[Timeline updated February 2008, excerpted from the Daily Bleed Calendar, adds 980+ dates since March of 2006]
[1- 1 -1918] -- US: Prior to imprisonment by the end of the month, Emma Goldman delivers her last public lectures in Chicago, Detroit, & Rochester (in Yiddish & English).
[1- 6 -1918] -- Russia: Dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, by a detachment led by the anarchist sailor Zheleznyakov, who announces:
[1- 14 -1918] -- US: Emma Goldman is fined & sentenced to 2 years in prison for obstruction of justice (opposing the draft). Raised in America, but born in Lithuania, the young anarchist feminist will soon be deported from the Land of the Free. http://home4.swipnet.se/~w-40997/emma.htm
[1- 14 -1918] -- US: The Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the selective service law, affirming all criminal charges arising from non-compliance with the draft.
On January 28th the Court mandates the return of Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman to fulfill their prison sentences. On January 30th, from Petrograd, in Russia, the US ambassador notifies the State Department of Russian anarchists threatening to hold him personally responsible for Goldman's & Berkman's safety in prison.
A member of Juventudes Libertarias during the Spanish Revolution, forced into exile in 1939, Rosa winds up in the French concentration camp Argelés-south-Mer. After World War II she participates in clandestine activities in solidarity with the prisoners of Franco.
Rosa appears in Susana Koska's film, Mujeres en pie de guerra (Women on a War Footing; NY Times Critic's Pick 2004), along with María Salvo, Sara Berenguer, Rosa Díaz, Neus Català & the sisters Carme & Merçona Puig Antich.
[2- 6 -1918] -- Italy: Temistocle Monticelli, secretary of the Comitato di Azione Internazionalista Anarchica (Anarchist International Committee of Action), arrested, relegated. Other members arrested & confined at Lipari are Emilio Raimondo, Pasquale Binazzi & his partner Petroni Carlotta Zelmira (see July 1920 reference page). Organized during the war, among the committee's major activities was providing support for the victims of repression, for internees & for exiles. With their arrests, & that of Torquato Gobbi, & the death of Gregorio Benvenuti, the committee was broken up.
[Details / context]
[2- 22 -1918] -- US: Birth of Brutus, Ben Reitman's son with Anna Martindale.
[2- 22 -1918] -- US: At the height of the Red Scare, the office of the "Cronaca Sovversiva," an anarchist newspaper both Sacco & Vanzetti had written for & donated money to, is raided. The names Sacco & Vanzetti are for the first time linked by officials to anarchist activities.
[2- 25 -1918] -- US: Newspapers report on government charges that Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman had worked with German spies in foreign countries, an allegation based on correspondence from Indian nationalist Har Dayal to Berkman found among the papers seized from the Mother Earth publishing office.
[3- 1 -1918] -- US: Emma Goldman receives a visit from Prince Hopkins, who reports on the activities of the League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners.
[3- 4 -1918] -- US: The Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice orders copies of all correspondence to & from Emma Goldman sent to its office in Washington, D.C.
[3- 7 -1918] -- US: Harry Weinberger submits motion to the US District Court, Southern District of New York, that the bail money provided for
Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman should not be used to pay their fines. Motion granted by Judge Augustus N. Hand on Mar. 11.
[3- 16 -1918] -- US: "Regeneración" publishes proclamation "With the anarchists of the world & the workers in general." The authors, Librado Rivera & Ricardo Flores Magón, argue that the social revolution approaches & that all anarchists must infuse it with their energies & possibilities. This text gets the paper seized in the land of the free, & this is its last published appearance in the mythical land of milk & honey.
[3- 18 -1918] -- US: Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón is arrested for the final time on March 18, 1918 under the Espionage Act.
He is charged with hindering the American war effort with his ideas, & imprisoned in the federal penitentiary of Leavenworth, causing outrage at the time among both Mexicans & even US liberals.
[3- 21 -1918] -- US: Mexican revolutionary Ricardo Flores Magón arrested in Los Angeles, placed under $25,000 bail. He is later convicted, under the Espionage Act for obstructing the war effort, & sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He will die there, ostensibly at the hands of his prison guards.
[3- 26 -1918] -- US: An anarchist draft resister, Philip Grosser, reports from Alcatraz Prison that he & other opponents of World War I are being tortured.
Meanwhile Minneapolis is the scene of the first so-called "Slacker Raid," a dragnet of men without draft cards.
During WWI, the raids will seize more than 40,000 non-registrants across the country ( On July 15th, 1919, the US War Department announces it has classified more than 337,000 American men as "draft dodgers.") http://cinepad.com/reviews/slacker.htm
[4- 1 -1918] -- US: During this month the final issue of "Mother Earth Bulletin" produced; future publication is made impossible by ongoing government seizures.
Today Harry Weinberger meets with the assistant superintendent of prisons in Washington, D.C., to complain about government tampering & confiscation of Emma Goldman's mail.
Also this month, the Ferrer Center (see Modern School) in New York closes.
[4- 6 -1918] -- Russia: The French captain Jacques Sadoul, on a mission here, writes in a report today:
The anarchist party is the most active, the most militant of the opposition groups & probably the most popular.... The Bolsheviks are anxious.
[4- 9 -1918] -- Russia: In Moscow, anarchist black guards confiscate the car of the American ambassador.
The car is seized in an effort to effect the release of political prisoners & trade union militants imprisoned in America. This action serves as a pretext for the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, to mount a sweeping attack on the anarchists on the night of April 11. http://ytak.club.fr/avril2.html#8
[4- 10 -1918] -- Russia: This evening of the 10th & 11th, in reaction to growing protests of Russian anarchists to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Cheka — the Bolshevik secret police — raids anarchist centers in Moscow. Approximately 40 anarchists are killed or wounded, more than 500 taken prisoners.
Emma Goldman Papers
[4- 11 -1918] -- Russia: The Bolsheviks use the respite of the Brest Litovsk treaty with imperialism to attack their critics on the left. Tonight, 26 anarchist centres in Moscow are raided by the Cheka (secret police).
[4- 12 -1918] -- Russia: Moscow headquarters of the anarchists surrounded & attacked by Bolshevik troops. For the past two days Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police has carried out raids on Moscow anarchist groups & making arrests. Very similar to what happens to anarchists, radical & labor activists in the US during this period.
[4- 13 -1918] -- France: Premier Le 13 avril 1918, à Paris, sortie du premier numéro de l'hebdomadaire "La Plèbe."
... more (in French)
Le 13 avril 1918, à Paris, sortie du premier numéro de l'hebdomadaire "La Plèbe." "Syndicaliste, libertaire, socialiste, la Plèbe [...] est l'organe de tous ceux qui, à l'épreuve du désastre, ont gardé intacte leur foi, leur raison, leur combativité, de tous ceux aussi des masses profondes, que la guerre à réveillés..." (Extrait d'une déclaration dans le premier numéro.) Importante colloboration de militants mais de nombreux articles sont censurés par les autorités, et le journal s'arrête après 4 numéros.
[5- 2 -1918] -- Amilcare Cipriani dies. Italian anarchist involved in the Paris Commune, & a friend of Lissagaray. Also did seven years in prison for "conspiracies" in Italy, was wounded fighting against the Turks, & sent to prison again for three years. Wrote for "Le Plébéien" & other libertarian papers.
"Distinctly foreign events & concerns, such as the plight of Russian nihilists or of Irish tenants, often received more attention from "Liberty" than American concerns. [Benjamin] Tucker was outraged by the imprisonment of the Italian Amilcare Cipriani, the trial of Louise Michel, & the plight of Russian refugees in Paris."
[5- 16 -1918] -- US: Congress passes Sedition Act against radicals, penalizing anyone judged to be hindering the war effort by making false statements, obstructing enlistment, or speaking against production of war materials, the American government, its constitution, or flag. Signed into
law by Beloved & Respected Comrade Liberal President Wilson on May 21.
[6- 3 -1918] -- US: During this month, while Emma Goldman is in prison in Missouri for exercising free speech...
Emma is granted permission to write two letters every week, in addition to letters to Harry Weinberger. Contemplates writing about the situation of women in prison. Receives news that William Marion Reedy & attorney Clarence Darrow are interested in the League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners, but believe that nothing can be done until after the war. Anticipating orders for her deportation, Emma begins investigating her citizenship status. Following suspension of the Mother Earth Bulletin, her niece Stella Ballantine publishes a mimeographed newsletter, Instead of a Magazine.
[6- 15 -1918] -- France: The anarchist Jules Durand, sentenced to death in November 1910, a victim of corrupt witnesses & vilification by the local press for a crime he did not commit, is found innocent in a new trial.
[6- 21 -1918] -- Poland: Edward Abramowski (1868-1918) dies. Libertarian socialist & cooperativist, psychologist & ethician, author of Socialism & State; The Republic of Friends; General Collusion Against the Government, founder of the biggest contrywide consumer cooperative "Spolem" (Together), founder of Polish Socialist Party. He developed a concept of a "stateless Socialism" & his thought tended increasingly towards an anarcho-syndicalism.
[Details / context]
[6- 27 -1918] -- US: Emma Goldman spends her birthday in agonizing pain, induced by strain from her prison work.
[6- 29 -1918] -- US: Because of Emma Goldman's anti-war activities, Federal agents raid the apartment of Emma's associate M. Eleanor Fitzgerald, seizing mailing lists & other relevant material. Emma's associates, Carl Newlander & William Bales, are arrested for draft evasion following the raid.
[7- 11 -1918] -- Argentina: Simón Radowitzky (Szymon Radowicki) escapes from the Ushuaia concentration camp on the Tierra del Fuego island.
[7- 15 -1918] -- US: Intelligence agencies begin to circulate the names & addresses of over 8,000 "Mother Earth" magazine subscribers, targeting them for investigation. Emma Goldman also reluctantly concurs with Stella Ballantine's decision to close the Mother Earth Bookshop.
[8- 8 -1918] -- France: Michel Zevaco (1860-1918) dies, Eaubonne (Seine-et-Oise). Novelist, professor, film director, anticleric, publisher, anarchist.
Zevaco wrote many historical swashbuckling novels which are still being printed & made into films. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called him a great writer who influenced him greatly.
[8- 15 -1918] -- US: Librado Rivera et Ricardo Flores Magón sont condamnés à quinze et vingt ans de prison pour avoir publié le 16 mars 1918, dans le journal "Regeneración" le manifeste "Aux anarchistes du monde et aux travailleurs en général." Ils seront conduits au pénitencier de McNeil Island near Seattle.
[Details / context]
[8- 23 -1918] -- US: Mollie Steimer, along with several other members of her group, arrested for distributing leaflets against the landing of American troops in Soviet Russia. (Notable for their selective amnesia, American school books pass over this invasion.)
... show details
[8- 25 -1918] -- Russia: First All-Russian Conference of Anarcho-syndicalists meets in Moscow (August 25-September 1).
Les délégués sont réunis dans le but de définir un programme commun de luttes et d'organisation pour lutter contre les ennemis de la révolution et de la classe ouvrière actuellement sous la triple menace des gouvernements étrangers, de la réaction intérieure (armées blanches) et de la dictature bolchevique.
The industrial resolution accuses the government of "betraying the working class with its suppression of workers' control in favour of such capitalist devices as one - man management, labour discipline & the employment of 'bourgeois' engineers & technicians. By forsaking the Factory Committees - the beloved child of the great workers' revolution - for those 'dead organisations', the trade unions, & by substituting decrees & red tape for industrial democracy, the Bolshevik leadership was creating a monster of 'state capitalism', a bureaucratic Behemoth, which it ludicrously called socialism."
http://ytak.club.fr/aout4.html#panrusse
[9- 14 -1918] -- US: The women's rights activist & anarchist Dr. Ben Reitman is released from prison.
[9- 24 -1918] -- Canada: Labor union, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), declared illegal.
A federal order in council declared that while Canada was engaged in war, 14 organizations were to be considered unlawful, including the IWW. Penalty for membership was set at five years in prison.
April 2, 1919 the ban on the IWW was lifted. Two branches were formed in Toronto & Kitchener.
By 1923 IWW had three branches with job control in Canada: Lumberworkers IU 120 & Marine Transport Workers IU 510 in Vancouver & an LWIU branch in Cranbrook BC for a total of 5,600 members.
1924 marked a peak year for the IWW in Canada. 8,000 in Northern Ontario, the Canadian Lumber Workers vote to join the IWW.
On January 1, 1924, IWW Lumber Workers IU120 struck the British Columbia lumber owners, calling for an 8 hour day with blankets supplied, minimum wage of $4 per day, release of all class war prisoners, no discrimination against IWW members & no censuring of IWW literature.
Fighting a mandatory dues check off to the United Mine Workers, Alberta Coal miners joined the IWW in 1924.
[10- 20 -1918] -- US: With the spread of a deathly strain of influenza, a quarantine is established at the penitentiary in Jefferson City, Mo., during this month, where Emma Goldman is imprisoned; all outside visits are suspended.
[10- 29 -1918] -- Germany: Wilhelmshaven Revolt. Sailors mutiny, take over naval base, garrison & city of Kiehl; Soldiers, Sailors & Workers Councils elected. The German government falls on November 10.
[11- 6 -1918] -- Germany: Revolt in shipyards in Kiel & Hamburg & the creation of Workers' Councils. In three days, Berlin follows suit, then all Germany, marking the beginning of the Sparticist Revolution, involving anarchists, socialists, communists & people in all walks of life. http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/9973/council.html
[11- 7 -1918] -- Germany: Kiel Mutiny, following the imprisonment of 600 sailors, sparks a general uprising. The provisional government declared by Independent Social Democrats will be overtaken by the Bavarian Raterepublik — the Workers', Soldiers', & Farmers' Councils — within five months.
"Red Bavaria" Revolution. Workers revolt. The Bavarian monarchy is overthrown & a Republic is declared by the Socialist Kurt Eisner, who becomes its president.
Eisner proposes a ministry position to the anarchist Erich Mühsam. Muhsam refused, preferring to fight, along with Gustav Landauer, Ernst Toller, Ret Marut (better known as the novelist B. Traven), & others, for the development of Workers' Councils & self-managed co-operatives.
Denn in der Poesie sind
Worte und Begriffe das
Instrument, das uns zur
Musik führt, -zum
Rhythmus, zum
Unsagbaren, das in uns
einschwingt und uns
mitschwingen läßt.
Ernst Toller, playwright, became chairman of the Central Council of the farmer & soldier, & leader of a Red Army.
The Munich Soviet (or "Council Republic") of 1919 exhibited certain features of the TAZ, even though — like most revolutions — its stated goals were not exactly "temporary." Gustav Landauer's participation as Minister of Culture along with Silvio Gesell as Minister of Economics & other anti-authoritarian & extreme libertarian socialists such as the poet/playwrights Erich Mühsam & Ernst Toller, & Ret Marut (B. Traven), gave the Soviet a distinct anarchist flavor. Landauer, who had spent years of isolation working on his grand synthesis of Nietzsche, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Stirner, Meister Eckhardt, the radical mystics, & the Romantic volk-philosophers, knew from the start that the Soviet was doomed; he hoped only that it would last long enough to be understood.
— Peter Lamborn Wilson
[11- 12 -1918] -- Russia: First general conference of the Confederation Nabat, anarchist organizations of the Ukraine (12-16th).
[Details / context]
[11- 14 -1918] -- Switzerland: Lucien Tronchet witnesses strikers being gunned down in Granges. Never to forget those three deaths, they weigh mightily upon his subsequent years as an anarcho- syndicalist militant.
[11- 15 -1918] -- US: Gabriella Segata Antolini, a 19-year-old anarchist arrested & convicted for transporting dynamite in Chicago, is imprisoned in the Jefferson City, Mo., penitentiary; she & fellow prisoner Emma Goldman become good friends.
[11- 18 -1918] -- Brazil: Major workers' insurrection, with a strike wave in Rio involving over 6,000 workers & a plot to overthrow the government. Prominent are the textile, metal & construction workers.
http://www.nodo50.org/insurgentes/textos/brasil/09revolta.htm
[11- 19 -1918] -- Brasil: O Rio de Janeiro Atravé dos Jornais 19 de novembro de 1918 REVOLTA DOS ANARQUISTAS.
Ausgeschert aus Reih' und Glied.
Mein Leben als Bücherfreund und Anarchist
Kurt Wafner, geboren am 29. November 1918, hat vier Staatsformen erlebt: die "Goldenen Zwanziger," den braunen Terror, die rote Diktatur und die heutige "real existierende" Demokratie - aber keine hat ihn zum Jubeln gebracht. Geriet er unter Zwang, drängte es ihn auszuscheren aus Reih' und Glied.
It is in literature itself that Randolph Bourne appears most unforgettably, in a haunting stanza from 1919 (1932), centerpiece of the U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos:
This little sparrowlike man,
tiny twisted bit of flesh in a black cape,
always in pain & ailing,
put a pebble in his sling,
& hit Goliath squarely in the forehead with it.
. . . If any man has a ghost,
Bourne has a ghost,
a tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak
hopping along the grimy old brick & brownstone streets
still left in downtown New York,
crying out in a shrill soundless giggle:
[1- 1 -1919] -- Spain: Sara Berenguer lives, Barcelona. Poet, anarchist member of Mujeres Libres.
[1- 10 -1919] -- Germany: Arrest of the author, poet, publisher, anarchist Erich Mühsam [Muehsam] & 11 other radicals.
[1- 10 -1919] -- US: Prison quarantine lifted during this month; influenza outbreak under control. Emma Goldman visited by M. Eleanor Fitzgerald, who brings her a smuggled communication from Alexander Berkman.
[1- 14 -1919] -- Russia: Voline, Russian revolutionary & anarchist historian, arrested & dragged from one prison to another.
Trotsky, pretender to the throne, already had ordered his execution, & Voline escaped death only by sheer accident...
[1- 16 -1919] -- Argentina: End of « Semaine Sanglante ». ("Bloody Week") in Buenos Aires. The General Strike begun a week ago, on the 7th, is crushed in blood, with as many as 700 dead & 2000 wounded. The militant Argentinean anarchist movement is decimated by the repression which follows & trade union reformists gain control of the workers' movement.
[1- 16 -1919] -- Spain: Constitutional guarantees suspended in Barcelona. Repression falls mainly on the cenetistas (CNT). Confederal premises are raided & unionists arrested. Workers found at or frequenting the homes of prominent militants are jailed. Imprisoned in the Cárcel Modelo, they are transferred to the boats "Pelayo" & "Giralda" which serve as floating prisons in the harbor, & all newspapers are censored, so that there is no voice in defense of the prisoners. The CNT is forced to operate underground.
[1- 21 -1919] -- US: New York City Police Inspector Thomas J. Tunney testifies before a Senate subcommittee, chaired by Senator Overman, investigating links between German agents & the US Brewers' Association & allied liquor interests.
Tunney also recounts his investigation of Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman in connection with the Hindu revolutionary Har Dayal. He claims Goldman & Berkman are close associates of Leon Trotsky. He describes Goldman as "a very able & intelligent woman & a very fine speaker."
Not bad for a flatfoot; he got the last part right.
[1- 23 -1919] -- Ukraine: First Regional Conference of Peasants, Workers & Insurgents (anarchist Makhnovists), held in Bolché-Mikhailovska. / Prva regionalna konferencija seljaka, radnika i pobunjenika Ukrajna: Prva regionalna konferencija seljaka, radnika i pobunjenika (anarhistièkih Mahnovista), održana je u
Bolèe-Mihajlovskoj.
[2- 8 -1919] -- Spain: "La Canadienne" strike in Barcelona, taking its name from the principle electrical company involved, begins. Lasts 44 days, & extends to other companies, & becomes a General Strike — paralyzing the whole city & industry. The government declares martial law & imprisons 3,000 strikers of the anarcho-syndicalist C.N.T. [Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo].
1919 - Fabric workers' strike, in Medellín, Colombia, with the worker Betsabé Espinoza as director & negotiator. Women's "swarms" are formed to protect strikers from police attacks.
[2- 19 -1919] -- France: The 23-year-old anarchist, Louis-Emile Cottin, fires on the car of Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Clemenceau, who is wounded. Cottin was tried & sentenced to death, a sentence commuted to 10 years imprisonment following a protest campaign organized in the pages of "Libertaire". See October 8, 1936.
[2- 21 -1919] -- In Munich, the socialist Kurt Eisner, principal in the Bavarian revolution & president of the Republic of Councils, is assassinated by extremists. The Central Council of the Republic, composed of 11 members, including the anarchist Erich Mühsam, declare a general strike & state of siege.
[2- 23 -1919] -- Portugal: "A Batalha" premiers, the second daily newspaper in the country, published by the anarcho-syndicalist CGT (the General Confederation of Workers in Portugal comprised of 150,000 workers). It prints 25,000 copies a day before being suppressed after the military coup d'etat of 1926. It reappears on April 25, 1974 (with the fall of the dictatorship), but never regaining the influence which it exerted in the Twenties. http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/07ref.htm#25/1927 http://www.fdca.it/fdcapt/index.htm
Anarquismo, ANARCHISTA, ANARQUISTA, Anarchici
[2- 25 -1919] -- US: During this month “Go-Head!” — a circular attributed to “The American Anarchists” — appears throughout New England. In it, the American Anarchists, presumably the Italian-American Anarchists, threaten to “dynamite” officials in retaliation for the ongoing deportations & repression the anarchists are enduring.
[3- 1 -1919] -- US: Man Ray, artist & photographer, publishes the only issue of "TNT," an anarchist magazine, this month. He illustrated for a number of anarchist publications, including Emma Goldman's "Mother Earth."http://www.manray-photo.com/
[3- 3 -1919] -- US: Ruling on the conviction of anarchists Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman, the Supreme Court upholds the Espionage Act. Goldman & Berkman were arrested during World War I for a so-called 'conspiracy' against the draft. Today's court ruling thus puts draft resistance outside First Amendment protection.
[3- 14 -1919] -- France: The 23-year-old Louis-Emile Cottin sentenced to death. Commuted to 10 years in prison following a protest campaign organized in the pages of the anarchist "Libertaire." See 2 February 1919. http://ytak.club.fr/mars2.html#cottin
[3- 31 -1919] -- US: Emma Goldman is interviewed by Winthrop Lane for an independent investigation of federal prisons slated for publication in the research magazine "Survey."
[3- 31 -1919] -- Spain: Se aplica por primera vez la ley de fugas en la persona de Miguel Burgos, secretario del Ramo de Curtidos de la CNT.
Following the triumph of the CNT in the recent "Canadian strike," the Civil Governor, in collusion with the employer's association, determined to use any method to crush the union. Constitutional guarantees were suspended & again the cenetistas were persecuted & jailed. Thus, too, is Miguel Burgos murdered.
"Ley de fugas"
"Ley de fugas" (law of escape) was applied frequently in Spain to union militants, who are taken to jail under any pretext, then "set free" — only to be shot down moments later as "escapees." The beauty for the police was its simplicity & cover of legality.
[4- 2 -1919] -- Canada: Ban on the IWW (September 1918) because of the Great War to End All Wars is lifted. Two branches are formed in Toronto & Kitchener.
By 1923 IWW had three branches with job control in Canada: Lumberworkers IU 120 & Marine Transport Workers IU 510 in Vancouver & an LWIU branch in Cranbrook BC for a total of 5,600 members.
1924 marked a peak year for the IWW in Canada. 8,000 in Northern Ontario, the Canadian Lumber Workers vote to join the IWW.
On January 1, 1924, IWW Lumber Workers IU120 struck the British Columbia lumber owners, calling for an 8-hour day with blankets supplied, minimum wage of $4 per day, release of all class war prisoners, no discrimination against IWW members & no censuring of IWW literature.
Fighting a mandatory dues check off to the United Mine Workers, Alberta Coal miners joined the IWW in 1924.
[4- 2 -1919] -- Russia: Premier Congress of the Nabat Confederation, April 2-7th, Elizabetgrad (Kirovograd), Ukraine.
[Details / context]
[4- 6 -1919] -- Bavarian Raterepublik declared in opposition to the provisional government. The Central Council of Workers', Soldiers' & Farmers' Councils includes Ernst Toller, anarchists Erich Muhsam, Gustav Landauer & one 'Richard Maurhut' — the man who became famous as B. Traven.
[4- 7 -1919] -- Workers' Councils declare a Republic in Bavaria, in spite of the opposition of the Communists. The anarchists are the principal actors: Erich Muhsam, Gustav Landauer, Ret Marut (B. Traven), Ernst Toller, etc. But the troops sent in by the socialists will crush the revolutionaries between April 30 & May 2, 1919, killing over 700 victims.
[4- 10 -1919] -- México: Anarchist revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata ambushed & assassinated by Mexican troops, age 29, Chinameca, Mexico. One of the main — & best known — participants in the peasant uprisings against the central government's authority from 1910 until his death. A wax replica of his body is put on public display -- obviously not his body, for everyone knows he still rides in the hills intent on finishing the job he began on November 28, 1911 (the Plan of Ayala, the peasants' declaration of independence).
[4- 12 -1919] -- Italy: Founding congress of the l'Union Anarchiste Communiste held, 12-14 April.
[4- 12 -1919] -- US: Benefit concert at Carnegie Hall for the League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners organized by M. Eleanor Fitzgerald,
Stella Ballantine, & Harry Weinberger.
[4- 13 -1919] -- Bavaria: A military attempt at a putsch against the Republic of the Workers Councils is repelled by the workers, led by the anarchists. Unfortunately the Communists of the KPD capitalize on the event to increase their power. It is the second phase of the Council Republic.
[4- 17 -1919] -- Switzerland: "l'Ecole Ferrer" school closes this month [I don't have the exact day -- ed.]
Founded in Lausanne by the anarchist pediatrist Jean Wintsch & Emile Durand, inspired by "l'Escuela moderna" of Francisco Ferrer.The school accomodated about 30 boys & girls. It was supported by about 15 trade unions & with personal donations (especially from Russian refugees). It was also favorably received by "Réveil" & the libertarian press in general. In 1911, Paul Robin bequeathed to the school most of the teaching equipment used at Cempuis.
