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The Stuff of which Nihilist Martyrs are Made (Sophie Perovskaya, 1881)

June 22, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

The Stuff of which Nihilist Martyrs are Made. Sophie Perowski, recently executed for complicity in the murder of the Czar, was, according to the Intransigeant, a woman of the highest endowments and accomplishments, who at the age of 16 devoted herself to the propaganda of socialist doctrines. For twelve years she never shrank from any sacrifice and never showed lack of courage or want of presence of mind. She cast aside honors, wealth, case, and submitted to tile coarsest drudgery. She walked alone the whole course of the Volga, her energy triumphing over old cold, tempests, hunger and malady. She […]

Beautiful Nihilist Slays; Weds; Tracked, Is Caught (Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz, 1907)

June 22, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

BEAUTIFUL NIHILIST SLAYS; WEDS; TRACKED, IS CAUGHT Woman Who Killed Governor Genera of Warsaw Pleads She Has Become Austrian by Marriage By Associated Press. VIENNA, Nov. 23.—Wanda Dobroczieka, the woman who threw a bomb at Gen. Skalon of Warsaw and, aided by confederates, disappeared has been brought from Cracow to Vienna, where her trial on the demand of the Russian government for her extradition will take place. The prisoner is a strikingly pretty woman of the Polish type and is as intelligent as she is pretty. After her crime she fled to Cracow. There her beauty attracted many admirers, one […]

A Beautiful Nihilist (Vera Figner, 1892)

June 22, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

A Beautiful Nihilist Boston Advertiser Vera Figner is one of the Nihilists lately condemned to death at St. Petersburg. She is described as of rare beauty. She is 27 years of age, and has been active in all nihilistic conspiracies since 1878. It was she who with Sophie Perowskaya succeeded in starting the propaganda in the army, and organized terrorist societies in several regiments, including the 16th Grenadiers. It is believed that the Czar will commute the death sentence. The Daily Commonwealth (Topeka, Kansas) no. 4860 (November 27, 1884): 3.

A Hunt to Death (1892)

June 22, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

A HUNT TO DEATH. A Beautiful Nihilist’s Contrivance to Elude Justice. I had settled myself in my corner and the train was already swinging at a good pace down the “Golden Valley” before I noticed, first, that I was not alone, and, second, that I was not in a smoking compartment. My fellow-traveler was a lady, clothed from head to foot in a traveling ulster with a deep cape, and closely veiled. I wanted a smoke very badly, and so I ventured to ask her if she had any objection. Imagine my astonishment when, instead of replying to my question, […]

Newspaper Clippings: Beer for Baptism (1901)

June 21, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Beer for Baptism. Emma Goldman Mocks Religious Rite in Mining Town. Milwaukee, Wis., Sept. 16. – A curious story of Emma Goldman, which is vouched for by a Milwaukee man is being told. It was in 1897 that the man in question happened to visit the mining town of Spring Valley, Ill., one of those forlorn, prairie mining towns where there is a good deal of actual misery and lots of underground hard work. At the time of the visit of the Milwaukee man Emma Goldman was there, holding nightly meetings and drawing large crowds. Just before leaving the town, […]

Strategies of Interpretation

June 13, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

SIDEBAR I. Engaging with the Texts. Don’t let anyone tell you that organizing a multi-volume edition is easy. It’s not. And organizing an anarchist edition, for an anarchist audience and taking into account even some basic anarchist theory, is much more complicated. I thought I understood all that pretty well when I took on the Bakunin Library project, but there’s nothing like living through the inevitable trial and error to remind you of the difference between theoretical and practical understanding. In general, I’m of a mind to follow Proudhon’s lead with regard to mistakes and “measure my valor by the […]

Frank Harris, “Emma Goldman, the Famous Anarchist (1923)

June 13, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Men stone the prophets still, and persecute those sent to them to point the upward way! In prison oft, this female St. Paul, an exile now and outcast from her own, living in Berlin even on sufferance from six months’ permission to six months, and no asylum, no place of rest in the wide world, if this be denied her; yet courageous still, and uncomplaining, full, indeed, of joyous energy and pregnant with plans of work. Think of it. She might be rotten to the teeth with self-indulgence, one foul infectious sore, leprous or syphilitic, and men would take her […]

Phrenological Examinations of Emma Goldman and Marie Louise (1895)

June 13, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

CHARACTER IN UNCONVENTIONAL PEOPLE. A PAIR OF ANARCHISTS. From Personal Examinations By The Editor. We trust that the readers of The Journal will not be alarmed at the introduction of the two somewhat noted opponents of the existing order of society which we present herewith. We can vouch for their harmlessness in the shadows we print, however dangerous they may be in person and at short range. As it is only by carefully studying and comparing all the elements of human nature, both agreeable and disagreeable, that we can hope to acquire accurate and comprehensive knowledge, we propose here to […]

Margaret C. Anderson, “The Challenge of Emma Goldman” (1914)

June 12, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

EMMA GOLDMAN has been lecturing in Chicago, and various kinds of people have been going to hear her. I have heard her twice — once before the audience of well-dressed women who flock to her drama lectures and don’t know quite what to think of her, and once at the International Labor Hall before a crowd of anarchists and syndicalists and socialists, most of whom were collarless but who knew very emphatically what they thought of her and of her ideas. I came away with a series of impressions, every one of which resolved somehow into a single conviction: that […]

Guido Bruno, “Anarchists in Greenwich Village” (1916)

June 12, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Have you ever seen a real live anarchist? Just to be honest, you never wanted to see one. Is it because the B follows the A in the alphabet or because of a close association of ideas for which you are not responsible, you think immediately of bombs? Bombs and anarchists are inseparable in the minds of most of us. Mysterious destroyers of life and of property, merciless men who have pledged their lives, their knives, or their guns to some nefarious cause or another, who assemble in cellars lighted with candles or in road-houses which seem uninhabited and in […]