Saint Ravachol

Ravachol spent his life as a sort of criminal jack-of-all-trades—smuggler, counterfeiter, grave-robber, murderer, bomber—and then, at the end of that career, was made a secular saint, “the violent Christ of anarchy.” And he was hardly the only one of the illegalists and attentateurs who was subsequently mythologized. Indeed, in the long war between anarchists and the agents of capitalism and the state, mythology has been a tool used on both sides. The items collected here are drawn from that war and are part of a literature in which history and myth are often inextricable. The collection includes items previously contained in the archives Relics of Saint-Ravachol and A Beautiful Nihilist.

Saint Ravachol

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 […]
Saint Ravachol

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.  
fiction

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, […]
Saint Ravachol

Emile Henry, “Comrades of l’En Dehors” (1892)

May 26, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
COMRADES OF L’EN DEHORS I read in your last number an article from the compagnon Malatesta, entitled “A Little Theory.” Please be so good as to insert these few lines of personal reflections on that subject. The compagnon Malatesta, after having elaborated upon the imminence and the necessity of a violent revolution, and considering the role of the anarchists to contribute to its imminent arrival, said that “any act of propaganda or achievement, by word or by deed, individual or collective, is good when it serves to bring nearer and to facilitate the Revolution… » Then, speaking of acts of revolt […]
Italian texts

Carlo Pisacane, “Testamento politico” (1857)

May 10, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
TESTAMENTO POLITICO DI CARLO PISACANE Nel momento d’imprendere un’ arrischiata impresa, voglio manifestare al paese le mie opinioni, onde rimbeccare la critica del volgo, corrivo sempre ad applaudire i fortunati e maledire i vinti. I miei principi politici sono abbastanza noti; io credo che il solo socialismo, ma non già i sistemi francesi informati tutti da quell’ idea monarchica e dispotica che predomina nella nazione, ma il socialismo espresso dalla formola: Libertà ed Associazione, sia il solo avvenire non lontano dell’Italia, e forse dell’Europa: questa mia idea l’ho espressa in due volumi, frutti di circa sei anni di studio; non […]
Saint Ravachol

Why Vaillant Threw the Bomb! (1894)

July 11, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
PRICE ONE HALF-PENNY. Why Vaillant Threw the Bomb! FELLOW-WORKERS,— We feel it our duty, as English comrades, in the face of what has been said by the smug faced hirelings of the capitalist press concerning Vaillant, to say a few words about him and his actions before proceeding to his defence. Vaillant’s life, like the lives of even our own workpeople, may be summed up in a few words,—one of intense struggle and misery. He, like others, possessed the heritage of the “right of life,” with all its pleasures. These were denied! He protested! Will his co-sufferers blame him? Never; […]
Saint Ravachol

A Handwritten Manuscript by Ravachol (1892)

July 11, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
A HANDWRITTEN MANUSCRIPT BY RAVACHOL Since his condemnation to death, Ravachol has written a great deal in prison. Here is a long handwritten text that we have been able to obtain, not without great difficulties. We have confided the reproduction of this interesting document to the house of Sédard in Lyon. It is written on two pages, and in it Ravachol explains his theories. [The manuscript combines bad spelling, horrible penmanship, rotten grammar and nonexistent punctuation. Decoding it has been a long process. But here is a rough translation.] Society can only be improved by a complete transformation of its […]
Saint Ravachol

“Ravachol’s Experiment” (April 17, 1892)

July 11, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
RAVACHOL’S EXPERIMENT. He Felt the Revolutionary Pulse and Found It Does Not Beat. Paris, April 17. — In an interview with his brother today Ravachol said: “I am neither a visionary nor a firebrand. I wished to feel the pulse of the revolutionary movement. To be candid, I find it does not beat. If it did, my example would be followed by others. Instead of this, they call me a criminal. I have written my memoirs covering my whole life. Let me be judged by these.” The persons on the jury list likely to be empanelled for the Ravachol case […]
Saint Ravachol

The Voice of the Penal Colony (1893)

July 11, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE VOICE OF THE PENAL COLONY While the populations panic and cheer the hangman tsar, while the bourgeois and the governmentals congratulate themselves on the success of their stratagems and observe that human stupidity is always so great, a protest must come, proud and energetic, to remind the bourgeois that there are still free men, even, and especially, in their prisons and their penal colonies. We must remind our leaders, who, in the joy of their triumph, lick the boots of the hangman of nihilists and whipper of women, that in the French penal colonies are also found those whose […]