Unfortunately WWI & the dissension following publication of the "Proclamation of the 16" (Proclamation of Seize/Manifesto of the Sixteen), which Wintsch adhered to, resulted in his withdrawal from activism & the school's closure in April 1919.
See Jean Wintsch – Une Révocation, une école (Lausanne: Société de l’école Ferrer, 1910)
[4- 19 -1919] -- Russia: Mutinerie des marins de la mer noire (Mutiny of the Sailors in the Black Sea), April 19-21. A delegation, made up partly of anarchist sailors, demands suspension of the war against Russia, the return of the ships to France, & no disciplining for their rebellion.
[4- 28 -1919] -- US: Bomb plot is discovered. The plot involved sending over 30 dynamite bombs to people "on the anarchists' enemies list," including A. Mitchell Palmer, the US Attorney General, J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, & Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (who becomes the first commissioner of baseball next year, which is more than reason enough!). http://www.torremaggiore.com/saccoevanzetti/storia.html
[4- 28 -1919] -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Seattle mayor Hanson gets a bomb in the mail. Hizzoner declares the government should "buck up & hang or incarcerate for life all the anarchists." This was one of 36 aforesaid bombs which turn up in the mails across the nation.
[4- 29 -1919] -- Germany: From April 29 to May 2, government forces in Munich crush in blood the Republic of the Councils of Bavaria. Resistance results in many hard-fought street battles. Many resistors (workers, socialists, anarchists, sympathizers) are summarily executed, leaving over 700 dead. http://ytak.club.fr/avril1.html#baviere
[5- 1 -1919] -- Germany: "Red Bavaria" suppressed, 600 die. German anarchist Gustav Landauer is killed tomorrow, following his arrest by a unit of the anti-revolutionary Freikorps.
[5- 4 -1919] -- Roger Paon, lives, Maritime Seine. French socialist, then an anarchist & pacifist. ... show details
Paon joined the Socialist Youth for a brief period in 1933, before turning to the libertarians, particularly the group l'Union Anarchiste de Rouen. He was also a member of the Ligue Internationale des Combattants de la paix, which aided in the resistance to the occupation during WWII.
Paon lived in Nice following the war, collaborating on libertarian publications, & publishing his own newspaper, "L'ordre Social" (1950-1953). He also agitated, with Louis Lecoin, for the recognition of rights of conscientious objection. Roger Paon is the author of Marine de Rivière, a work on shipping.
[5- 8 -1919] -- Vera Zasulich (1849-1919) dies. Russian anarchist, then a Menshevik. Left a family of nobility for revolutionary activities.
[Details / context]
[5- 9 -1919] -- US: Socialist Ella Reeve (Mother) Bloor visits Emma Goldman in prison.
During this month Emma emphatically rejects Ben Reitman's request to visit her in prison.
Also this month & next, mail bombs purportedly sent to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer & other prominent officials gain media attention. Government agents wrongly implicate Emma & Alexander Berkman in the 'conspiracy'.
[5- 12 -1919] -- US: Tribulations? Henry Ford's $1-million libel suit against the "Chicago Tribune" begins (for editorially calling him an "anarchist") — the anti-semite wins Big Time: awarded 6 cents.
That'll teach 'em to get their anarchists straight.
[5- 30 -1919] -- France: Militants of the C.D.S. join the first Communist Party (PC), French section of the Communist International, largement inspiré des thèses anarchistes.
[Source: Le Libertaire Chronologie]
[6- 2 -1919] -- US: Galleanist anarchists carry out a series of coordinated bombings across the Eastern United States.
[6- 2 -1919] -- Switzerland: Luigi Bertoni & Italian anarchists, implicated in the "Plot of Zurich," appear in court today, after being held in detention the past 13 months. The so-called "plot" was a political pretext to arrest Bertoni, publisher of "Le Réveil communiste anarchiste", & others opposing WWI. A nationwide protest movement agitated for their release.
En fait une machination politico-judiciaire qui se clôt par un acquittement général, après un impressionnant discours (de 2 heures) que Bertoni prononce pour sa défense.
[6- 4 -1919] -- Ukraine: Marxism vs. the working classes: the 4th (Ukrainian) Congress of Free Soviets, to which rank & file members of the Red Army have been invited to send representatives, is banned by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Leon Trotsky. Bolshevist troops are sent to destroy the Rosa Luxemburg Commune near Provkovski & the Ukrainian anarchist insurgent Nestor Makhno is declared an outlaw.
[Source: Calendar Riots]
[6- 5 -1919] -- US: 67 anarchists are arrested & face deportation in the wake of a bomb explosion marking the beginning of the famous "Palmer raids." (See June 2).
[6- 14 -1919] -- Russia: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Trotsky, chief of the Red Army (aka The "Red Butcher" of Kronstadt), drafts an order banning the Makhnovist (anarchist) Congress, accusing them of opposing Soviet power in the Ukraine. Trotsky calls for the arrest of the delegates.
[Details / context]
[6- 15 -1919] -- Bulgaria: Founding of the Federation of Anarchist Communists of Bulgaria (F.A.C.B.), in Sofia, June 15-17th. Federation members included Ivan Nicolov, one of its most popular speakers & polemicists, & Gueorgui Cheitanov, a popular speaker & guerrilla. (Both were murdered by the fascist government in 1925.) The Federation published the theoretical review, "Free Society." [Source: Le Libertaire Chronologie] http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=2526
[6- 24 -1919] -- US: Following an attack on the house of Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Attorney General Palmer on June 2, 1919, the
Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani & collaborators on the newspaper "Cronaca Sovversiva" are expelled from the country.
[6- 27 -1919] -- US: Emma Goldman celebrates her 50th birthday in prison. Especially touched that William Shatoff sends her a bouquet of flowers from Russia.
[7- 2 -1919] -- US: An amnesty conference scheduled to take place in Chicago July 2-4 is canceled, much to the disappointment of Emma Goldman, who remains in prison for her anti-war activities. During this month Kate Richards O'Hare begins to type Emma's weekly dictated letters.
[7- 12 -1919] -- Germany: The anarchist Erich Mühsam, on trial in Munich since July 7 for High Treason, is sentenced to 15 years in prison for his involvement in Bavarian Workers' Councils uprising.
[7- 17 -1919] -- Spain: Militant cenetista Pablo Sabater Lliró (aka "El Tero") is assassinated by a rightwing band of pistoleros controlled by the Barcelona police chief Bravo Portillo.
35-year-old Sabater was president of the Barcelona Dyers Union (CNT) which had just carried out a strike. He is one of the first victims of the business owner's terrorism, employing gangs of thugs to murder anyone they deem troublesome, which breaks out in earnest at the beginning of the Twenties.
Two months from now, in retaliation, Portillo is assassinated. Police found a cap dropped by the culprits, but witnesses refuse to identify them:
[8- 16 -1919] -- Spain: Conchita Guillen Bertolin lives (1919-), Alfondseguilla, Valencia. Militant anarchist & member of "Mujeres Libres."
Forced into refuge in France with the rout of the Republican forces in 1939. In 1999 she participated in the collected work Mujeres Libres, will luchadoras libertarias, translated into French by the Ascaso-Durruti Center of Montpellier in 2000 & published by Los Solidarios.
[8- 24 -1919] -- Spain: The Gunman of Portillo, Luís Fernández por los Mozos de Escuadra, is arrested. Implicated in the assassination (his car apparently used in the killing) of Alvarez Caparrós, a police honcho. This is during a period of repression against the CNT (the anarchist labor union was shut down & 15,000 "cenetistas" are in prison or in hiding).
[8- 24 -1919] -- Spain: Victor García (Tomás Germinal García Ibars) lives.
Infatigable militant anarcho-syndicalist, writer, translator & historian of the international anarchist movement.. Sometimes known as 'the Marco Polo of anarchism' for the length & breadth of his travels Translator (in Castillan) of l'Encyclopédie Anarchiste of Sébastien Faure, author of Antologia del anarcho-sindicalismo,Museihushugi, el anarchismo japonés, Three Japanese Anarchists: Kotoku, Osugi & Yamaga (Kate Sharpley Library, 2000), etc. http://ytak.club.fr/aout4.html#victorgarcia
[8- 28 -1919] -- US: Seattle mayor demands,"Hang or incarcerate all anarchists for life."
[9- 7 -1919] -- Italy: In Milan 19-year-old Bruno Filippi attempts to set off a bomb at the "Circolo dei Nobili ou au Caffè."
Filippi dies in a premature explosion while climbing the steps of the building to the "club of nobles," a meeting place for the richest people of the city. His presumed accomplices, the anarchists Guido Villa, Aldo Perego, Elena Melli & Maria Zibardi, are tried in July 1920 & receive harsh sentences. http://www.omnipresence.mahost.org/brunofilippi.htm
[9- 12 -1919] -- US: Still in prison for opposing the war once opposed by Beloved & Respected Comrade Liberal Leader Woodrow Wilson, the anarchist Emma Goldman is served a warrant for her arrest & deportation; bond set at $15,000.
[9- 24 -1919] -- The Ukrainian Anarchists, seeing themselves about to be caught in Denikin's vise, wheeled, turning suddenly east.
They saw only one hope, to break through his lines. Denikin thought the move was a feint or reconnaissance. His principle forces continued chasing Makhno westward, thinking the Anarchists still in retreat.
Never did Denikin's staff dream that Makhno would turn to attack the bulk of the White army...
[9- 25 -1919] -- Russian Revolution: After brutal repression at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Cheka raids on anarchist groups & the banning of the Anarchist Congress by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Trotsky in June, underground anarchists retaliate by bombing the Communist headquarters in Moscow.
A number of Left Social Revolutionaries & underground anarchists bombed the headquarters of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party in protest at the growing repression. Twelve Communists were killed & 45 others were wounded.
[9- 26 -1919] -- Ukraine: After months of retreat, the anarchist Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army, headed by Nestor Makhno, turns on its pursuers & Denikin's forces are routed.
[9- 27 -1919] -- US: Emma Goldman's term of imprisonment at Jefferson City penitentiary expires; released on bail with orders for deportation pending. Greeted in Jefferson City by mobs of reporters, friends, & niece Stella Ballantine, who accompanies her to Rochester. Stops in Chicago to visit Ben Reitman; meets his wife & child. Alexander Berkman's release from the Atlanta penitentiary follows in a few days, on Oct. 1.
Giliana studied medicine & specialized in pediatrics. A militant involved with the French anarchist milieu & worked with "Le Libertaire."
[10- 7 -1919] -- Nicolas Thomassin (1849-1919) dies. French weaver, socialist, anarchist, participant in "Sans patrie" (formed October 18, 1891) with Gustave Bouillard, Pierre Leroux, Paulin Mailfait, etc.
[10- 8 -1919] -- US: General Strike called to demand Tom Mooney's release & amnesty for all political prisoners.
American labor agitator Tom Mooney was falsely convicted of a fatal bombing. He is not released until 1939.
Meanwhile, Bureau of Investigation Director & famed cross-dresser J. Edgar Hoover, in NY to review evidence collected for Emma Goldman's deportation, monitors a protest rally this same night. In search of further evidence, Hoover personally pokes around in a storage room leased by the anarchists M. Eleanor Fitzgerald & Ben Reitman.
[10- 16 -1919] -- US: Deportation Act to rid US of anarchist aliens. Thousands, including Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman, jailed, sent packing. Harbinger of US government anti-labor & anti-Red attacks in the 1920's when Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Attorney General Mitchell Palmer & his pal J. Edgar go after impertinent American citizens who suppose they live in the "Land of the Free."
"& you, are you so forgetful of your past, is there no echo in your soul of your poets' songs, your dreamers' dreams, your rebels' calls?"
[10- 16 -1919] -- Alexander Berkman & Emma Goldman spend a few days in the country recuperating from harsh prison conditions before beginning work to oppose their deportations. Emma is to appear before immigration authorities at Ellis Island on the 27th & 28th to appeal her deportation order; she claims US citizenship from her marriage to Jacob A. Kersner. On the 31st a benefit theater performance in New York City raises $500 to help them cover the costs of fighting their deportation.
[10- 27 -1919] -- US: Emma Goldman appears before immigration authorities at Ellis Island to appeal her deportation order from the land of the free. She & Alexander Berkman have just recently been freed from prison.
[11- 1 -1919] -- US: Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman send out a 3,000-piece solicitation to raise support for political prisoners, the fight against deportation of aliens, & to announce their proposed lecture tour scheduled to begin at the end of the month.
On the 7th of this month violent raids of the homes of hundreds of "suspected radicals" & labor activists begin in NY City, & across the country some 10,000 suspected communists & anarchists are arrested. Based on a list of 450,000 dissidents compiled by J. Edgar Hoover, in January another crackdown sweeps the country during what is referred to as the "Palmer Raids" during America's first "Red Scare." Ambitious men, with unbridled appetites for power, Hoover & US Attorney General Palmer, both notorious liars & law breakers, soon have the country in a panic, claiming a revolution is planned for May Day.
[11- 2 -1919] -- Laurent Tailhade (1854-1919), French poet, writer, anarchist polemist, opium addict (La noire idole), translator (Satyricon de Pétrone), dies.
“What do the victims matter, if the gesture be beautiful?”
His first poems were published in 1880, but it was his polemical writings which gained the most attention, being lambasted by the press & a costing him a year in jail for "provoking murder."
Tailhade himself was the victim of an anarchist bombing of a restaurant where he chanced to be (April 4, 1894,) & lost an eye.
[11- 7 -1919] -- US: "Palmer's Reign of Terror" begins: 3,000 anarchists imprisoned without bail, Ellis Island in NY harbor, in a "Freedom-loving" nation (just don't try to practice it!).
[11- 15 -1919] -- US: In New York City, the main headquarters of the anarcho-syndicalist I.W.W is torn up & destroyed by agents acting under the US Attorney General Palmer, in his continuing persecution of labor militants, anarchists, radicals, etc. The era of the Palmer Raids (the"Red Scare") ruthlessly foisted upon the public, it should better be called the “White Terror,": government agents illegally breaking into trade-union buildings & peoples homes, meeting halls, arresting militants without cause or charges, seizing or trashing files, destroying fixtures & the buildings. http://ytak.club.fr/novembre3.html#15
[11- 17 -1919] -- US: Emma Goldman speaks at a New York dinner organized by friends of Kate Richards O'Hare.
[11- 18 -1919] -- Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis dies. Elected to office in Amsterdam, as a socialist, in 1891 before giving up politics to adopt the anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin.
alt; Michael Bakunin, Michel Bakounine
[11- 19 -1919] -- Brazil: In São Paulo, João Penteado, a teacher & anarchist militant, is ordered to close the Modern School n°1 — open since May 13, 1912 (founded by Neno Vasco, Edgard Leuenroth, Oreste Ristori & Gigi Damiani) — when a bomb explodes (accidental?) in a house, killing four anarchists, including José Alvés, the principal of l'Ecole moderne de São Caetano.
[11- 20 -1919] -- Liu Shih-p'ei dies, at the early age of 36. Chinese anarchist, involved in the Chinese anarchist movement which emerged in Tokyo about the same time as another important group emerged in Paris, France.
Liu Shih-p'ei, his wife Ho Chen, Chang Ping-lin & Chang Chi were leading members of the group in Japan.
[Details / context]
[11- 23 -1919] -- US: The anti-war activists & anarchists Alexander Berkman & Emma Goldman begin a short lecture tour in Detroit; today's event is attended by 1,500 people & Emma says 2,000 people had to be turned away for lack of space. Large Jewish audience attends a meeting on Nov. 25.
[11- 25 -1919] -- US: Amid a strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers (ultimately unsuccessful), approximately 250 "anarchists," "communists," & "labor agitators" were deported to Russia yesterday, marking the onset of the so-called "Red Scare."
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Guide/chronology2040.html
The United States:
"a country where truth is tarred & feathered, lynched, imprisoned, clubbed, & expatriated as undesirable...
— George Bernard Shaw (1925)
[11- 25 -1919] -- US: Department of Labor orders antiwar activist & anarchist Alexander Berkman's deportation to Russia. Emma Goldman's deportation order follows on Nov. 29. Their lawyer Weinberger meets in Washington, D.C., with immigration officials, including Anthony Caminetti & Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post.
[11- 29 -1919] -- US: Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman address an audience of 4,500 people in Chicago about their prison experiences.
Tomorrow they address another large crowd. Then, on December 21, a large benefit banquet is held at the Hotel Morrison in Chicago. Emma describes the Detroit & Chicago meetings as "among the most inspiring in our public career." Berkman received his deportation orders from the Land of the Free on the 25th, & Emma receives hers today.
[11- 29 -1919] -- US: Bogalusa Massacre.
From: "Gene Lawhorn" Subject: UBCMEMBERS * Bogalusa Massacre Memorial Resolution
Bogalusa, Louisiana Carpenters Memorial Resolution
Whereas; On November 29th of 1919 four union organizers, & officers of Bogalusa UBC local 2203 were murdered while they were working to organize the Great Southern Lumber Company in the offices of the Central Labor Council,
Be It Therefore Resolved; That a plot of land as close as possible to the original Central Labor Council be purchased by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & that a monument be erected in remembrance of Lum Williams, & the other three Union Brothers who were murdered in their attempt to organize workers at the Great Southern Lumber Company...
— Resolution passed at Carpenters local 247 on May 9th (1999?) ... & I am looking for any further information regarding the subject of the Bogalusa massacre that anyone can provide.
Solidarity, Gene Lawhorn Local 247 Portland, Oregon.
[12- 1 -1919] -- US: Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman & 200+ anarchists, labor militants, & radicals are forced to leave the "Land of the Free," deported to Russia on the rust-bucket Buford. Shades of B. Traven's The Death Ship. In America it is axiomatic that we have free speech only if no one practices it.
[12- 5 -1919] -- US: Representative Isaac Siegel, after a trip to Ellis Island yesterday, declares he has discovered
Goldman & Berkman appear in federal court before Judge Julius M. Mayer, December 8th, who declares that as aliens, they have no constitutional rights. They remain in detention at Ellis Island & are be kicked out of the "Land of the Free" before month's end, sent to Red Russia on a leaking scow that is in danger of sinking with them & 247 other radicals & labor organizers who are also deported to protect American free speech.
"THE "Red Ark" will loom big in American history.
It is the first picturesque incident of the beginning effort of the War Millionaires to crush the soul of America & insure the safety of the dollars they have looted over the graves of Europe & through the deaths of the quarter million soldier boys whom American mothers now mourn..."
— Robert Minor, excerpt from the introduction, Deportation, Its Meaning & Menace: Last Message to the People of America by Alexander Berkman & Emma Goldman, Ellis Island, New York, U.S.A., December, 1919.
[12- 5 -1919] -- M.L. Polonsky, Bolshevik, commander of a regiment of the Makhnovist army, arrested by the Makhnovist counter-intelligence under suspicion of planning to kill the anarchist Nestor Makhno, is shot today.
"Once a Bolshevik parliamentarian by the name of Polonsky was executed at Makhnovist headquarters. Many members of the general staff were unhappy with this.
Voline arrived at the headquarters, & when he heard what had happened he asked: "What does Batko [Makhno] think? If he says it was the right thing to do I won't go into the issue."
Makhno was sitting in the next room & had got tipsy. When he heard his comrades talking he came in & went
up to Voline: "So you don't give a damn that a man has just been shot? You don't even ask why he was executed! As long as Batko approves it's alright, huh? But a man can make mistakes, can't he, especially when he's drunk. What do you say to that, eh?"
[12- 8 -1919] -- US: Jailed at Ellis Island on the 5th, "Made Anarchists" Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman appear in federal court before Judge Julius M. Mayer, who declares that as aliens, they have no constitutional rights. They remain in detention at Ellis Island.
[12- 10 -1919] -- Spain: The Madrid Congress of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT (December 10-20). The questions on the agenda, the quality of the delegates & the sheer number of workers represented (over 600,000) made this the most important congress to date. Dazzled by the Russian Revolution, & despite complaints it was a "political" revolution & did not incorporate the libertarian ideal, the congress voted provisionally to join the Communist International & to send a delegation to the Second Congress of the Third International (Moscow on July 15, 1920).
[Details / context]
[12- 19 -1919] -- Spain: Pépita Carpeña lives (1919-2005), Barcelona. Militant Spanish anarcho-syndicalist & feminist. Combatant during the Spanish Revolution, member of the CNT, "Jeunesses Libertaires" (JJLL) & "Mujeres Libres." Escaped Barcelona on January 25, 1939, interned in France. Involved with CIRA de Marseille during the 80s & 90s. Wrote De toda la vida, & appeared in two films, Richard Prost's Un autre futurDe toda la vida. Pépita died three years after the death of her companion Juan Martinez Vita (Moreno).
http://ytak.club.fr/decembre3.html#carpenahttp://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=672
[12- 20 -1919] -- [December] During this month Bartolomeo Vanzetti & Aldino Felicani discuss plans for new anarchist journal, "Cara Compagna."
Vanzetti would never have described himself as a fish peddler, "something that he did for less than a year, & that only during the time he was trying to begin the publication of an anarchist journal, Cara Compagna, with his friend Aldino Felicani."
Malatesta was a wealthy man who put his entire fortune at the disposal of the cause. He won the militant support of broad sections of his countrymen whose demonstrations & strikes on his behalf saved him from death & imprisonment many times.
His writing & speeches on anarchist organization influenced the shape of the anarchist movement.
Kropotkin left us a picture of Malatesta's life in exile:
"Without even so much as a room that he could call his own, he would sell sherbet in the streets of London to get his living, & in the evening write brilliant articles for the Italian papers. Imprisoned in France, released, expelled, re-condemned in Italy, confined to an island, escaped, & again in Italy in disguise; always in the hottest of the struggle...."
Through the systematic destruction of its finest radical leadership by big business & royalists, Italy eventually succumbed to fascism.
Malatesta remained in Italy, under house arrest, until he died.
Authorities ordered his body thrown into a common grave.
[12- 24 -1919] -- US: Four men attempt to rob the payroll of the L.Q. White Shoe Company in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. One, later known as the “shotgun bandit,” fires at the moving payroll truck. They are unsuccessful & no one is hurt. The would-be bandits escaped. Part of a series of robberies in the area, which includes the Braintree robbery for which the anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti are tried & executed. http://infoshop.org/page/Sacco-Vanzetti
[12- 27 -1919] -- Germany: On the initiative of Rudolf Rocker, the founding Congress of F.A.U.D. (Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschland), free union of the German workers, is held in Berlin, from the 27th-30th.
Arthur Lehning & Augustin Souchy are among the founders, along with Rocker. FAUD declares itself anarchist-syndicalist — opposed to both the State & to parliamentarism.
[1- 2 -1920] -- US: The Red Scare goes into full swing, until the 6th. Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who has Presidential ambitions, unleashes a nationwide reign of terrorism, raids on suspected anarchist, communist, unionist & radical Americans, arresting at least 2,700 (possibly as many as 8,000) after issuing orders for the arrest (without warrants), & illegal detention of 10,000 Americans, many of them trade union members & officials. Federal agents seized labor leaders & literature in the hopes of discouraging labor activity. A number of citizens were turned over to state officials for prosecution under various anti-anarchy statutes.
Thugs with badges break down doors, destroy personal property, printing presses, books, etc. Palmer orders Justice Department raids on meeting halls & homes in 30 cities nationwide.
None of the 2,700 people arrested are charged with any explicit crime. In all, more than 6,000 are arrested.
"The war bowed to a hundred repressive acts. They have become slaves to the government. They are frightened at the excesses in Russia. They are docile; & they will not recover from being so for many years... In the end, of course, there will be a revolution, but it will not come in my time."
— Hiram Johnson, former Governor of California
Shortly after the famous Vitameatavegamin episode aired, Ball appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the next big Red Scare because she had registered as a Communist in 1936. She explained that it was to please her grandfather.
Palmer, in coordination with Justice Department agent J. Edgar Hoover & immigration commissioner Anthony Caminetti, orders the arrest of approximately 10,000 alien radicals. US Bureau of Investigation carries out nationwide Palmer Raids. Federal agents seize labor leaders & literature in the hopes of discouraging labor activity. A number of citizens are turned over to state officials for prosecution under various anti-anarchy statutes.
[1- 6 -1920] -- José Lluís Facerias, the ‘implacable fighter,’ lives. Spanish anarchist guerrilla. (Josep Lluís i Facerias, aka Petro or Petronio Face [1920-1957].)
[1- 17 -1920] -- Italy: Luigi Galleani & Raffaele Schiavina begin publishing their anarchist paper, N°1 of "Cronaca Sovversiva," in Turin. Galleani began the paper in the US in 1903, but he & other "Cronaca Sovversiva" supporters were deported on June 24, 1919.
[1- 17 -1920] -- Finland: S.S. Buford, full of labor activists, anarchists & radicals kicked out of the Land of the Free, lands at Hangö. On January 19 the deportees are met at the Russo-Finnish border by Russian representatives & received warmly at a mass meeting of soldiers & peasants in Belo-Ostrov.
http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/redscare/HTMLCODE/SUBJECTS/SUBJECTS.HTM
[2- 1 -1920] -- Russia: During this month Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman settle in Petrograd where they renew their friendships with William Shatoff, now working as Commissar of Railroads, & John Reed.
They also meet with Grigory Zinoviev, director of the Soviet Executive Committee, & briefly with Maxim Gorki at his home in Petrograd.
They attend a conference of anarchists, including Baltic factory workers & Kronstadt sailors, who echo criticisms of the
Bolsheviks voiced by Left Social Revolutionaries & others who have paid visits to Berkman & Goldman in this period.
Emma Goldman Papers
[2- 10 -1920] -- England: Alex Comfort lives. British anarchist, poet, & author of the ever-popular Joy of Sex. Involved with Freedom Bookstore in the 40s & ‘Anarchy' magazine in the 50s — & author of the hugely successful « Joy of Sex ». He also lectured in physiology at London Hospital Medical College. Devoted to "unreason" — or the imagination. Wrote lyrics for Pete Seeger. Oh, Joy! Oh, Joy!
