The World That Never Was (2 page)

Goldman, Emma
. Born Lithuania, 1869. Emigrated to America 1885 where drawn to anarchism under influence of Johann Most, who encouraged her public speaking. Following imprisonment of lover Alexander
Berkman, she became the leading figure of the anarchist movement in America, frequently courting internment. Deported to Russia with Berkman in 1919, she abhorred the Bolshevik Terror, and returned to the West to live out her days in England and Canada.

Golovinsky, Matvei
. A family friend of Dostoevsky, he joined the Holy Brotherhood in the early 1880s and subsequently the Okhrana, but following exposure by Gorky as an informant he moved to Paris to work as a forger for Rachkovsky, allegedly creating
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
. Joined Bolsheviks in 1917, playing an important role in the St Petersburg soviet.

Grave, Jean
. Born 1854. Cobbler by trade, became acting editor of
Le Révolté
at the invitation of Reclus and made the role his own for thirty years, going on to edit the renamed
La Révolte
and
Temps Nouveaux
, and becoming known as the ‘Pope of the rue Mouffetard’ for his opinionated influence. Intermittently imprisoned for his views such as those in
The Dying Society and Anarchy
, he was acquitted at the Trial of the Thirty. Signed the
Manifesto of the Sixteen
in support of war with Germany. Died 1938.

Grousset, Paschal
. Born 1844. Editor-in-chief of
La Marseillaise
, became representative for foreign affairs under the Commune, was imprisoned on New Caledonia but escaped with Henri Rochefort. Collaborated with Jules Verne on various novels as ‘André Laurie’, he was elected as a socialist deputy in 1893, having made educational reform the focus of his study and writing. Died 1909.

Guillaume, James
. Born 1844. Teacher by profession and follower of Bakunin, prominent in establishing Jura Federation and St Imier Congress, and Kropotkin’s first point of contact with federalist ideas, though the two later disagreed. Biographer of Bakunin and anarchist historian of the First International. Died 1916.

Hansen, Jules
. Born 1829. Well-connected Danish journalist known as ‘Shrew’ or ‘President’ recruited by Rachkovsky to coordinate propaganda campaign in Paris. Took French citizenship and appointed counsellor of embassy for French diplomatic service, he operated as high-level conduit and fixer.

Harting, Baron Arkady
. Born Abraham Hekkelman. Recruited to the Okhrana while a student in St Petersburg, was adopted by Rachkovsky
and sent among émigrés under cover name of Landesen. Contrived 1890 nihilist bomb plot in France, escaping five-year sentence
in absentia
to re-establish himself as respectable Arkady Harting in Belgium. Later appointed head of the Foreign Okhrana, but past life exposed in 1909. Disappeared to Belgium under official protection.

Hartmann, Lev
. Born Archangel, 1850. Arrested 1876 and released a year later, he became member of the executive committee of the People’s Will. Fled to France following involvement in bomb attack aimed at tsar’s train in 1879, arrested in Paris but surreptitiously deported to England. Active abroad as propagandist until death in 1913.

Hekkelman – see Harting
.

Henry, Emile
. Born 1872. Raised in exiled Communard family, frustrated by lack of academic and career opportunities, was drawn by brother Fortune into anarchist circles. His intended bombing of Carmaux mine offices in Paris killed five in rue des Bons Enfants police station in late 1892; arrested after attack on Café Terminus in early 1894, eloquent at trial, he was executed that May.

Jagolkovsky, Cyprien
. Deep-cover agent of the Paris Okhrana, active in Switzerland, France and Belgium. Would later admit to role in assassination of General Seliverstoff, and played key role in Liège bombings as Baron Ungern-Sternberg.

Jenkinson, Edward
. Anti-Fenian policeman, ousted Anderson from post to run autonomous unit in Scotland Yard, contriving Jubilee Plot against Queen Victoria. Subsequently sidelined.

