Mongolian-Buddhist world.

Lindon the archaeologist and Anna the artist, reading my cartoons. I would never have got round Ulan Ude's museum without them - you had to get the lights turned on in each room you wanted to go.

From Ulan Ude to Chita.

Chita Nothing

2010-09-19T00:31:00.000-07:00

I'm in Chita now, back on the route of Kropotkin and Bakunin - although it's the Ingolda not the Amur river here which I somehow got confused. Now that I've come this far, I'm realising where all the big gaps are that I'm not going to fill.

If I ever come back this way, I will need to go to that Volcano in July (found a probable reference to it in Kropotkin's writing), and go further down the Amur, to Blagoveschensk and Khabarovsk etc..

But right here, now, is the furthest east and the furthest away from home I will be going. As of midnight, local time, I'll be starting my gradual return home. Plans are still to be fixed, abandoned travel companions to be looked out for, and the possibility of a shamanic island stop is still there. But I have a fixed date to be back in Copenhagen now, so I will have to decide what to skip and where to spend my few free days.

Irkutsk is the next stop (21st Sept), and the obvious main places to visit still are Bakunin and Kropotkins' homes in Moscow; and Kronstadt & Shlisselburg outside St Petersburg. One thing pretty definitely OFF the cards already is the slower, more expensive land route north out of Helsinki and round to Stockholm. The ferry straight across saves too much to be ignored. I could always say I did it and who would check up on me!

Here I am reading Dostoyevsky, looking for Decembrists' street, walking up the hill to leave offerings at the ovoos, and generally being a bit crap. Here are pictures from my walking tour of the centre:

Locations of the pics.

Post Office.

Oh those happy memories of stalingrad.

A feminist carwash.

And my comedy purchase at the station.

The border guards got her.

2010-09-17T07:47:00.000-07:00

I've arrived safe and sound back in Russia and Ulan Ude, where I am now cleaning myself and waiting for the new day to dawn in England so I can pay for a train to Chita and the Amur river.

However, my companion did not make it over the border. She was forced to pack up her things, carry them off the train, and sit in a room with a guard while I was left outside on the platform feeling guilty and pretty useless.

For the rest of the journey I had no time for a chatty archaeologist who was probably really interesting, but wasn't someone I've spent the last month with, and so I just sat reading.

As a cartoonist vampire I did of course draw/write the story of Birke being thrown off the train (I will add it to this post when next I'm in an internet cafe), but when I started doing it I didn't realise it would end with her actually being sent back into Mongolia. I assumed that patience, flexibilty and money would get us through. But no, so just best wishes to you Birke and we will see who is first back in Irkutsk. Although I would love to meet you off the train with your tent and sleeping bag, I hope you beat me in the race, because it means your escape from Mongolia will be swifter.

Travis above the Pacific, John crossing northern China, Freya with the horses, and everyone else from the camp who is now dispersed and off, lots of love, and I will still see some of you before western europe gets me back...

Meanwhile in Mongolia.

2010-09-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

I've been drawing a cartoon diary while in Mongolia, available here.

Photos of Mongolia are on a temporary faecebook account here.

And photos of the Lake Baikal camp are also on the account here.

Into Outer Mongolia

2010-09-05T00:43:00.000-07:00

I am currently on a detour from the Bakunin-Kropotkin route, into Mongolia with 4 others who did the conservation camp on Baikal. Tomorrow we're heading west to camp for a few days in an unknown place. It's 2 days away because we were advised that wild camping in the general vicinity of Ulan Bator and its nearest national parks is too dangerous. There's still marauders about.

Approaching the border I read about Kropotkin's bluffs and successful manouevres to get past official obstructions and into Chinese Manchuria. I myself was, strictly speaking, in breach of my Russian visa because the conservation organisation I camped with had failed to notify the right authorities that I was there. But another Austrian girl was in worse straits because someone had stolen her visa on the train.

We had 8 hours wait on the Russian side of the border, but in the end the only real (as opposed to imagined) difficulties we faced were the heat and the boredom. My registration slip was wordlessly collected and even the Austrian girl was okay - it was the Mongolian border guard's birthday.

So I'm no longer making notes for the anarchist pilgrimage zine, but will take them up again when I return into Russia, on the 17th September, when I mean to take another train straight away to Chita and the Amur River (where Kropotkin had his first job, and Bakunin escaped exile).

Until then, I am still drawing a diary, which I will probably post here, but there isn't much anarchist history in it.

The only way I am continuing the heritage of Bakunin is by borrowing money off people - the bank has stopped my card and so I've had to buy tickets etc... with the cash of new acquaintances. Bakunin continued to do it into his old age, and never paid back. But I think I'm too middle class for that.

Back in Ulan Bator on the 13th September.

Trail Zine

2010-09-02T03:52:00.000-07:00

The Trail Zine we made together is mentioned on my other blog.

Train Journeys

2010-09-02T03:31:00.000-07:00

I've booked tickets on the early train to Mongolia tomorrow, with Travis the lucky-in-love confederate boy, and Miss Freya Jones. We have packs of cards and high hopes, although my semi-illegality here now means I may be quizzed at the border (the delay at the border is approximately 7 hours).

Here are pictures from the 3 day train journey on the relatively luxururious 'Rossiya' train. I am proud of dragging people from my carriage out of their cabins and into the restaurant car for drinks. The two men are Waldemar the Finn and Alexandr the Russian. The station is Zima station, which means 'Winter'.

Trail-making on Lake Baikal's shore.

2010-09-02T03:21:00.000-07:00

Ulan Ude as a base.

2010-09-02T02:57:00.000-07:00

The words on the hill are in Cyrillic, en route to the Datsan, see if you can tell what they say.

The words on the Buddhist temple honour 'green tara'. Yes, the goddess is worshipped only in Buryatia.

The cyclists are a bunch of Germans, American, Polish etc.. we met by Lenin's disembodied head, calling themselves '2wheel4change' and cycling from Ulan Ude to Mongolia. Bunch of hippies - we met them a day before they were due to go to the Lake, after they did a juggling performance in the street. Next day they were still there in the square, still planning to do their performance. Next day they were there again. Good luck to them and all their bike grease.

The dog is blind, and called variously 'mole' or 'blindie' (in Russian). He has a real thing for chewing feet, arms, shoes etc.., and along with the 2 hostel cats has made this hostel a lovely place to be based.

Lake Baikal

2010-08-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

In a few hours I go to Lake Baikal, where I will camp for 2 weeks on the shore, as part of a trail-building project of volunteers, both Russian and West European.

I have let the anarchist history-mapping fall a little lately, and instead I've been visiting the Buddhist Monastery, Ingoltsy Datsan, and seeing throat-singing and other nomadic music in Ulan Ude.

So I do of course promise to get it back on track when I return in 2 weeks. For now, I am just thinking of Kropotkin's formative experiences in Siberia, which taught him that the state commands nothing, progresses nothing, cannot be the leader of positive change and reform for people. Read what he said in his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, available here.

Here is one of his experiences of Lake Baikal, which encouraged he and his brother to leave the army:

"Several batches of Russian political exiles had been sent during the last century to Siberia, but with the submissiveness to fate which is characteristic of the Russians, they never revolted; they allowed themselves to be killed inch by inch without ever attempting to free themselves. The Poles, on the contrary, -- to their honor be it said, -- were never so submissive as that, and this time they broke into open revolt. It was evident that they had no chance of success, but they revolted nevertheless. They had before them the great lake, and behind them a girdle of absolutely impracticable mountains, beyond which spread the wildernesses of North Mongolia; but they conceived the idea of disarming the soldiers who guarded them, forging those terrible weapons of the Polish insurrections, -- scythes fastened as pikes on long poles, -- and making their way across the mountains and across Mongolia, towards China, where they would find English ships to take them. One day the news came to Irkútsk that part of those Poles who were at work on the Baikál road had disarmed a dozen soldiers and broken out into revolt. Eighty soldiers were all that could be dispatched against them from Irkútsk; crossing the Baikál in a steamer, they went to meet the insurgents on the other side of the lake.

The winter of 1866 had been unusually dull at Irkútsk. In the Siberian capital there is no such distinction between the different classes as one sees in Russian provincial towns, and Irkútsk "society," composed of numerous officers and officials, together with the wives and daughters of local traders and even clergymen, met during the winter, every Thursday, at the Assembly rooms. This winter, however, there was no "go" in the evening parties. Amateur theatricals, too, were not successful; and gambling, which usually flourished on a grand scale at Irkútsk, only dragged along; a serious want of money was felt among the officials, and even the arrival of several mining officers was not signalized by the heaps of banknotes with which these privileged gentlemen commonly enlivened the knights of the green tables. The season was decidedly dull, -- just the season for starting spiritualistic experiences with talking tables and talkative spirits. A gentleman who had been the pet of Irkútsk society the previous winter for the tales from popular life which he recited with great talent, seeing that interest in himself and his tales was failing, took now to spiritualism as a new amusement. He was clever, and in a week's time all Irkútsk society was mad over talking spirits. A new life was infused into those who did not know how to kill time. Talking tables appeared in every drawing-room, and love-making went hand in hand with spirit rapping. Lieutenant Pótaloff took it all in deadly earnest, -- talking tables and love. Perhaps he was less fortunate with the latter than with the tables; at any rate, when the news of the Polish insurrection came, he asked to be sent to the spot with the eighty soldiers. He hoped to return with a halo of military glory."

"I go against the Poles," he wrote in his diary; "it would be so interesting to be slightly wounded!"

He was killed. He rode on horseback by the side of the colonel who commanded the soldiers, when "the battle with the insurgents" - the glowing description of which may be found in the annals of the general staff - began. The soldiers were slowly advancing along the road when they met some fifty Poles, five or six of whom were armed with rifles and the remainder with sticks and scythes. The Poles occupied the forest and from time to time fired their guns. The file of soldiers returned the fire. Pótaloff twice asked the permission of the colonel to dismount and dash into the forest. The colonel very angrily ordered him to stay where he was. Notwithstanding this, the next moment the lieutenant had disappeared. Several shots resounded in the wood in succession, followed by wild cries; the soldiers rushed that way, and found the lieutenant bleeding on the grass. The Poles fired their last shots and surrendered; the battle was over, and Pótaloff was dead. He had rushed, revolver in hand, into the thicket, where he found several Poles armed with scythes. He fired upon them all his shots, in a haphazard way, wounding one of them, whereupon the others rushed upon him with their scythes.

At the other end of the road, on this side of the lake, two Russian officers behaved in the most abominable way toward the Poles who were building the same road, but took no part in the insurrection. One of the two officers rushed into their tent, swearing and firing his revolver at the peaceful exiles, two of whom he badly wounded.

">Now, the logic of the Siberian military authorities was that as a Russian officer had been killed, several Poles must be executed. The court-martial condemned five of them to death: Szaramówicz, a pianist, a fine looking man of thirty, who was the leader of the insurrection; Celínski, a man of sixty, who had once been an officer in the Russian army; and three others whose names I do not remember.

The governor-general telegraphed to St Petersburg asking permission to reprieve the condemned insurgents; but no answer came. He had promised us not to execute them, but after having waited several days for the reply, he ordered the sentence to be carried out in secrecy, early in the morning. The reply from St Petersburg came four weeks later, by post: the governor was left to act "according to the best of his understanding." In the mean time five brave men had been shot.

The insurrection, people said, was foolish. And yet this brave handful of insurgents had obtained something. The news of it reached Europe. The executions, the brutalities of the two officers, which became known through the proceedings of the court, produced a commotion in Austria, and Austria interfered in favor of the Galicians who had taken part in the revolution of 1863 and had been sent to Siberia. Soon after the insurrection, the fate of the Polish exiles in Siberia was substantially bettered, and they owed it to the insurgents, -- to those five brave men who were shot at Irkútsk, and those who had taken arms by their side.

For my brother and myself this insurrection was a great lesson. We realized what it meant to belong in any way to the army. I was far away, but my brother was at Irkútsk, and his squadron was dispatched against the insurgents. Happily, the commander of the regiment to which my brother belonged knew him well, and, under some pretext, he ordered another officer to take command of the mobilized part of the squadron. Otherwise, Alexander, of course, would have refused to march. If I had been at Irkútsk, I should have done the same.