[2- 19 -1920] -- US: John Creaghe (or Juan, as he came to be known) dies in prison in Washington, DC. Doctor & Irish militant anarchist.
[2- 25 -1920] -- US: US: Roberto Elia & Andrea Salsedo, anarchists who worked for the "Cronaca Sovversiva", are kidnapped by the Department of Justice without a warrant or being arrested. They are secretly confined & beaten in Department Justice (sic) offices until they agree to inform on their fellow anarchists. // Arrest of Andrea Salsedo & Roberto Elia (or March 8?), editors, for "interrogation" about the anarchist attacks of the previous year. Andrea Salsedo was suicided on May 3rd, defenestrated from the 14th floor of the "Department of Justice" where he was being questioned.
http://ytak.club.fr/fevrier4.html#25
[2- 26 -1920] -- Italy: Premier of "Umanita Nova", anarchist daily paper published in Milan & Rome (circulation 50,000). Shut down in 1922 by the fascist regime, it reappears in 1945 as a weekly, & currently continues publishing at this writing. Founded by Errico Malatesta & Antonio Cieri, with many contributors, including Gigi Damiani, Luigi Fabbri, Camillo Berneri, Nella Giacomelli, etc.
[2- 29 -1920] -- France: "Le Libertaire" annonce la mort du chansonnier anarchiste Paul Paillette.
[2- 29 -1920] -- Italy: à Milan, à la sortie d'un grand meeting de protestation auquel se sont joints divers orateurs dont Errico Malatesta. La police intervient pour empêcher toute manifestation de se former. Les carabiniers ouvrent le feu sur la foule, tuant deux personnes et en blessant cinq autres. Aussitôt, éclate une grève générale de protestation.http://ytak.club.fr/fevrier4.html#29
[3- 6 -1920] -- Russia: This month Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman travel to Moscow where they meet with Bolshevik leaders, including Alexandra Kollontai, Commissar for Public Welfare; Anatoly Lunacharsky, Commissar for Education; Angelica Balabanoff, Secretary of the Third International; & Grigory Chicherin, Assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs. They meet with Lenin on the 8th.
[3- 8 -1920] -- US: Roberto Elia & Andrea Salsedo, anarchists who worked for the "Cronaca Sovversiva," are kidnapped (or on February 25th?) by the Department of Justice without a warrant or being arrested. They are secretly confined & beaten in Department Justice (sic) offices in an effort to get them to inform on their fellow anarchists. Andrea Salsedo was suicided May 3rd, defenestrated from the 14th floor of the "Department of Justice" where he was being questioned.
[3- 8 -1920] -- Russia: After attending a conference of Moscow anarchists Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman are granted a meeting today with Lenin.
[3- 8 -1920] -- Italy: In Sienne, fascists & the police attack the union offices.
The union offices are defended by a hundred anarchist & socialist militants. Many workers are wounded in the confrontation, & the anarchist Regoli Giuseppe succumbs to his wounds. A General Strike in protest follows.
http://ytak.club.fr/mars2.html#8
[3- 15 -1920] -- Italy: The council movement in Turin begins a strike, combined with occupation of the factories & resuming production under their own workers' control.
[3- 15 -1920] -- Russia: Mid-March, Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman return to Petrograd to secure work in support of the revolution.
[3- 27 -1920] -- Italy: The metal workers' union (F.I.O.M) in Turin begins a General Strike. The Turin anarchist newspaper "L'Ordine Nuovo" publishes a proclamation, "Pour le congrès des conseils d'usine. Aux ouvriers et paysans d'Italie," signed by the libertarian group of Turin, including the strike organizers & militant Councilists Pietro Ferrero (assassinated by the fascists in 1922) & Maurizio Garino. On April 14, the authorities intervene with an extreme rigor to break the strike (which continues until April 23). Arrests en masse occur, which include Maurizio Garino. http://ytak.club.fr/octobre4.html#garino
[4- 1 -1920] -- US: T-Bone Slim's The Popular Wobbly published in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) One Big Union Monthly.
anarchist
[4- 13 -1920] -- Russia: Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman, frustrated with the Bolshevik leaders' pettiness & gross mismanagement, during this month express dissatisfaction with their work assignments. [... show details]
Emma tours Soviet factories in Petrograd with journalist John Clayton of the Chicago Tribune, who previously interviewed her upon her arrival in Finland. She learns firsthand of the poor conditions & dissatisfaction among the workers.
[4- 14 -1920] -- Italy: Today the strike & Councilist factory occupations, begun March 15, has spread, & is now general in Piedmont; in the following days it spreads through much of northern Italy, particularly among the dockers & railroad workers. The government had to use warships to land troops at Genoa to march on Turin.
The councils began a strike combined with occupation of the factories & resumed production under their own control. By September an upsurge again engulfs most of Northern Italy: the occupation of more than 200 factories by 600,000 workers revitalized the sagging council movement. It was supported by a small Socialist section in Turin & by the anarchists in Piedmont, but the unions & the Socialist Party opposed the movement & sabotaged the strikes.
[4- 15 -1920] -- US: In South Braintree, Massachusetts, two men armed with handguns shoot & kill Frederick Parmenter & Alessandro Berardelli, employees of the Slater & Morrill Shoe Company. The thieves rob the men of the $15,776.51 payroll they were carrying. The thieves are picked up by a car carrying other men. The anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti will ultimately be blamed & railroaded to their deaths.
[4- 16 -1920] -- US: Italian-American anarchist Feruccio Coacci is arrested in Bridgewater, Ma. for his activities supporting "Cronaca Sovversiva" & deported on the 18th.
This is during a period of a second series of "Palmer raids" which swept 33 cities throughout the US in January to suppress radicals, labor agitators, & in this case, is related also to the South Braintree hold-ups & the crime for which Sacco & Vanzetti were ultimately executed for.
[4- 23 -1920] -- Brasil: Third Brazilian Labor Congress (April 23rd-30th) sponsored by the União dos Trabalhadores em Fábricas de Tecidos (fabric workers' union), in Rio De Janeiro. 23 sessions are held, involving 39 unions from 11 states. http://www.galeon.com/ateneosant/Ateneo/Historia/Paises/ha-BRASIL.htm
[4- 23 -1920] -- Brazil: Third National Labor Congress, Rio de Janeiro, April 23-30th.
23 sessions are held at the facilities of the União dos Trabalhadores em Fábricas de Tecidos, where 39 organizations from 11 states atttend.
Source: [ Arquivo de História Social ]
[4- 25 -1920] -- Russia: Poland "invades". Most of the WWI allied countries have done the same (including the US & Britain) in an effort to overthrow the Bolsheviks.
It depends how you define Russia. Pilsudski forces entered Ucraina with Ucrainian nationalists' forces to support them. Before WWI, Ucraine (& huge part of Pole populated territory) formed part of Tsarist imperial Russia.
[5- 2 -1920] -- US: Boston radicals, including Sacco, Vanzetti, Mario Buda (aka Mike Boda), Aldino Felicani, & others meet to discuss support for Roberto Elia & Andrea Salsedo & to plan a protest against their illegal imprisonment. Salsedo is killed in custody tomorrow.
[5- 3 -1920] -- US: The anarchist typographer / printer Andrea Salsedo plunges to his death from the 14th floor of the "Department of Justice" where he was being questioned & tortured by the FBI, apparently tossed by his captors.
[5- 4 -1920] -- US: Sacco & Vanzetti learn of their comrade Andrea Salsedo’s death. Salseda plunged from the 14th floor of the Department of Justice offices while being secretly held & interrogated. Believing he was tossed to his death yesterday, Sacco & Vanzetti fear they will be implicated in a bomb plot. They are arrested tomorrow — accused instead of murder in a bank robbery.
[Details / context]
[5- 5 -1920] -- Massachusetts: Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-American anarchists, are arrested for murder & payroll robbery & eventually they are executed for a crime they quite possibly did not commit. Climaxes postwar anti-radical, anti-labor & anti-immigrant hysteria of the Wilson-Mitchell period.
[5- 5 -1920] -- Charles Ange Laisant dies (b. 1841). French Conseiller Général in Nantes, & Député in Paris (18ème) who later became an anarchist under the influence of his son Albert (who also led his two sons, Maurice & Charles, down the errant path). Charles wrote educational texts for children, in mathematics, physics, etc, as well as radical (La barbarie moderne, (1912)). He was a friend & correspondent with the Spanish educator Francisco Ferrer.
[Details / context]
[5- 14 -1920] -- Italy: During this month [I don't have exact date — ed.] in Livorno, Carabinieri & Royal Guards called in following rioting by anarchists & footballers.
[Details / context]
[5- 17 -1920] -- Spain: Los de la banda de Köenning capitaneados por Soler "El Mallorquín" intentan de nuevo recuperar su prestigio y sacar a los cenetistas (CNT) del bar de la plaza del Peso de la Paja, interviniendo la policía en el suceso lo que propicio que la noticia corriera como la pólvora, la prensa hablara en esta ocasión abiertamente de los pistoleros de la patronal... [Further Details]
[6- 3 -1920] -- Russia: During this month, Emma Goldman nurses John Reed, in poor health following his release from a two-month prison term in Finland for unauthorized travel.
[Details / context]
[6- 11 -1920] -- US: Bartolemo Vanzetti — despite having no previous criminal record — is indicted for the Bridgewater hold-up. The anarchist is quickly brought to trial, convicted, & sentenced to the maximum sentence of 12 - 15 years by Beloved & Respected Comrade Judge Thayer, a rather stupid & prejudiced example of justice in America.
[6- 15 -1920] -- Spain: Liberto Sarrau Royes (1920-2001) lives, in the province of Huesca. His father, Antonio Sarrau (1893-1939), was a miner & a member of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT. Liberto was a writer, member of the Juventudes Libertarias (JJLL), & the famed Durruti Column. In 1946 Liberto, a member of the antifascist resistance movement in Barcelona, & his compañera Joaquina Dorado, met Raúl Carballeira, & the three were part of the group 3 de Mayo. Arrested in 1948, tortured & sent to prison.
[Details / context]
[6- 22 -1920] -- Italy: Following an immense open air meeting in Milan, supporting the local striking railwaymen, people returning home are fired upon & assaulted by gendarmes, aided by nationalists. Five young workers are shot dead & many wounded.
"Our high ideal is not violence but peace, a society of people who are free & equal, in which conflicts & massacres will be impossible. Violence is not ours, but theirs, of the governing class which oppresses, tramples on the ground & murders the weaker. There is nothing left to the proletariat but to react violently against their violence & to put lead against lead to crush violence."
[6- 26 -1920] -- Italy: Soldiers mutiny in Ancône, refusing orders to fight in Albania. Armed insurgents & sympathizers occupy city hall & new troops are ordered in to suppress the revolt.
[6- 30 -1920] -- Russia: Emma Goldman & anarchist sidekick Alexander Berkman travel to Moscow to collect permits necessary for their museum expedition through Russia to gather historical material.
[7- 1 -1920] -- Italy: Second Congress of the Unione Anarchica Italiana, Bologna, July 1-4.
Here Errico Malatesta argues for "continuous struggle, pacific or violent, according to circumstances, against the government & the possessors to conquer as much possible of freedom & well-being for all."
A General Strike was raging across Italy, with Workers Councils appearing, & the councilist program & occupation of the factories was approved by the Congress. The strike & the councilist movement, under attack by the Italian government & military, would be sabotaged by the Socialist party & the mainstream unions.
[7- 3 -1920] -- Italy: 2nd Congress of "Unione Communista Anarchica d' Italia," begun on the 1st, concludes. Under the influence of Errico Malatesta it drops the reference to Communism (so badly distorted by the Bolsheviks) & takes the name "Unione Anarchica Italiana" (UAI).
[Details / context]
[7- 12 -1920] -- Italy: Shortly after the second congress of the Unione Anarchica Italiana in Bologna (July 1-4, 1920) the offices of the paper, Errico Malatesta's rooms & the premises of the Unione Anarchica Milanese, of which he is a member, are raided, under false pretext.
[Source]
[7- 13 -1920] -- Italy: Trial in Milan (July 12 & 13) of the anarchists Guido Villa, Aldo Perego, Elena Melli & Maria Zibardi ends.
Villa & Perego are convicted for complicity in the bombing of the "Circolo dei Nobili ou au Caffè" (September 7, 1919).
(19-year-old Bruno Filippi was climbing the steps of the building where the "club of nobles" was located. He was carrying a bomb, hoping to destroy this meeting place for the richest people of the city.) With the primary culprit killed in the explosion, justice comes down heavy on his presumed accomplices: Perego gets 20 years & Villa 10 years in prison.
[7- 15 -1920] -- Russia: Eight-member expedition for the Petrograd Museum of the Revolution, including Henry Alsberg, travels through the Ukraine (July 15-August 6).
Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman are given responsibility for collecting materials... In Kharkov they meet anarchists they worked with in the US, including Aaron (executed in 1940) & Fanya Baron (executed on Lenin's personal order by the Cheka in 1921), Mark Mratchny, & Senya Fleshin...They receive a plea to aid Nestor Makhno's movement...
Second Congress of the Third International opens / celebra la Conferència prèvia a la constitució de la Internacional Sindical Roja (ISR). Hi va participar Àngel Pestaña representant la CNT.
Pestaña is a delegate for the anarcho-syndicalist CNT & the Spanish spokesman. When Pestaña leaves Russia on September 6, he is profoundly disillusioned by all he has observed.
[7- 20 -1920] -- Italy: The anarchist Spartaco Stagnetti, secretary of the syndicat des traminots de Rome is attacked & wounded by a bunch of nationalists & fascists, setting off a General Strike against these violent provocations. http://ytak.club.fr/juillet3.html#20
[7- 21 -1920] -- Italy: In Turin, Guglielmo Musso is killed by his own bomb during a solidarity strike following yesterday's fascist attack on Spartaco Stagnetti (the trade union secretary in Rome). The young anarchist Musso, about to toss a bomb at a group of police officers, apparently chose to hang onto the bomb at the last moment to avoid killing innocent bystanders.
[7- 22 -1920] -- Chile: Police raid the Santiago IWW headquarters. In Valparaiso, police plant dynamite in the Wobbly hall & arrest most of the IWW organizers for terrorism.
These raids were retaliatory: Through the summer of 1920 the Chilean union conducted a three month strike to prevent the export of grains from the country at a time when this export was producing famine & famine prices & profits.
[Details / context]
[7- 23 -1920] --
Moscow, Russia
July 23 to August 7, 1920
2on. congrés de la Tercera Internacional. Hi van assistir Àngel Pestaña represents la CNT i Ramón Merino Gracia represents el Partit Comunista Espanyol.
Àngel Pestaña, Spanish anarcho-syndicalist, left Russia in September thoroughly disheartened with the Bolshevik Revolution...
[7- 28 -1920] -- Argentina & Uruguay: Congress of the Operários Chapeleiros Sul-Americano (South American hat-makers), held this month.
Anarcho-syndicalist participation &/or a marked presence at this congress is evident.
Throughout most of South America in the early 20th century, in addition to their own congresses, anarchists & anarcho-syndicalists are often on the front lines of the various workers' actions, meetings, unions, conferences & congresses.
[I don't have exact dates or details; not clear if two separate gatherings are held, or a joint congress — ed.]
[ Source: Arquivo de História Social ]
[7- 28 -1920] -- Italy: Pasquale Binazzi is arrested in Spezio, charged with forming an armed gang during social disturbances in the city last month. Binazzi, as a trade union militant & director of the anarchist magazine "Il Libertario", is often the target of exercised authorities. In response to his arrest workers initiate a General Strike.
[Details / context]
[8- 4 -1920] -- Spain: Count de Salvatierra, ex-governor of Barcelona (the "Pacifier of Barcelona," responsible for the repression of the CNT, & the "ley de fugas" murders of 30 trade unionists) is shot down by several anarchists. Salvatierra had been laying low because of threats to his life. Police attribute this attack Ramón Casanellas & Pere (Pedro) Matheu, who are responsible similar previous actions. http://ytak.club.fr/aout1.html
[8- 12 -1920] -- France: Bernard Voyenne lives (1920-2003). Journalist, professor, a convinced Proudhonian & also militant anarchist-syndicalist & federalist. During WWII Voyenne was a resistance fighter against the Nazis.
A writer for Albert Camus' journal "Combat," he was passionate about journalism & the French language. He began teaching at the "Centre de formation des Journalistes" in 1952, & eventually published 10 volumes on the history of the press & writers, as well as providing an accessible version of Proudhon's memoirs.
[8- 15 -1920] -- Italy: In Florence, national meeting of Italian anarchists to intensify solidarity & agitation for victims of political repression.
Present are: Errico Malatesta & Clodoveo Bonazzi for the U.A.I.; Gigi Damiani, for the newspaper "Umanità Nova"; Diego Guadagnini for the "Libertarian Committee of Defense"; Dante Pagliai & Emilio Spinaci of the Milan "Committee For the Political Victims"; Giuseppe Sartini, for the U.S.I.; Domenico Giulietti for the "Federation of Sea Workers"; Andrea Pedrini & Cesare Stazzi for the "Labor market of Ancône"; Camillo Berneri for the "Federation of Young Revolutionaries" & Andrea Viglongo for the "Committee of the Turin Factory Councils". http://ytak.club.fr/aout3.html
The majority of the population is Jewish. Here they find valuable material on the rightwing Denikin pogroms; interview local Jews whose views on Bolshevik anti-Semitism differ....
Visited by two women representing the Ukranian guerrilla Nestor Makhno ... it is too risky to meet with him in person.
[8- 28 -1920] -- Italy: Bologna conference, Errico Malatesta & Bonazzi being present as before. This time moderate leaders participate & a manifesto is signed by the Partito Socialista Italiano along with the Unione Anarchica Italiana, the moderate Confederazione Generale del Lavoro, & the Unione Syndicale Italiana, the Socialist "Avanti" & "Umanita Nova" etc.
[8- 30 -1920] -- Russia: Henry Alsberg is arrested traveling from Kiev to Odessa with the Museum Expedition; authorities claim he is traveling without permission. Alexander Berkman & Emma Goldman, also members of the expedition, protest the arrest, immediately sending telegrams to Lenin & Chicherin; no response is received. Alsberg is temporarily detained while the expedition travels on.
[9- 1 -1920] -- Italy: Between the 1st & 4th of September metal workers occupy factories throughout the Italian peninsula....
With the mass factory occupations in September 1920 a defining moment is reached. Things have gone so far that turning back is not a real option. As the anarchist Errico Malatesta predicted:
If we do not carry on to the end, we will pay with tears of blood for the fear we now instill in the bourgeoisie.
[9- 3 -1920] -- Joseph Lane (1851-1920), British anarchist, dies. One of the little-known founders of the libertarian socialist movement in Britain. Author of An Antistatist, Communist Manifesto (1887).
[9- 3 -1920] -- Italy: In Spezia nearly all the factories are occupied, under workers' control.
[9- 6 -1920] -- Russia: Àngel Pestaña leaves, profoundly disillusioned by all that he has observed after spending several months in Moscow. Pestana was a CNT delegate to Second Congress of the Third International which opened in Moscow on July 15, 1920.
Pestana told the congress:
"You tell us that the revolution cannot take place without a communist party & that without the conquest of political power emancipation is not possible, & that without dictatorship one cannot destroy the bourgeoisie: all these assertions are absolutely gratuitous."
[9- 10 -1920] -- Italy: Milano · Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGdL - General Confederation of Labor) holds a conciliation meeting: despite the anarchists of CGdL, the Unione Sindacale Italiana (USI; a split from the reformist CGdL) is not invited.
[Details / context]
[9- 11 -1920] -- US: The anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti indicted for South Braintree crimes.
[9- 16 -1920] -- US: Bomb explosion outside the J.P. Morgan Company on NY's Wall Street kills 30, injures over 100, & does $2 million worth of damage in the ensuing fire which destroyed Morgan's offices. Authorities blame "anarchists," in the plural, many who subsequently flee to Russia.
In revenge for the prosecution of Sacco & Vanzetti, Mario Buda, Galleanist anarchist (practitioners of "propaganda by the deed"), detonates a horse-&-buggy bomb at the corner of Wall & Broad streets in Manhattan.
[9- 16 -1920] -- [September 16] Bomb explosion outside the J.P. Morgan Company on NY's Wall Street
In revenge for the prosecution of Sacco & Vanzetti, Mario Buda (aka Mike Boda), anarchist & Galleanist (practitioners of "propaganda by the deed"), detonates a horse-&-buggy bomb at the corner of Wall & Broad streets in Manhattan.
La Salute è in voi! ("Health is in You!") was a 46-page bomb manual adapted from a guide to explosives from a chemist friend of Galleani's, Professor Ettore Molinari. Galleani's handbook was characterized as accurate & practical by the NY City bomb squad, but as several unfortunate anarchists soon discovered, there was an error in the formula.
Luigi Galleani's manual was put to use by his followers (the first instance of its use occurred in 1914). Three anarchists were blown up while creating a bomb meant to destroy John D. Rockefeller's home in Tarrytown, NY (in retaliation for the Ludlow Massacre).
Later that year, several bombings occurred in different areas of NY, including several police stations.
(One Galleanist, Nestor Dondoglio had his own recipe book: a chef by profession, he poisoned some 200 guests at a banquet in 1916 to honor Archbishop Mundelein by lacing the soup with arsenic. None of the guests died — Dondoglio, under the alias of Jean Crones, had used too much poison, which prompted the victims to vomit it back up. Dondoglio was never apprehended.)
See Paul Avrich for discussion of this bomb manual & also social context for the judicial murders of Sacco & Vanzetti.
A bomb exploded in front of the Morgan building at 23 Wall St. in NYC at noon on a busy Thursday. At least 33 (35) people were killed & hundreds wounded. A 16-foot stretch of the Tennessee-marble façade with pockmarks of the blast was retained as a memorial. Ron Chernow described the incident in his book The House of Morgan. No one was charged but Paul Avrich, in his book Sacco & Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, later held that Mario Buda, an Italian immigrant, was the culprit.
[9- 19 -1920] -- France: Founding congress of Fédération communiste libertaire du Nord, in Amiens.
Among those attending was the teacher Eugènie Trébuquet who, with her husband François Segond Casteu, wrote for "Germinal" & "Libertaire." Eugènie Casteu was killed in a bombardment while visiting her wounded brother at the anarchist front during the Spanish Revolution.
alt:
[9- 20 -1920] -- Russia: Russian Expedition stops in Odessa; advancement of Polish troops prevents them from traveling further.
In Odessa, Emma Goldman meets with local officials & again polls members of the Jewish community about their experience with & views about anti-Semitism. She meets the famous Jewish poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik. Attends a gathering of anarchists in Odessa.
Later in the month, on the way to Kiev, Alexander Berkman is robbed of a large amount of his & Emma's savings. The Expedition spends a few days in panic-stricken Kiev as residents brace for a potential attack by Polish forces.
[9- 21 -1920] -- Chile: FECH's headquarters broken into, the burning of books, furniture, & ultimately the whole building. FECH (Federación Estudiantes Universidad de Chile) was a militant student organization involving anarchists, Marxists, democrats, etx., & had strong links with the radical labor movement.
Overall 1920 was a year of brutal repression for the workers movement — many labor locals were burnt down, agitators murdered, workers sent to prison, etc., & the following year witnessed the San Gregorio Massacre where hundreds of miners were killed mercilessly.
[9- 28 -1920] -- Italy: DURING September a widespread occupation of Italian factories by their work forces is taking place, which originated in the auto factories, steel mills & machine tool plants of the metal sector but spread out into many other industries — cotton mills & hosiery firms, lignite mines, tire factories, breweries & distilleries, & steamships & warehouses in the port towns.
The factory occupations again Northern Italy,as they had in March & April earlier this year. With the mass factory occupations in September 1920 a defining moment is reached...
[10- 3 -1920] -- Dr. Marie Equi (1872-1952) is imprisoned at San Quentin, California this month (exact date unknown) to serve a three year term which was later commuted to a year & a half.
Dr. Equi is convicted of sedition (like countless others opposing American involvement in one of Europe's bloodiest wars) under a newly amended Espionage Act.
The law "forbade criticism of the US government, the constitution, the military, the flag, navy or uniform."
At her trial A Special Agent of the Dept. of Justice, called her "an anarchist, a degenerate, & an abortionist."
Of prime interest to the Department of Justice (sic) were efforts made by Equi's friends to secure a pardon on her behalf. J. Edgar Hoover noted Equi was "associated with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Anita Whitney & Emma Goldman...& was a professional abortionist."
[10- 3 -1920] -- Italy: The re-opening of the Modern School at Clivio, later closed by a government official (See "Umanita Nova," Feb. 17, 1921).
[10- 10 -1920] -- Italy: Errico Malatesta meets his comrades of the General Council of the Unione Anarchica Italiana, 22 out of 30, at their first six-monthly meeting in Bologna, where he takes up the question of action on behalf of political prisoners; the Council also resolves to contact the Socialist-Anarchist Federation of Holland, which proposes to organize an International Anarchist Congress.
Max Nettlau, Errico Malatesta: The Biography of an Anarchist
[10- 12 -1920] -- Italy: Armando Borghi, general secretary of the Unione Sindicale Italiana (USI) & militant anarchist, arrested in Milan by some order dating from July 20, but which had not been executed before.
Armando Borghi's arrest is meant to cripple the union, which represents some 300,000 workers.
Despite nationwide protests over 80 arrests occurred in Milan by the 17th, & even the veteran jailbird Errico Malatesta is nabbed.
[10- 14 -1920] -- Italy: Demonstrations held in support of the Russian Revolution (opposing the American & European invasions) & also demanding the release of political prisoners in Italy. In Bologna, where Errico Malatesta appears, police open fire on demonstrators, killing several.
[10- 15 -1920] -- Italy: Errico Malatesta, anarchist militant/writer, is arrested. He is held responsible, along with Armando Borghi, for the worker occupations of the factories in Milan during this past summer & in September.