Jogand-Pages, Gabriel, used pseudonym Léo Taxil
. Born 1854. Ferocious anti-Catholic journalist and hoaxer, expelled from Masons for scurrilous attacks on the Pope, he professed to be reconciled with the Church in 1885, turning his fire instead on Freemasonry which he exposed with supporting forged testimony as a satanic cult.

Kibalchich, Nicholas
. Born 1853, the son of a local priest. Educated in engineering and medicine, he attended lectures by de Cyon. Arrested 1875 for lending a banned book to a peasant and sentenced to two months in prison at the Trial of the 193. Became technical explosives expert of the
People’s Will, setting aside his groundbreaking interest in jet propulsion. Arrested in March 1881 for his part in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, he was hanged the following month.

Kletochnikov, Nicholas
. Born 1848, he infilitrated the Third Section on behalf of the People’s Will. Arrested I January 1881 having betrayed Rachkovsky, he was tried in the Trial of the Twenty in 1882 and died in the Peter and Paul Fortress the following year.

Kravchinsky, Sergei
. Born 1851. Already a radical while in artillery school, resigned his commission in 1871, joining the Chaikovsky Circle the following year. Fought in the Balkans against the Turks in 1875–6, then involved in planning of Matese revolt near Naples before arrest. Amnestied in Italy, he returned to Russia where he assassinated General Mezentsev in August 1878 but escaped capture, from 1883 resident in London where active in propaganda, founding the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom and the Russian Free Press, and native socialist movement. Killed by a train in 1895.

Kropotkin, Alexander
. The closest of Peter Kropotkin’s siblings to him in age, their early correspondence traces development of their political thought, Alexander adhering more closely to the moderate Lavrov. Arrested soon after Peter’s imprisonment in 1875, after decade in Siberian exile committed suicide shortly before his planned release.

Kropotkin, Prince Peter
. Born 1842. Descendant of the royal Rurik dynasty, led geographical expeditions in Siberia and Arctic, but prioritised political activities over his scientific interests. Escaping imprisonment as a propagandist of the Chaikovsky Circle, he fled to western Europe where he took a leading role in development and promulgation of anarchist ideas from Switzerland, France and England, despite expulsions and further spells in prison. Developed theories of Mutual Aid and anarchist communism. Opposed Bolshevism following return to Russia in 1917, where he died four years later.

Landesen – see Harting
.

Lingg, Louis
. Born Germany, 1864. Experience of economic oppression made him an anarchist, known to Reinsdorf. Arrived Chicago, 1885, arrested the following year on suspicion of involvement with the
Haymarket bombing and sentenced to death. Beat the gallows by biting down on explosive cartridge.

Littlechild, John
. Born 1848. Dolly Williamson’s assistant from 1883, with responsibility for Irish Special Branch, became first head of Special Branch in 1888; promoted to chief inspector two years later but resigned in 1893 to pursue career as private investigator.

Lombroso, Cesare
. Born 1835. Socialist in his youth, later theorist of criminal anthropology and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology, he worked at University of Turin. Asserted that criminals could be identified by atavistic physiology and measurement of craniology; his work appealed to eugenicists.

Lopatin, German
. Early member of the Chaikovsky Circle, he resisted Kropotkin joining. The first translator of Marx’s
Das Kapital
into Russian, he briefly became leader in exile of the People’s Will in 1883 before his arrest and imprisonment in the Schlüsselburg Fortress. Emerged after twenty years to sit on Burtsev Jury of Honour.

Lopukhin, Alexei
. Appointed director of the police department by Plehve in 1892, became associate minister of the interior, but fell from grace. Divulged details of Okhrana agents to Burtsev and was exiled to post in Siberia.

Mace, Gustave-Placide
. Head of the Sûreté 1879–84, latterly encouraging Bertillon’s methods of scientific detection.

Malato de Cornet, Charles
. Born 1857. Accompanied his father, a prominent Communard, to New Caledonia. Published
The Philosophy of Anarchy
in 1889, was close to many individualists such as Martin and Emile Henry, and became secretary to Rochefort in London during the early 1890s and a bridge to the younger anarchists. Later acquitted of involvement with an assassination attempt on the king of Spain, he became one of the signatories of the
Manifesto of the Sixteen
, in support of war with Germany. Died 1938.