We decided then to leave the military service and to return to Russia. This was not an easy matter, especially as Alexander had married in Siberia; but at last all was arranged, and early in 1867 we were on our way to St Petersburg"

Red Ude

2010-08-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

Got off the train, both the Finnish and the Russian man came after me to give me the cup I'd left - but which the German had actually borrowed for me. Nice of them.

And I happily found this place on foot from memory of an internet map: although all the dogs round the back streets know me now, coz I didn't come in a quite perfect line. Much scrappier and more like a 'wild east' cowboy dirt street town than the other side of Russia. Feels much more Mongolian, and rather than write turgid dribble I'm gonna wander into the old bit of town having TRIUMPHED in finding my way here alone.

cat's just come for a stroke. 10 pages of now bloody dull war n peace to go.

Bored in Yekaterinburg

2010-08-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

One consequence of working out my own tickets has been a 36 hour stopover in this big and, to me, pretty boring city. I've wandered round, read lots of War & Peace (two thirds of the way through, and it isn't getting any better), and briefly gawped at all the statues. My hotel room was plush with a huge view, but I didn't sleep cos of drinking too much coffee. I've also been drinking lots of irn bru - it's amazing how big irn bru is here, and frankly quite odd to see Russian squaddies drinking it.

I've done very little (actually none) writing or drawing here. Too hot. I did find anarchist graffiti at the university, but all I've done is wandered and read.

So again, some odd photos will go up in this post eventually, but for now it's just a post to say I'm here, and I'm leaving here on a 3 day train journey across Siberia, in about 6 hours time.

Kazan and Tatarstan Ravings

2010-08-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

Does Tartar sauce come from Tatarstan? I HAVE to find this out immediately after this post.

Kazan was my first breakjourney on the Trans-Siberian.

Actually it's not quite the Trans-Siberian route. I'm quite proud of myself for finding my own route that the old lonely planet guide doesn't mention (which I'm ripping up as I go, and is 10 years old so some crucial stuff is out of date). It seems there may be another alternative route that dips into Kazakhstan, which I might try out on the way back too. Can you really say you've lived if you've never been to Kazakhstan?*

Kazan was dead pretty, and I'll stick up some photos of what was once its pedestrianised mainstreet and central bazaar, but is currently being pulled down, or possibly rebuilt with just the facades remaining from the original. Very beautiful.

I was very sad to find no anarchist graffiti, but you'd hardly expect it in a tourist unesco heritage hotspot. There were swastikas, though.

Actually, swastikas are confusing. Okay in Germany a swastika would be fascist harking back to the Nazis. Probably the case is the same in Russia - it certainly would be in 'european' Russia. But originally the swastika was nicked as an eastern/asian symbol by anti-semitic nutters like Baron Ungern von Sternburg. In HIS case, he reckoned he was a Buddhist war-god bringing vengeance and a new aristocratic/mongolian-Buddhist regime on the atheistic and Jewish commies. Most of his troops were non-european (Mongolian, Chinese, or most significantly the 'non-european' Russians, like Buryats). AND he tried to raise divisions of troops from the fringe ethic groups of Russia, INCLUDING TARTARS. You see where I'm going with this. So the Swastika on his flag, for example, was certainly racist but NOT against the non-european tatars of Kazan. Which means if I see graffiti saying ACAB** with a swastika, I can only be 90% certain it's fascist, and aimed against Tatars by ethnically 'european' russians locally. It remains just possible it could be a weird nutty anti-state pro-asian tradition graffiti!

No, I haven't persuaded myself.

Anyway, a few pictures will follow of the nice buildings here. I wish I'd gone swimming in the Volga but I'm still too nervous about bus tickets.

* Answer: er, yes.
** Universal for 'all coppers are b******s'

Vic Reeves and Michael Palin

2010-08-08T23:49:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's the lack of sleep from them friggin mosqitoes, but I'm having ongoing feelings of deja vu. Like 300 pages into war and peace and I know the story - surely I would have remembered reading it before? Could I have started it as a teenager? I DID read a lot of books back then...

Anyway, the above pictures of Vic Reeves and Michael Palin are not, they are doppelgangers from Russian TV. Somehow I am sure everybody already knows that there are Russian versions of Vic Reeves and Michael Palin, but anyway there they are.

I've watched a lot of crap TV in the last few hotels and here's my conclusions:

- Russian dubbing leaves the original voices in, a little quieter in the background. I prefer it to the French version.

- "Autoglass Repair, Autoglass Replace" uses the same annoyingly catchy jingle in the French and German versions. Each time, the friendly mechanic chappy manages to inject something into the windscreen and the chip danger is averted. But not in Russia. No "szvetjschnlovnrtzta vnshnevsnza" here.

- Family Guy and South Park are unexpectedly successful crossovers to Slavic.

Well that's enough pop-tv crap for now.

I'm leaving St Petersburg today and getting my first trans-siberian overnighter to Kazan, where all being well I will arrive tomorrow afternoon.

Then I get a 2nd overnighter from there to Ekaterinburg where the last Tsars were got rid of by the nasty Bolsheviks (boo! the baddies! boo!). Staying in what's apparently a dump called the Sverdlovsk hotel.

I don't know how I'll fare on these two little journeys with my nonexistent Russian, but they are both short enough that I hope with snacks and a gaumless smile I will get through.

From Ekaterinburg I get on a 3 day train journey, but this time it's the posh 'Rossiya' train which should be well used to internationals and who knows, I might even get to have a conversation.

So then, trusting all this works out, I turn up in Ulan Ude 3 nights early on the 15th, and I've decided not to leave myself the chance of pushing on to Chita for a day, but rather I've booked into the GBT hostel to hopefully recover/replenish stores before the beach camp.

So if there's no more blog/emails till then, there should be on the 16th.

Some bits of Switzerland I missed out - Zurich, Geneva and Bern

2010-08-08T06:13:00.000-07:00

Zurich was my last stop in Switzerland, but it was Bakunin (and Kropotkin)'s introduction to the Russian exile & student community and the various radicals amongst them.

I didn't stay in Geneva, or Lausanne, because of setting off two days later than planned.

But Bern, where Bakunin went to die, was the last stop in Switzerland.

Bern is sick, keeping captive bears because when some aristocratic tosspot decided to make his HQ there, he said he'd name it after the first thing he'd kill. A bear it was, Bern got named after it, and ever since then, bears have been tortured to sustain this invented identity.

Mosquito Enemy

2010-08-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

Ongoing.

The Winter Palace

2010-08-08T06:00:00.001-07:00

In the Hermitage, I went for the Siberian bit while everyone else went for the art. I'm not quite sure where all these particular artefacts were from, but they cover reindeer, shamanism, wolves and mountain sheep.

Then I drew some of Gauguin's faces of Tahitian girls. He paints in a cartoon style already. Gaps and shading etc.. to be completed at some point in the future.

The Peter & Paul Fortress

2010-08-08T05:54:00.001-07:00

From the beach beneath the fortress walls.

This wedding photo was actually just over the water, but they were at the fortress too.

Stories of various of its prisoners to follow - Nechaev, for example, and an anarchist terrorist who ironically called himself 'Tolstoy'.

St Petersburg in the heat

2010-08-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

DAY ONE: Not sure how readable that is (I may have found a tinternet cafe with free usb ports, but being able to lighten/resize pictures is still not possible.

and DAY TWO. One would imagine that day three would follow at some point.

Through Poland and Belarus

2010-08-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

My first big train journey. 2 days on board. This is how it went:

coffee

war & peace

cabin to myself

Belarus countryside

Minsk

I've come off a train in which I'd hoped to mix with other international travellers, haggle for food on the platforms, play cards in the restaurant wagon etc.. I'm so naive - I'd even asked at Berlin what money I was able to use in Poland and Belarus.

As if I'd get a chance.

But no, no restaurant car and I was scurried after the one time I tried to walk up to other carriages. A cabin luxuriously to my self for two days, but just local(ish) families and the provodnik/provodnitsa in charge of our two sleeper carriages.

We stopped plenty of times, but only in sidings to shunt back and forwards, changing wheels and banging things with a hammer. I'd brought snacks for the journey, but had assumed I'd get more options down the line. Nope.

The one place I definitely knew we'd stop for a bit was Minsk, but on day two when I walked out on the platform, the train was half a mile long with no 'booths' or babushkas selling owt to be seen.

So it was just me, 'war and peace', and the occasional cup of coffee I blagged off the provodnitsa. Good job I don't get hungry in the heat.

Those two days in isolation have at least made me really enjoy the crowds in St Petersburg, which is a very easy city to hang out in. But they make me less confident about the next batch of train journeys - equally as quarantined and enclosed? But without the privacy (which was great, actually).

MP3 tracklist wonderful - Nev Clay, New Model Army, Kath Williams, Richard Dawson, Cranes, all evocative of the Newcastle gig scene and past memories of company!

OK, Schlusselburg is now Shlisselburg, and 35 km east.

Kronstadt is 30 km west.

Buses allegedly go near each, but in this heat I think I'll pass up on the possibility until I return in September. Just getting across to the Peter & Paul fortress was exhausting.

A couple of Russian websites

2010-08-04T05:05:00.000-07:00

Waiting at Berlin station, I've trawled some of the websites on the 'abolishing the borders from below' list, and while some, like siberia indymedia get blocked as pornography, a couple do some up.

St Petersburg Indymedia

Autonomous Action

Dresden

2010-08-03T03:50:00.000-07:00

I've skipped Prague, where legend has it that Bakunin started a 5-day battle between Czech workers & students on the one hand, and the Austrian army on the other, by firing a shot at the Austrians from his hotel window (it's unlikely to be a true story, but he certainly joined in on the barricades). I now regret this decision, as Dresden is rainy and disappointing and I might go early to Berlin to get that part of the journey over with, thus spending even more money.

The story of Dresden involves Bakunin, who just happened to be in the area, being invited by Richard Wagner (who else?) to join in their fight to make the king accept a constitution. The king sent the Prussian troops in, Bakunin and Wagner joined in the defence of the city, hundreds died and in the end, while Wagner escaped scot-free, Bakunin paid the consequences big-time.

St Imier

2010-08-03T01:16:00.000-07:00

St Imier station, with Sonvillier a couple of km further up the valley. I was so excited when I found this place on the map, and I got a train out to see the place which had inspired both Bakunin and Kropotkin, and which was such a central place in the development of anarchism.

The big yellow building is the very Town Hall where the Jura Federation was set up by, amongst others, Bakunin, Guillaume & Schwitzgeubel (a local lad). It's also the place where the 'International' was continued after Marx's attempt to take it over - anarchists and others met here to continue it without him, and this "St.Imier International" continued meeting for a few years until economic conditions got bad locally.

Incidentally, Marx's rival version of the International, to be joined only by those who would do what he told them to do, died a much quicker death after he had its office moved to New York (in order to prevent anarchist-minded delegates, or any other voices really, having any influence over it). ["If you won't let me do it my way, I will destroy it!"]

Me in the sun. I didn't know the town hall or the place below even existed, but helpful plaques filled me in and made my day.

This is L'Espace Noir, an anarchist social centre set up in an old watchmakers' factory - these were the same watchmakers who, after Bakunin had passed on, showed Kropotkin how workers could make anarchism a reality. They were the hub of the fledgling anarchist movement at the end of the 19th century, and Kropotkin had to be persuaded not to settle down and join them, making watches too.

My picture of it from outside (before I plucked up courage to go in).

Plaque outside explaining how "l'espace noir" was set up in the same libertarian spirit as the Jura watchmakers.

Neuchatel

2010-08-03T01:15:00.000-07:00

James Guillaume, a schoolteacher from Neuchatel who led Bakunin into libertarian ways of thinking.

Random ticket guy conversation.

And the pretty town itself.

Lyons part two

2010-08-03T01:13:00.000-07:00

Social centre in the old weavers' district.

Plaque remembering their chants 'live working or die fighting'.

I did find the old weavers bit, including a plaque recording their chants of 'live working or die fighting', plus anarchist literature, zines and comics.

Lyons ( or Lyon as the French insist on calling it )

2010-07-30T07:22:00.000-07:00

Third city of France; not much evidence of the old poor textile workers' town.

I'm really rather pleased with this, my first attempt at drawing over photocopied text.
Here the text is from Bakunin's 'God and the State', which he wrote in some disillusion after helping people in Lyons stage an insurrection in 1870. When everyone else ran away, Bakunin got locked up in the basement of this very building, the Hotel de Ville. Luckily the anarchists came back and rescued him ( and the Commune in Paris took place the next year ).