[10- 16 -1920] -- Spain: Trial begins, involving seven defendants, amongst them Paulino Diez, an indefatigable labor militant in the CNT & thus much accustomed to trials & jailhouses.
Indeed, Paulino Diez is only recently provisionally released from prison where he was doing a 100-year sentence.
Arrested again in July, he forms a defense committee in the prison. Among their lawyers is José del Río & Francesc Layret, & during the trial a General Strike is called by the local unions in Málaga & its province.
Layret provided a great defense, & all of the defendents are acquitted — to much shouting of "long live anarchy!" The town of Malaga hefts Layret to its shoulders, jubilantly carrying him off to his Hotel.
Layret hizo una argumentación tal del anarquismo que un cabo de artillería, que se encontraba en la sala, no pudo más que gritar viva la anarquía, por lo que los compañeros anarquistas tuvieron que esconder su identidad para que no fuera detenido. Todos salieron absueltos. El pueblo de Málaga llevó en hombros a Layret hasta el Hotel y dando vivas a la Confederación.
Diez is arrested again, in January, escapes, arrested again....& so it goes...
[10- 17 -1920] -- Italy: The Unione Anarchica offices in Bologna are raided. Carlo Frigerio & Errico Malatesta, anarchist militant/writer, is arrested (& upwards of 80 others), held responsible, along with Armando Borghi & Corrado Quaglino, the local editor of "Umanita Nova," & Virgilia d'Andrea, for the worker occupations of the factories in Milan during the summer & especially during September.
Since the arrest of Armando Borghi on October 13, shortly after his return of Russia & the searching on October 15 of the newspaper Umanita Nova," all the principal leaders of the U.A.I, the U.S.I. are detained because of the factory occupations.
Their demand for provisional liberation is refused early in January, & the manufacture of the "criminal" plot fiction leads their lawyer, Merlino, to tear to shreds in the "Scintilla," the accusing documents.
When Errico Malatesta returned to Italy in October [actually Dec. 24 — ed.] 1919, after being smuggled out of England on a coal boat by the head of the Italian Seamen's Federation, all the ships in the port of Genoa saluted his arrival, the city stopped work & turned out to greet him.
— Hippolyte Havel
[10- 21 -1920] -- Italy: About 25 delegates of the Unione Sindicale Italiana (USI, a syndicalist union 300,000 strong), meeting at Bologna, are all arrested in a body.
With the tide of fascism on the rise, this is part of a government crackdown against the union & numerous anarchist organizations & publications, resulting in the jailings of hundreds of activists. Among the jailed are Armando Borghi (General Secretary of the USI, his wife Virgilia d'Andrea, Errico Malatesta, & the editorial staff of newspaper "Umanita Nova."
[10- 23 -1920] -- Russia: Emma Goldman postpones her return trip to Petrograd to attend John Reed's funeral in Moscow today.
[Details / context]
[10- 23 -1920] -- Spain: In Badalona several cenetistas are arrested as they arrive at the North Station, among them Joan Manent y Pesas, Guillermo Martí Texier, & Vicens Soler Juan.
Part of an orchestrated crackdown on the best revolutionary syndicalist militants during this period, marked by targeted arrests & murders.
The basis of the anti-parliamentary communist critique of trade unionism was that trade unions organised workers within the capitalist system, as 'The Pimps of Labour' bargaining with the capitalists over the sale of the commodity labour power
[11- 7 -1920] -- Russia: Emma Goldman attends the third anniversary of the October Revolution in Petrograd, in her estimation "more like the funeral than the birth of the Revolution."
Also during this month, following the Red Army's murder of Nestor Makhno's commanders in the Crimea while negotiating under a white flag, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Leon Trotsky orders an attack on Makhno's headquarters; Makhno manages to escape, eventually reaching Paris where he lives in exile. Trotsky orders the arrest & imprisonment of Russian anarchist Voline.
Sowing what he one day shall reap, "The Red Butcher" creates a fine legacy.
[11- 10 -1920] -- Italy: The first significant Fascist incursion occurs today when Fascists & soldiers attempt to seize the town hall in Livorno, following the example of successful disruptions of socialist councils elsewhere.
However, as news of the raid spread, power workers turned out the lights & the working class districts mobilised en masse to march into the centre & reclaim it.
Then again on February 16, 1921 the Fascists attempt to break a strike by operating the trams. But they met mass resistance, with one tram load being attacked by over 400 people.
[11- 14 -1920] -- Italy: In Turin, "Cronaca Sovversiva", the anarchist weekly, announces it can no longer publish while Luigi Galleani & the manager of the paper, Piero Rayneri, are subjects of warrants for their arrest.
[11- 20 -1920] -- Spain: The government declares the anarcho-syndicalist CNT illegal & 64 union leaders are jailed.
Signals the bloody repression of Spain's largest union over the next few years, militants being attacked, jailed, &/or assassinated.
[11- 26 -1920] -- Russia: Red Army led by "Snowball" (Trotsky's name in Orwell's Animal Farm) & Kamenov murders Makhnovist anarchist delegation under a flag of truce & attacks agrarian commune federation.
[11- 27 -1920] -- Russia: Leon Trotsky (aka "The Red Butcher") orders an attack on Nestor Makhno's headquarters. Yesterday Makhno's anarchist commanders were executed after being lured to a meeting with Trotsky under a flag of truce. The Cheka simultaneously arrests members of the Nabat Confederation in Kharkov & raids anarchist clubs & organizations throughout Russia.
[11- 27 -1920] -- Spain: Andrés Nin & Josep (or José) Canela attacked by "pistoleros" in Plaza Buensuceso, Barcelona. Nin is unscathed but Canela dies.
Part of the government's bloody campaign to destroy the CNT. The so-called "Free" Unions (syndicat libre) were organized to serve as the bosses' gunmen, &, protected by the civil & military authorities, they murdered the most selfless of the trade union militants: Salvador Segui, Evelio Boal, José Canela were just a few among hundreds of others. These death squads & their assassinations were directed by Barcelona Governor Martinez Anido.
At the end of month, the CNT's labor lawyer Francesc Layret is assassinated & 36 more union leaders imprisoned.
[11- 30 -1920] -- Spain: The CNT's labor lawyer Francesc Layret is assassinated & 36 more union leaders imprisoned (including Narcís Vidal, Miguel Abós Serena, & Spain: Salvador Caracersa). Part of the government's bloody campaign to destroy the CNT.
[Background / context]
[12- 18 -1920] -- Russia: In Archangel, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman & others in a Museum expedition collect leftist & anarchist underground publications produced during the rule of the Czar.
The Expedition also obtains letters written by Nicholas Chaikovsky from the period of his provisional government leadership. Emma, at this point, is favorably impressed with the efficiency & integrity of Bolshevik operations in Archangel. Late in the month they return to Petrograd.
[12- 20 -1920] -- Anarchist masthead, August 12, 1922
Bulgaria: In December 1920, the first number of the semi-monthly "Anarchist" appears in Kustendil, replacing the "Alarm Clock". After three numbers the paper moves to Sofia where, under the direction of poet/journalist George (Gueorgui) Getchev, it appears clandestinely. Subtitled "Organ of the Federation of the Communist Anarchists in Bulgaria" (in Bulgarian & French), it is the voice for activists grouped around Vassil Ikonomov & promotes acts of "propaganda by the deed". It continues publishing during the years 1921-1922.
[1- 7 -1921] -- [January 7] A lamentable appeal & warning from the Russian anarcho-syndicalists to the world proletariat is appears in the January 7-14, 1921 issue of the French journal Le Libertaire:
"Comrades, put an end to the domination of your bourgeoisie just as we have done here. But do not repeat our errors; do not let state communism establish itself in your countries!"
In 1920 Rudolf Rocker wrote Die Bankrotte des Russischen Stautskommunismus (The Bankruptcy of State Communism), which appeared in 1921. This was the first analysis to be made of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution. In his view the famous "dictatorship of the proletariat" was not the expression of the will of a single class, but the dictatorship of a party pretending to speak in the name of a class & kept in power by force of bayonets. "Under the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia a new class has developed, the 'commissarocracy,' which oppresses the broad masses just as much as the old regime used to do."
By systematically subordinating all the factors in social life to an all-powerful government endowed with every prerogative, "one could not fail to end up with the hierarchy of officials which proved fatal to the development of the Russian Revolution." "Not only did the Bolsheviks borrow the state apparatus from the previous society, but they have given it an all-embracing power which no other government arrogates to itself."
Just before he died Kropotkin too had issued a "Message to the Workers of the West" in which he sorrowfully denounced the rise of a "formidable bureaucracy": "It seems to me that this attempt to build a communist republic on the basis of a strongly centralized state, under the iron law of the dictatorship of one party, has ended in a terrible fiasco. Russia teaches us how not to impose communism."
[1- 14 -1921] -- Murray Bookchin, American anarchist, lives.
Prolific author, philosopher, ecologist (under the pseudonym Lewis Herber during the 50s Red Scare & blacklist), historian, advocate of 'Libertarian Municipalism', head of the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont.
Bookchin was a young communist, expelled in the 40s. He became a labor organizer & a libertarian socialist working with dissident German exile Marxists in New York city, then an anarchist. During the 50s he pioneered writing on ecological issues.
During the 60s he founded the Anarchos Collective & his writings, particularly his critiques of Marxism & Leninism (Listen, Marxist!), profoundly influenced the American New Left.
[1- 17 -1921] -- Spain: Crackdown on Barcelona cenetistas involved with the Comité Pro-Presos de la CNT (Pro-Prisoner Committee).
Cenetistas (Juan Villanueva, Juli Peris, Ramon Gomar, Antonio Parra), delivering financial aid for prisoners, are arrested & accused of an attentat on ex-governor Salvatierra. Meanwhile Policía raid the Comité Pro-Presos de la CNT, detaining Pablo Martínez Casanova, María López, Juan Canales Moncax y Pablo Martín (using the identy of José Ramón Cuartero), confiscating documents & records which in turn are used to detain or arrest still others.
[1- 18 -1921] -- Spain: In a series of reprisals between the CNT & Barcelona police, police are ordered to murder ("Ley de Fugas") cenetistas currently being held in jail.
Thus the Valencian cenetistas Juan Villanueva, Antonio Parra, Juli Peris, & Ramón Gomar — arrested yesterday while delivering funds to aid political prisoners in Barcelona — are among those shot down. Police announce all are killed in an attempted jailbreak. In fact, however, Parra is only wounded, buried beneath the dead bodies of his companions. (Parra survived, dying in exile in Venezuela, 1970).
[1- 20 -1921] -- Russia: Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman leave Petrograd for Moscow to prepare for second journey with the museum expedition; they stay with Angelica Balabanoff, head of the Russo-Italian bureau. Emma offers to nurse Peter Kropotkin when she learns he is very ill.
[2- 4 -1921] -- Chile: Massacre at San Gregorio leaves 565 nitrate miners dead. Hot on the heels of the 1920 post-war depression the employers are on the offensive & from 1921 to 1923 are successful in beating back the unions.
Overall 1920 was a year of brutal repression for the workers movement — many locals were burnt down, many agitators murdered, workers sent to prison, etc. The IWW led a three month long strike protesting the export of grain during a food shortage. The government repressed both the IWW & anarchists, going so far as to frame the Wobblies with a planted bomb. & the following year witnessed the almost forgotten San Gregorio Massacre where hundreds of miners were killed mercilessly.
[2- 8 -1921] -- Russia: The "Anarchist Prince," geographer, theorist, militant Peter Kropotkin dies.
Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Lenin offers a state funeral & burial in the Kremlin Wall — which is refused.
100,000 people attend Kropotkin's funeral procession on February 13 — organized by Alexandre Atabekian & others — & it is the last non-state-sponsored mass assembly in the Bolshevik Worker's Paradise for the next 70 years.
[2- 8 -1921] -- Russia: Emma Goldman arrives in Dmitrov shortly after Kropotkin's death.
On Feb. 13, Emma, among others, delivers a public remembrance at Kropotkin's funeral in Moscow. Soviet leaders release only a handful of anarchist political prisoners following an appeal to allow all incarcerated anarchists to attend the ceremony.
She & Alexander Berkman later decide to discontinue their work with the Petrograd Museum of the Revolution in order to accept an invitation to participate in the organizing committee of a museum honoring Kropotkin, independent of Soviet financing & oversight.
In mid-February Emma prepares articles about Kropotkin's death for the "Nation" & the "Manchester Guardian," & rejects an offer to write about Soviet Russia for the "New York World."
Within a month both she & Alex decide to leave Russia & alert the world to what they have witnessed & their disillusionment with the Bolshevik counter-revolution.
[2- 13 -1921] -- Russia: Peter Kropotkin's funeral held in Moscow — the last public anarchist gathering & the last non-state-sponsored mass assembly in Russia for 70 years — as Lenin, Trotsky & the Bolsheviks begin their crackdown to secure their power over the working class. On passing Butyrki jail, incarcerated political prisoners strike up an anarchist hymn to the dead.
[2- 13 -1921] -- Russia: Emma Goldman, among others, delivers a public remembrance at Kropotkin's funeral in Moscow.
Soviet leaders release only a handful of anarchist political prisoners following an appeal to allow all incarcerated anarchists to attend the ceremony.
Later, Emma & Alexander Berkman decide to discontinue their work with the Petrograd Museum of the Revolution in order to accept an invitation to participate in the organizing committee of a museum honoring Peter Kropotkin, independent of Soviet financing & oversight.
In mid-February Emma receives permission to visit anarchist prisoners at Butyrki prison; among others, she sees Fanya & Aaron Baron (both eventually executed) & Voline.
Goldman & Berkman return to Petrograd & she prepares articles about Kropotkin's death for the Nation & the Manchester Guardian; rejects offer to write about Soviet Russia for the New York World.
[2- 16 -1921] -- Italy: The Fascists attempt to break a strike by operating the trams. But they meet mass resistance, with one tram load attacked by over 400 people.
Italy: Les 27 et 28 février 1921, à Florence (Italie), dans un contexte exacerbé par la montée du fascisme, des affrontements particulièrement graves se produisent avec les fascistes, et causent la mort de deux cheminots: Gino Mugnai et Spartaco Lavagnini.
Les fascistes tenteront ensuite de pénéter dans le quartier de San Frediano, ils se heurtent alors à une forte résistance des militants radicaux et de la population qui se retranche derrière une barricade.
A Certaldo (près de Florence), l'anarchiste Ferruccio Scarselli, meurt déchiqueté par un bombe durant un affrontement, tandis qu'à La Spezia c'est l'anarchiste Uliviero qui est tué par la police. Dans le même temps à Trieste, la Bourse du travail est incendiée.
Le 1er mars, en réponse aux violences fascistes, une grève générale est déclenchée à Trieste et à Florence, ville où de nouveaux heurts se produiront. Ils causeront la mort de plus de 20 personnes et feront plus d'une centaine de blessés.
The Kronstadt Revolt begins, critical of Bolshevism & in sympathy with the resistance in Petrograd. As opposed to the Bolshevik Party dictatorship they demand workers' rule.
"Kronstadt is of great historic significance. It sounded the death knell of Bolshevism with its Party dictatorship, mad centralisation, Tcheka terrorism & bureaucratic castes. It struck into the very heart of Communist autocracy. At the same time it shocked the intelligent & honest minds of Europe & America into a critical examination of Bolshevik theories & practices. It exploded the Bolshevik myth of the Communist State being the "Workers' & Peasants' Government."
— Alexander Berkman, The Kronstadt Rebellion (Berlin: Der Syndikalist, 1922), pp. 41-42.
Kenneth Rexroth (See his poem “From the Paris Commune to the Kronstadt Rebellion"), was among those few Americans who saw through Bolshevik pretenses as early as 1921, when Trotsky & Lenin crushed the libertarian revolt of the Kronstadt Soviet in their drive to impose their dictatorship.
While clearly opposing all forms of “Communism" he did not, like so many others of his generation, react into supporting Western capitalism or becoming a "Cold War Warrior."
I am far better aware of
The evils of Stalinism
Than you are, you ex-Trotskyite
Warmonger. But it won’t get you
Anywhere to tell me I should
Welcome the beast who devours me
Just because a bigger lion
Is eating somebody else on
The other side of the arena.
[2- 28 -1921] -- CGT Meeting protesting the union position assumed by the CROM. Source: Photographic file of the CTM.
México: Founding convention of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT), during this month [(I don't have exact date) --ed.], in México City.
Breaking with the reformist CROM, some 50 unions, influenced by revolutionary synicalists & anarcosindicalistas, adopt "class war & direct action" as fundamental principles, & reject participation in the political arena. Initially associated with Moscow's Red International, under the influence of the anarchists, this congress breaks with Mexican communists & the International.
The backbone of the CGT is the Federation of Unions of Spinning & Weaving Workers, but also includes agricultural, tabaquera, textile, transport, mining, telephone, graphic arts, commerce, construction, dress makers, & other unions.
[3- 4 -1921] -- Russia: During Krondstadt uprising (March 1-17), in support of striking Petrograd factory workers, sailors demand democratic election of Soviet representatives. Emma Goldman attends today's meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, which votes to accept Zinoviev's proposal to force the surrender of Krondstadt sailors upon penalty of death.
[3- 5 -1921] -- Russia: Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, & several others send a letter of protest to Zinoviev, proposing a commission to settle the dispute with the Krondstadt sailors peacefully; no response received. In two days Leon Trotsky orders the artillery bombardment of Krondstadt, counter-revolutionary vs. revolutionaries.
[3- 7 -1921] -- Russia: Specially selected forces of the Red Army (commanded by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Field Marshal Leon Trotsky) opens fire on the forts of Kronstadt; the sailors, soldiers, workers & populace of Kronstadt counter-fire & reduce Trotsky's batteries to silence.
In a discussion Voline (known as the "dynamiter of the Bolshevik myth") had with Trotsky in 1919, at the height of the Russian Civil war, they had the following exchange:
Trotsky: "One can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."
Voline: "I see the broken eggs — now where's this omelette of yours?"
[3- 7 -1921] -- US: Man Ray (1890-1976), artist, chess player/designer, anarchist & photographer, between today & the 26th, while in Philadelphia, wins $10 for Portrait of a Sculptor Berenice Abbott in John Wanamaker's competition "15th Annual Exhibition of Photographs." Man Ray also makes a movie with Marcel Duchamp; Elsa, Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, shaves her pubic hair. http://www.manray-photo.com/
[3- 8 -1921] -- Russia: Grigori Petrovitch Maximov, a Russian anarcho-syndicalist militant, is imprisoned, along with other members of the Nabat Federation. He is not released until autumn, following a hunger strike, when he is expelled from Russia with Voline.
[3- 8 -1921] -- Spain: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Eduardo Dato assassinated in Madrid by Luis Nicolau, Pedro Mateu, & Ramon Castenellas, metallurgists of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT.
"ley de fugas"
Dato was in charge of anti-union repression in Barcelona, responsible for murder: on January 20th three imprisoned union activists were victims of the "Ley de fugas" (law of escape) — being "set free" only to be shot down moments later as "escapees."
"Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman [part of an anarchist mediation group who had the ear of the Kronstadt Soviet] had an interview with Zinoviev...Their mediation scheme was a complete failure...
Most of the Russian members of the mediation groups were arrested.
I was not — an indulgence which I owed to the good opinion that Zinoviev, Zorin & a few others had of me..."
— Victor Serge, "Kronstadt 1921" (A former anarchist, now a sympathizer, believed the Kronstadt rebels were right, but toed the Bolshevik line.) alt: Cronstadt
[3- 10 -1921] -- Russia: Attack on Kronstadt, in revolt against Bolshevik absolutism in their demands for Free Soviets.
alt: Cronstadt uprising, anarchism
[3- 14 -1921] -- Italy: Errico Malatesta, Armando Borghi & Corrado Quaglino launch a hunger strike in the San Villore prison in Milan.
In October of 1920, Borghi, Malatesta & other anarchists were rounded up on no particular charges. Today the three anarchists go on their hunger strike to force the court authorities to set a trial date. After nine months in prison on remand, by late July 1921, they were brought for trial to the Assizes in Milan. All of those charged were freed. Malatesta & Borghi had offered a zealous defence of themselves.
Fascism was now in the ascendant & the lives of antifascist militants were in the balance. Borghi & Virgilia d'Andrea were continually receiving death threats.
[3- 17 -1921] -- USSR: Kronstadt falls to the Bolshevik military assault under the direction of Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Trotsky, who boasted he would "shoot them like pigeons." There is a great slaughter when the island is taken. To the end of his life Trostky continued defending his actions, as Kenneth Rexroth notes, in a dispute with Victor Serge he continued dispensing Bolshevik lies.
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[3- 18 -1921] -- Russia: Kronstadt fell yesterday. Thousands of sailors & workers lie dead in the streets. Summary execution of prisoners & hostages continues.
Today the victorious Bolsheviks are celebrating the anniversary of the Paris Commune of 1871.
Trotsky & Zinoviev, without shame, denounce Thiers & Gallifet for the slaughter of the Paris rebels.
From the Paris Commune to the Kronstadt Rebellion
They shall rise up heroes, there will be many,
None will prevail against them at last.
They go saying each: "I am one of many";
Their hands empty save for history.
They die at bridges, bridge gates, & drawbridges.
Remember now there were others before;
The sepulchres are full at ford & bridgehead.
There will be children with flowers there,
And lambs & golden-eyed lions there,
And people remembering in the future.
The next morning [after the final crushing of Kronstadt], March 18, the Petrograd newspapers carried banner headlines commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Paris Commune. Bands played military tunes & Communists paraded in the streets, singing the "Internationale."
"Its strains," noted Emma Goldman, "once jubilant to my ears, now sounded like a funeral dirge for humanity's flaming hope."
"The victors are celebrating the anniversary of the Commune of 1871. Trotsky & Zinoviev denounce Thiers & Gallifet for the slaughter of the Paris rebels."
The Berkman quote is from The Bolshevik Myth, p. 303. A fuller passage from it is in Avrich's The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution, p. 163
[3- 23 -1921] -- Italy: A bomb explodes at the Teatro Diana in Milan, killing & wounding many. Among those accused are Giuseppe Mariani & Giuseppe Boldrini get life sentences, & Ettore Aguggini; also implicated are Ugo Fedeli, Pietro Bruzzi, & Francesco Ghezzi (editors of "L’Indivi-dualista").
The work of an individualist anarchist group believed manipulated & set up by the Chief of Police Gasti, the bombing serves as a pretext for a general repression against all anarchists & also serves the interests of the fascists, who attack the offices of the trade unions & leftist organizations. They also destroyed the office of the anarchist paper "Umanita Nova."
[3- 25 -1921] --
Argentina: Premier issue of the weekly anarchist paper "La Antorcha," in Buenos Aires.
Numéro 300 de mai 1930, qui publie un entretien avec Simón Radowitzky (Radovitzky) (qui venait d'être libéré).
Principal collaborators include Rodolfo González Pacheco, Teodoro Antillí, Alberto S. Bianchi, Horacio Badaracco et le gérant: Antonio Rizzo.
“Haute Cuisine?”
The title of the paper revives the name Argentinian gastronomical federation publication of 1911-1912....with fewer dire intestinal implications.
[4- 5 -1921] -- Russia: Early this month Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman return to Moscow determined to cut off all relations with the Bolshevik government.
Also during the month, they plan to request permission to leave the country; prepared to exit secretly if necessary. Agrees to appeal to anarchists in the US for funds to support the Kropotkin Museum. Emma accompanies Louise Bryant to meet Stanislavsky, "the father of the modern Russian theater."
See Emma Goldman's My Disillusionment in Russia — Ch 28.
The Armenian medical doctor Alexander Atabekian was one of the veteran anarchists who founded the Museum; arrested in the 30s & presumably died in a Stalinist labor camp in 1940. Vera Figner was director of the Museum until she was herself banished by the Communists on Feb. 3, 1930.
[4- 17 -1921] --
US: "New York Times" publishes excerpts from a letter from Emma Goldman to her niece Stella Ballantine disclaiming December 1920 reports by American businessman Washington B. Vanderlip that Emma had requested he use his influence to gain her return to the US (from which she was deported & banned).
[4- 27 -1921] -- Russia: Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman alerted about the April 25 Soviet night raid of the Butyrki prison intended to break prisoner solidarity.
Fanya Baron is among those relocated (executed 1938-1940). Soviets attempt to repress all political protests of the raid. Emma helps collect food provisions for the starving anarchist prisoners. In light of Soviet constraints on independent political expression, Goldman & Berkman postpone efforts to organize support for the Kropotkin Museum.
[5- 2 -1921] -- Russia: Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman begin receiving visits from many foreign delegates, during this month, for the International Congress of the Third International.
... show details
Visitors include Americans "Big" Bill Haywood, Agnes Smedley, Bob Robins, Mary Heaton Vorse, Ella Reeve Bloor, William Z. Foster, & Robert Minor.
Emma is disparaging of Haywood's flight from the US, comparing his action to a "captain leaving the ship," for abandoning fellow IWW members who remain imprisoned.
[5- 2 -1921] -- Paul Wulf lives (1921-1999). German antifascist much influenced by the work of the anarchist Erich Mühsam.
Wulf was a victim of Nazi eugenics, forcibly sterilized in 1938. Following WWII he was an active Nazi-hunter, flushing out & revealing those seeking to hide & integrate themselves in the community.
[5- 5 -1921] -- Italy: Fascists in Pisa attack & set fire to the printing works of the newspaper "Avvenire anarchico."
[5- 5 -1921] --
Italy: Riccardo Siliprandi (pseudonym, Ariè) is assassinated by a fascist squad in Luzzara, in the Piazza del Teatro. Militant antifascist, anarchosyndicalist & part of the Luzzara anarchist group which had some 36 members. Interred with other antifascist partisans in the Mausoleo dei partigiana Luzzaresi.
See G. Laghi & R. Cavandoli, Storia di Luzzara(1978) & A. Paterlini, Il sacrificio reggiano per la pace e la libertà 1915-1943 (1982).
