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The Three Lives of “God and the State”

June 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

I have been thinking about “God and the State” in terms of a choice between two texts: the fragment, “God and the State,” and the incomplete work from which it was drawn, “The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution.” This is the choice proposed by James Guillaume, when he suggested that the publication of the latter should be the occasion for no longer publishing in the former. But, if Guillaume’s suspicions were correct and Reclus and Cafiero knew what they were publishing, and engaged in a bit of “literary artifice” when they presented it as a fragment, what we have […]

Leon de Tinseau, “A Beautiful Nihilist” (fiction, 1892)

June 27, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

A BEAUTIFUL NIHILIST. From the French of Leon de Tinseau; V.E.T., Chateau Bange, Bordeaux. In 187-, somewhat before the tragic death of the least Czar, one of the most notable men of the Russian Empire was Prince Michael ——-, whose family name, an illustrious one, reasons of the highest importance forbid our giving. During a visit to France after the war, while at one of the receptions of the Princesse Lise, he met that superb daughter of General de Contremont, whom the Parisian world, springing to life again from its ashes, knew already as “la belle Madeleine,” a girl as […]

Gesya Gelfman (1852-1882)

June 27, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

[aka Jessy Helfman, Hessy Helfman, Hesse Helfman, Hesia Helfman] Gesya Gelfman at Wikipedia “A Horrible Story” (1881) JESSY HELFMAN, THE HUMBLE MARTYR [From Stepniak’s Underground Russia] There are unknown heroines, obscure toilers, who offer up everything upon the altar of their cause, without asking anything for themselves. They assume the most ungrateful parts; sacrifice themselves for the merest trifles; for lending their names to the correspondence of others; for sheltering a man, often unknown to them; for delivering a parcel without knowing what it contains. Poets do not dedicate verses to them; history will not inscribe their names upon its […]

Cruel Punishments (Goukoffski, 1979)

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

The St. Petersburg correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says that official details now published confirm the astonishment which has been felt at the terrible severity of the sentences on the Odessa political convicts. The official publication states that all the 28 prisoners were found guilty of having belonged to an illegal society, which called itself the Social Revolutionary party. No further accusation was brought against Lissogoub, a gentleman aged 29, who had already been hanged; against Bolomeze, aged l8, condemned to 20 years’ hard labour; against the lady Levandovski, aged 25, and condemned to 15 years hard labour; or against […]

Russian Revolutionary Heroines (Sophia Bardina, 1881)

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY HEROINES THE weight of a woman’s brain in Slavonic races is greater than that of a man’s. Among the Germanic peoples the brain weight of the sexes is equal, and in the Latin nations the brain of the man is heavier than that of the woman. Quantity does not necessarily imply quality, but in this case worth follows weight. “For intelligence and resolution,” says M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, the most recent and; the most fascinating of writers on Russia and the Russians, “as well as for education, and the rank she holds in the family, the Russian woman is […]

Mentioned in passing

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

“Achristoff, the 17-year-old priest’s daughter, who made love to the detective Lavroffski, in order to betray him into the hands of the nihilists…” “Victoria Goukoffski, daughter of a medical dispenser of Odessa, who, on hearing that the Nihilist Kovalsky had been sentenced to death, created a riot…” “the daughter of Major General Herzfeld, who was arrested at Kief…” “Jude Krakoffski, the daughter of a university official at Kieff, whose banishment to Siberia for having destroyed certain compromising papers in 1877, was confirmed only the other day…” (1881) “the lady Levandovski, aged 25, and condemned to 15 years hard labour…” “Anna […]

May Beals-Hoffpauir, “Sketches of Russian Heroines. I. Vera Figner”

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

Sketches of Russian Heroines. I. Vera Figner BY May Beals-Hoffpauir Twenty-two years, nearly one-third of the expected three score and ten, spent in a black prison cell with no glimpse of passing cloud or starry skies; no message for thirteen of these years from friend or relative; no hope, in all that dreary time, of any change but death—such is the record of nearly one-half of Vera Figner’s life. It is not strange that her recent appearance in London aroused the wild enthusiasm to which she was already accustomed on the continent. Few can survive twenty years in a Russian […]

Joaquin Miller, “Sophia Perovskaya” (1881)

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

Sophie Perovskaya, LIBERTY’S MARTYRED HEROINE. Hanged April 15, 1881, For Helping to Rid the World of a Tyrant. Down from her high estate she stept, A maiden, gently born And by the icy Volga kept Sad watch, and waited morn; And peasants say that where she slept The new moon dipped her horn. Yet on and on, through shoreless snows Stretched tow’rd the great north pole, The foulest wrong the good God known Rolls as dark rivers roll. While never once for all these woes Upspeaks one human soul. She toiled, […]

George Barlow, “Sophia Perovskaia” (1895)

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

SOPHIA PEROVSKAIA. Blue-eyed, fair-haired, a girl in outward seeming, With lips, men held, that only cared to sing, When thy foot passed along the meadows dreaming Soft dreams and tender of the gold-haired Spring— When other maidens dreamed with longing wonder Of love, thou crowned with Spring’s most loving light Beneath blue skies wast dreaming of the thunder, Beneath the morn wast dreaming of the night . High-born, thou didst forsake the lordly places; Thy young heart thrilled at Freedom’s trumpet-call: Thou wanderedst forth, a light for poor men’s faces; Love, wealth, repose,—thou didst surrender all. And has not yet […]

Strategies of Presentation

June 25, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third padding=”0 0px 0 0px”] Beneath all the (hopefully useful) chatter, the strategy of interpretation I’m pursuing has three main elaments: To treat the body of Bakunin’s works as rich and relatively coherent, suffering much more from various kinds of incompleteness than from inconsistency; To remind ourselves of the long periods during which we, particularly in the English-speaking world, have not always adhered to that kind of strategy; and To look to Bakunin’s own texts for inspiration when trying to solve the problems posed by their notoriously untidy state. So what are the consequences of those strategic commitments, when it […]