Unlike in Paris & London, this feels like a real, powerfully real location for the first time, and has got me reading his words again with a sense of power.

From my notepad.

Paris

2010-07-30T07:06:00.000-07:00

Marian looking as cool as is possible in plastic specs, waiting for me to draw the column.

I saw a cafe terminus by Gare de Lyons, but I don't imagine it was the same as the one Emile Henry ( or was it Vaillant? ) attacked. We walked around the Latin Quarter, but couldn't really connect it to '68 etc...

I don't know where exactly Bakunin met Proudhon or Proudhon met Marx, and the events of the commune and so on are quite dispersed. No really symbolic location leapt out at me.

So I drew a not terribly impressive picture of the Vendome Column which Courbet and pals pulled down. It's back up, sadly, and just as hideous, and made worse by the super-posh (really, as posh as posh gets, positively evil) boutiques surrounding it. With hindsight we should have found a current, existing social centre or anarchist venue.

This is Marian leaving at Gare Bercy for Milan.

And from the next morning of me leaving - from a shittily noisy hostel at Gare de Lyon.

Some photos in London

2010-07-29T00:26:00.000-07:00

Antonis told us that this toothpaste was made by a friend of his who, when he was younger, was very much inspired by Kropotkin.

Plaques in Angel Alley for the 3 bearded wonders I'll be following.

The Kropotkin section in Freedom Bookshop - & elsewhere I was very pleasantly surprised to see a stack of my old bothy zines.

Outside Angel Alley, a man was reading Kropotkin's Mutual Aid. I thought that was a very neat start to my journey.

To get home, Laura used my old rail ticket that I had cunningly cleaned so you couldn't tell it had already been used.

Off to Paris

2010-07-29T00:17:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving the country in a couple of hours, first to Paris where my main chosen sight to see, unless I visit where the 1890s bombs were chucked, will be the Vendome Column.

The Vendome Column - 44 metres high - is comprised of a stone core, encased in the bronze of 1250 cannons captured at the Battle of Austerliz (1805). It was designed by Denon, Gondouin, and Lepère and modeled in the style of Trajan's Column in Rome. It was constructed during 1806 - 1810.

Originally a statue of Napoléon a Caesar was placed on top. This was replaced by a likeness of Henri IV which was removed during the 100 Day (1815) when Napoléon returned from Elba and attempted to regain power. Afterwards Louis XVIII installed an enormous fleur-de-lys, but Louis-Philippe restored Napoléon in military uniform.

During the Commune in 1871, a group of Communards lead by Gustave Courbet the artist, tore down the column. Rather than pay for its re-erection, as he was ordered, Courbet died (1877) in exile in Switzerland. During 1873 - 1874, the column was reestablished at the center of Place Vendôme with a copy of the original statue on top.

Courbet was a devoted fan of Proudhon, and I liked reading his reasons for why he wanted to pull it down.

London, day 1

2010-07-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

In London, last night we stayed with two ex-Newcastle friends.
Pictures will follow of the toothpaste made by a guy who loved reading Kropotkin when he was young, and of the man on the train reading Gerard Winstanley, the man in the cafe reading Mutual Aid, and the books in Freedom Bookshop by Peter Kropotkin. I was also surprised to see a little stack of my bothy zines in there too.

This picture will, when completed, make it into the zine I will make of the travels. For now though, I need to find a bed for the night.

books books books

2010-07-24T19:08:00.000-07:00

I am carrying SO many books.
Almost all my weight is books.

It's 3 in the morning before I go to London, and I haven't got through the books I meant to just get notes from and then leave behind. So I'm carrying even MORE down, with the hope of leaving them in London once I'm done with them. But before that, here are some I am at least leaving behind, with much regret. I didn't even get Kropotkin's classics out of my book-built shelving unit, but at least they're online. It's the more obscure or new stuff I want to finish my notes for, but I won't... And two of the biggest, most-filled-with-sticky-notes are from the library ...

A couple of Swiss things

2010-07-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

"Freedom to travel was one of the many new relaxations enjoyed by Russian citizens under Alexander II, and one result of thsi was the establishment of student colonies in foreign towns, including Heidelberg and Zurich. Soon spies of the Third Section (Russian secret police) were reporting back that these places had been turned into cesspits of Nihilism. The area around ZXurich Polytechnic became heavily infested with young Russians whose loud voices and carefree gesticulations - not to mention their extreme Socialist views and reputation for promiscuity - shocked the staid burghers of that ancient Swiss City."

from Ronald Hingley's 'Nihilists'

Bakunin: "In Switzerland, in spite of all the democratic revolutions that have taken place there, it is still always the class in comfortable circumstances, the bourgeoisie, that is to say, the class privileged by wealth, leisure, and education, which governs. The sovereignty of the people - a word which, anyway, we detest because in our eyes, all sovereignty is detestable - the government of the people by themselves is likewise a fiction. The people is sovereign in law, not in fact, for necessarily absorbed by their daily labour, which leave them no leisure, and if not completely ignorant, at least very inferior in education to the bourgeoisie, they are forced to place in the hands of the latter their supposed sovereignty. The sole advantage which they get out of it in Switzerland, as in the United States, is that ambitiuos minorities, the political class, cannot arrive at power otherwise than by paying court to the people, flattering their fleeting passions, which may sometimes be bad, and most often deceiving them.
[but]
It is true that the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy, for at least in the republic there are moments when, though always exploited, the people are not oppressed, while in monarchies they are never anything else."

Also criticised "the parts of Switzerland where the Marxiam programme prevails, at Geneva, Zurich, Basel ... the International has descended to the point of being no longer anything more than a sort of electoral box for the profit of the Radical bougeois."
As opposed to hte programme of the International which states "The emancipation of the toilers can be the work only of the toilers themselves."

From K.J.Kenafick's edited Bakunin, 'Marxism Freedom & the State'

Kropotkin: "The egalitarian relations which I found in the Jura mountains; the independence of thought and expression which I saw developing in the workers and their unlimited devotion to the cause appealed strongly to my feelings; and when I came away from the mountains, after a week's stay with the watchmakers, my views upon socialism were settled; I was an anarchist."

1898, Luigi Luccheni kills Austria's Empress Elizabeth, in Geneva.

A few Paris sights

2010-07-24T17:31:00.000-07:00

The Movement of the Free Spirit begain in 1200 among Paris intellectuals gathered around William Aurifex as a rebellion against the church. Openly contemptuous of monks (wearing a patched red cowl as a parody of a habit), they disrupted church services by engaging priests in debate. The central group was swiftly executed for heresy, but the movement spread to virtually every part of Europe.

Sans culottes flocked into the Champ de Mars in July 1791 to sign or set their mark on a petition calling for the King's abdication - they were violently dispersed by sabres and bullets.
[pic to insert here]
In spring 1793, after 4 years of civil war and rocketing food prices, they rose up and toppled the Government, coining the term 'anarchist' as they did so:
"We are the poor Sans-culottes, an association of artisans and peasants. We know who our friends are: those who have delivered us from the clergy, nobility, the feudal systems, tithes, the monarchy and all the ills which follow in its train, those whom the aristocrats have called the 'anarchists'."

Their example of mass direct action endured.

From Clifford Harper's 'Anarchy: A Graphic guide'

1848 revolution
"a struggle of class against class, a sort of Servile war" Tocqueville
"the first great battle ... between the two classes that split modern society" Marx

1871 was the first genuinely workers' revolution - first time urban workers created their own self-government.

From George Rude's Ideology and Popular Protest

After the Commune was destroyed, Louis Michel said at her trial:
"You are now the victors, but I tell you, in the end the social revolution will be stronger than you. I demand that you lawfully murder me as you have lawfully murdered others. The lead that pierced their breasts I want to pierce my breast also. If you are not cowards, kill me. Should you decided not to do it then I will preach hatred against your laws and your society as long as my life lasts. I cry out for revenge against the murderers and executioners of the commune."

From the terrorist period of the 1890s:

At the May Day demonstrations in Paris in 1891, nine people were killed at Fourmies, and at Clichy there was a riot in which 3 wounded anarchists were taken to Clichy police station wehre they were seriously assaulted by the police, and not even given facilities for bathing their wounds. At trial, presided over by M.Benoit, two were sentenced to 5 and 3 years imprisonment. All the talk was then of revenge.

On 11 March, Ravachol & 2 companions, he carrying two kilograms of dynamite, sharp pieces of metal and two revolvers in his pockets, wearing a top hat and tailcoat so as not to attract attention, took a tram to the hosue in the Boulevard Saint Germain where M.Benoit lived. Ravachol left his 2 companions to go up the steps, and bombed the place. He committed various other crimes also.

Later, at Montbrison prison, Ravachol spend the last 3 weeks of his life in peaceful serenity. He became a folk hero to many, not so much for his violent escapades (though revenge was a powerful urge for many), as for the courage and defiance with which he met his fate. On his way to the guillotine, he sang 'Pere Duchene'

Si tu veux etre heureux
nom de dieu!
Pends ton proprietaire,
Coup' les cures en deux
nom de dieu!
Foutes les eglis' par terre.
Sang-dieu!
Et l'bon dieu dans la merde
nom de dieu!
Et l'bon dieu dans la merde.

which translates:

If you want to be hapy
By God!
String up your landlord
Cur the sky-pilots in two
By God!
Knock down the churches
God's blood!
And fling the Good God on hte dungheap
By God!
And the Good God on the dungheap.

Popular songs commemorated Ravachol, two of which translate as:

My lads, it's very sad,
The moral of this story.
Here it is, in a few words.
It's that when one's an anarchist
One mustn't boast of one's daring deeds
To young cafe waiters.

And:

In the great city of Paris
There are some well-fed bourgeois
There are some starvelings too
With empty bellies
And these are very hungry
Long live the sound!
Long live the sound!
Of the explosion!

9th december 1893, Auguste Vaillant threw a bomb in the Palais Bourbon, the seat of the French parliament, while the Chamber of Deputies was in session.
Vaillant's execution took place in the square in front of La Roquette prison, on the morning of 6th February 1894. With barriers up, drizzle pouring, Vaillant declined to see a chaplain, saying "Religion is a useless and grotesque thing." He hummed an anarchist song and then said "The bourgeoisie whom I attempted to destroy is revenging itself. It is its right. The people who suffer will revenge itself in its turn." He walked to the scaffold with his head held high, and shouted out "Death to the bourgeoisie and long live anarchism!" before the guillotine.
At the graveyard, flowers were left. One mourning card read:

"As they have sprinkled the earth
At the hour of the rising sun
With the august and life-giving dew,
The sacred drops of your blood,
Beneath the leaves of this palm
Which outraged Right bestows on you,
You can sleep your calm slumber
O martyr ... you will be avenged."

12 February 1894, Emile Henry's bomb exploded at the Hotel Terminus, aimed at its bourgeois clientele.
His father had been a member of the Internationale, and as an officer of the National Guard during the siege of Paris, he was elected to the Commune to represent the 10th arrondissement on 26th March 1871. At first he pursued negotiation, but when this failed, he supported the Commune in order to save the Republic, whose very existence was menaced by the Versaillese troops. When they invaded Paris, he escaped the massacres to Spain (San Martin near Barcelona), where Emile was born. In poverty, the family settled at 3 Rue de Jouy in Paris, the father dying in 1882.
His brother was held in Clairvaux prison for propaganda of the deed.
Emile Henry's execution took place on 21 may 1894 in the Place de la Roquette (he'd been held in the Grande Roquette prison. Barriers for the small crowd, hundreds of soldiers and various newspaper men - a grand occasion!
His last words were "Courage, comrades! Long live anarchism!"

The assassination of the French President which followed in Lyons saw the perpetrator Caserio, once he checked his tears, repeat the same words after the sentence of execution was given. He was kept in the St.Paul prison, arms tied at night lest he commit suicide, and he read Don Quixote. Louis Michel, the veteran of the Paris Commune, wrote that "The blow struck at Carnot was a blow at the bourgeoisie of the whole world. It was not an assassination. It was an execution. Ravachol, Henry and Vaillant are avenged." Caserio's final words were 'Vive l'anarchie!'

From 'Four patients of Dr.Deibler', a fantastic book, by J.C.Longoni.