[5- 8 -1921] -- France: Nathalie Lemel (1827-1921) dies, blind & miserable in an old people's home in Ivry. Revolutionist & feminist. Founded a bookshop in Quimper, then moved to Paris & became a bookbinder.
A Parisian Communard, she was sent to prison along with the anarchist Louise Michel.
Pardoned in 1879, she returned to Paris, working with "the intransigent." Nathalie eventually went blind & died in miserable conditions.
J. Edgar Hoover & his elegant crew of FBI guys have the same affinity for Berrigan as for Martin Luther King, Jr. — trying to smear & destroy him & also his brother Philip (a then Josephite priest doing God's work & Christian anarchist).
J. Edgar, now best-known for his peculiar interpretation of "dress code," went so far as to publicly call Howard Zinn & Berrigan "traitors" for going to North Vietnam & securing the first release of American POWs.
[5- 24 -1921] -- US: Beginning of the trial of Sacco & Vanzetti, anarchist labor organizers, in Massachusetts. Their execution was the culmination of a five-year government campaign to crush political dissidents (particularly socialist & anarchist workers) in the Land of the Free. (see April 9 & 22; May 5; Aug 21).
The prosecution left a trail of doctored eyewitness accounts, altered testimony & false ballistics reports. That trail appears to exonerate the victims while convicting the executioners.
Here's to you, Nicola & Bart
Rest forever here in our hearts
The last & final moment is yours
That agony is your triumph
"Here's To You"
(Lyrics by Joan Baez, Music by Ennio Morricone)
[6- 3 -1921] -- Russia: Alexander Berkman sustains a foot injury, delaying his departure with Emma Goldman from Workers' Paradise.
The veteran anarchists are thoroughly disillusioned with the Bolshevik "counter" revolution...
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[6- 3 -1921] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti case, after several days of voir dire, only seven jurors have been selected & the entire panel of 500 people exhausted. The Court directs the Sheriff to bring in 200 more potential jurors to try "those anarchist bastards."
[6- 4 -1921] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti case, the defense challenges the way in which the additional potential jurors (200 of 'em) were arbitrarily rounded up. Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Judge Thayer denies the challenge.
[6- 9 -1921] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti trial, eyewitnesses Carrigan, Bostock, & Wade testify they are unable to identify any of the bandits they had seen at the crime.
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[6- 10 -1921] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti trial, Mr. Pelser testifies Sacco was the “dead image” of the man in the getaway car. He admits in cross-examination that he earlier told the police that he had not witnessed the robbery & had run away because he was scared. http://www.torremaggiore.com/saccoevanzetti/storia.html
[6- 11 -1921] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti trial, Lola Andrews testifies she had spoken to a man working under a car in front of the shoe factory the day of the robbery & identifies Sacco as the man. She denies stating during an interview that a picture of Sacco did not resemble the man she had seen.
[Sacco-Vanzetti Sources]
[6- 15 -1921] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti trial, The final identification witness, Goodridge, testifies he had seen Sacco shooting from the car. The defense tries to impeach his testimony by implying a larceny charge had gone unpunished in return for his testimony. Judge Thayer refuses to allow the defense to introduce its impeaching evidence. http://www.torremaggiore.com/saccoevanzetti/storia.html
[6- 17 -1921] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti trial, Connolly, the officer who arrested Sacco & Vanzetti on the train, testifies that Sacco & Vanzetti reached for their guns when they were arrested.
[6- 17 -1921] -- Spain: Evelio Boal, Secretary General of the CNT, assassinated ("ley de fugas") by the government. Part of the bloody repression of the anarcho-syndicalist union in the early 1920s, large numbers of cenetista leaders being jailed &/or assassinated.
[6- 18 -1921] -- Spain: José Martínez Guerricabeitia (aka Felipe de Orero) lives (1921-1986), Villar del Arzobispo (Valencia). Active in the Spanish underground 1945-1947. Anarchist & founder of the Ruedo Ibérico publishing house in 1961, of which he was the undisputed heart & to which he devoted most of his life for the next 25 years. Committed suicide in Madrid, March 12, 1986.
See M. Iñiguez, Cuadernos para una enciclopedia histórica del anarquismo español, No 42, November 1986, Vitoria, Entry No 637. http://www.christiebooks.com/html/history/archives6.html http://www.iisg.nl/archives/en/files/m/10760597full.php
[6- 21 -1921] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti trial, a ballistics expert testifies shells found at the scene & taken from the bodies of the decedents were "consistent with" having been fired by Sacco’s pistol.
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[6- 28 -1921] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti trial, the defense began to present their case on June 22. Today Mr. Kurlansky testifies that Mrs. Andrews had told him she could not identify the defendants but a government agent was forcing her to do so. Defense expert witnesses testify that Sacco’s gun did not fire the bullet that killed Berardelli.
[7- 3 -1921] --
Moscow, Russia
July 3 to 19, 1921
1st Congress of the Red Trade Union International. Representing the CNT are Joaquim Maurín, Hilari Arlandis, Jesús Ibañez & Andreu Nin.
Attended by 380 delegates from 41 countries of Europe, America & Asia, among them Russia, Britain, Italy, Spain, France, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia,
Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Finland, Korea, China & South Africa.
The Red Trade Union International lasted till late 1937 & had a large influence on the world trade union movement.
[7- 6 -1921] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti trial, during cross-examination, Sacco, too, is questioned at length concerning his political views.
[7- 9 -1921] -- Russia: Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman persuade some of the foreign delegates, including Tom Mann, to protest the imprisonment of Voline, G. P. Maximov, & other anarchists who have begun a hunger strike.
A delegation meets with Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Lenin today; Lenin is only willing to deport the anarchists, upon penalty of death if they return to Russia. Offer is accepted.
[7- 14 -1921] -- US: Sacco & Vanzetti case goes to the jury. At 7:30 in the evening the jury returns its verdict: both are both found guilty of murder in the first degree. Their long years of appeals & massive protests world-wide, begins.
The emotional & highly publicized case of Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti became a touchstone & rallying cry for American radicals.
The two were accused of murder & although the evidence against them was flimsy, they were readily convicted, in large part because they were immigrants & anarchists. They were executed, despite international protests, on August 23, 1927.
[7- 20 -1921] -- Belgium: Jacques Long (Jacklon) dies, a suicide. French militant anarchist & antiwar activist. Frequented the individualist milieu & wrote for "L'Anarchie". Joined the Fédération Communiste Anarchite. Companion of Jeanne Morand. Opposed to the War that Ended All Wars, under threat of prison they both left France, bouncing around Europe.
[More details]http://ytak.club.fr/juin4.html#long
[7- 21 -1921] -- Italy: 500 fascists arrive at the railway station in Sarzana to exact revenge for previous humiliations.
The town is expecting their attack. Twenty of the thugs are killed & others sent packing to the countryside an effort to escape, only to be hounded by the peasants.
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[7- 25 -1921] -- France: Mécislas Charrier, French anarchist individualist & illégaliste, attempts to rob the Paris-Marseilles train.
Mécislas Charrier & two accomplices attempted to rob the First Class travellers on the Paris-Marseilles train, but things go badly & one person is killed. Charrier was later arrested, & his accomplices killed. While not the killer, Charrier defended his anarchist illegalism at his trial (April 28, 1922) & defies the court to take his head.
It did exactly that, sending him to the guillotine on August 22, 1922, as he sang "l'Internationale," "L'hymne au 17e" & "La Carmagnole."
"Je ne puis me défendre de la sympathie que j'éprouve pour vos conceptions ; j'en reconnais toute la valeur, mais que voulez-vous, j'ai trop souffert pour ne pas vouloir me venger, et j'ai été trop
écoeuré par les inégalités sociales pour vous suivre dans l'âpre voie du travail (...)"
— "Le Libertaire," May 26, 1922
[7- 27 -1921] -- France: Léon Prouvost (the "Libertarian Philanthropist") is raided. A few days from now he ends his life, a suicide, after having bequeathed part of his fortune to his fellow anarchist publisher André Lorulot.
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[7- 29 -1921] -- Italy: Maria Occhipinti lives (1921-1996), Sicily. Pacifist & anarchist, active in Sicily, Milan, San Remo, Rome, Los Angeles & Raguse.
In 1945, in Raguse, Sicily, Maria Occhipinti, lies down in front of army trucks which came to find new young conscripts to incorporate into the new Italian army. Within minutes, a crowd surrounds the soldiers, forcing them to release their recruits, but they kill a demonstrator & set off a major revolt.
The city falls to the insurgents & resists government troops for three days. The revolt is subdued only at the cost of many deaths. The ringleaders, including Maria & Erasmo Santangelo, were imprisoned until the end of 1946, (except the young anarchist Santangelo, who was sentenced to 23 years & later found hanged in his cell).
The Communist Party, seeking to help restore the capitalist state & the national army in a bid for a piece of the power pie, condemned this revolt as a "soulèvement fasciste."
Maria Occhipinti tells her own story of the uprising in A Woman of Sicily (Italy, 1957; translated into French, 1980) & published It carrubo E altri racconti (1993).
[8- 11 -1921] -- France: Léon Prouvost dies, St-Raphaël. Known as the "Libertarian Philanthropist." Anarchist militant, antimilitarist & anticlericalist propagandist, & publisher. He bequeathed part of his fortune to André Lorulot.
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A militant anarchist, Paz helped found the "Los Quijotes del Ideal" group in August 1936, along with Victor García, Liberto Sarrau, & other young libertarians. (Los Quijotes del Ideal opposed anarchist collaboration with the Republican government.)
Historian & the author of Durruti, the People Armed
, CNT 1939-1951: El anarquismo contra el Estado franquista (Madrid: 2001), etc.
[8- 16 -1921] -- Kenneth Owen Ghormley lives, Tacoma, Washington. Member of Redlands Fortnightly Club, Redlands California. (Believed to be the second oldest literary club in the United States.) Author of a family history which involves the anarchist Home Colony.
http://www.redlandsfortnightly.org/papers/ghorm99.htm
[8- 19 -1921] -- Georges Darien dies. French novelist & anarchist.
" . . .the grandfather catches the boy plowing, unenlightened, through the Code's articles on contracts, dowries & diving walls & demoralizes him by saying it is not what is written down in black & white which matters but the blank spaces, the margins: the unwritten laws, the loopholes."
Between 1886 & 1890, Darien moves among the young literary generation, first appearing on the literary stage with Bas les coeurs! & Biribi, & his play Les Chapons, which is found scandalizing. He is seen as a subversive, antimilitarist & naturalistic writer.
Darien also denounces socialism because of his hatred of parliamentary government & legal political action.
After his defence of terrorism in "L'endehors" & the publishing of his review L'Escarmouche, he leaves France in July 1894. After 1898, he became more aloof from the anarchist movement, & more extremist, an individualist preferring personal & violent action rather than submission to collective action.
Biribi
Biribi is the name given in France to the punishment battalions in Algeria...
Scores of the most terrible facts became known lately, since Georges Darien published his book "Biribi" (Paris, 1890, Savine publisher) based on actual experience, & full of the most horrible revelations. One of my Clairvaux companions had to spend two years of military service in such a battalion — his condemnation at Lyons, as the editor of an Anarchist paper, being already a reason to be transported to Algeria.
Louis Malle directed the film The Thief of Paris, after the novel by Darien, with Jean-Paul Belmondo as a gentleman-thief in fin-de-siècle France, impressed by the anarchist thief Canonnier, a recent escapee from Devil 's Island.
[8- 25 -1921] -- "The slave is always in a state of legitimate defence & consequently, his violence against the Boss, against the oppressor, is always justifiable, & must be controlled only by such considerations as that the best & most economical use is being made of human effort & human sufferings."
It seems unbelievable that even today, after everything that has happened & is happening in Russia, there are people who still imagine that the difference between socialists & anarchists is only that of wanting revolution gradually or quickly.
[9- 3 -1921] -- Italy: Death of a local anarchist in Piombino sets off clashes between radicals & fascists, & government raids on the left radicals.
So, in Piombino, following the death of a local anarchist on September 3rd in a fire fight with Royal Guards & Fascists, the authorities launched a series of raids during the night, arresting & detaining some 200 comrades. The fascists immediately seized their opportunity & attacked & burned the Socialist Party offices. However, their advance was checked by an anarchist patrol, who were soon reinforced by groups of workers. &, as in Sarzanza a few months earlier, the fascists had no choice but to surrender to the police in order to escape a severe dose of working class justice.
[9- 10 -1921] -- Spain: Eugenio Martínez Fernández is detained, & later prosecuted, for publishing the clandestine CNT publication, "Solidaridad Obrera." The anarchosyndicalist CNT union is suppressed by the government during this period & many of its confederal groups decimated, but maintained itself undergound, & managed to continue publishing "Solidaridad Obrera.". http://www.manelaisa.com/texto/Articulos/PagArticulos9.htm
[9- 16 -1921] -- Emma Goldman visits briefly with the "millionaire American hobo" James Eads How, who, she believes, does not have the ability to make a worthwhile assessment of the situation in Russia. She was also disappointed by most published accounts of events in Russia, including reports by Louise Bryant.
[9- 17 -1921] -- Russia: Ten anarchists released & deported: Voline, Vorobiov, Mark Mratchny, Michailov, Gregori Maximoff, Ioudine, Iartchouk, Gorelik, Feldman & Fedorov.
Fanya Baron & the poet Lev Chernyi are detained, to be executed. Her execution was personally ordered by Lenin himself.
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[9- 21 -1921] -- Russia: The anarchist poet Lev Chernyi is shot by the Cheka.
In 1921 a new wave of arrests swept the country. The anarchists are scattered to the prison camps, dying of illness, hard labor — or Cheka executioners. Afew managed to flee into exile.
'Grey are the passing days. One by one the embers of hope have died out. Terror & despotism have crushed the life born on October. The slogans of the revolution are foresworn, its ideals stifled in the blood of the people. The breath of yesterday is dooming millions to death; the shadow of today hangs like a black pall over the country.
Dictatorship is trampling the masses underfoot. The revolution is dead; its spirit cries in the wilderness... I have decided to leave Russia.'
[9- 29 -1921] -- Russia: The Cheka (Bolshevik Secret Police), execute Fanya Baron & nine other anarchist prisoners. (Fanya's execution was on the personal order of Lenin.) These executions follow that of the anarchist & poet Lev Chernyi on the 21st.
Leon Trotsky remarks at the time, "We do not imprison the real anarchists, but criminals & bandits who cover themselves by claiming to be anarchists."
Emma Goldman, a friend & fellow anarchist, was so outraged that friends had to dissuade her from chaining herself to a bench in the hall where the Third International was meeting to shout her protests to the delegates.
Fanya's husband Aaron met the same fate: after 18 years in imprisoned at Taganka he was briefly released before being arrested again in 1939 & executed in 1940.
It seems unbelievable that even today, after everything that has happened & is happening in Russia, there are people who still imagine that the difference between socialists & anarchists is only that of wanting revolution gradually or quickly.
O Congresso da Covilhã, também votou pela não-adesão à ISV, apesar dos esforços das "minorias sindicalistas" infiltradas na CGT para servir ao governo ditatorial soviético, de acordo com o Relatório de Jules Humberto Droz, delegado da IC.
[10- 21 -1921] -- Massive demonstrations all over Europe in support of the anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti. In Paris 10,000 police & 18,000 soldiers attempt to control the crowds.
'The prosecution left a trail' of doctored eyewitness accounts, altered testimony & false ballistics reports. That trail appears to exonerate the victims while convicting the executioners.
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sacvan.html
[10- 22 -1921] --
France: Georges Brassens lives (1921-1981), Sète.
Anarchist militant, nonconformist poet began writing/singing songs in 1952. Popular, but reclusive as a star. Songs include "La mauvaise réputation," "La non-demande en mariage," "Les copains d'abord."
[10- 28 -1921] -- Argentina: In response to an employers' & government offensive, workers revolt & the anarchist flag of red & black flies. Isolated, the groups are encircled & destroyed by the army. Over 1,500 workers die, including all the leaders of the revolt.http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/world/la/argentina/index.html
[11- 4 -1921] -- Switzerland: Victorine Brocher-Rouchy, French militant anarchist, dies (1838-1921), in Lausanne. Participant in Paris Commune, married Gustave Brocher (who wrote reminiscences published by Jean Grave).
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[11- 5 -1921] -- France: Jeanne Humbert & Eugène Humbert, militant anarchists, pacifists, néo-malthusians & naturists are sentenced to prison. Under the terms of the new laws (voted in 1920) to repress anti-natalist propaganda, Jeanne & Eugene are each condemned one to two years of prison & fined 3000 francs. Jeanne is released on July 30, 1922. Eugene is not released until February 1924.
[11- 7 -1921] -- Dancer Isadora Duncan, sympathetic to the Soviets, attempts to meet with Emma Goldman.
[11- 8 -1921] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti case, the Ripley motion for a new trial is made.
The defendants argued that it was reversible error for the the jury foreman, Ripley, to have had brought into the juryroom 38 caliber cartridges, presumably to show the other jurors what they looked like. The defense also produces an affidavit stating that Ripley had responded to a comment that the defendants might not be guilty by saying,
[11- 21 -1921] -- US: At Allaire's Restaurant in New York city 175 people attend a ceremonial fundraising dinner to say farewell to Mollie Steimer, Hyman Lachowsky, Samuel Lipman, & Jacob Abrams.
Four empty chairs in the center of the dining room symbolize the deportees' absence. A fifth Frayhayt member, Jacob Schwartz, is also not present, having been beaten to death by the police.
The four, members of the anarchist Frayhayt group, are being kicked out of the Land of the Free for publishing leaflets in 1918 opposing the American invasion of Russia that year.
[11- 24 -1921] -- US: Mollie Steimer, after doing 18 months of a 15-year sentence for handing out leaflets, & three other radicals (Jacob Abrams, Samuel Lipman, & Hyman Lachowsky) were shipped off to Soviet Russia. Victims of the Red Scare in America, they were soon victims of the Red Terror in Russia ("Proletarian Democracy")
On August 23, 1918, Mollie & others in her group were arrested for distributing leaflets "the land of the free" opposing the landing of American troops in Soviet Russia.
The Abrams case, as it became known, is now a landmark in the repression of civil liberties in the US. It is cited in all standard histories as one of the most flagrant violations of constitutional rights during the Red Scare hysteria (pre-2002).
In Moscow, Mollie met Senya Fleshin, who became her lifelong companion. Both Mollie & Senya were imprisoned in 1922 for aiding "criminal elements" & were deported in 1923.
[11- 26 -1921] -- France: Second congress of l'Union Anarchiste meets for two days, in Lyon (or Villeurbanne?). http://libertaire.org/article28.html
[12- 1 -1921] -- Russia: Under the pretext of representing the Kropotkin Museum at an anarchist conference in Berlin, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, & Alexander Schapiro are authorized to leave Russia.
Early this month Goldman & Berkman settle in Riga, Latvia. They write to Harry Weinberger about chances of getting back into the US. Allowed only a temporary visa in Latvia, they seek entry to either Germany or Sweden. They are granted Swedish visas on December 14th, & enroute to Germany, on a train on the 22nd they are arrested by the Latvian secret service; accused of being Bolshevik agents.
[12- 3 -1921] -- Anti-authoritarian educator A.S. Neill establishes his school, Summerhill, with Lyme Regis, in England. Moves it three years later to Leiston (Suffolk). Proponent of children sharing in running schools, Neill told of this anarchist experiment in numerous books.http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/pages/index.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.S._Neill
[12- 22 -1921] -- Latvia: Having left Russia disillusioned with the Bolshevik counter-revolution, on the train to Reval, Estonia, Alexander Berkman & Emma Goldman are arrested by the Latvian secret service & accused of being Bolshevik agents. They are detained for several days, preventing them from attending the anarchist congress in Berlin.
[1- 2 -1922] -- US: Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, & Alexander Schapiro, having left Russia disillusioned with the Bolshevik Paradise, arrive in Stockholm, Sweden, & are met by birth-control advocates Albert Jensen & Elise Ottesen-Jensen; Emma becomes lover with 30-year old Swedish anarchist Arthur Svensson shortly after arrival.
Voline, G. P. Maximoff & other hunger strikers are deported from Russia & resettle in Berlin.
[1- 3 -1922] -- France: "La Revue Anarchiste" appears in Paris. In runs for 35 issues, until August 1925, & counts many talented collaborators.
[1- 10 -1922] -- [January 1922] France: During this month Sébastien Faure founds La Revue Anarchiste (The Anarchist Review).
This was but one of many periodicals Faure published over the years; La Revue Anarchiste became the leading monthly magazine of the French anarchist movement between the world wars.
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[2- 7 -1922] -- US: Samuel Fielden, American militant anarchist & propagandist & one of the few Haymarket Martyers not executed, dies.
Fielden's crime was to be stepping downfrom the speaker's platofrm when a bomb went off, wounding him. His death sentence commuted to life by Illinois Governor Richard James Oglesby, he was pardoned & released in 1893 by Governor John Peter Altgeld ("The Friend of Mad Dogs" as the famed "liberal" illustrator Thomas Nast characterized him).
[2- 17 -1922] -- Patagonia: In San Julian (Patagonie) five prostitutes of the "Catalana" brothel refuse to consort with Varela's (aka the "Killer of Patagonia") soldiers (who killed or tortured more than 1,500 striking workers), shouting:
"Screw yourselves! We do not sleep with assassins!"
Max Nettlau's, "Panarchy, A Forgotten Idea of 1860" first published (in Gustav Landauer's Der Sozialist, 15.3.1909).
[3- 26 -1922] -- US: The New York World publishes a series of controversial articles, (March 26-April 4) by Emma Goldman, exposing the harsh political & economic conditions in Russia.
[4- 28 -1922] -- Mécislas Charrier, French anarchist illégaliste, goes on trial for his attempt, along with two others, to rob the Paris-Marseilles train, in which one person was killed.
... more
Charrier was arrested & his accomplices killed by police. Charrier was not the killer, but he defended his illegalist activities & defied the court to take his head.
It did exactly that, sending him to the guillotine, singing "l'Internationale," "L'hymne au 17e" & "La Carmagnole," at 4 a.m., August 2, 1922.
Je ne puis me défendre de la
sympathie que j'éprouve pour vos conceptions ; j'en reconnais
toute la valeur, mais que voulez-vous, j'ai trop souffert pour ne pas
vouloir me venger, et j'ai été trop
écoeuré par les inégalités sociales pour
vous suivre dans l'âpre voie du travail (...)
Later, her niece Stella Ballantine visits with six-year-old son Ian.
Emma develops friendship with anarchist theorist Rudolf Rocker & his wife, Milly, with whom she had begun to correspond while in Russia.
Emma also begins work on book-length manuscript with the intended title My Two Years in Russia.
[5- 9 -1922] -- Italy: Milan trial begins for the anarchists held responsible for bombing the Teatro Diana. Giuseppe Mariani & Giuseppe Boldrini get life sentences, & Ettore Aguggini is only released after many years. Others accused are Ugo Fedeli, Pietro Bruzzi, & Francesco Ghezzi (editors of "L’Indivi-dualista").
[5- 18 -1922] -- Italy: Pasquale Binazzi, eminent Italian anarchist from Spezia, contacts the Soviet Minister of Interior Department to help the anarchists imprisoned by the Bolsheviks.
[6- 11 -1922] -- Spain: The anarcho-syndicalist CNT withdraws its provisional affiliation with the Third International in favor of the International Workers Association (IWA).
National Congress of the CNT convenes at Saragossa (June 11-12) & decides to withdraw from the Red Trade-Union International & to send delegates to an international anarcho-syndicalist conference held in Berlin in December, from which resulted a "Workers' International Association."
From the time of this breach Moscow bore an inveterate hatred for Spanish anarchism. Joaquin Maurin & Andres Nin were disowned by the CNT & they founded the Spanish Communist Party. In 1924 Maurin published a pamphlet declaring war to the death on his former comrades, a threat carried out during the Spanish Revolution when the Communists began assassinating anarchists.
[6- 12 -1922] -- Italy: The Fascists make a definitive assault on Piombino, with the support of Royal Guards from Pisa. They were repulsed on their previous attempt, on April 25th, by the Arditi. Even so it took a day & a half of heavy fighting before they were able to storm the offices of the USI & the printing press of the anarchist paper "Il Martello" & complete their conquest of the town. http://struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/anarchism/italianfascism.html
[6- 25 -1922] -- France: Delegates of the first congress (June25-July 1, in Saint-Etienne) of the C.G.T.U. (Confédération générale du travail unitaire) align with the Communist International. This decision marks the defeat of the anarcho-syndicalists within its ranks. http://libertaire.org/article137.html http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGTU
[7- 8 -1922] -- Spain: Conference in Blanes (8-10th) where the principal discussion centers on the repressive Martínez Anido, Military & Civil Governor of Barcelona, & his bloody repression of the CNT.
The union is outlawed in 1920, & large numbers of cenetista anarchist leaders are jailed or assassinated in the years following by the government's effort to destroy the CNT. The leadership of Spain's largest trade union is decimated but the union unvanquished.
[7- 22 -1922] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti case, following the trial, the Goodridge motion for a new trial is made. It is based on the lack of credibility of prosecution witness Goodridge, a known felon who testified under a false name. Other motions for similar reasons have previously been filed & others follow in the next year.
[7- 30 -1922] -- France: Jeanne Humbert released from St. Lazare prison.
Militant anarchist, pacifist, néo-malthusian & naturist, she & Eugene Humbert were sent to prison on November 5, 1921, under 1920 laws designed to repress anti-nataliste propaganda. They were sentenced one to two years of prison & fined 3000 francs.
Eugene is not released until 1924, & they then continue their actions for free maternity & in the naturist movement.
[8- 2 -1922] -- Mécislas Charrier (1895-1922) dies, guillotinéd in Paris. French anarchist individualist & illégaliste. Raised until the age of five by the anarchist Mécislas Golberg (or Goldberg).