Malatesta, Errico
. Born 1853. Expelled from medical studies, became an acolyte of and emissary for Bakunin, promoting insurrectionary tactics, then an active theorist and propagandist for anarchism in travels that took in
much of Europe, Egypt and North and South America. Resident in London, working in menial jobs for many years from 1889, he was nevertheless seen as the mastermind of plots worldwide. Returned to Italy 1919, but was under house arrest by fascists for much of the rest of his life. Died 1932.

Malon, Benoît
. Born 1841. One of the first French members of the International, from its foundation, became mayor of 17e arrondissement in 1870, was elected to the National Assembly and sat on the Commune council. On returning to France from Swiss exile he joined the French Workers Party. Died 1893.

Melville, William
. Born 1850. Moved to London from Ireland at an early age, joined police in 1872, working for Criminal Investigation Department and Special Irish Branch, becoming superintendent of Special Branch in 1893, when known to anarchists as ‘Le Vil Melville’ for his ruthless policing of them. Later illustrious career in British intelligence.

Mezentsev, General Nicholas
. Born 1827. Director of the Third Section of the police from 1876, he was stabbed to death two years later by Kravchinsky.

Michel, Louise
. Born 1830. The illegitimate daughter of country gentry, she became a schoolteacher and, following her move to Paris, a socialist, joining the Montmartre Vigilance Committee and cementing her iconic reputation during the Commune. A deportee to New Caledonia, she was uncompromising regarding the amnesty, as so much else, and remained a totemic figure in the anarchist movement until her death in 1905.

Morris, William
. Born 1834. Designer, author, poet, artist and artistic entrepreneur, he became one of the most prominent British socialists in the 1880s in the Social Democratic Federation, before joining the Socialist League and founding
Commonweal
. Disillusioned by tensions with anarchists he withdrew but remained active, publishing the utopian novel
News from Nowhere
.

Most, Johann
. Born 1846. Socialist journalist in Austria and Germany and a Marxist member of the Reichstag from 1874, he was forced into exile in London in 1879, where he founded
Freiheit
. Imprisoned for celebrating the assassination of the tsar, he arrived in the United States in 1883, becoming the foremost evangelist for violent interpretation of ‘propaganda
by deed’, publishing a handbook on explosives,
The Science of Revolutionary Warfare
. Many times imprisoned, he died in 1906.

Mowbray, Charles
. English anarchist orator, co-editor of
Commonweal
in 1890s, he appears to have been a police spy.

Nadar, Felix
. Born 1820. Celebrated photographer, writer and aeronaut.

Nechaev, Sergei
. Born 1847, the son of a serf, formed a revolutionary circle as a student in St Petersburg in 1868, faked his own arrest and escape and presented himself to Bakunin in Switzerland. In Russia, he organised the murder of a rival student radical, Ivanov, again fled but was extradited and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Made contact with the People’s Will leadership shortly before the assassination of Alexander II to encourage their plans. Died in prison, 1883.

Neve, Johann
. Born Denmark, 1844. Peripatetic from London to Paris to New York for several years, took a key role in organising the Social Democratic Club in London with Frank Kitz in 1877, and as editor of Most’s
Freiheit
. Established revolutionary cells in Germany and Switzerland in early 1880s, despite arrest and brief imprisonment, but betrayed by Reuss he spent ten years in terrible prison conditions before dying in 1896.

Nicoll, David
. An aesthete in his youth, encouraged into anarchism by veteran John Turner, took a leading role in
Commonweal
. Imprisoned for incitement, he made many accusations of provocation against colleagues and was shunned for his paranoia, despite accuracy of his claims in defence of Walsall anarchists and others.

Nordau, Max
. Born 1849. Author of ‘The Conventional Lies of our Civilisation’ and ‘Degeneration’, he was founder of Zionist movement with Herzl; secret lover of Olga Novikoff.