A few more notes on Lyons:

Its silk-weavers had a far longer tradition of militancy than craftsmen in Paris. The 18th century saw many violent conflicts between employers and employees. In 1786 they had fought for a minimum wage, and for the first time identified themselves as a 'class' exploited by their masters. Thus class consciousness first appeared here in time for the revolution of 1789. The workers lived in densely packed suburbs like La Croux Rousse and Parrache.
In November 1831 the weavers rose in rebellion, chanting the slogan 'Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant' (Live working or die fighting), overpowered the local garrison and took control of the city. Lacking organisation, they accepted a compromise and returned to their districts. They then organised in the Society of Mutual Duty and prepared for a general strike - Mutuellism was therefore banned by the Paris Government and its members arrested. This then led to further uprisings, spreading to Paris etc...

Blanqui was the first to use the term 'proletarire' in 1832.

From George Rude's 'Ideology and Popular Protest'.

The final word here from Jean Genet, who wrote it on the wall in Paris in 1968:
"C'est triste a dire, mais je ne pense que l'on puisse vaincre sans les drapeaux rouges et noires. Mais ils faut detrure - apres."
= Unfortunately I don't think we can win without the red and black flags. But they must be destroyed - afterwards.

A few London sights

2010-07-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

Not knowing if Kropotkin's old house still stands, or any of the original anarchist clubs, there are at least these locations in London:

Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park for free speech fights - literally a fight on days like November 13 1887, Bloody Sunday when many South London workers were injured by police batons blocking their approach over the bridges. Other processions were blocked by police, but one North London contingent did make it to Trafalgar Square, to be attacked and wounded by police. One young worker, Alfred Linnel, was beaten to death. A great procession followed his coffin to the grave, with William Morris giving the funeral oration. A vast crowd stood bareheaded as Morris read the Death Chant:

"They will not learn; they have no ears to harken,
They turn their faces from the eye of fate,
Their gay-lit halls shut out the skies that darken,
But lo! this dead man knocking at the gate."

The refrain was often repeated in the years that followed:

"Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day."

And fight went on, and for a period the Square was won for free speech.

In Hyde Park, a mass meeting for 23 July 1866 was met with posters declaring the park closed from 5pm. The police refused entry to the park and the majority of the mass Reform League demo followed its leaders to Trafalgar Square, where after a few speeches the crowd went home.

But meanwhile, back at the park, tens of thousands had remained, massed at two places. At Bayswater road a throng hurled themselves at the massive iron rails, which were thrown down; at the same time, workers in Park Lane tore down the park railings and the two sections joined forces to fight the police.
The Foot guards were sent in, and the workers sought to fraternise, halting the troops near the gates. Then the horse guards trotted in, again the workers cheered, the cavalry trotted off again and the police were attacked again. More foot and cavalry guards were then sent in with orders to shoot if necessary. Many were wounded, but on that day it was the workers who won. As a Reform League paper reported:

"The people have triumphed, in so far as they have vindicated their right to speak, resolve and exhort in Hyde park. True, the gates were closed against them, and lo! in twentyh minutes after the Park all around was one vast, gaping gate. The ordinary gates were the only closed part of the fencing."

From Tom Brown's 'British Syndicalism; Pages of labour History', which also lists newcastle's Bigg market as our local area for free speech.

Kings Cross, where 'the Alarm' was printed for a while, by a small group who pooled their money to make it happen. They hired a premises behind a shop in Ossulston St, Euston Rd, which was then taken over by the 'freedom group'.

Charlotte Wilson left the Freedom paper when its editor put his own slant and censorship over the contents, but workers in the group got together and kept the paper going with John Turner as publisher.
The income from pamphlets, aided by Kropotkin's reputation, kept 'Freedom' going for years.

The London Freedom group hired a room at 144 High Holborn, from the Emily Davison Dining Club, and carried on meetings there for several years. They also held oepn-air meetings in Hyde Park.

From George Cores' 'Personal recollections of the anarchist past'

Anchoring Myself

2010-07-24T12:39:00.001-07:00

I'm leaving 4 little talismans in the keeping of friends to keep me safe. Here are 3 of them.

Anarchy in the USSR: ed.Phil Ruff

2010-07-24T07:34:00.001-07:00

I've been upset by a lot of the research reading I've done for my trip. Beginning with the liberal ideals and heroism of 1848, gunned down. To the amazing courage of those who despite failure, despite having lost, despite knowing the same would happen to them, still rose up and strove again and again. From the horrors of Baron von Ungern-Sternberg in Dauria and Mongolia, to the unfathomable scale of the death-camps under Stalin.

It's fascinating the courage of people who, during an age when just making a joke about Stalin would see you sent to the gulag and die, your family condemning you in order to save themselves, would nonetheless declare themselves loyal to the flag of anarchism and its uncompromising ideal.

But in a way, I found the more recent stories of anarchism in Russia the most upsetting of all. The notes which follow come from a book published in 1991, and it features optimistic voices from within the USSR, hoping for a new dawn of soldarity and freedom that reality just wasn't going to bear out.

Instead of a grassroots anarchist rebirth, post-perestroika Russia was taken over by nationalism and capitalism, and the anarchists in Russia are under ongoing and lethal attack by the fascists who so outnumber them.

MOSCOW

p5 On 28 May, 1989, 20,000 people marched through Moscow, demonstrating against the Congress of People's Deputies. The Guardian's Jonathan Steele noticed amongst the banners, "a black flag with a red star carried by the recently formed Anarcho-Syndicalist Club. The slogan read: 'No confidence in the Supreme Soviet - form a left-wing faction.'"
This was the first open display of anarchists in the Soviet capital since 13 February, 1921, when a crowd of the same size joined the funeral cortege of Peter Kropotkin. Then came Kronstadt, the rout of Makhno and the outlawing of open anarchist organisation. Trotsky boasted: "At last the Soviet government, with an iron broom, has rid Russia of anarchism".

p41 In 1921, Lenin wrote: 'All this syndicalist nonsense must go in the wastepaper basket. To proceed on those lines would mean thrusting the Party aside and making the dictatorship of the Proletariat impossible.' And he was right. Anarchism will thrust the Party and all parties aside, for anarcho-syndicalism empowers people with the means to seize control of their own lives.
(Black Flag no.200)

p78 Golos Truda's publishing house and bookshops in Leningrad and Moscow, finally closed down in June 1929. Its final work was called 'the Bolshevik Dictatorship and the Anarchist Viewpoint'. An underground anarchist press was uncovered by the OGPU in Cheliabinsk in 1930.

p76 Moscow metro station [and volcano and towns] named after Kropotkin, statue of him with cat near the never-reopened Kropotkin museum, and even a Kropotkin rouble was minted! Despite Lenin's admiration, and the offer for deluxe state editions of his Mutual Aid and the Great French Revolution (which Kropotkin politely declined), his political works were banned until Glasnost, and were circulated only in illicit samizdat versions. His scientific-geographical works, however, always were admired.

p8 1950, underground student group formed in Moscow, avowedly Marxist but with the slogan 'Soviets, not Party'. Its manifesto opposed all political parties, and advocated government based in trade unions & worker & peasant soviets.
'Predictably, its members were all arrested and shipped-of to the Gulag.'

p15 First Congress of the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists (KAS), Moscow 1 May 1989
[Met 2 kilometers from the official state parade, knowing they were watched by the KGB.]
"Alexei told how he had been listening to the BBC's Russian language service when they quoted from the anarchist paper Obschina. He then realised he was not alone, "and now I am at this Congress." He had also taken part in a strike over dangerous working conditions. He was fired and now alone. ...
The Congress agreed on a minimal programme and decided that their principle motto would be 'all power to the people, not the party', the slogan of the Kronstadt workers and sailors during the uprising of 1921."
[outlined a federalist model of organisation, and changed the symbol from the red star on a black flag to the red and black banner of the international anarcho-syndicalist movement.]
(reported in Black Flag no.197)

p27 In November 1989, KAS adopted a pacifist stance, seeing 'political terrorism' as leading to the strengthening of totalitarian structures and thus as counter-productive.

p19 "Our motto remains the words of Bakunin: 'Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality'." Andrei Isaev

p23 Obschina no.43
"We do not want to impose our views on you, even less to call upon you to sacrifice your lives for them on the barricades. We can see perfectly well that time has killed the old, stubborn, terrorist, war anarchism. Anarchism is dead ... so long live anarchism, the great ideal of liberty, mutual respect and solidarity among people!"

p55 Moscow Union of Anarchists, declaration of principles, February 1991
"Replacement of the 'barracks' type of army and of the State-employed police forces by full access to arms for all the people, on a voluntary basis and with professional branches in the 'scientific' sectors of the army (chemical weapons, anti-missile technology...).
Freedom and self-determination for all peoples and nations."
p56 "Free movement of people within the country, as well as in and out of it (the enslaving system in which registration of the dwelling place, passports and identity cards are compulsory, is abolished)."

p41 1990 May Day in Moscow saw the red and black flags of anarchy being paraded through the streets of Moscow bearing the slogans 'Power to the people, not the parties' and 'Tell us, Communists when is your state going to whither away?'. And in May Day demonstrations from Leningrad to Kharkov, Kaluga to Angarsk in Siberia, the anarchists marched.

p58 SMOT Council of representatives, Moscow February 1991
"When you are a worker, you have nothing to do in everyday life with Yeltsin, Landsbergis or Gorbachev, but rather with the cashier at work who pays you little, and with the cashier at the shop who takes a lot from you, and even peeps in your passport. We worry much more about changing those relationships, than about the relationships between Yeltsin, and Gorbachev and Landsbergis."

RADIO

p9 In 1970, a BBC World Service programme about Soviet radio pirates made mention of one which described itself as anarchist.

ST PETERSBURG

p10 25th CPSU Congress in Feb 1976, leaflets appeared all over Leningrad declaring the Party compromised, its policies bankrupt, its methods Stalinist and its Congress a bluff. Anonymous authors called for pluralism and humane socialism, ending: "Long live the new revolution! Long live communism!"
2 weeks later, KGB arrested 17yr old Andrei Reznikov, sentenced to a strict regime camp but due to his youth was transferred to Red Army after 2 months.
Reznikov a member of a Leningrad student circle called the Left Opposition. Another member, Alexis Khavine, arrested in 1977 for disseminating works by Kropotkin.
[Summer 1978, they published 3 issues of a magazine, including anarchsit Trotskyist and New Left ideas, eg. Marcuse & Cohn-Bendit, plus reprints of samizdat manifestos, articles about the Kronstadt rebellion etc..]
The Left Opposition planned a conference of leftist groups from across the USSR (Leningrad, Moscow, the Baltics, Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Caucasus) in Sept 1978. It was postponed, and those who did turn up were rounded up by the police. Then police raids, KGB questioning, arrests.
On 5 december, over 200 students staged a demonstration in Leningrad's Our Lady of Kazan Square, in protest at the arrests.
[Reznikov attacked in the street, those arrested sent to hard labour, internal exile, psychiatric hospital etcc. Some forced to emigrate to avoid that fate.]

p11 On 7 October, 1979, Vladimir Mikhailov, Alexei Stasevich and Alevtina Koncheva were arrested in Leningrad, for painting slogans and fly-posting leaflets, which demanded 'democracy not demagogy' and 'down with state capitalism!' The leaflets advocated an 'anti-authoritarian order' and opposed the 'evils' of the family, private property and the state.
[found guilty of 'hooliganism', VM & AS 3 years in a strict regime camp, AK 1year 3months. All were members of the Movement of Revolutionary Communards, about which little is known.]

p12 Formation of SMOT in 1979, the Free General Workers Union, continuing at least till 1982 = the first active advocate of independent working class organisation to appear in the USSR since the elimination of the anarcho-syndicalist organisations of the 1920s.