On July 25, 1921, Charrier & two accomplices attempted to rob the First Class travellers on the Paris-Marseilles train, but things went badly & a person was killed. Afterwards in Paris, he was arrested, & his accomplices were killed by the police. Charrier went on trial on April 28, 1922. Mécislas, while not the killer, argues before the court his anarchist illegalism & defies it to take his head.
The court obliges, sending to the guillotine a simple idealistic robber.
At four o'clock in the morning, he approaches death in song, singing "l'Internationale," "L'hymne au 17e" & "La Carmagnole."
[8- 2 -1922] -- Mécislas Charrier (1895-1922) dies, guillotinéd in Paris. French anarchist individualist & illégaliste. Raised until the age of five by the anarchist Mécislas Golberg (or Goldberg).
On July 25, 1921, Charrier & two accomplices attempted to rob the First Class travellers on the Paris-Marseilles train, but things went badly & a person was killed. Afterwards in Paris, he was arrested, & his accomplices were killed by the police. Charrier went on trial on April 28, 1922. Mécislas, while not the killer, argues before the court his anarchist illegalism & defies it to take his head.
The court obliges, sending to the guillotine a simple idealistic robber.
At four o'clock in the morning, he approaches death in song, singing "l'Internationale," "L'hymne au 17e" & "La Carmagnole."
[8- 4 -1922] --
Corto travelled to the Aegean island of Rhodes in the Autumn of 1921 to begin a new Asian adventure, "La Maison Doree du Samarkand." This took him from the Turkish coast to the mountains of Afghanistan in search of the treasure of Alexander the Great. Beginning in Adana he crossed Turkey into Azerbaidjan.
Corto Maltese
Today, during a Russo-Turkish border dispute in Tadjikistan, Corto Maltese — existential anarchist adventurer — & Rasputin, witness the heroic death of Enver Pasha.
Arrested by a trigger-happy Bolshevik Comissar he was nearly shot but was saved by the intervention of then-Commissar Stalin (always tip your porter!)
Next Corto crossed the Caspian Sea from Baku to Krasnovodsk. There he found Rasputin imprisoned in the Emirate of Bukhara. During a Russo-Turkish border dispute in Tadjikistan the pair witnessed the heroic death of Enver Pasha on August 4, 1922.
Finally they reached Afghanistan where for a hallucinatory moment they see the treasure of Cyrus. At the end of the adventure Corto & Rasputin bade each other farewell at a borderpost on the Pakistani frontier.
[8- 25 -1922] -- Spain: Ángel Pestaña is ambushed by a rightwing death squad.
Returning from a lecture tour, Pestaña, militant anarcho-syndicaliste & CNT reformist, is shot down by "pistoleros du syndicat libre" in the industrial town of Manresa, Catalonia. The pistoleros are thugs commonly employed during this period by the Catholic Church, Barcelona governor Martínez Anido & big businesses.
Seriously wounded, Pestaña is hospitalized in a private clinic, but the pistoleros, which have openly sworn to kill him & enjoy a total impunity, try again upon his release from the clinic (unsuccessfully).
Excluded from the CNT in 1932, he joins the "Parti Syndicaliste" & is elected to the “Popular Front” government in February 1936. Imprisoned during the street fighting during the first days of the Spanish Revolution, CNT combatants free him & he rejoins the CNT & is appointed an officer in the army before his death in 1937.
[9- 12 -1922] -- US: Jackson Mac Low lives (1922- ). American poet & anarchist pacifist involved (1944-54) with "Why?" & edited(?) "Resistance."
Also writes performance pieces, essays, plays, & radio works.
Mac Low has always been a political activist, a self-proclaimed pacifist-anarchist. This political stance is evident in the content of the verse written before 1954, as it is also in Mac Low's activity as an editor of an anarchist publication.
After 1954 & Mac Low's increasing use of non-intentional strategies, the politcal stance is shifted to the poem's form & becomes actualized in the transaction between the text & the reader. As Bruce Campbell has explained, Mac Low has no desire "to be a dictator....Instead Mac Low wants to 'empower' the reader.... The reader is not someone who simply gazes upon the work or arrives at a prefabricated meaning; the reader helps to make the meaning." In short, using non-intentional strategies allows Mac Low to alter radically the power relationship of conventional author / reader transactions.
The Jackson Mac Low Papers:
Political Subjects consists largely of newspaper & magazine clippings, brochures & flyers. Many of these materials
date to the 1940s, 1950s & 1960s, with an emphasis on anarchist movements of the period.
[10- 29 -1922] -- Spain: El 29 de octubre aprovechando la nueva coyuntura, una delegación de obreros de la CNT se presentaron en Gobernación para hablar con Ardanza, el general les recibió y escuchó a la delegación cenetistas que iba encabezada por el abogado Joan Casanovas, la conversación verso sobre la intensión de la CNT de estar dentro de la legalidad. Ardanza se limitó a decirles que él transmitiría el mensaje a Madrid. El gobierno de la nación tardó varios días en contestar, pero evidentemente no podían más que aceptar aquella nueva situación.
[Details / context]
[10- 31 -1922] -- Italy: Fascist Benito Mussolini (Il Duce) becomes premier (-1943); Head office of the anarchist paper "Umanita Nova" is again ransacked by Mussolini's fascists.
Costituzione del governo con l'inclusione oltre che di fascisti anche di popolari, nazionalisti, democratico-sociali, salandriani, giolittiani, militari e cani sciolti. Una manifestazione fascista per celebrare la vittoria si conclude con assalti a giornali, violenze, morti e feriti. Un inizio violento prepara fin d'ora una fine violenta.
[11- 1 -1922] -- Brazil: Alfonso Henriques de Lima Barreto (1881-1922) dies, Rio de Janeiro. Important Brazilian novelist, wrote for the labor press, social critic, & an anarchist sympathizer. Author of the classic Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma, (9th edition, 1971; novel of the 1910 Sailors’ "Revolt Against the Lash"), A Nova California Contos. Lima Barreto wrote for the anarchist press, in "A Plebe, "A Voz do Trabalhador" & "A Lanterna".
See Figueiredo, Carmem Lúcia Negreiros de. Lima Barreto e o Fim do Sonho Republicano (Rio de
Janeiro, 1995). In French, see
http://ytak.club.fr/mai2.html#barreto Used books by Lima Barreto at Biblio.com
[11- 15 -1922] -- Ecuador: General Strike called by the anarchosyndicalist-inspired union FTRE — reuniting nearly all the workers & craftsmen in Guayaqui — resulting later in a massacre of the workers.
1922 - General strike & massacre
Huelga General y posterior masacre de obreros de la ciudad de Guayaquil, en Ecuador. La huelga fue convocada por la sindical FTRE, de inspiración anarcosindicalista, que reunía a casi todos los trabajadores y artesanos de la ciudad.
[11- 20 -1922] -- US: Muere Ricardo Flores Magón, anarchiste, en la prisión de Leavenworth.
—Cuando muera, mis amigos quizás escriban en mi tumba: «Aquí yace un soñador», y mis enemigos «Aquí yace un loco». Pero no habrá nadie que se atreva a estampar esta inscripción: «Aquí yace un cobarde y traidor a sus ideas».
En su celda, lejos de su tierra, lo extrangulan. Paro cardíaco, dice el parte médico.
[11- 21 -1922] -- US: Ricardo Flores Magón, Mexican anarchist militant & author, dies at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas, USA. Possibly murdered by prison guards. His remains were returned to Mexico, where they rest at the "Rotunda of Illustrious Men" in México City; he also now has a city named after him in Mexico.
[11- 29 -1922] -- Renzo Novatore (1890-1922) is killed in an ambush by police. Close friends with Enzo Martucci & Bruno Filippi.
Pseudonimo di Abele Ricieri Ferrari. Fu poeta, filosofo, artista e militante anarchico individualista, fondamentalmente autodidatta. Individualista e anticlericale.
Viene ucciso il 29 Novembre 1922 a Teglia, nel Genovese, dentro un'osteria, durante un conflitto a fuoco con i regi carabinieri, i quali gli avevano teso una vile ed infame imboscata.
"So turn to yourselves rather than to your Gods or to your idols. Find what hides in yourselves; bring it to light; show yourselves!"
Caro Renzo, nostro amico, nostro compagno, anima immensa, cristallina, cuore generoso e provvido, i nostri cuori palpitano, la mia mano trema, le mie membra fremono, i miei occhi lacrimano, nell'attimo in cui io mi industrio a scrivere su di te, nel tentare inverecondamente ed ingiustificatamente di riassumere, sintetizzare, limitare la tua superba Individualità in questa scheda o articolo per forza di cose meschino, mediocre, inarrivabile a te...
"Already the foreboding sky grows dark & silent!"
"Novatore began as an anarcho-communist, but soon fell under the influence of Stirner, Nietzsche & Baudelaire. He believed that the truly realized individual would conflict with any organized society, even an anarchist utopia; he was a complete immoralist, in fact a practicing bandit. The anarcho-communist scholar Camillo Berneri attacked Novatore & his disciple Enzo Martucci as “paranoid megalomaniacs, exalters of a mad philosophy & a decadent literature, feeble imitators of the artists of opium & hashish, sirens at so much an hour.”"
[12- 18 -1922] -- Italy: In Turin, the fascists attack the "Chambre du Travail," set fire to the Circle of the Railwaymen, the Circle Karl Marx & the seat of the anarchist paper "L'Ordine Nuovo".
22 workmen, socialists, Communists & anarchists are assassinated. The anarchist Pietro Ferrero, secretary of the metallurgists union (F.I.O.M.) & organizer of the Councilist movement in the factories, is assassinated in atrocious manner — attached to a truck & dragged in the street.
Scontri a Torino fra fascisti e socialisti-comunisti. Il capo delle squadre fasciste afferma con orgoglio di aver provocato la morte di 22 persone.
[12- 22 -1922] -- Germany: International Congress of Revolutionary Syndicalists at Berlin. Founding of the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers Association (AIT/ IWA), on the initiative of Rudolf Rocker.
Rudolf Rocker was responsible for putting together the anti-authoritarian A.I.T.; it is an umbrella organization of various anarchist-syndicalist trade unionists from 12 countries (FORA, USI, SAC, FAUD, CNT, etc.) which numbered several million members over the years. The first secretaries are Rudolf Rocker, Augustin Souchy & Alexander Schapiro.
[1- 3 -1923] -- ¡Dead Drunk! Czechoslovakian writer Jaroslav Hasek dies of drunkenness at 39, having finished only four QUARTS volumes of his projected six-volume anarchist novel The Good Soldier Schweik [or Svejk]. For the first edition Hasek's friend Karel Vanek provides a weak, spurious ending. Now a classic in world literature, Schweik is a soldier who creates havoc in the Austrian army during World War I by pretending to be extremely stupid.
http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/ppl/wri/
[1- 15 -1923] -- France: "La Brochure mensuelle" (The Monthly Booklet) begins publishing in Paris.
"La Brochure mensuelle" is published by Emile Bidault & the Groupe de Propagande par la Brochure. The first number is a text by Peter Kropotkin "To Young People." Devoted to spreading libertarian ideas, it publishes the writings of over 100 authors in 190 issues before its cessation in December of 1937.
[1- 23 -1923] -- France: The young individualist Germaine Berton attempts to kill Leon Daudet, the extreme rightwing propagandist of l'Action Française (& father of the anarchist Philippe Daudet). A solidarity campaign in the pages of "Libertaire" rallied Severine (Caroline Remy), Louis Lecoin, & other militants to her defense.
[Details / context]
[2- 5 -1923] -- Italy: Mass arrests of socialists, anarchists & communists.
[2- 9 -1923] -- France: Emile Masson (1869-1923) dies, in Paris, the evening of February 8-9. Breton militant, professor, writer & libertarian socialist propagandist.
Masson frequented the revolutionary milieu of socialists, anarchists & antimilitarists while a student of philosophy & English at the Sorbonne. He writes "Rebelles", "Anarchico-Breton" tales, & diverse articles for "Temps Nouveaux", the Fédération Régionaliste Bretonne journal, etc. & is publisher of the bilingual monthly, "Brug" (Breton-Français) until the onset of the Great War That Ended all Wars.
"- ¡Ajajá! Y ya estamos en plena revolución, ¿verdad?
- ¿Y por qué no? ¿Quién puede adivinar lo que produzca una chispa?
- ¡Ah, criollo ignorante y bárbaro!
- ¿Bárbaro? Puede. Pero para mí que los bárbaros, los ignorantes son ellos, los que solo hacen las cosas a medias…"
— Alberto Ghiraldo (1874-1946), "El rebelde", Febrero 10 de 1923
Long ago a British judge was quoted as saying he refused clemency at popular demand to uphold the principle of capital punishment & to prove he was not to be intimidated by public protest.
During Hitler's time, Himmler remarked that for the good of the state, popular complaints should be ignored, & if they persisted, the complainers should be punished.
Judge Webster Thayer, during the Sacco-Vanzetti episode, was heard to boast while playing golf, "Did you see what I did to those anarchistic bastards?"
[2- 27 -1923] -- US: Formation in New York of the Mohegan Colony Association, based on anarchist principles.
[Details / context]
[3- 10 -1923] -- Spain: Salvador Segui Rubinat, "El noi del sucre," assassinated.
Born in 1890, Segui, "El noi del sucre," was an anarcho-syndicalist in the very large & popular CNT in Catalonia. He was assassinated today along with another trade unionist, Francesc Comes (murders financed by the governor of Catalonia). Fundacion Salvador Segui now exist in Barcelona, Valencia & Madrid.
[3- 25 -1923] -- Germany: Emma Goldman delivers a speech in Berlin, "Rudolf Rocker on the Occasion of his 50th Birthday."
[Exact day not given by source; presumably on or about today — ed.]
[3- 26 -1923] -- Bulgaria: In Yambol, during an anarchist protest against the government decision to disarm the people, the army shoots into the crowd, wounding the speaker Atanas Stoitchev & massacre others.
About 30 are murdered here ( Todor Darzev, Pani Botchkov, Dimitar Vassilev, Cyrille Kehaiov, Spiro Obretenov, Pétar Kassapina, Rousko Nanine, Pétar Glavtchev, etc.), including others executed at the Yambol barracks tomorrow.
Still others are executed on April 24, & with the coup d'etat of June 9th, the remaining activists are forced underground.
[4- 24 -1923] -- Bulgaria: In Sliven, the anarchists Nicolai Dragnev, the brothers Panayot & Ilia Kratounkov are shot by soldiers under the pretext of "attempting to escape."
[4- 30 -1923] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti case, the Hamilton motion for a new trial for the anarchists is filed. It is based upon criminologist & gun case expert Hamilton who signed an affidavit stating that said the bullets at the scene & in Berardelli did not come from Sacco’s
gun.
Similarly, on Nov 5, 1923, the Proctor motion for a new trial is made. Prosecution expert witness Proctor admitted that the use of the ambiguous phrase “consistent with” was prearranged by the District Attorny to allow the jury to believe he was testifying that Sacco’s gun was the gun that killed Berardelli.
[5- 1 -1923] -- France: Ôsugi Sakae, the Japanese anarchist, makes a speech at a May Day gathering in Paris. He is arrested & deported. Osugi returned to Japan, where he was, shortly thereafter, murdered by military police, along with his companion Ito Noe & their 6-year old nephew. http://www.ne.jp/asahi/anarchy/anarchy/english/history.html
[6- 17 -1923] -- Spain: During this month the review "Generación Consciente" first appears, in Alcoi (Catalonia).
Published June 1925 to 1928 in Valencia, it changes its name to “Estudios” & continues publishing until 1937 with a print run of 60,000 copies.
An eclectic review, naturist & libertarian, principal themes are nudism, integral medicine, free love, sex education, hygiene & natural foods, rational pedagogy, art, etc. Exerting a decisive influence on the Spanish working class, it contributes to developing radical sensibilities.
Among its many collaborators are the anarchist doctors Isaac Puente & Felix Martí Ibañez. In charge of the review is Jose Juan Pastor, a member of the founding committee of the “League for Sexual Reform” in 1928.
[6- 18 -1923] -- Argentina: A nationwide General Strike, protesting the assassination of the anarchist Kurt Wilckens in his prison cell, paralyzes the country.
In Buenos-Aires a protest demonstration turns into a shoot-out when police attempt to raid the local offices of the anarchist union (FORA (Fédération Ouvrière Régionale Argentine). Two workers are killed, 17 wounded (including the Spanish anarchist Enrique Gombas) & 163 arrested; one policeman is killed & three wounded. See the Daily Bleed,
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0125.htm http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/5166/7tirano.html
[7- 9 -1923] -- Russia: Mollie Steimer & photographer Senya Fleshin deported; arrested November 1922 for propagating anarchism — that is, "aiding criminal elements" (Mollie had earlier been arrested & booted out of the US for such dastardly activities); they were released soon after they begin a hunger strike to publicize their situation. See Paul Avrich's Anarchist Portraits.
[7- 20 -1923] -- México: Mayhaps revolutionary Pancho Villa (1878-1923) dies, ambushed in Parral, Mexico. Villa had teamed up with the anarchist Emiliano Zapata to overthrow the corrupt conservative government (redundancies abound, so sorry!), then retired.
Daily Bleed Saint, June 5.
PANCHO VILLA
Inspired hero of the Mexican Revolution, or "social bandit," depending on your point of view.
"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
[7- 21 -1923] -- US: Prince Caetani delivers a speech bitterly denouncing the opponents of Fascismo among the American Italians, & argued "a certain Italian paper in New York ought to be suppressed."
The assembled apostles of Human Liberty knew that he meant "Il Martello", & applauded him heartily. That there was no law in the US forbidding a newspaper to criticize a foreign government did not trouble them; they had been through the late war, & knew what could be done. So did the Department of Justice, then still in command of the eminent Daugherty, & the Postoffice Department.
Word was conveyed to Washington, & then back to NY. [Today] the whole issue of "Il Martello" was held up in the mails. The anarchist Carlo Tresca demanded to know why. The Postoffice gave him no answer. He kept on denouncing the Fascisti.
— H. L. Mencken
[7- 23 -1923] -- México: Mayhaps revolutionary Pancho Villa (1878-1923) dies, Parral. Teamed up with the anarchist Emiliano Zapata to overthrow the corrupt conservative government of Mexico, then retired.
Having put down his arms for land & amnesty, Pancho Villa is ambushed by political enemies. His death is variously listed as June 20th ("New York Times" & Compton's), July 20th & the July 23rd. Most internet sites list July 20.
With his death, however, the legend of Pancho Villa did not fade but grew to mythic proportions. Pancho Villa was seen by the people as a
Mexican Robin Hood of those times.Always supporting vague ideas of land & educational reform, Villa represented for the people a regional patriotism which found expression for years to come in corridos (songs) & cries of "Viva Villa."
Daily Bleed Saint, June 5.
PANCHO VILLA
Inspired hero of the Mexican Revolution, or "social bandit," depending on your point of view.
[8- 1 -1923] -- Spain: Regional Plenary Session of the Catalunya CNT.
[Details / context]
[8- 10 -1923] -- US: Carlo Tresca, Italian-American anarchist, suddenly arrested. The charge was that he had printed an article, three months before, attacking the Italian monarchy & the the Fascists. No such crime, of course, is known to American law, but Tresca was nevertheless arrested.
"On August 18 the whole issue of Il Martello was held up because it contained an account of a raffle; two other Italian papers, containing precisely the same account, went through the mails unmolested. On September 8 it was held up because it contained a two-line advertisement of a book on birth control. On October 27 it was held up because it printed an account of how the Fascisti had forced an Italian woman to swallow an immense dose of castor oil; all the American newspapers printed the same story, but were not molested. On November 10 it was held up because it printed a letter from a reader predicting that Mussolini would come to the same end as Rienzi; other papers had made the same prediction without challenge. On November 24 it was held up for charging Mussolini with misappropriating funds. September 8, announcing a book in Italian on birth control, showed the way. Experienced witch-hunters from the Department of Justice were rushed to New York, Tresca was indicted for advertising a means of preventing conception, & his trial was called in hot haste. He appeared before Goddard, J., in the United States District Court, on November.
So far, indeed, but eight persons in all the United States have gone to Tresca's aid. Four are Italian-American politicians. One is a Liberal pastor. Two are old & battle-scarred libertarians, already marked with the scars of a hundred defeats. The eighth is La Sanger,
the birth control agitator, herself an experienced goat of the New Jurisprudence. No one else will take any interest in the case."
Researcher Archie Green tells us that Industrial Workers of the World artists "have been modest in telling their life-stories," & "within this laconic tradition, Carlos Cortez reports key facts."
— Archie Green, "Carlos Cortez & Wobbly Artistry," in Carlos Cortez, Where are the Voices & Other Wobbly Poems? Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1997, p. 5.
Carlos Cortez, son of Alfredo Cortez, a Mexican partisan of the Industrial Workers of the World (acronym, IWW, popularly known as "Wobblies"), & a German socialist-pacifist mother, Augusta Cortez.
Cortez spent two years in federal prison (Sandstone, Minnesota) during World War II as a conscientious objector "because he did not want to kill living things."
— Eugene Nelson, "Introduction" to Carlos Cortez, Crystal-Gazing the Amber Fluid & Other Wobbly Poems, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., 1997, p. 6.
Upon his release from federal detention in 1947 he joined the IWW & has remained active for five decades as a graphic artist, poet, & adviser within that organization. In 1985 at the Gato Negro Press [transl. Black Cat Press] he printed a catalog for a touring exhibition of cartoons, Wobbly: 80 Years of Rebel Art.
[9- 2 -1923] -- Spain: Rafael Torres Escartín, a member of the anarchist Los Solidarios, is arrested in Oviedo & tortured. He escapes but is recaptured.
[9- 8 -1923] -- Spain: "Los Solidarios" members are discovered hiding out in an attic, setting off a two day daring escapade, out a window, fleeing by train & a long shoot-out. Some members make it to Basque country but Eusebio Brau & Torres Escartín, involved in the shootout, do not.
http://www.manelaisa.com/texto/Articulos/PagArticulos9.htm
[9- 16 -1923] -- Japan: Anarchist Osugi Sakae, his companion Ito Noe, & a six-year-old nephew, are murdered by military police.
Anarchism in Japan was dealt a blow as hard as the execution of Kôtoku & his comrades 12 years earlier. Ôsugi was the most talented thinker & writer in the anarchists' ranks.
Their battered bodies are discovered four days later where they had been dumped in a well.
This provoked outrage throughout Japan & became known as "The Amakasu Incident".
[9- 28 -1923] -- Fug You!! Anarchist songster, author Tuli Kupferberg lives! (Coca Cola Douche, CIA Man, Paint It Red [&Black], Wide, Wide River.) "One of the leading Anarchist theorists of our time," according to "Reader's Digest" (4/87).
Created the review "40-tal," & wrote for the libertarian newspaper "Arbetaren."
His works present a variety of themes which prefigure the French existentialists. His many writings include The Snake (1945), & Island of the Condemned.
(See also 4 November 1954).
[10- 5 -1923] -- US: Radical Roman Catholic priest, anti-war activist & christian anarchist, Philip Berrigan lives (-2002).
Along with his brother Daniel Berrigan, also a priest & anarchist, he was for a time on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for actions against Vietnam war.
My real trouble is
People keep mistaking me
for a human being.
Olson (being a great poet) says
"Whalen!—that Whalen is a—a—
That Whalen is a great big vegetable!"
He's guessing exactly in the right direction.
6:xi:64
It is interesting to note that upon publication of Overtime the following luminaries came out to praise & celebrate this wise & good-hearted "Zen Falstaff": Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Diane diPrima, David Meltzer, Clark Coolidge, Joanne Kyger, Bill Berkson, Lewis MacAdams, Phoebe MacAdams, Jackson Mac Low, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Anselm Hollo, Jack Collom, Mei-Mei Bersenbrugge, Charles Bernstein, Lewis Warsh, Anne Tardos, Eileen Myles, & many others.
The spirit of honor & admiration for Philip Whalen extends beyond the Beat Generation. He is honored by some as one of the progenitors of the Language School movement of poetry. & by others he said to be the progenitor of Zen poetry in America.
One thing for certain, he spread an "ecology of permission" that enabled poets of every style & taste to go beyond the limits of the known to explore their new creative selves.
— Michael Rothenberg
[10- 24 -1923] -- Poet Denise Levertov, lives, Ilford, Essex, England. Socially committed writer, moved to the US in the 40s.
Levertov's poetry displays “a kind of animal grace of the word, a pulse like the footfalls of a cat or the wingbeats of a gull. It is the intense aliveness of an alert domestic love — the wedding of form & content in poems which themselves celebrate a kind of perpetual wedding of two persons always realized as two responsible sensibilities.”
In the 40s emerged as one of the best of the British Neo-Romantics (included the anarchists Alex Comfort, George Woodcock, Herbert Read). With her move to America her verse changed abruptly. Influenced by Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, William Carlos Williams, her poetry was "like" Parker Tyler, Kenneth Patchen, Kenneth Rexroth & With Eyes at the Back of our Heads (1959), established her as one of the great American poets. Rexroth considered her "superior to all but a handful of American poets born in this century."
In the early 60s she was poetry editor of "Nation" magazine. During the 1960's of the Vietnam War era, activism & feminism became prominent in her poetry. She produced one of her most memorable works of rage & sadness, The Sorrow Dance (1967), encompassing her feelings toward the war & the death of her older sister. From 1975 to 1978, she was poetry editor of "Mother Jones" magazine. She spent the last decade of her life in Seattle, Washington.
[11- 5 -1923] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti case, the Proctor motion for a new trial is made.
Prosecution expert witness Proctor admitted the use of the ambiguous phrase “consistent with” was prearranged by the District Attorny to allow the jury to believe he was testifying that Sacco’s gun was the gun that killed Berardelli.
Previously, on April 30, 1923, the Hamilton motion for a new trial was filed, based upon criminologist & gun case expert Hamilton who signed an affidavit stating the bullets at the scene & in Berardelli did not come from Sacco’s gun.
[11- 12 -1923] -- Emma Goldman's manuscript published this month under the title My Disillusionment in Russia; the last twelve chapters have been cut without her permission.
