Section Plans

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

Newcastle upon Tyne

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

Stockholm Street Art

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

Losing the plot in Stockholm

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]