SIBERIA

p5 The full story of the anarchist underground during the Stalin years has not been told (there were 'armed anarchist uprisings' in Siberia, in the late 1920s, of which nothing is known).

p8 The penal colonies of North Russia, Siberia and Central Asia were home to anarchists of every ilk and nation in the years 1946-54: 'religious anarchists' (Tolstoyans and Monashki), Ukrainian Makhnovists, anarcho-syndicalists, Poles, Russians, Latvians.
They participated in a wave of strikes and uprisings (sometimes armed), triggered off in the camps in 1953, by news of Stalin's death and the execution of Beria.
[Spanish CNT members took part in Karaganda insurrection, Kazakhstan]
The most bitter revolts took place in the coal-mining camps at Norilsk and Vorkuta, in the summers of 1953/54, where the banner of the strikers was the black flag.

p76 The Monashki was a libertarian Christian sect started by former Communists in Moscow & Leningrad at the end of the 1930s. It espoused a strict doctrine of civil disobedience to the state, and advocated a stateless, classless society, founded on the gospel of 'from each according to their ability, to all according to their needs', with the commune providing the basic unit of society. The movement seems to have been quite widespread among the peasants of Siberia and Central Asia. Inside the camps, its members distinguished themeslves by their determined refusal (backed up by countless hunger strikes) of any work by which the state might profit. There were some 8000 Monashki in the camps of Vorkuta in 1953.

p9 1973 report by ex-prisoner that she encountered anarchists in all the camps through which she passed. In one, a group of anarchist prisoners included young students and elderly women who had been in detention since before the Stalin era.
Another inmate, from 1957-1965, met anarchists "They had read books by Kropotkin and sometimes by Bakunin (whose works are very hard to find in libraries inside the USSR); they were even conversant with the ideas of Proudhon and with contemporary Western thought".

p38 Sitnikov, anarchist and striking worker from Siberia, murdered by KGB.
p74 Aaron Baron first exiled to Siberia by the Tsar's regime. Escaped to the USA and edited teh anarchist newspaper the Alarm (still in Chicago) until returning to Russia in 1917. One of the organisers of the Nabat (Alarm) Confederation of Anarchist Organisations in Ukraine, in 1918; joined Makhno's army; arrested November 1920, two years in Orel prison, then the notorious Solovetsky islands until 5 Jan 1925. Arrested in Moscow soon after his release and exiled to Altai, Siberia. his wife, Fanny Avrutska, was summarily executed (with the anarchist poet Lev Cherny) by the Cheka in Sept 1921.

TOMSK

p24 1990 On 3 April in Tomsk (Siberia), a new KAS paper Golos Truda (The Voice of Labour) came out.

EASTERN EDGE OF RUSSIA DURING WORLD WAR II

p6 A lot of the old political prisoners [incl left SR leader Maria Spiridovna] were killed by the NKVD in 1941, during the evacuation of territory threatened by the Nazi invasion: to stop them falling into the hands of the Germans (who would have hanged them!).
p75 At the start of WW2 Orel isolation prison for political offenders held 5000 prisoners. When the Germans were about to take Orel, the prisoners were herded into the basement, which was then flooded. All 5000 died.

p6 By 1942, Germans occupied Ukraine, Byelorussia & reached Leningrad & outskirts of Moscow: amongst the partisan groups who resisted, there were some who professed an allegiance to anarchism and the memory of Makhno.

p8 Amongst occupying troops at end of war, a secret organisation called Zavietti Kronstadta (the Kronstadt accords) alleged to be active in the Red Army in East Germany and Austria, including "former Makhnovists or veterans of Kronstadt".

LIBERTY FOR OTHER NATIONS
(echo of 1848 national liberation hopes)

p52 Open Letter handed out in Moscow, 13 January 1991
"We support the Lithuanian people's determination in their struggle for independence. We hope the government of our country, the Soviet Union, will fail in its attempt to bring Lithuania back into the USSR.
No to the Empire! Yes to a voluntary union of free nations! Long live your freedom and our freedom!
Signed by supporters of the leftist movement 'Self-management by the People'"
[ short list of names, including 3 KAS members]

UKRAINE

p7 In 1944-5, the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) noted in its war despatches, frequent encounters with "the Ukrainian anarchist partisans". Assuming these were the same people who later appeared as prisoners, in the camps at Karaganda and Vorkuta, they included some old members of Makhno's army; the younger ones having become anarchists under the spell of Makhno's legend.

p7 Nabat youth organisation set up by V.I.Us. [not the same as the earlier Nabat]
A school headmaster who had been badly wounded and captured by the Germans in 1941, Us escaped to his former village and recruited his former pupils as guerrillas. In November 1943, Nabat launched an armed uprising, seized the village and created a bridgehead on the West bank of the Dnieper, which it held until reinforced by a Corp of the Second Ukrainian Front. Nabat was highly commended by the political division of the Fourth Guards Army. After Soviet forces regained control of Ukraine, Us was arrested and sentenced to twenty years, for "voluntarily surrendering and creating a nationalist organisation".
[Set free 4 years later, he and Nabat were finally rehabilitated after Stalin's death.]

p33 Piotr Petrovich Siouda, 53 year old activist of the KAS, was killed in secret on 5 May, 1990. He had been investigating the repression carried out by the KGB in the town of Novocherkassk [in 1962] for the KAS paper Volya, and making the details widely known through the communist press too.
He was one of the survivors of the insurrectionary strike wave of the '60s, in which the workers were shot down in town after town.
"The ethnic unrest and the fascist groups that sprang up in the seventies were a deliberately introduced counter-balance to workers struggles - an exactly parallel situation with the capitalist world."

p35 A few days before he was killed, he told a local reporter that he had come into possession of a secret KGB document whcih gave the order to fire upon the crowd of rioters in Novocherkassk in 1962, constituting 'irrefutable proof' of the KGB's guilt.
Born Rostov-on-Don, founder member of the KAS.

p78 Solzhenitsyn reports on the Novocherkassk massacre that the wounded all disappeared without trace. Their families, and those of the dead, were all deported to Siberia, along with many of the workers. "A whole town rebels - and every trace is licked clean and hidden."

ALEXANDROVSK

p39 Never mentioned in the official press, workers uprisings in the 1960s in Alexandrovsk, Murom, Nizhni-Tagil, Temirtau, Odessa, Dneprodzerzhinsk, Lubny, Kuybyshev, Kemerovo, Kirvoy-Rog, Grozny, Donetsk, Yaroslavl etc... over housing and wages.
In Alexandrovsk, summer 1961, a worker beaten to death by the militia. Factory workers struck and went to the Commisariat with banners demanding the prosecution of the murderers. After they had stormed the building and set it on fire, they went to the prison where the soldiers refused to fire on the crowd. Special troops were then sent in and the massacre began. [over 100 killed]
The director of the factory who had supported the strike, the doctor who had exhumed the corpse of the first worker killed and attested to the means of his death, the painter who made the banners, were secretly judged and shot.

Locations in George Woodcock's History of Anarchism

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LONDON
British Museum 1876 after the famous escape from the military hospital (note not the PeterPaul fortress) via finland etc.. Kropotkin reached England, then back to Switzerland & conferences in Belgium & Ghent. "But he fled precipitately, under the impression that the Belgian police intended to arrest him, and returned to England, where for a time he contented himself with studying in the British Museum. It was now that he began to develop a conception of anarchism as a moral philosophy rather than as a mere programme of scoial change." p163

1864 French delegates - Proudhonists and Eugene varlin, at international conference at St Martins hall, 28 Sept. p199
1886+ In London, Kropotkin "became the great prophetic savant of the movement, to be asked for advice and articles, to be welcomed when he made a rare appearance at a public meeting or at a reunion in one of the revolutionary clubs which then dotted Soho and Whitechapel." p174
"The real birthplaces of modern British anarchism were the clubs for foreign workers which appeared in Soho as early as the 1840s, and somewhat later in the East End of London. The Rose Street Club in Soho, the Autonomie Club in Windmill Street, and later (after 1885) the International Club in Berners Street, Whitechapel, were the most favoured centres of the anarchist faction among the expatriates." p371
1885+ Jewish anarchism in London, "the various socialist points of view that were so volubly discussed week after week in the Berners Street International Club in Whitechapel. In 1891, owing largely to the expulsion of the anarchists by the Second International, the Berners Street Club was riven by political dissension, out of which the anarchists emerged triumphant, in possession of both the club and Der Arbeiter Fraint." [yiddish journal, to which Rudolf Rocker was famously linked after his arrival in 1895] p376

PARIS
1968 black flag of anarchism along with red of, basically, Marxism, over the Sorbonne p271

LYON
Hotel de Ville - 1848 "At last Lyons seemed to be in the power of Bakunin and his followers, and they settled down with some embarrassment to decide what they should do with the city.
Before they could reach any decision, the National Guard from the bourgeois quarters converged on the Hotel de Ville, drove the crowd from its vicinity, and recaptured the building. The Committee fled, with the exception of Bakunin, who was imprisoned in the cellars of the Hotel de Ville, and eventually rescued by the local anarchists. He escaped to Marseille, where he spent three weeks hiding ... until a friendly Italian ship's captain smuggled him to Genoa." p147
After Lyons trial, Kropotkin "sent to the prison of Clairvaux in the old Abbey of St Bernard, where they were given the privileged treatment of political prisoners... He conducted classes among his fellow prisoners in languages, cosmography, physics, and geometry; he experimented with intensive cultivation in the prison garden; he wrote articles on Russia" etc.. p172

SWITZERLAND
Locations to find in French-speaking Switzerland & just over the French border.
1867 Lausanne conference, mutualist followers of Proudhon outnumbered by collectivists (Bakuninists) p200
1871 Sonvillier, site of anarchist conference that drafted & circulated the influential "Sonvillier declaration" putting forward the libertarian case against the centralising faction of Marx in the International. p148
Kropotkin in the idea-formation part of his life travelled to Zurich with its several hundred Russian exiles, the radicals amongst whom were split between Bakunin's and the populist Lavrov's camps of influence. Then to Geneva to try out the Marxists, who irked him, where he met the Bakuninist Zhukovsky, who directed him to the Jura.
"The first man he met in the Jura was James Guillaume, working in his little printing shop in Neuchatel; from there he went on to Sonvillier, where he sought out Schwitzgeubel, and made the acquaintance of the mountain watchmakers, talking with them in their little family workshops and attending the meetings in the villages where the peasant craftsmen came tramping down from the hills to discuss the anarchist doctrine that seemed to offer them a chance of establishing social justice while retaining their treasured independence." p161
1878 Kropotkin having founded the La Revolte paper, he spent "a great deal of his time in lecture tours in an effort to reactivate the International in the small towns around Lake Leman and in the Jura." p164
1881 after London International Anarchist Congress, Kropotkin "expelled from Switzerland because of pressure exerted by the Russian ambassador, and settled in the little French town of Thonon on the southern shore of Lake Leman." p165
Lake Leman = another name for Lake Geneva.
"In France itself it was in the south-eastern region, nearest to Switzerland and therefore most open to the influence of the Jura Federation and the Communard exiles, that anarchist activity first began to appear after the months of repression that followed the Commune. The earliest organizations were small secret groups which towards the end of 1872 began to re-establish connections with the Bakuninists over the frontier, to hold secret meetings in Lyons and Saint-Etienne, and to import literature from Geneva." p240
1881 beginning of French anarchist bombs phase: "The first widely publicized act of violence during this period was an attmempt to blow up a statue of Thiers at Saint-Germain in June 1881", possibly by police prefect & agent-provocateur Serreaux. p248

ST PETERSBURG
1917 Kropotkin, (like Lenin) arrived at the Finland Station "where he was welcomed by Kerensky, a regiment of Guards, and military bands playing the 'Marseillaies'. Absent were the Russian anarchists, most of whom opposed the war." p180 (he had supported the Allied states' war against Germany and thus became isolated from the main anarchist movement).

1921 5 mile long procession at Kropotkin's funeral through the streets of Moscow remember, not St.Petersburg. p182

Mount Kropotkin

2010-07-19T09:55:00.001-07:00

There's a 7 second clip of Kropotkin on youtube.

& John Beard just found Mt Kropotkin for me, not too far from Lake Baikal but, according to a website:

"With its cone-like shape the Kropotkin is one of the most beautiful peaks in the East-Sayan Mountains. Since the volcano valley lies in a very isolated region it can only be reached by means of an expedition."

The description continues, and has everything from mysteriously dead exiles to local superstitious dread:

"The best starting point for a hike to Volcano Valley are the springs of Choito Gol. The trail itself starts behind the last cabin and steeply leads uphill to the tree limit for 3 km. After crossing the Arshan stream it leads to the pass wherefrom it starts running downhill again. When you reach the first longish lake keep on going along the shore in a northward direction and you will soon see the Volcano Valley. Some minutes later, you will leave the main trail and you will come across a cabin where you can spend the night and which is also quite useful as base camp for those who want to climb the volcanoes.