[11- 24 -1923] -- Philippe Daudet, French anarchist, son of Léon Daudet (leader of fascist "Ligue de l'Action Française"), dies under mysterious circumstances (assassinated).
Saint-Pol-Roux, Raymond Roussel, Philippe Daudet, Germaine Berton, Saint-John Perse, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio di Chirico, Pierre Reverdy, Jacques Vachè, Leon-Paul Fargue, Sigmund Freud, your portraits hang on dream's bedroom walls, you are the presidents of the Republic of Dream.
[12- 24 -1923] -- France: Germaine Berton, the young individualist is acquitted for her attempt to kill Leon Daudet (father of the anarchist Philippe Daudet), the extreme rightwing propagandist for l'Action Française.
[Details / context]
[1- 1 -1924] -- Canada: IWW Lumber Workers IU120 strikes the British Columbia lumber owners, calling for an 8 hour day with blankets supplied, minimum wage of $4 per day, release of all class war prisoners, no discrimination against IWW members & no censuring of IWW literature.
By 1923 IWW had three branches with job control in Canada: Lumberworkers IU 120 & Marine Transport Workers IU 510 in Vancouver & an LWIU branch in Cranbrook BC for a total of 5,600 members.
1924 marks a peak year for the IWW in Canada. 8,000 in Northern Ontario, the Canadian Lumber Workers vote to join the IWW. Fighting a mandatory dues check off to the United Mine Workers, Alberta Coal miners also join the IWW.
[1- 9 -1924] -- France: Jean-Baptiste Thuriault dies. French labor militant, considered by authorities to be the "Grand Master" of anarchism in the Nièvre department.
[1- 26 -1924] -- Armand Gatti lives, in Monaco. Libertarian playwright, author of more than 40 plays.
Armand's father Gino Gatti, a Piedmontese anarchist, was a comrade of Carlo Cafiero, & involved in many struggles in Argentina.
A Resistance member during WWII with the "Maquis", Armand Gatti was captured in 1943, condemned to death & shipped to Germany, near Hamburg, from which he escaped to England.
After the war he became a prize-winning journalist (Prix Albert Londres in 1954), then devoted himself to the theatre.
For the anarchist that Gatti still is, the theatre is "a perpetual medium for freedom". Resistance & exile are themes in his works, which include The Time of the Physicists, La Deuxième Existence du camp de Tatenberg, & La Journée d’une infirmière. His La passion du général Franco (1968) was banned in France, under pressure from Franco's fascist government.
[1- 31 -1924] -- George Simeonov Popov (1900-1924) dies.
George Popov was a Bulgarian teacher, poet, speaker & anarchist organizer.
Popov initiated an insurrectionary movement against the coup d'etat of June 1923, which was quelled after a week of fighting against the army. Popov took refuge in the mountains, forming guerrilla anarchist groups. When his hiding place was discovered, he committed suicide rather than fall into the hands of the army.
[2- 20 -1924] -- France: In a Parisian restaurant Ernesto Bonominitakes revenge for the beating murder of his teacher/friend by a squad of fascist thugs in Italy, silencing Nicola Bonservizi, secretary of "Faisceau," a writer for "L'Italie Nouvelle" & Mussolini's fascist paper, "Popolo d' Italia," with several shots from his revolver. The brutal murder in June, of Giacomo Matteotti, an Italian socialist & antifascist politician, by Mussolini's henchmen, creates a sympathetic atmosphere for Bonomini: facing a possible death sentence, he gets eight years hard labor (later commuted to prison time).
[Further details]
[2- 24 -1924] -- Uruguay: On the rue Monte Caseros, Montevideo Chief of Police Luis Pardeiro & his chauffeur are killed in a hail of bullets. An attentat against the renowned torturer of many anarchists (Miguel Arcangel Roscigno, et al), the attack is attributed to the anarchists Armando Guidot, Bruno Antonelli Dellabella & Francisco Sapia. http://ytak.club.fr/fevrier4.html#22
[3- 24 -1924] -- Spain: Barcelona police attempt to haul in the militant anarchist group, "Los Solidarios."
“Los Solidarios”
Gregorio Suberviela tries to escape but falls in a hail of bullets, while Marcelino del Campo is killed. The brothers Ceferino & Aurelio Fernandez, & Adolph Ballano, are arrested before they are able to use their weapons. Gregorio Jover, though arrested & taken to the police station, effects an escape through a window. Police attempting to arrest Domingo Asacaso are so fearful of the anarchist that he too is able to escape.http://ytak.club.fr/mars4.html#22
[4- 3 -1924] -- Emma Goldman, this month, is unable to solicit writing contracts with European & American magazines; she finds mainstream magazines are interested only in her experiences in Russia, thus thwarting her attempts to earn a living.
[4- 11 -1924] -- US: Premier issue of the Bulletin of the Anarchist Red Cross."
Bulletin of the Anarchist Red Cross
"Save your brothers tortured in the prisons of Russia"
Launched with a call to American workers & their organizations to put pressure on the Bolshevik authorities to put an end to persecutions & imprisonments of Russian workers, Socialist revolutionary militants, trade unionists, & anarchists — victims because they refuse to kneel before the Bolshevik Party dictatorship.
A satirical, humorous & naturalist newspaper produced by the Brestoin anarchist Herve Coatmeur. The newspaper appears on Saturdays, & is one of many titles published by Coatmeur & Foyer Naturien (Natural Hearth) de Brest.
[4- 16 -1924] -- Durante o mandato de Silvetti caracterizouse pola súa actitude unitaria cara á (FORA) anarquista. Iniciou unha grande campaña en defensa dos presos por cuestións políticas. Durante a súa xestión á frente da central sindical aconteceron os tráxicos sucesos da Patagonia que acabaron con 1.500 fusilados.
Do 16 ó 22 de abril de 1924 realizouse o Primeiro Congreso Ordinario da Union Sindical Argentina (USA) sendo reelixido por un mandato. Ao remate do mesmo volveu ao taller, foi electo dúas veces máis membro do Comité Central da USA. Organizou o Sindicato de Obreiros da Industria do Calzado.
[4- 24 -1924] -- Germany: Emma Goldman is howled down during a meeting of 5,000 workers in Berlin when she criticizes the Soviet government. Emma, "The Queen of Anarchy," is warned about the "consequences" of expressing further criticism of the Soviet Republic.
[5- 22 -1924] -- France: Germaine Berton arrested in Bordeaux, following a conference, & a brawl ensues. Newly imprisoned, the young anarchist went on a hunger strike & was hospitalized.
[Details / context]
[5- 28 -1924] -- Spain: The "Torturer of Barcelona," Rogelio Pérez, is killed by anarchists, during uprisings sparked by the revolt in Vera de Bidassoa. José Llacer & Juan Montejo, members of the anarcho-syndicalist union CNT, are accused of the assassination, along with attacking the Atarazanas barracks on November 6th, & executed on November 10th.
[10- 6 -1924] -- India: Gandhi ends 21-day fast for Hindu-Moslem unity. Pacifist inspired by the christian mystical anarchist & novelist Leo Tolstoy. http://www.gandhiinstitute.org/
[10- 7 -1924] -- Russia:
Nicolas Lazarevitch & Alexis Maslov are arrested for belonging to a criminal workers' organization. Both were active this past summer in Moscow with an anarcho-syndicalist group publishing "Dynamo". Maslov is sent to the camp at Urda & Lazarevitch is imprisoned for nearly three years (Lubianka, Butyrki, Souzdal, & Vladimir prison), before a campaign gains his deportation in 1926.
[10- 24 -1924] -- Italy: Anarchist Ernesto Bonomini sentenced to eight years hard labor (commuted to prison time) for killing, with the blow of a revolver, Nicola Bonservizi, a correspondent of Mussolini's fascist newspaper, "Popolo d' Italia," & secretary of the Parisian "Faisceau."
[10- 31 -1924] -- Italy: Enrico Baj (1924-2003) lives, Milan. Controversial anarchist Italian painter & sculptor, best known for his collages of ridiculous-looking generals (sic) made from medals, shards of glass, scraps of flowery material & shells.
"Baj's playful & ironic side masks a constant & coherent engagement against all the forms of destructiveness & oppression that man inflicts on man," French surrealist Andre Breton commented.
One of his great paintings is "The funeral of the anarchist Pinelli (I funerali dell’anarchico Pinelli 1972)," which was banned for disturbing the public order. In fact , at 9a.m. on the morning of 17 May 1972, the day the work was to be inaugurated, Luigi Calabresi, the Milan police chief thought by many at the time to be responsible for the murder of Pinelli, was assassinated in the street.
[11- 6 -1924] -- Spain: CNT militants (including Durruti) attempt a revolt in Vera de Bidassoa, as cenetistas attack the Atarazanas barracks in Barcelona. Anarchists & civil guards clash for two days. A guard is killed, two militants die, four wounded, 19 taken prisoner. Captured, Pablo Martin, Enrique Gil, Julián Santillan, Jose Llacer & Juan Montejo are condemned & executed (except Martin who commits suicide in prison).
[Details / context]
[12- 21 -1924] -- Germany: After five years of prison for his participation in the Republic of the Workers Councils, anarchist Erich Muhsam is amnestied. Thousands of workers turn out for his release. German anarchist poet, murdered by the Nazis at the Orianenburg concentration camp.
[1- 3 -1925] -- Italy: Mussolini puts an end to the parliamentary system & issues a decree ordering the dissolution of the anarcho-syndicalist USI (Unione Sindacala Italiana).
[1- 29 -1925] -- England: Emma Goldman lectures on "The Bolshevik Myth & the Condition of the Political Prisoners" at South Place Institute, London, her first public meeting in England at which she denounces the Bolsheviks, prompting vocal protests from some members of the audience.
In London, Emma Goldman continues her efforts to expose the Bolsheviks as betrayers of the revolution & violators of civil liberties, a task made more difficult & more urgent by the return of a British trade union delegation that reports favorably on conditions in the Soviet Union.
[2- 14 -1925] -- In the film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre a close-up of a lottery list shows the winning numbers drawn in the Mexican National Lottery, dated February 14, 1925.
The camera pulls back to the hands of a man holding a lottery ticket.
The scraggly-looking bum, a dirty, ragged scrounger [later identified as Fred C. Dobbs "Dobbsie" (Humphrey Bogart)], tears his losing ticket to pieces.
— From John Huston's film script of the anarchist B. Traven's book, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
[4- 16 -1925] -- US: During this month Boni & Liveright publishes Alexander Berkman's The Bolshevik Myth, critical of the Bolshevik counterrevolution in Russia.
In an attempt to refute the report of the British trade union delegation, Emma Goldman & her comrades — as the British Committee for the Defence of Political Prisoners in Russia — publish a pamphlet, "Russia & the British Labour Delegation's Report: A Reply."
Emma continues speaking on conditions in the Soviet Union with a lecture at South Place Institute today, "An
Exposure of the Trade Union Delegation's Report on Russia"; she also delivers a second lecture in London on April 27.
[4- 19 -1925] -- England: April 19-29, Emma Goldman fills speaking engagements in Norwich, Leeds, & Manchester with lectures on Soviet Russia.
[4- 27 -1925] -- England: Emma Goldman delivers a lecture in London, her second here this month.
[5- 31 -1925] --
Julian Beck lives, New York. Cofounder of the infamous Living Theatre, along with his partner Judith Malina.
Beck wrote & directed plays many plays throughout the course of his life. Julian led massive political demonstrations in NY in the 60s. All were involving peace. Julian Beck was a lifelong poet & anarchist.
"I CALL FOR A THEATRE IN WHICH THE ACTORS ARE LIKE VICTIMS BURNING AT THE STAKE, SIGNALLING THROUGH THE FLAMES."
— Antonin Artaud
Julian published several books including: Poetry: Songs of the Revolution 1-35 (1963); 21 Songs of the Revolution (1969); Songs of the Revolution 36-89 (1974). See also his book, The Life of the Theatre (City Lights Books, 1972).
[6- 2 -1925] -- Bulgaria: Gueorgui Cheitanov dies.
Anarchist militant captured & executed, along with his companion Mariola Sirakova & others, by the fascist government during a crackdown on leftists following a Communist bombing in Sofia.
[6- 20 -1925] -- Bulgaria: Vassil Ikonomov dies. Tracked down by the army & paramilitary groups, the anarchist revolutionary guerrilla Ikonomov is killed under mysterious circumstances today while bathing in a river close to the village of Bélitsa.
A significant figure in the Bulgarian anarchist movement & an anti-fascist partisan against the dictatorship of Stambolijski, Ikonomov organized groups which included anarchists, Communists, & members of the peasants' party.
[6- 27 -1925] -- England (?): Emma Goldman, on her birthday, marries James Colton, an elderly anarchist friend & trade unionist from Wales, in order to obtain British citizenship & the right to travel & speak more widely. Emma had been deported from the "Land of the Free," & was having difficulty travelling, working & finding places to live.
[7- 10 -1925] -- US: Today & tomorrow cops in Illinois torch all files of correspondence, documents & books belonging to the I.W.W. which were used as exhibits in their trial against "Big Bill" (William D.) Haywood in 1918.
With this auto-da-fe the State reveals its fear & contempt for labor generally & its particular desire to erase the glorious pages of the revolutionary trade unionism of the IWW.
Source: Ephéméride anarchiste
[8- 5 -1925] -- France: Georges Palante (1862-1925) dies, Yffiniac, (Côtes d'Armor). Philosopher preaching an aristocratic & libertarian individualism.
Victim of a rare hormonal & disfiguring disease, Palante became a professor of philosophy. Influenced by the work of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche & the individualist Max Stirner, he developed a radical anarchist philosophy & "une morale désespérée, mais élégante, de la résistance."
Pessimism taking the upper hand in his struggles, Palante puts an end to his life today. His epitaph reads,
"L'individu est la seule source d'énergie, la seule mesure de l'idéal."
"The individual is the sole source of energy, the only measure of the ideal."
[8- 7 -1925] -- Ricardo Mella (1861-1925), Spanish anarchist, dies. Headed publishing teams of "Solidaridad", "El Libertario," "Acción Libertaria".
... "El socialismo anarquista" de Ricardo Mella. es tracta d alguns capítols del seu llibre "IDEARIO" que ens semblen molt interessants i actuals per el seu ... pages
[8- 18 -1925] -- England: Warlaam Tcherkesoff (or Tcherkezov) dies, London. Georgian Prince, anarchist militant & collaborator of that other Prince, Peter Kropotkin. "Ambassador of Georgian patriots." Incisive early critic of Marxism.
[Details / context]
alt; Cerkezov, Cerkesov, Cherkesov, Cherkezov; first name also written as Varlaam, Warlam
[8- 25 -1925] -- England: Emma Goldman spends most of this month in the British Museum reading Russian dramatists in preparation for her upcoming lectures.
M. Eleanor Fitzgerald, Goldman's close associate from NY, visits at the end of the month & through her Goldman meets African-American singer & actor Paul Robeson, who is starring in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones in London.
Prompted by a publisher's fleeting interest in a book of reminiscences, Red Emma begins asking correspondents to send her letters she had written them over the years.
[9- 9 -1925] -- England: Emma Goldman's one-volume English edition of My Disillusionment in Russia, with an introduction by Rebecca West, is published early this month, by C. W. Daniel of London.
The anarchist feminist Goldman borrowed $250 from Michael Cohn to underwrite its publication. Also, during this time, through the British Drama League, she solicits lecture dates from 250 affiliated local playgoers societies while she continues her reading of Russian dramatists in the British Museum.
[9- 27 -1925] -- Brazil: Third Labor Congress of Rio Grande do Sul, September 27 to October 2.
12 sessions are held involving delegates from 23 labor organizations, the Comitê Pró-Presos Sociais & two periodicals. A Declaration of Principles of the AIT is approved & a Pact of International Anarchist Solidarity formulated.
Source: [ Arquivo de História Social ]
[10- 1 -1925] -- Korea: In Kiho province the daily newspaper "Dong-a Ilbo" reports this month (I don't have exact day. — ed.) that 10 members of the League of Black Flag had been jailed for one year each. http://struggle.ws/talks/korea.html
[10- 13 -1925] -- Lenny Bruce, standup comic, social rebel, hounded to death by cops for using such words as fuck & cocksucker on stage, lives. Of course the "Jackie Hauling Ass bit" wasn't funny to the all-Catholic jury he faced in Chicago.
Imprisoned on obscenity charges & refused permission to enter Britain, his show was banned both in England & in Australia. Nightclub owners, fearing police harassment, began refusing to book him & his career collapsed. See his autobiography How to Talk Dirty & Influence People, & also Bob Fosse's award-winning film Lenny (1974).
"When you can't say 'fuck,' you can't say 'fuck the government.'"
[11- 1 -1925] -- England: November 1-9, Emma Goldman lectures on drama in Birmingham, Bath, & Birkenhead, & in Manchester delivers her first lecture on Eugene O'Neill.
Despite excellent publicity, Emma's lectures draw a small audience & receipts barely cover expenses. Publisher C. W. Daniel, however, considers issuing a book of her lectures on Russian dramatists & supplies a stenographer to record them.
In East London, Emma repeats the lecture series on Russian drama in Yiddish.
November 12-December 17, Goldman repeats her lecture series on Russian drama at Keats House, Hampstead, London.
November 21-22, she speaks twice — once on birth control — under the auspices of the Trades & Labour Council in Neath, South Wales.
[11- 9 -1925] -- Argentina: Perez Millan (rightwing nationalist who killed the anarchist Kurt Gustav Wilckens in his prison cell), is killed in an asylum in Buenos Aires. Boris Vladimirovitch, a doctor & biologist doing time for an "expropriation," feigned madness so as to be transferred to Millan's asylum. Vladimirovitch was unable to get close enough (Millan was "protected"), so another internee killed him. See Daily Bleed, http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0125.htm
[12- 1 -1925] -- Joseph Jean-Marie Tortelier dies. A carpenter, anarcho-syndicalist, ardent proponent & speaker for the General Strike, Tortelier organized "The League of Antipatriots" (with Emile Bidault), to fight militarism, the wars it leads to, along with its corollary, patriotism. Also organized the "League of Antipropriétaires." Along with Peter Kropotkin & Elise Reclus, Tortelier was instrumental in influencing the socialist Sébastien Faure to become an anarchist.http://ytak.club.fr/decembre1.html#1
[12- 20 -1925] -- After finishing up a lecture series, Emma Goldman leaves for France where she spends the holidays in Nice at the home of author Frank & Nellie Harris.
[1- 12 -1926] -- Pedro Augusto Mota (189?-1926) dies. Brazilian graphics worker, journalist & militant anarchist & labor activist.
In 1924 he was arrested, with hundreds of other militant laborers, anarchists & Communists, & sent to a concentration camp in Oiapoque (NE Brazil). In 1926 he managed to escape to French Guyana, but died today from deteriorating health due to his maltreatment in the forced-labor camp.
The labor camp of Oiapoque meant the death of some of the most well-known labor militants: José Alves do Nascimento, Nicolau Parada, Biófilo Panclasta, Pedro Augusto Mota e Nino Martins, among others.
[1- 25 -1926] -- France: Emma Goldman in Nice for most of the month, finishing a prospectus for "Foremost Russian Dramatists," a book based on her lectures, for which she hopes to receive an advance from Doubleday, Page & Company, leaves for Paris. Alexander Berkman is also in Nice, helping Isadora Duncan edit her autobiography.
[2- 2 -1926] -- France: Jules Leroux (1860-1926) dies. Militant anarchist cooperativist. Founded a working coop of shoe makers in Amiens. Began manufacturing in 1902 & in 1906, becomes the "Société coopérative de production à bases socialistes." Forced to close in 1914, they resume activity with the end of the war, animated by Jules Leroux.
[2- 20 -1926] -- France: Jules Durand (1880-1926) dies. Anarchist, revolutionary trade unionist, secretary of the Le Havre coalmen's union.
[2- 26 -1926] -- France: Georges Butaud (1868-1926) dies, in Ermont.
Partisan of the "Milieux libres," publisher of "Flambeau" ("an enemy of authority") in 1901 in Vienna. Most of his energies were devoted to creating anarchist colonies (communautés expérimentales) in which he participated in several.
In 1997, the Nobel committee awarded Dario Fo the Literature Prize, noting he "emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority & upholding the dignity of the downtrodden."
Dario Fo´s career started in small cabarets, theatres. In 1959 he founded the Compagnia Dario Fo — Franca Rame, producing satirical dramas such as Archangels Don´t Play Pinnball & He Had Two Pistols with White & Black Eyes.
In 1968 Dario founded the acting group Nuova Scena, which had ties to the Italian Communist Party, but his satirical views aroused much criticism from the Communist Press — like earlier from the Catholic Church.
In 1970 Fo started Colletivo Teatrale La Comune. Among Fo´s most famous works are Accidental Death of an Anarchist & We Can´t Pay? We Won´t Pay!
[3- 25 -1926] -- England: Emma Goldman returns to London for a series of six lectures ( March 25-April 29) on dramatists, including O'Neill, Ibsen, Susan Glaspell, & the German expressionists; Emma also delivers the same lectures in Yiddish as well as lecturing on Yiddish drama. [Details, click here]
[4- 1 -1926] -- France: Charles Angrand (1854-1926) dies. Impressionist, Pointillist painter & anarchist illustrator. Friends with Seurat, Cross, Luce & Signac & other libertarian artists & illustrators. Angrand designed a now-famous black cat & provided illustrations to Jean Grave's "Les Temps Nouveaux" as well as helping to finance it with the sale of his paintings.
[4- 8 -1926] --
England: Emma Goldman lectures in Norwich (part of a series on dramatists begun on March 25th).
[Details / context]
[4- 14 -1926] -- England: Emma Goldman lectures on "The Menace of Dictatorship: Bolshevist or Fascist," with British feminist Sylvia Pankhurst &
William C. Owen at Essex Hall.
Emma is in London until the end of the month, for a series of six lectures on dramatists, including O'Neill, Ibsen, Susan Glaspell, & the German expressionists; she also delivers the same lectures in Yiddish as well as lecturing on Yiddish drama.
Emma continues her work for political prisoners in Russia, focusing her efforts on imprisoned women; enlists the support of influential women politicians like Lady Astor. Her old anarchist pal, Dr. Ben Reitman & his family visit her.
[5- 1 -1926] -- Switzerland: "Le Réveil communiste anarchiste" shortens its name, from today on simply called "Le Reveil anarchiste" (The Anarchist Alarm Clock). Luigi Bertoni founded the paper in Genève, in 1900, as "Il Risveglio anarchico, Le Réveil socialiste anarchiste". Bilingual (Italian-French), it printed different articles depending on the language. Bertoni edited the paper until his death in 1947. http://ytak.club.fr/juillet1.html#reveil
[5- 3 -1926] -- England: The British general strike is called off by the Trades Union Congress after nine days, though the coal miners remain out
through the summer.
[5- 12 -1926] -- US: Massachusetts Supreme Court upholds the death sentences of "those anarchist bastards" Sacco & Vanzetti & denies their motion for a new trial.
The prosecution left a trail of doctored eyewitness accounts, altered testimony & false ballistics reports. That trail appears to exonerate the victims while convicting the executioners.
400 delegates, representing 25 unions with a combined membership of 8,400, particpate in the founding of The All-Japan Libertarian Federation of Labor Unions (Zenkoku Rôdô Kumiai Jiyû Rengôkai), generally abbreviated in Japanese to Zenkoku Jiren.
These figures compared with the 35 unions (with around 20,000 members) which remained in the reformist Japanese Confederation of Labor when 32 of its constituent unions (with 12,500 members) split away in 1925 to form the Bolshevik-led Japanese Labor Union Council.
While Zenkoku Jiren was thus smaller than its reformist & Bolshevik rivals, the unions which comprised it were implanted in virtually all areas of Japan, from the island of Hokkaidô in the far North, through major urban centers such as Tôkyô & Ôsaka in Japan's industrial heartland, to cities in the South-West of the country, such as Hiroshima. In addition to the wide geographical spread of Zenkoku Jiren, it also had roots in most major industries. Its unions were organised along industrial lines & encompassed sectors of the workforce as varied as printworkers, textile workers, engineering workers, food workers, rubber workers, general laborers & so on.
[5- 25 -1926] -- France: Times Up? Simon Petliura (Petlyura) assassinated in Paris by Samuel Schwartzbard, a young Jewish anarchist poet & watchmaker, to avenge the Ukraine pogroms of 1919-1920 against Jews (directed by Petliura, a rightwing nationalist & former Hetman of Ukrainian armies) & the murder of his own family members.
Schwartzbard was set free October 26, 1927 by a sympathetic jury & to the acclaim of a sympathetic public.
[5- 26 -1926] -- US: A motion is filed for a new trial for the anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti case based upon Medeiros’ confession & information about the Morelli gang, an Italian gang that robbed freight cars in Providence, R.I. & New Bedford, Mass.
The prosecution left a trail of doctored eyewitness accounts, altered testimony & false ballistics reports....
[5- 28 -1926] -- Portugal: A military coup today forces Portuguese anarchists to move their planned congress & relocate it to Valencia, Spain, where it proceeds surreptitiously on July 25, 1927.
[Details / context]
[6- 3 -1926] -- Allen Ginsberg lives (1926-1997), Newark, New Jersey.
Beat poet, auntie-authoritarian activist, pedophile &, according to the FBI, god forbid (!),
an "Internal Subversive-Cuba" risk.
Branded by de FBI,
in his 3-foot high file,
as a displayer of
anti-American sympathies.
Kicked out of Cuba & Czechoslovakia for chanting to Commie Cops.
[6- 20 -1926] -- Portugal: Original date for the União Anarquista Portuguesa (UAP; Portuguese Anarchist Union) congress. Scheduled today in Lisbon, the rightwing coup on May 28 forces postponing the congress for a year & moving it outside of Portugal. (It secretly convenes in July 1927 in Valencia, Spain.)
