Textile designer and poet, a member of the Commune, who wrote the words of “The Internationale” in hiding after Bloody Week
After the Paris Commune's defeat, he wrote the words of “The Internationale” while hiding in Paris in June 1871. In exile in the United States, he organized solidarity for deported Communards.
Born to a Paris box-maker, he worked as a textile designer and wrote songs and poems from the 1830s, taking part in the June Days of 1848. He founded a designers’ union and joined the International. Elected to the Commune in an April 1871 by-election for the 2nd arrondissement, he wrote “The Internationale” in hiding in June after Bloody Week. Condemned to death in absentia, he fled to the United States and returned under the 1880 amnesty. He died poor in 1887; the next year Pierre De Geyter set “The Internationale” to music and it became the anthem of the world labour movement.
Career timeline
- 1830Composed his first song, “Long Live Liberty.”
- 1848Took part in the 1848 Revolution.
- 1864Helped found the textile designers’ union, which later joined the First International.
- 1871Elected to the Paris Commune, he served on its Public Services Commission and fought during Bloody Week.
- 1880Returned to France after the amnesty.
- 1887Chants révolutionnaires, the first collection to print the words of “The Internationale,” was published.
Realist painter who led the Commune’s Federation of Artists and went into Swiss exile blamed for the Vendôme Column
In the 1871 Paris Commune, Courbet chaired the Federation of Artists and served as a councillor, advocating the opening of museums. After its defeat, he was imprisoned for six months over the Vendôme Column’s destruction; a later order to pay reconstruction costs led him into exile in Switzerland.
Born to prosperous farmers in Ornans in the Jura, he launched Realism with A Burial at Ornans and The Stone Breakers and was close to Proudhon; in 1870 he refused the Legion of Honour. As president of the Commune’s Federation of Artists in 1871 he demanded self-government for museums and an end to censorship, and after winning a by-election in the 6th arrondissement he sided with the minority against the Commune's Committee of Public Safety. For proposing to remove the Vendôme Column he was sentenced to six months after Bloody Week; ordered in 1873 to pay for its rebuilding, he fled to Switzerland and died at La Tour-de-Peilz.
Career timeline
- 1849–1851In works such as The Stonebreakers and A Burial at Ornans, he painted everyday scenes in a large-scale realist style that challenged Paris Salon conventions.
- 1870He publicly refused the Legion of Honour, declaring his independence from government authority.
- 1871As president of the Federation of Artists during the Paris Commune, he worked to open museums and organize an exhibition, and served as a councillor.
- 1873After being ordered to pay 323,000 francs toward rebuilding the Vendôme Column, he left for Switzerland and settled in La Tour-de-Peilz.
Exiled revolutionary who made anarchism an international political movement
After witnessing the crushing of Kronstadt, Goldman wrote: 'Kronstadt broke the last thread that held me to the Bolsheviki.' She left Soviet Russia in December 1921.
Russian-born anarchist revolutionary, writer, and orator who emigrated to the United States. Politically awakened by the Haymarket affair, she played a pivotal role in developing anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe. Known as 'Red Emma,' she drew thousands to lectures on birth control, free love, and antimilitarism, and was deported to Soviet Russia in 1919. After the Kronstadt rebellion, she became a prominent critic of Bolshevik authoritarianism, documenting her disillusionment in My Disillusionment in Russia (1923).
Career timeline
- 1889Moves to NYC; mentored by Johann Most, enters anarchist movement
- 1892Implicated in Berkman's attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick
- 1893First imprisonment — one year for incitement after Union Square speech
- 1906Founds the anarchist journal Mother Earth
- 1917Sentenced to two years for anti-draft organizing
- 1919Deported to Soviet Russia aboard the 'Soviet Ark' Buford
- 1923Publishes My Disillusionment in Russia, a critique of Bolshevik rule
- 1936Supports the anarchist revolution in the Spanish Civil War