Whereas it is not very difficult to climb the volcanoes, it is difficult to walk across the fields of lava because large cracks and crevices are running through them.

"Mt Kropotkin was named after the first Russian geologist who explored the region. He became aware of the distinct features of the volcano chain through drawings from the second half of the 19th century by the English painter Atkinson. More detailed notes only exist from the Russian geographer Peretolchin. He was banned by the Tsar and used the time of this exile to thoroughly explore the region. From one of this trips he did not come back and it was not until two years later that his wive found him, laying dead and without any visible injuries on the brink of the volcano crater that was named after him a few years later.

The Buryats shun the area because they say that it is the home of evil spirits. It looks indeed a bit unreal, due to the missing vegetation and the vast fields of lava."

A building per city.

2010-07-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

I intend to do at least one sketch of a building/location that features in the stories of Kropotkin, Bakunin & co, for each of the following cities. As I read up on the episodes they got involved with, I hope a building will leap out and a google search will reveal it still exists. Until then, this is a very hesitant list, which will help focus me on the journey.

Newcastle, the Cowen Monument (his links to Kropotkin, & of Newcastle to Russia, will kick me off)

London (1. Freedom Bookshop, Kropotin's house?, exiles' meeting place?)
Paris (Commune? Pere Lachaise graveyard, exiles' meeting place? location of bombings?)
Lyon (1.Hotel de Ville. Also is the prison still there?)
Geneva (location of a meeting, eg. of the International?)
Chaux le Fonds (location linked to the Jura Federation?)
Zurich
Dresden (Church [rebuilt several times] from which Wagner kept his look-outs during the 1848 insurrection)
Berlin (1848 streetfights? University? Exiles' meeting place?)
St Petersburg (1. St.Peter-Paul fortress 2.Kronstadt 3. location of K's escape? 4. spot of Tsar's assassination 5. Nevsky Prospekt for gatherings/massacres ...6. Site of K's funeral procession)
Kazan
Yekaterinburg
Irkutsk
Chita
Ulan Ude
Moscow (Kropotkin Museum [his old house] Bakunin's house/estate)
Helsinki
Stockholm
Copenhagen
Cologne
Brussels
Amsterdam

Packing

2010-07-18T07:53:00.000-07:00

I had intended to travel light. This post will demonstrate how that intention is crumbling to bits.

ONE.

These are the novels I currently plan to take with me. (I will be a dostoyevsky EXPERT when I return.) But they're way too heavy, and I'm also taking a similar amount of weight in sketchpads & photocopied sheets from various historical & anarchist books.
The one good thing about the novels is they're all expendable - as I read war & peace, for example, I'll rip out the chapters I've read to lose weight. But i won't get round to reading them till I'm in Russia, so that's still a week of carrying a LOT of ballast around...

TWO.

Absolute friendly essentials (the things that I bond with through intimate constant use).
(a) My trusty 35litre backpack. (b) Light coat. (c) Cheap fake converse which will probably stink by the time I make the trans-siberian. Sorry carriage-mates.

THREE.

As instructed to bring for the conservation project on Lake Baikal.

Their list No.1 is what they say is essential (compulsory)

(a)Backpack (yes, but they say it should be minimum 60 litres, and mine is defiantly 35)
(b) Sleeping pad (to buy)
They explain why: "A sleeping pad is an indispensable item in Siberia. Because of nearby permafrost, even during the hottest time of the year the surface layers of soil around Baikal do not warm up sufficiently. If you sleep without a sleeping pad on bare soil, you will not only get a cold but also risk getting hypothermia, which has severe health consequences."
(c) Sleeping bag (ok, I had meant to leave it, but I will bring it - it is still nowhere near as suitable as the one they recommend, for the extreme night-time drops in temperature you get in Siberia. I might buy an extra blanket in Siberia to compensate.)
(d) Footwear - at least two pairs of shoes, such as hiking boots and sneakers (buy boots in Siberia? No, or I'll get blisters, I guess I do need to buy & carry a pair, grumble...)
(e) Personal set of light, sturdy dishware - cup, bowl, spoon, knife (was gonna buy in Siberia but actually I'll need for the train, so I'll try get a light handy travel-set)
(f) Toiletries - toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, towel (yep)
(g) Waterproof jacket or coat (light cagoule from amble [see 'beach zine'], gonna leave waterproof trousers behind this time)
(h) Warm sweater, pants, hat (my anarchist uniform of black hoody, leftover black troosers bought for school, and a hat I'll get in Siberia)
(i) Personal first aid kit (yep, got - a happy reminder that I do at least know the outdoors)
(j) Sunscreen (get in Siberia or 'forget' as I usually do)
(k) Wide-brimmed sun hat (to buy)
(l) Sunglasses (somewhere I've got some prescription ones to dig out)
(m) Mosquito net for head (to buy)

Their list no.2 is optional, & I ain't gonna bring hardly any of it:

(a) Work gloves (nope)
(b) Safety glasses (nope)
(c) Tent - if you are over 6 feet tall or want to sleep alone (nope, although both those things are true)
(d) Flashlight (well, I'll take a mini headtorch)
(e) Multifunctional pocket knife (I intend to buy one en route in Switzerland as a souvenir and, not flying, I hope to actually keep this one - I've lost 2 good knives at airports on previous trips)
(f) Sewing kit (yes, cos I need to fix my backpack for starters!)
(g) Biodegradable soap (good idea, but is it worth carrying for 2000 miles?)
They say: "Biodegradable soap and shampoo are not available in Siberia, unfortunately, and we don't usually have them on our projects. Therefore, if it's possible to buy such soap in your home country, definitely do so. By bringing it to the camp you will help preserve pristine waters of Baikal!"
(h) Rubber boots (er, nope)
(i) Insect repellant (nope)
"The group first aid kit includes mosquito and tick repellent sprays that can be applied to clothes ONLY. If you prefer repellents that can be sprayed directly on the skin, you should bring them yourself. "
(j) Water filter (nope)
"It is said that the water of Lake Baikal and its tributaries is among the cleanest in the world. It is definitely suitable for drinking. All that aside, you should be aware that bacteria in Baikal water may be different from the ones your body is used to. First, each person has his own internal microflora and different immunities against foreign bacteria. Second, everyone's immunity depends on their daily living conditions and their environment, which can differ from one continent to another. Local Siberians can easily drink untreated water from open bodies of water. However, our experiences from the previous summer camps show that participants from North America and Australia tend to have the most intense reaction to untreated Siberian water. Most Europeans, on the other hand, drink the water straight from the rivers and streams without experiencing any problems. If you want to drink untreated water, we recommend bringing a water filter to the camp. However, it is not necessary to filter water if you will be boiling it for tea, coffee or soup." I'll risk it.
(k) Swimsuit (shorts, yep)

FOUR.

My other sundries list - entertainment, documentation, hygiene
(a) mp3 player (to buy, along with two-plug charger).
(b) Digital camera (again, plug adapter to find & buy). I might photograph some book pages to avoid carrying the photocopies too.
(c) Lots of pens.
(d) Passport & tickets & suchlike pouch.
(e) Wetwipes (& shoe unstinkifiers?).
(f) Travelwash to wash clothes.
(g) Universal plug for train sink (to buy/borrow).
(h) Food (this is gonna be the second most constant concern, getting enough veggie stuff before each journey. Happily the camp has food provided so I should get my health back then if I've been surviving on processed carbohydrates for a fortnight. The exiles used to get scurvy in Siberia, hopefully I won't.)
(i) Clothes (5 sets of pants & socks enough? same number of (t)shirts? 2 trousers?)

So will I physically be able to carry all this stuff? I don't know, but I REALLY don't want to get a huge backpack. I might prefer a second hold-all/bag to stick food & other temporaries in.

DUMPSPOTS TO PLAN

I intend to update the blog/pick up info at certain key moments, and likewise post back any finished sketchpads/letters/finished-with info. So I need to plan which post offices/internet cafes I am gonna use.
(a) Switzerland or Germany before the 2 day journey into eastern europe.
(b) St Petersburg before the trans siberian
(c) Ulan Ude or similar before & after the conservation camp.
(d) probably St Petersburg again on the way out, but if my plans change, this could be Beijing or anything.

Tickets bought, loan out, time ticking.

2010-07-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

I know it's childish, but look at this wikipedia entry from 'Russian explorers' and tell me Kropotkin is not a cool dude.

I couldn't find where the settlement in Irkutsk Oblast is (but I'll be IN the Irkutsk Oblast... ), nor where the inactive volcano is in Buryatia (but I'll be IN Buryatia... ).

I've got some set dates and times for trains.

25th July leave Newcastle 8.35am
27th July leave London 5.25am
(Some time in Paris, then onto Lyon then thru Switzerland to Dresden then Berlin).
4th August leave Berlin 3.22pm
6th August arrive St.Petersburg 6.13am
Some time in St.Petersburg.
9th August leave St.Petersburg 4.13pm
10th August arrive Kazan 1.55pm, then back on a train 7.55pm
11th August arrive Yekaterinburg (bit of an accident, this stop, I think I made a mistake buying tickets!)
Some time in Yekaterinburg.
Very late 12th August (actually 1.31am 13th August) leave on the posh Rossija train.
15th August arrive Ulan Ude 1.32pm
Hopefully head to Chita and back (but I may be too sick of trains & need a break).
18th August, meet at the famous Lenin's head.
Nowt else booked, nor likely to be, after this date.

8am, by Lenin's head

2010-06-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

I am confirming some dates, which is scary because I'm giving myself a rather tight schedule to start off with - but I think that's okay because that's the mindset I'll be setting off with.

So dates:

Belarus transit visa 4th-5th August paid for but not completed.

Train leaves Berlin 4th August, through Belarus on 5th, arriving in St Petersburg on the 6th. Paid for and confirmed - bed in a 3-bed compartment.

Russian business double entry visa paid for but not completed, 5th August to 5th November.

Actually that Belarus train trip is exciting in itself. The German lady on the phone had a very sexy voice and the route is this:

Berlin Hbf	We, 04.08.10	dep	15:22
Berlin Ostbahnhof		dep	15:34
Frankfurt(Oder)		dep	17:09
Rzepin		dep	17:49
Poznan Gl.		dep	19:46
Warszawa Centralna		dep	23:00
Warszawa Wschodnia		dep	23:53
Lukow		dep	01:22
Terespol		dep	03:30
Brest Central		dep	07:20
Minsk(BY)		dep	11:14
Orscha Central		dep	16:50
Vitebsk		dep	18:31
Gorodok		dep	19:11
Ezerische		dep	20:01
Newel 2		dep	21:40
Novosokolniki		dep	22:54
Loknja		dep	00:15
Suschewo		dep	00:49
Dedowitschi		dep	01:42
Dno		dep	02:23
Solzi		dep	03:07
Utorgosch		dep	03:25
Batezkaja		dep	04:05
St Petersburg Vitebskii	Fr, 06.08.10	arr	06:13

heh heh, 'brest central', heh heh

Books to read en-route (green are ones i've read, red are definites)

2010-06-27T07:45:00.000-07:00

I am planning NOT to stop at most of these places, at least on the way out and into Siberia, but these are books I would like to either read as I go past, or have already read and so remind myself of them as I go past. I need to find a good english-language bookshop in Siberia to avoid carrying some of these out there.

Versions of the train trip to scan through - Mark Taplin 'Open Lands: Travels through Russia's once forbidden places'; Ryszard Kapusinski 1958 trip in 'Imperium'; David Mitchell 'Ghostwritten'

Nizhni Novgorod - Maxim Gorky (born there, had the city named after him) & Andrey Sakharov (exiled there)

Perm - Dr.Zhivago written there, Chekhov's 'three sisters' set there.

Kazan - I will stop here, Tatar, Muslim, Genghis Khan themes

Yekaterinburg - death of Romanovs in 1917. Also features a lot in 'Railwaymen and Revolution: Russia 1905' by Henry Reichman, which i read on google books and was a bit boring - I guess it's hard to tell stories when you're working off such a vast geographical area and primarily using statistical sources. But basically it was the railwaymen who kicked off two general strikes in 1905 that galvanised the country and which, despite the military repression that followed, served to change the material basis of 'possibility' in old tsarist russia.

Tobolsk - exiles, Solzhenitzyn 'One Day in the Life...' etc..

Omsk - Dostoyevsky 'The House of the Dead', and centre of anti-Bolshevik forces in civil war.
(also Dostoyevsky's Idiots looks good)

Novosibirsk - built for the railway.

