A couple of Russian websites

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

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

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

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

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 )

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

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.