[Details / context]
[6- 25 -1926] -- France: In Paris, three Spanish anarchists are arrested, accused of preparing to assassinate Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Alphonse XIII: Ascaso, Durruti & Jover. Louis Lecoin mounts a major protest campaign to prevent their extradition; gains their release in July of 1927.
Francisco Ascaso, Buenaventura Durruti & Gregorio Jover, meet for a banquet in a Parisian restaurant to celebrate their recent release; in addition to their families, those released are joined by the "Comité International de Défense Anarchiste," some 30 militants, including Sebastien Faure, Nestor Makhno & Louis Lecoin (who mastermind their release).
[7- 2 -1926] -- France: Police announce they have thwarted a plot to assassinate the king of Spain Alphonse XIII (officially visiting France), with the arrests of the Spanish anarchists Francisco Ascaso, Buenaventura Durruti & Gregorio Jover (on June 25). Also today numéro 65 of the anarchiste paper "Libertaire" is seized in Paris.
Spain & Argentina immediately seek extradictions for the three pistoleros (Spain for killings & escapes, Argentina for “expropriations”). But the French anarchists mobilize themselves, & in particular Louis Lecoin, & circumvent their delivery to their torturers.
The three are tried in Paris on October 17, 1926, & proudly declare their intent to remove the king & bring down the monarchy in Spain.
They are finally condemned to 6 months of prison for rebellion, forged passports, wearing prohibited of weapons, etc. They are not released until July 1927.
[7- 12 -1926] -- France: At the Union anarchiste Congress in Orléans (12-14th) the U.A. changes its name to Union anarchiste communiste (UAC). This reflects the major shift in the French movement away from the "individualist" anarchism of the pre-WWI years.
[Details / context]
[7- 19 -1926] -- France: Henri Gauche (aka René or Henri Chaughi), anarchist, dies. Longtime contributor to "Les Temps Nouveaux." Gauche originally agreed with Manifest de Seize, & went to the front during WWI to fight — though by 1916 he concluded he was wrong (fortunately not "dead" wrong). http://ytak.club.fr/juillet3.html#21
[8- 4 -1926] -- Italy: Gaetano Salvemini escapes to France after his arrest (while out on bail?). A socialist & leading anti-Fascist critic, he was in exile for over 20 years, teaching at Harvard University (1930-48) before returning to Italy.
Camillo Berneri attended his univeersity lectures before he was forced to flee fascist persecution. Salvemini (1873-1957), Enzo Tagliacozzo, Davide Jona, & many other anti-Fascist refugees were contributors to the anarchist Aldino Felicani's Italian & English language anti-Fascist journal, Controcorrente/ Countercurrent.
[8- 8 -1926] -- US: Sarah Elizabeth (Lizzie) Holmes (1850-1926) dies, Santa Fe, New Mexico. American anarchist, feminist, & journalist. She & her husband William H. Holmes joined with Albert & Lucy Parsons in publishing "The Alarm", inciting women in the labor movement & agitating for the 8-hour work day. A contributor to Benjamin Tucker's periodical "Liberty," she also translated & published Sophie Kropotkin, Michael Bakunin, etc. http://ytak.club.fr/aout2.html#8 http://www.wendymcelroy.com/articles/holmes.html
[9- 4 -1926] -- Germany: Ivan Illich (1926-2002) lives.
llich was a priest who thought there were too many priests, a lifelong educator who argued for the end of schools & an intellectual sniper from a perch with a wide view. He argued that hospitals cause more sickness than health, that people would save time if transportation were limited to bicycles & that historians who rely on previously published material perpetuate falsehoods.
His intellectual ordnance of anarchist panache, hatred of bureaucracy, Jesuitic argumentation, deep reverence for the past & watered-down Marxism, was applied to many targets.
[9- 11 -1926] -- Italy: A rocky day in Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Mussolini's life.
In Rome, the anarchist Gino Lucetti tosses a bomb at Mussolini's car, but it deflected from the windshield, wounding eight passersby.
"Bullets pass, Mussolini stays," announces Mussolini after surviving the attack.
Famous Italian anarchist-communist Errico Malatesta was briefed & endorsed the attentat.
The 26-year-old Lucetti was sentenced to 30 years; he died in the Ischia prison in 1943.
In his honor, two anarchist antifascist partisan groups fighting in the Carrara area adopted the names ‘G. Lucetti’ (60-80 combatants) & ‘Lucetti bis’ (58 strong).
Lazarevitch, the son of Russian revolutionary émigrés, became an anarcho-syndicalist shortly before WWI. He went to Russia in February 1919 & was close to the Bolsheviks prior to his arrest.
[10- 15 -1926] -- Canada: Emma Goldman arrives by ship, to lecture; proximity rekindles her hope for readmission to the US, where she grew up, but has been banished from the "Land of the Free."
Shortly after Emma's arrival, Leon Malmed, a long-time anarchist friend from Albany, N.Y., visits & they become lovers.
[10- 15 -1926] -- Japan: Nakahama Tetsu (aka Tomioka Makoto) executed for various anti-government acts, including a plan to assassinate Prince Hirohito. Member of the Guillotine Society (Girochin Sha), an anarchist terrorist group.
[10- 23 -1926] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti case, Judge Thayer denies the Medeiros motion, presented before him on Sept 13-17. Jan. 27-28, 1927 Appeal from the denial of Medeiros motion is argued before the Supreme Judicial Court, but on April 7, 1927 the denial of the Medeiros motion is affirmed.
[10- 31 -1926] -- Italy: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Benito Mussolini (a former anarchist-syndicalist) escapes an assassination attempt by the 15-year-old anarchist Anteo Zamboni. Lynched by the black-shirted fascistes. Son of anarchist Mammolo Zamboni, both parents are sent to prison with 30-year terms. Zamboni's effort follows on the heels of an earlier botched attempt on Il Duce's life by Gino Lucetti on September 11th http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture9.html http://www.iisg.nl/today/en/31-10.php
[10- 31 -1926] -- Canada: Emma Goldman gives her first lecture in Montreal before an audience of 700 at His Majesty's Theatre on "The Present Crisis in Russia."
[11- 8 -1926] -- Italy: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Dictator Mussolini issues the laws of exceptions. It sets up special tribunals for the "defense" of the state, allowing the arrests & imprisonment of many anarchists without trials.
[11- 13 -1926] -- France: Le congrès de la Fédération autonome du Bâtiment donne naissance à la troisième C.G.T., Lyon (November 13-14): la C.G.T.-S.R., d’obédience anarcho-syndicaliste. http://libertaire.org/article133.html
[11- 15 -1926] -- Italy: During this month Mussolini issues the "laws of exceptions," instituting special "tribunals of state defense," with many anarchists arrested & deported. http://www.radio4all.net/redblack/books/a_violent.html
[11- 15 -1926] -- France: Le 15 et 16 novembre 1926, à Lyon, se tient le congrès constitutif d'un nouvelle organisation syndicale la C.G.T-S.R (Confédération Générale du Travail - Syndicaliste Révolutionnaire). Impulsée par Pierre Besnard, la création de cette nouvelle organisation de sensiblitité libertaire et ouvertement anarcho-syndicaliste était devenue nécessaire après la main mise des communistes staliniens sur la C.G.T.U. La C.G.T.- S.R adhère à son tour à l'A.I.T (anti-autoritaire) créée à Berlin en 1922.
"Ils ont un drapeau noir
en berne sur l'Espoir
Et la mélancolie
pour traîner dans la vie
Des couteaux pour trancher
le pain de l'amitié
Et des armes rouillées
pour ne pas oublier...
Léo Ferré, extrait de la chanson "Les anarchistes"
[11- 29 -1926] -- Canada: Emma Goldman lectures on Ibsen to an audience of 500 at Hygeia Hall; the interest shown persuades her to initiate a series on drama.
[12- 2 -1926] -- France: Premier issue of "Combat Syndicaliste," journal of the Confédération Générale duTravail - Syndicaliste Révolutionnaire (CGT-SR), French anarcho-syndicalist section of the AIT.
[12- 3 -1926] -- Emma Goldman's lectures on Russian drama this month cover Griboyedev, Gogol, & Ostrovsky, though the attendance is disappointing.
More successful are Emma's three lectures to the Arbeiter Ring: 600 attend her Dec. 12 lecture in Yiddish on Gorki. In addition, she lectures twice at Hygeia Hall, on modern education on Dec. 3 & on the dictatorships of Bolshevik Russia & Fascist Italy on Dec. 5.
Among her visitors are her brother Morris, her sister Lena, & Lena's children, Saxe Commins & Stella Ballantine.
[1- 7 -1927] -- Canada: Emma Goldman lectures in London, Ontario, on Communist & Fascist dictatorships, having finished her lecture series in Toronto on Russian dramatists with talks on Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, & Andreyev.
[1- 17 -1927] -- Chile: General Strike, simultaneously, in Santiago & Valparaiso.
The ability of workers to openly seek economic & political liberation that has led to so many bloody fights culminates today, the last of the workers' major strikes for the next 10 years. In February a military dictatorship takes power & devastates workers' organizations through terroristic methods. Revolutionary anarcho-syndicalists refuse to strike their battle flags, but are forced to work clandestinely or from outside the country.
[1- 18 -1927] -- Brazil: Roberto Freire lives, São Paulo.
Brazilian intellectual life is marked by the intense multiplicity of his work. Anarchist, writer, dramaturg, journalist, doctor, psychiatrist, ex-psychoanalyst, he also worked with theatre, television & cinema. His long & rich trajectory was always characterized by his effort in combining the ideology of pleasure (‘tesão’) with his scientific & artistic work.
He created SOMA, an anarchist therapy based on the revolutionary ideas of Wilhelm Reich & the art of Capoeira Angola.
As a writer, Roberto Freire reached great recognition. He wrote several essays, short stories, children stories & romances. With his novels (Cléo e Daniel (1965), Coiote (1986), Os cúmplices (1995/6, two volumes), & Liv e Tatziu), he conquered loads of readers, especially among the young. In psychology & politics, he has several books of essays, such as ‘Ame e Dê Vexame’ (1987), ‘Utopia e Paixão’ (1991), ‘Tesudos de Todo Mundo, Uni-vos!’ (1995).
As a filmmaker, he wrote, co-produced & directed the feature film ‘Cléo e Daniel’. In all his work, in his books, articles, plays, etc, the themes are always love, creation & freedom.
During the dictatorship in Brazil, Roberto Freire had an important political & cultural role. He took part in many subversive groups from 1963 to 1979 & was arrested & tortured 13 times, leading to the loss of sight in his right eye.
[1- 27 -1927] -- Canada: Emma Goldman's first two lectures, January 27-30, in Winnipeg draw large audiences: a Yiddish lecture attracts 400 & 1,000 attend an English lecture on "The Labor Situation in Europe."
[1- 29 -1927] -- US: Cactus Ed Abbey, American xenophobic anarchist / ecologist / writer lives, Home, Pennsylvania. His uncompromising works include The Monkey Wrench Gang; Desert Solitaire; Hayduke Lives.http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/AbbeyEdward.htm
[2- 5 -1927] -- France: The Dielo Trouda, a publishing group founded by Nestor Makhno, Peter Arshinov & other exiled Russian & Ukrainian anarchists in Paris, issues an invitation to an 'international conference', based on their 'Organisational Platform.'
The 'Platform' was met with ferocity & indignation by many in the international anarchist movement. First to attack it was the Russian Voline, who, with Mollie Steimer, Senya Fleshin & others, who noted that to "maintain that anarchism is only a theory of classes is to limit it to a single viewpoint."
[2- 12 -1927] -- France: Preliminary meeting is held for 'international conference', based on the Dielo Trouda group's 'Organizational Platform.'
The Dielo Trouda group, often referred to as "Platformists," was founded by Nestor Makhno, Peter Arshinov & other exiled Russian & Ukrainian anarchists in Paris...
[3- 3 -1927] -- Canada: In Edmonton, where Emma Goldman expects to give just two lectures March 3-11, she addresses 15 meetings in a week, speaking on trends in modern education, Ibsen, birth control, women's emancipation (to the Women's Press Club); she speaks to factory girls during their lunch hour & to large Jewish audiences under the auspices of the Jewish Council of Women, the Arbeiter Ring, Hadassah, & Poale Zion, as well as to professors at the University of Alberta & a Sunday audience of 1,500.
[3- 24 -1927] -- Canada: Emma Goldman's English-language lecture series in Toronto (March 24-April 26) covers social topics as well as drama, including plays of Susan Glaspell, Eugene O'Neill, & Russian drama.
"Red Emma" also researches a new lecture on "The Awakening in China," which draws 800 people.
After protests from the Catholic community, Emma delivers the final lecture of the series, on birth control, to a packed hall.
She also lectures in Yiddish on the history of anarchism & on art & revolution.
[4- 7 -1927] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti case, the denial of the Medeiros motion is affirmed.
[4- 9 -1927] -- US: Massachusetts: Death sentences for "those anarchist bastards" (quote from the trial Judge Thayer during the trial) Nicolas Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti are upheld.
excerpt...AMERICA
...America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die . . .
— Allen Ginsberg
[4- 20 -1927] -- France: International anarchist conference at Hay-les-Roses, near Paris, in the Cinema Les Roses.
[6- 10 -1927] -- Italy: The trial (June 8-10) of anarchist Gino Lucetti concludes. He attempted to assassinate Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Mussolini, September 11, 1926. He is sentenced to 30 years in prison; two others receive 12 years. Antifascist partisan formations during WWII took group names, & two in the Carrara area adopted the names ‘G. Lucetti’ (60-80 guerrillas) & ‘Lucetti bis’ (58 strong).
[Details / context] http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/DOF/chron/chronmus.htm
[7- 15 -1927] -- Julien Content (1892-1927) dies. French anarchist militant, antimilitarist, revolutionary trade unionist involved with numerous libertarian papers. Secretary of the Paris section of the Fédération Communiste Anarchiste & a principal instigator in restarting its paper "Libertaire". Administrator of that paper & "La Revue anarchiste" until discord in 1924 led to his working with "l'Idée anarchiste." Crippled in a car accident in 1926, today he commits suicide. http://ytak.club.fr/juillet3.html#15
[7- 21 -1927] -- France: Francisco Ascaso, Buenaventura Durruti & Gregorio Jover meet for a banquet in a Parisian restaurant to celebrate their recent release from a French prison — the result of an intense campaign by the "Comité International de Défense Anarchiste" to get them freed. The three had been jailed for a plot to kill the Spanish King Alphonse XIII. In addition to their families, anarchistes criminels horribles are joined by some 30 other militants, including Sebastien Faure, Nestor Makhno & Louis Lecoin (true architect of their release).
[7- 22 -1927] -- Switzerland: Albert Meister lives (1927-1982), Bâle. Writer & anarchist sociologist. Under various pseudonyms he wrote many works on the problems of labor associations, workers' self-management & development in poor countries, including Coopération d'habitation et sociologie du voisinage (1957), Socialisme et autogestion, l'expérience yougoslave (1964), Participation, animation et développement (1969), La participation dans les associations (1974), L'inflation créatrice (1975), La soi-disant utopie du centre Beaubourg (1976).
http://ytak.club.fr/janvier1.html#meister
[7- 23 -1927] -- Germany: The anarchosyndikalistische "Gegenkultur" forms a network of the most diffuse currents & unions, branching out far.
[7- 25 -1927] -- Spain: Portuguese anarchist conference, relocated from Portugal, secretly meets in Valencia (July 25-26). Founding of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI).
A Portuguese military coup in May forces the anarchists move this conference to Spain. The Portuguese cofounded the the "F.A.I." (Iberian Anarchist Federation), which quickly became a significant revolutionary organization in both regions, opposing the reformism of some CNT leaders, & were involved in the National Plenum of Regionals in Madrid on October 30 & 31.
[7- 25 -1927] -- Spain: Congress of the União Anarquista Portuguesa (UAP; Portuguese Anarchist Union) secretly held, in Valencia (July 25-26th). Originally scheduled for June 20, 1926 in Lisbon, Portugal, a rightwing coup in May of 1926 forced its cancellation & the move to Valencia. This congress marks the founding of the FAI (Federación Anarquista Ibérica).
[Details / context]
[7- 28 -1927] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti case, after being interviewed for several hours by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Governor Fuller, Vanzetti writes a letter to him providing more complete answers to the Governor's questions & asking him to stop the scheduled executions. Fuller announces his refusal to intervene on Aug. 3rd.
See Heroes & Martyrs: Emma Goldman, Sacco & Vanzetti, & the Revolutionary Struggle, an audio CD by Howard Zinn.
[8- 3 -1927] -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti case, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Gov. Fuller announces he will not intervene to stop the scheduled executions. http://infoshop.org/page/Sacco-Vanzetti
[8- 6 -1927] --
US: Massachusetts high court hears final plea from "those anarchist bastards," Sacco & Vanzetti.
Protest bombs hit homes of Baltimore mayor, & Boston.
[8- 28 -1927] -- US: Ashes to Ashes?: Sacco-Vanzetti funeral from North End to Forest Hills Cemetery. The anarchists are cremated. In September all Hollywood newsreels on Sacco & Vanzetti are ordered destroyed by Will Hayes, movie czar.
[9- 1 -1927] -- Canada: Memorial meeting for Sacco & Vanzetti (in Toronto?). Speakers include Emma Goldman, who has spent the summer trying to research & write a new lectures for her fall series despite the impending executions, & had addressed a meeting on the case in Toronto on Aug. 18, a few days before their execution on Aug. 23.
[9- 3 -1927] -- Man Ray, surrealist, chess player/designer, anarchist, filmmaker & photographer, in this month signs the surrealist manifesto, "Hands Off Love," devoted to Charlie Chaplin, in "La Révolution surréaliste."
http://www.manray-photo.com/ http://www.surrealism-usa.org/
[9- 7 -1927] -- François Malicet (1843-1927) killed by a burglar. French barber, lifelong anarchist, member of "Les déshérités" group in Nouzon.http://ytak.club.fr/mai3.html#15
[10- 30 -1927] -- Spain: FAI National Plenum of Regionals held in Madrid (-31st).
Germinal de Sousa, a participant, along with other Portuguese delegates, was a member of the new Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI).
The "F.A.I.," which includes both Portuguese & Spanish anarchists, was founded at a congress in Valencia back in July, & quickly became a significant revolutionary organization & played an important role in the Spanish Revolution of 1936.
[10- 30 -1927] -- France: Congrés de l’U.A.C., Paris (-November 1). L’organisation se dote de statuts, elle prend le nom d’Union anarchiste communiste révolutionnaire pour bien se démarquer d’autres tendances libertaires.
http://libertaire.org/article133.html
[11- 5 -1927] -- Argentina: During this month Osvaldo Bayer lives [Exact day remains elusive — ed.], Santa Fé. Argentinian journalist, film scenarist, pacifist, anarchist, historian. Forced into exile in 1975, returned in 1983. Among his books are Severino Di Giovanni, el idéalista de la violencia, Les anarchistes expropriateurs, Radowitsky, marthyr ou assassin ?. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8289701955621254707&q=anarquistas&hl=en
[12- 25 -1927] -- Argentina: In Buenos Aires, the National City Bank is bombed, killing two & wounding 23 American & Argentinean customers: it is the work of anarchist (Giovanni & the brothers Scarfo) proponents of violent action.
[1- 29 -1928] -- Canada: Family members visit from the US to see Emma Goldman before she departs for France; a farewell banquet is held in her honor today. As she anticipates writing her autobiography, Emma asks a wider circle of friends to loan her her past correspondence to refresh her memory.
[2- 7 -1928] -- Canada: In her final appearance in Toronto, Emma Goldman lectures on two books by Judge Ben Lindsey, The Revolt of Youth & Companionate Marriage.
[2- 9 -1928] -- Canada: Emma Goldman travels to Montreal, where she gives two lectures in Yiddish — on birth control & on art & revolution — & one on poet Walt Whitman delivered in a private home. She leaves Montreal on Feb. 18 for Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she embarks for France on Feb. 20.
[2- 14 -1928] -- Venzuela: Pío Tamayo, poet & influential militant anarchist, arrested along with student leaders Rómulo Betancourt, Jóvito Villalba & Prince Lara. La Federación de Estudiantes demanded their release. Anti-dictatorial fighter who died 1936.
[2- 18 -1928] -- Canada:
Emma Goldman leaves Montreal for Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she embarks for France on Feb. 20.
[2- 20 -1928] -- Canada: Emma Goldman embarks for France from Halifax, Nova Scotia.
[4- 7 -1928] -- Marcel Wullens dies of tuberculoses. Militant anarchist & syndicalist who helped found "La révolution prolétarienne." He also participated, with his brother Maurice, in the review "Les humbles," the journal "L'insurgé," & (without Maurice, a novelist, who broke with the anarchists in favor of the Bolsheviks, & later became an organizer, with André Breton & Leon Trotsky, of the F.I.A.R.I. [Fédération Internationale (pour l') Art Révolutionnaire Indépendant]). http://ytak.club.fr/mai2.html#wullens http://newmedia.cgu.edu/cody/surrealism/Brenton.htm
[5- 3 -1928] -- Argentina: In Buenos Aires, to protest against the Italian dictatorship, the anarchist Severino Di Giovanni bombs the Italian consulate (which was being used to eliminate Italian antifascists in exile). Nine killed, 34 wounded. http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/world/la/
[5- 13 -1928] -- Man Ray, artist, chess player/designer, anarchist, filmmaker & photographer, premiers L'Etoile de Mer (The Star of the Sea), a film by Man Ray based on a poem by Robert Desnos, at the Studio des Ursulines. It continues to be shown in the same program as The Blue Angel at least until December. http://www.manray-photo.com/
[5- 19 -1928] -- Lucien Tronchet, anarchist & Swiss trade unionist, & Clovis-Abel Pignat & Vuattolo instigate a 15-day wildcat strike which results in a reduction of working hours, minimum wages, etc.
[5- 21 -1928] --
During the month of May 1928, 3rd Congrés de l'AIT(r), in Leija.
[5- 25 -1928] -- France: During this month Emma Goldman tries to organize a small gathering of anarchist writers & theoreticians in to discuss the future of anarchism & especially its propaganda, circulating an agenda & soliciting comments. Though the meeting does not occur as planned, Emma is gratified that the effort generates ideas & discussion.
[7- 17 -1928] -- México: General Alvaro Obregón, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader president, assassinated. Obregón is responsible for the crushing of Zapatistan autonomous initiatives 10 years ago. His assassin is not an anarchist, but rather an activist Catholic.
[8- 15 -1928] -- Italy: Spartaco Stagnetti, a militant trade union secretary & anarcho-syndicalist in Rome, dies, while banished by the fascists to the island of Ustica. In 1920 he was attacked by fascists, setting off a General Strike. See Spartaco Stagnetti: un sindacalis, G. Manga (1991). http://ytak.club.fr/avril4.html#stagnetti
[9- 2 -1928] -- US: A picnic held for the individualist journal "Eresia" today is deemed a great success, & is followed up by a theatrical production, “La Donna del Populo,” a "powerful drama analyzing social psychology in four acts, with musical selections, Ladies 50 cents, men 75 cents." Could this have been an Italian version of one of Brand's plays? (Brand is a pseudonym for the anarchist Enrico Arrigoni.) http://www.anarchist-studies.org/article/articleview/46/5/7/
[9- 26 -1928] -- US: Man Ray, surrealist, chess player/designer, anarchist, filmmaker & photographer, publishes a photographic report about the big trades of lorraine in the magazine "Vu." http://www.manray-photo.com/
[9- 27 -1928] -- Brazil: Fourth Labor Congress of Rio Grande do Sul, held clandestinely, the date secret as well.
The Daily Bleed's Anarchist Timeline...
[Details / context]
http://www.epdlp.com/escritor.php?id=1775
April 2, 1919 the ban on the IWW was lifted. Two branches were formed in Toronto & Kitchener.
Giliana studied medicine & specialized in pediatrics. A militant involved with the French anarchist milieu & worked with "Le Libertaire."
Germany: On the initiative of Rudolf Rocker, the founding Congress of F.A.U.D. (Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschland), free union of the German workers, is held in Berlin, from the 27th-30th.
Shortly after the famous Vitameatavegamin episode aired, Ball appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the next big Red Scare because she had registered as a Communist in 1936. She explained that it was to please her grandfather.
Throughout most of South America in the early 20th century, in addition to their own congresses, anarchists & anarcho-syndicalists are often on the front lines of the various workers' actions, meetings, unions, conferences & congresses.
Russia: Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman leave Petrograd for Moscow to prepare for second journey with the museum expedition; they stay with Angelica Balabanoff, head of the Russo-Italian bureau. Emma offers to nurse Peter Kropotkin when she learns he is very ill.
Argentina: Premier issue of the weekly anarchist paper "La Antorcha," in Buenos Aires.
The city falls to the insurgents & resists government troops for three days. The revolt is subdued only at the cost of many deaths. The ringleaders, including Maria & Erasmo Santangelo, were imprisoned until the end of 1946, (except the young anarchist Santangelo, who was sentenced to 23 years & later found hanged in his cell).
Corto travelled to the Aegean island of Rhodes in the Autumn of 1921 to begin a new Asian adventure, "La Maison Doree du Samarkand." This took him from the Turkish coast to the mountains of Afghanistan in search of the treasure of Alexander the Great. Beginning in Adana he crossed Turkey into Azerbaidjan.
Carlos Cortez, son of Alfredo Cortez, a Mexican partisan of the Industrial Workers of the World (acronym, IWW, popularly known as "Wobblies"), & a German socialist-pacifist mother, Augusta Cortez.
Sweden: Stig Dagerman (1923-1954) lives.
Emma Goldman's manuscript published this month under the title My Disillusionment in Russia; the last twelve chapters have been cut without her permission.
Armand Gatti lives, in Monaco. Libertarian playwright, author of more than 40 plays.
In 1968 Dario founded the acting group Nuova Scena, which had ties to the Italian Communist Party, but his satirical views aroused much criticism from the Communist Press — like earlier from the Catholic Church.
Allen Ginsberg lives (1926-1997), Newark, New Jersey.