Tomsk - I might stop here, old Russia.

Krasnoyarsk - good place to go hiking.

Zima station.

Irkutsk - Siberian folktales, eg. 'The Sun Maiden and the Crescent Moon' James Riordan, and the Ugadan publishing books by Kira van Deusen, 'Fox Mischief', 'Shyaan am!', 'Woman of Steel''

Also Vladimir Korolenko 'Makar's Dream'; Avvakum's 'Life'; Dimitry Stonov 'In the past night: the Siberian stories'; Sergei Zalygin 'the commission'; Viktor Astafiev 'the cursed and the dead'; Vasili Shukshin 'Stories from a Siberian Village'; Valentin Rasputin 'Farewell to Matyora'

About Lake Baikal: Bartel Bull 'Around the Sacred Sea' (on horseback); Harmon Tupper 'To the Great Ocean'

Ulan Ude - Buryat/Buddhist centre, where I get off.
Local indigenous authors include:
Chuckhi - Iurii Rytkheu
Nivkhi: Chuner Taksami
Khanty: Yeremei Aipin
Anna Nerkagi (in 'Anxious North')
Yukagir: Semyon Kurilov
Antonina Kymytval
Vladimir Sangi
Teki Odulok
Yuvan Shestalov
Sulungu Onenko

Chita - Decembrists 'The Queen of Siberia'

Trying to look like Kropotkin

2010-06-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

With my head blatted by the attempt to work out visas and how to only be in Russia for the 30 day maximum, I decide I am starting to look like Kropotkin.

Did HE have to get a HIV test before he could escape the country?
I mean Bakunin, yes, he'd have to. But Kropotkin?

Voline's history and places en route

2010-06-19T12:10:00.001-07:00

Today I've skim-read Voline's sad history of the Bolshevik destruction/takeover of the Russian revolution, which included the brutal wiping out of the anarchist movements of the time.

A few episodes at certain locations leap out as possibilities for me to focus on:

Moscow - anarchists, syndicalists and others put in Tanganka prison - Summer 1921 Congress of Red Trade Unions protest to Bolsheviks when these prisoners go on hunger strike - triggers first deportation of political prisoners from the new Russia. (better than being shot)

Berlin - arrival of said prisoners by boat into a Germany teetering on revolution (with wrong passports deliberately set up by Bolsheviks) - very unususual/brave solidarity/acceptance of these anarchists by Germans, story to be told.

Paris - Voline buried in Pere-Lachaise cemetery

Voline's online text of Russia

Kronstadt story clearly told - the sailors role before the conflict/ the Bolshevik repression of any independent voices and the sailors' response/ the bombardment and massacre by Trotsky and his Cheka.
(Especially: The role of kitchen gardens; the very evocative statements/bulletins; the independence of soviets versus central control)
(to check: which sailors died in Siberian exile)

"Appointed Commissar of Kronstadt, Dybenko was given full power to "clean up the rebel city". This meant an orgy of massacre. The victims of the Cheka were innumerable, and they were executed en masse during the days that followed the fall of the fortress"

During the ensuing weeks the gaols of Kronstadt were filled with hundreds of prisoners from Kronstadt. Each night, little groups of prisoners were taken out and shot by order of the Cheka.

"In the prisons, in the concentration camps, in the polar regions of Archangel, in the distant deserts of Turkestan, the men of Kronstadt who rebelled against the Bolshevik absolutism for really free Soviets endured, for long years, a miserable existence, and slowly died. There are probably no more of them still alive today."

Nishni-Novgorod - place where anarchist Moscow regiment leader Gratchov lured to and (probably) assassinated when Bolsheviks eliminated original military forces who had defended the revolution in Moscow.

April 12, day that Trotsky had all Moscow organisations rounded up, closed down, shot etc.. under the exact same rhetoric as Stalin used to close his own lot down later.

Summer 1919 command to wipe out the Makhnovists. Intercepted secret telegram from lenin:
- Arrest all the Anarchists and incriminate them. Lenin.

Tolstoyan pacifists rounded up and killed for refusal to serve in army.

Murmansk - location at which 3 delegates who were critical of Bolsheviks were sent deceitfully to die.

Info on Siberian anarchism to collect. Book on the mental Buddhist white general on its way.

"The Bolsheviks moved against the anarchists in spring 1918, using the Cheka to attack them and imprison them. But the disarming of anarchist units in Siberia by the Bolsheviks was hindered by the attack by the Whites led by Kolchak in March 1918. These units, as well as units organised by the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, fought too efficiently for the Bolsheviks to allow themselves to destroy them. They were in the first rank of the underground resistance when the Whites occupied Siberia. In autumn 1918 anarchist peasant guerrilla groups appeared in the regions already mentioned. Novoselov was commander of a group of tens of combatants singing The March of the Anarchists and flying red and black flags inscribed with the slogan “Anarchy is the Mother of Order” (a sentence from Reclus also used on Makhnovist flags). Other anarchist detachments elected their commanders.

Shtirbul considers that a significant number of the 140,000 revolutionary combatants in Siberia were under anarchist influence. Like the Makhnovist detachments who contributed in a decisive fashion to the defeat of the White general Denikin in the Ukraine, the Siberian anarchist partisans (Novoselov and Rogov) contributed to the pushing back of Kolchak, From a strictly military point of view, the support of the anarchists in the struggle against the Whites was indispensable. This explains why, despite orders from Moscow, there were severe problems with the crushing of Siberian anarchism, as local Bolsheviks regarded the anarchists as honest revolutionaries."

Mp3 player to buy

2010-06-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

I don't like or own any mobile phone. For a few brief weeks I used one when I lived in London, and was staying in different beds each night, but I was happy the day I realised I'd lost it.

However, I thought for arranging things in Russia/Siberia it might come in handy. Plus texts from friends might make me feel less lonely, and also I figure I should have something to give away if I'm mugged/robbed. There's no point having nothing nickable if they then decide 'it'd better be your passport then'.

I will take my digital camera, I think. And also I've decided today that getting a v.small mp3 player would be good for the neverending journeys & snoring carriage-mates. It's also another thing to accept being stolen/exchanged/used as a bribe-in-need. As I've not had one before, I shouldn't mind it once it's gone.

And the bonus thing about it is it lets me spend hours choosing favourite tracks to evoke old times/ to go well with train journeys/ to represent and remind me of different sides of my life. And it doesn't depend upon radio reception or mobile phone reception like a phone would. And it will leave me with my awareness/interaction with my surroundings intact, unlike a mobile which creates a self-centred blockage.

One problem is that I have no money at the moment. I'm £1000 into my £1200 overdraft with £200 to pay for my next zine printing. So I need to arrange a meeting with the bank to get a credit card and/or loan. And in the meantime I'm trying to save money on some things in order to pay for the things I want to (like the £40 worth of books about russia/siberia/anarchism I've sent off for today).

Making my scrapbook & reading the NME today - listening to the highlighted bands - was enjoyable, and kind've informs my decision.

First tickets bought

2010-05-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

I've spent a lot of time thinking of dropping the idea, because it will be a very lonely 6 weeks on my own, running up debt to no particular purpose.

But no, I'm gonna do it. When I get paid on thursday I'll buy one of the big tickets - today I've bought just the initial ones

newcastle to london on 25th July
london to paris on 27th July

friend of a friend to stay with in Lyons (trendy art scene)
possible family friend of a friend to stay with in Zurich (squat scene)
half-booked myself on an environmental camp 18-31st August in Siberia

paris to london 16th September

Reading up on places, read the 1848 revolutions book, got books on the decembrists in siberia and others to read next.

A couple of maps

2010-01-11T13:51:00.000-08:00

This defunct map is nice for showing Harbin's location, which is a tempter. It isn't quite the same route in the west these days, though...

Here's one with the UK, but missing the northern loop thru finland/sweden via st.petrosgradburg.

And 3 because 3 is the magic number.
(alchemico-philosophically, 1 is everything, all, unity, which you have to divide/ demarcate/ separate in order to define/ determine/ talk about anything, but by creating 2 (subjectobject, lightdark, herethere etc..) you have inevitably created a 3, the most interesting bit, the relationship between the two.

2010-01-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

Films I've watched on TV this weekend are exactly how I imagine this trip will turn out.

Getting on the train at St.Petersburg.

Hanging out with the Russians.

Changing trains at Lake Baikal.

Approaching Chita

And beyond.

No.3 Possible page one text

2010-01-01T11:12:00.001-08:00

I am part of a loose collective who make a diary each year, called Wor Diary, which is dedicated to remembering rebellious men and women, protests and riots and fights done by the ordinary folk (folk like us), who don't usually feature on the official record. The people, in fact, whose names are forgotten, whose voices are silenced and whose ideas of a different, better future, are denied.

Each year about fifty people take part in drawing the pages and making Wor Diary, we print a few hundred copies and then sell it around Tyneside for cost price. It's a fundamentally amateur project, with no big marketing or famous names being splashed about. There's a reason for this, connected to the idea that real history is not handed down by a few famous characters - the story of the 'official' history books. Rather, history is created day-by-day in every nook & cranny of the world, in the most diverse way possible, and it is THIS world of struggle & sociability that we want to celebrate in Wor Diary. The neighbours helping each other out, the people saying 'no' to abuse, to control and to selling-out.

There are some other reasons why this project needs a few disclaimers.

Unlike Marxism, anarchism does not have an originator or a primary theorist, and unlike a movement such as Chartism, anarchism is still alive and still relevant to people's struggles today. The place to find it is amongst the people trying to live free, to increase theirs & others' freedom, to reduce oppression, remove injustice in their own way. So there's no point going searching for the person who 'invented' anarchism, and it is against anarchist principles to say that one person is more important than any other. We're all in it together.

What Happened Where - Overview

2009-12-30T17:51:00.001-08:00

Bit by bit I'll add the notable record next to the location. This will guide me when I come to write the actual notebooks.

London - Exiles settle.

Paris - Exiles meet, including Bakunin with Proudhon & Marx 1844; Commune 1871;

Lyon - 1870 Bakunin leads failed insurrection on principles of later Paris Commune

Switzerland - Gatherings & conferences (Geneva/Bern). Exiles, printing presses, smuggling and snatches by secret police. Bakunin retires (Lugano/Bern).
Neuchatel - Jura federation works out anarchist programme that Kropotkin takes up 1872.

Baden 1848 - Bakunin joins abortive attempt at insurrection.

Dresden 1849 - Bakunin organising barricades during insurrection.

Chemnitz 1849 - Bakunin captured for Russians.

Wroclaw - Marx circulates allegation that Bakunin's a state asset.

St.Petersburg -
Peter & Paul fortress - Kropotkin's notorious escape 1876. The rescue of the red balloon fails, but the rescue of the wild fiddler succeeds. His descriptions in the comments
Apraxin Dvor - fire story

Lake Baikal - 1866 Polish exiles revolt, and die. Kropotkin's account.

Irkutsk, administrative centre of Siberia & its exiles. 1857 plans for United States of Siberia. Bakunin escapes 1861.

Chita, Kropotkin's work-base 1862+. Watchtower parable.

The Amur River - 1863 Kropotkin's explorations and boat journeys.

Manchurian explorations - 1863 Kropotkin stories vs Chinese.

Ghirin - encounter with Chinese culture.

1865 Kropotkin exploring western Sayans etc..

Tom River crossing on ice, Kropotkin story 1863?

Finland - Kropotkin passes through in a northern loop.

Stockholm - Bakunin meets up with his wife.

Christiania - Kropotkin docks on his escape from Russia.

The Hague 1872 - Bakunin expelled by Marx from the IWMA

Kropotkin talks about the Amur river

2009-12-30T17:44:00.000-08:00

"After I had delivered my barges, I made about a thousand miles down the Amúr in one of the post boats which are used on the river. The stern of the boat was covered in, and in the bow was a box filled with earth upon which a fire was kept to cook the food. My crew consisted of three men. We had to make haste, and therefore used to row in turns all day long, while at night the boat was left to float with the current, and I kept the watch for three or four hours to maintain the boat in the middle of the river, and to prevent it from being drawn into some side channel. These watches - the full moon shining above and the dark hills reflectcd in the river - were beautiful beyond description.

My rowers were taken from the aforementioned sons; they were three tramps, who had the reputation of being incorrigible thieves and robbers, - and I carried with me a heavy sack full of banknotes, silver, and copper. In Western Europe such a journey, on a lonely river, would have been considered risky; not so in East Siberia. I made it without even having so much as an old pistol, and I found my three tramps excellent company. Only, as we approached Blagovéschensk, they became restless. "Khánshina" (the Chinese brandy) "is cheap there," they reasoned, with deep sighs. "We are sure to get into trouble! It's cheap, and it knocks you over in no time, from want of being used to it!" I offered to leave the money which was due to them with a friend who would see them off with the first steamer. "That would not help us," they replied mournfully. "Somebody will offer a glass, - it's cheap, and a glass knocks you over!" they persisted in saying. They were really perplexed, and when, a few months later, I returned through the town, I learned that one of "my sons," as people called them in town, had really got into trouble. When he had sold the last pair of boots to get the poisonous drink, he had committed some theft and had been locked up. My friend finally obtained his release and shipped him back."

& another time ...

"A few days later, a steamer slowly creeping up the river overtook me, and when I boarded her, the passengers told me that the captain had drunk himself into a delirium and jumped overboard. He was saved, however, and was now lying ill in his cabin. They asked me to take command of the steamer, and I had to consent; but soon I found to my great astonishment that everything went on by itself in such an excellent routine way that, though I paraded all day on the bridge, I had almost nothing to do. Apart from a few minutes of real responsibility, when the steamer had to be brought to the landing-places, where we took wood for fuel, and saying a word or two now and then to encourage the stokers to start as soon as the dawn permitted us faintly to distinguish the outlines of the shores, matters took care of themselves. "

In conclusion, about Siberia ...

"Having been brought up in a serf-owner's family, I entered active life, like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing, and the like. But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises and to deal with men, and when each mistake would lead at once to heavy consequences, I began to appreciate the difference between acting on the principle of command and discipline and acting on the principle of common understanding. The former works admirably in a military parade, but it is worth nothing where real life is concerned, and the aim can be achieved only through the severe effort of many converging wills. Although I did not then formulate my observations in terms borrowed from party struggles, I may say now that I lost in Siberia whatever faith in state discipline I had cherished before. I was prepared to become an anarchist. "

No.2 - Itinerary

2009-12-30T14:26:00.001-08:00

Dates & train times to be added, beds to be arranged, plans to be changed on a regular basis. But my thoughts to begin with, before I trim them down:

UK
Newcastle (Clousden Hill K 1896; Durham Miners' Gala K 1882)
TRAIN NO.1. NEWCASTLE TO LONDON *
London (K 1881 visit; K 1886-1914 lived in Harrow, Ealing & Bromley; Autonomy Club; Freedom Bookshop)
[Brighton] (1890s/1900s? lived) [SEPARATE TRIP?]

FRANCE
TRAIN NO.2 LONDON TO PARIS *
Paris (B 1844 meets Proudhon & Marx, likes one hates the other; K 1877 helps start socialist movement)
TRAIN NO.3 PARIS TO LYONS *
Lyons (B 1870 uprising; K 1882 sentenced to imprisonment)
TRAIN NO.4 LYONS TO LAKE GENEVA *, PLUS SMALL JOURNEYS
Thonon (K 1881 & 1882 where arrested) [LAKE GENEVA]

SWITZERLAND
Geneva (B 1843?; B 1867 conference; B 1868 First International; K 1872 International Workingmen's Association) [LAKE GENEVA]
[Vevey] (B 1863 passing through) [LAKE GENEVA]
TRAIN NO.5 GENEVA TO NEUCHATEL/BERNE = SMALL JOURNEYS
Neuchatel (K 1872 joined Jura federation, adopted anarchism; K 1873 again after escape; K 1878 editing 'La Revolte') [NEAR BERNE]
La Chaux de Fonds? K meets Malatesta etc..
Berne (B 1868 conference spit; B 1876 died)
TRAIN NO.6 BERNE TO BADEN/VIENNA VIA ZURICH (=optional. Alternative is direct to Dresden))
Zurich (B 1840?)

[Lugano] (B 1873 retirement) [NEAR ITALY]
[ITALY] (B 1864 developed anarchist ideas)

AUSTRIA
Baden (B 1848 attempted insurrection)
TRAIN NO.7 BADEN/VIENNA TO DRESDEN VIA PRAGUE (= optional, droppable)

(Prague) (B 1848 first pan slav congress)

GERMANY
Dresden (B 1840 study-awakening; B 1849 insurrection)
[Chemnitz] (B 1849 captured)
[Leipzig] (B passed through 1848)

TRAIN NO.8 DRESDEN TO WROCLAW (non-stop train)
POLAND
Breslau = Wroclau (B 1848 passed through; 1848or9? accused by Marx of being a state agent)
TRAIN NO.9 (change trains, don't stay over) WROCLAW VIA WARSAW TO MOSCOW OR ST.PETERSBURG

(Minsk)(Gardinas) (B 1834 military service)

RUSSIA
[Moscow] (B born 1814; K born; K 1921 died Dmitrov, buried Novodevichy cemetery)
[IF DO MOSCOW TO ST.PETERSBURG TRAIN, TSAR'S FINGER STORY & EXPLO LINKS, OR COULD START TRANS-SIBERIAN DIRECT FROM MOSCOW]
St.Petersburg (B study until 1834; B 1851-4 in Peter-Paul fortress; B 1854-1856 Shlisselburg; K 1857 joins corps of pages then army; K 1867 study after quit army; K 1871 joined revolutionary party; K 1873 in Peter-Paul fortress, escaped 1876)
Kronstadt
TRAIN NO.10 ST.PETERSBURG TO TOMSK
Tomsk (exile B 1857)
TRAIN NO.11 TOMSK TO IRKUTSK
Irkutsk (exile B 1857?-1861; K 1862? attache for cossack affairs)
TRAIN NO.12 IRKUTSK TO CHITA
Chita (K 1862 aide to governor)

[Nikolaevsk] (B 1861 trip he never made cos he escaped) [THE ONE IN VOLGOGRAD?]

TRAIN NO.13 TO VLADIVOSTOCK
Manchuria (K explorations 1864+)
[Vladivostock/sea of okhotsk]
TRAIN NO.14 VLADIVOSTOCK TO ST.PETERSBURG? [OR GO WHOLE WAY AND SPLIT THE RETURN]
FINLAND
tbc (K 1871 explorations; K 1876 escape route)
TRAIN NO.15 ST.PETERSBURG THROUGH FINLAND via HELSINKI, KEMI?, THIS , KROPOTKIN'S ROUTE, IS LONGWAY ROUND
SWEDEN
Stockholm (B joined wife 1863)
tbc (K 1871 explorations)

DENMARK
Christiana (K 1876 escape route)
TRAIN NO.16 STOCKHOLM? TO COPENHAGEN
Copenhagen (B 1863 attempt to join Polish insurrection)
FERRY OPTION ESBJERG TO HARWICH

TRAIN NO.17 OPTION COPENHAGEN TO THE HAGUE VIA BERLIN
GERMANY
Berlin (B 1840 study, 1848)
In 1848 Bakunin also passed through Frankfurt, Cologne, Leipzig

NETHERLANDS
Hague (B 1872 expelled from International by Marx)
FERRY OPTION AMSTERDAM TO NEWCASTLE

BELGIUM
Brussels (B 1843 to meet Polish nationalists; 1844+? voluntary exile; 1863 passing through)
TRAIN NO. 18 BRUSSELS (or Paris) TO LONDON [may be cheaper to go Brussels to Paris & then use Eurostar return]
UK
London (B 1863; Anarchist Bookfair)
TRAIN NO. 19 HOME TO BED.
Newcastle

No.1 - The General Idea

2009-12-30T11:59:00.000-08:00

Hello

I live in Newcastle upon Tyne.
I am interested in anarchism, and in the anarchist heritage that has come down to us.
I want to go on holiday.

In this blog I will be piecing together plans for a tour, a kind of atheist's pilgrimage, to visit the places where two particularly famous anarchist characters lived, escaped from, erected barricades and discovered new geographies.

I have chosen the two most famous early anarchist theorists and propagandists, both Russians, both imprisoned in the same place (at slightly different times), and both with impressive beards. Both of them spent time in Switzerland, Paris & London, talking & thinking through the ideas that became, for each of them, a clear and distinct doctrine of anarchism. Both still have books available on the shelves of Newcastle University Library.

The biographies of these two men, exciting as they are in their own right, are given particular prominence in the anarchist tradition because they intersect with some of the most formative and influential history of the western revolutionary tradition.

One led the split with Marx in the International Working Men's Association, developing what are now the core and standard anarchist arguments against centralism and authority. He formed international networks and conspiracies of anarchists to work against the states and empires of Europe, members of which ended up starting Britain's own history of anarchist organisation. (He also fought on the barricades with Wagner, lost his teeth in prison and pissed off uncountable people, from both sides of the revolutionary struggle.)

The other arrived in Irkutsk, Siberia, the year after the first had escaped (by ship, down the river to Japan). He developed his ideas amongst a new climate of repression and ended up having to escape in the other direction (North through Finland and down though Sweden). He toured the world, speaking in Newcastle on numerous occasions and writing works that inspired projects like the local Clousden Hill Anarchist Commune. When he died, the funeral procession though the streets of St.Petersburg became the last massive demonstration of anti-Bolshevik, anti-authoritarian revolution. After that, repression was pretty complete.

One's name was Mikhail Bakunin and the other's was Peter Kropotkin.

By retracing some of their journeys, and ruminating on some of their ideas and experiences and works as I go, I hope to connect (on at least a personal level), with the anarchism that they absorbed, worked with & developed. I will sketch some things I see, doodle and write in various notepads, take the odd photo and meet the odd person. I hope to persuade friends to come with me some of the way, and come out to meet me on the way back.

So I am not trying to recreate their lives. I am not a daring agitator. When the police demand a bribe to stop them chucking me off the train, I will probably pay up. I want a quiet life and - sad as it is to admit - I think I lack the great optimism and backbone of a great historical figure. I am a zine-maker and my mum says I can draw quite well, so that is what I will aim to do.

I have yet to figure out what exact route I will take. There are no boats from or to the ports that Bakunin used. Even the ferries to Scandinavia have been replaced now by planes. One thing I will certainly not be doing is using an aeroplane. I do know roughly when I will set off, because I finish work in mid July, and I am holding on to this dream as my way of getting through six months of what I consider quite soul-destroying work. The purpose of my wages will be to buy train tickets and pay for beds in far off towns. The light at the end of the tunnel will be the sun rising over Siberia!

I will try and work out my itinerary in blog post no.2, changing it each time something crops up. In post no.3 I'll stick in some words that might turn into the first page. As you read this blog, however, do remember that this internetty wotnot is purely preparatory. It's a place to make notes and jot down plans before I get started. The actual product of this journey will be hand-drawn and stuck together with pritt stick, as a proper zine should be. My other zine projects can be seen at http://zine-it-yourself.blogspot.com and I'm also on the networking site http://wemakezines.ning.com/

The final thing to say, though, is that I do hope this big holiday-research project-zine thing will not be solely about me and my navel. Issues of state repression, of border controls, of alliances amongst the powerful to screw up the rules in their own favour, keep the poor disunited, make profit from death and injustice. These things are as horrible in 2010 as they were in 1910. And are the wild mountains and flocks of geese still there, that Kropotkin recorded in the desolate forests of Siberia? Are the communal societies and moments of tragedy when the people rally round still as true? What ever happened to the alternative future which these two thinkers glimpsed? Does mutual aid still count in Putin's Russia? Where do the lies of power show themselves most plain, and where might hope be found. I don't know.

Anarchism is a theory of liberation against oppression, and if there's one thing that I think these two great bearded fellows have got right it's that the forms of both - of freedom and of unfreedom - are changing all the time. Domestic violence, internet technology, fear, friendship, we all have both sides of the struggle inside of us and the world at large has even more. The struggle never ends. Neither Bakunin nor Kropotkin had all the answers - & I'm neither a Kropotkinian nor a Bakuninite - but then they never claimed that their version of anarchism was complete and for all time. They were just two people, two of us, and in their own time, to their own ability, they tried to change the world, to increase our possibilities of freedom, and declare that the worst cases of injustice could indeed be stopped. I think that, looking back, they can give us some insights and inspirations that can help us in our own journeys.