People of the Revolution and the USSR

Anarchists 1814–1876 ○ Illness

Marx's greatest rival: founder of collectivist anarchism, at the center of the First International's great split

At the 1869 Basel Congress: 'Take the most fervent revolutionary and give him absolute power — within a year he'll be worse than the Tsar' — cited in Statism and Anarchy

A Tver nobleman, founder of collectivist anarchism. He opposed Marx's statism in the First International, was expelled at the 1872 Hague Congress, and codified stateless federalism in Statism and Anarchy (1873).

International Workingmen's Association (First International) Anarchists 1826–1921

French bookbinder and activist in the Women's Union of the Paris Commune

Born in Brest in Brittany, Le Mel worked as a bookbinder in Paris and joined the workers' movement. In 1865 she helped win equal pay for women and men in bookbinding, joined the International Workingmen's Association, and ran the cooperative restaurant La Marmite with Eugène Varlin. During the 1871 Paris Commune she was a leading activist in the Women's Union and fought on the barricades. Arrested after the Commune's defeat, she was deported to New Caledonia with Louise Michel and returned to Paris under the 1880 amnesty.

Anarchists 1830–1905 ○ Pneumonia

Montmartre teacher who fought on the Commune’s barricades, was deported to New Caledonia and became the anarchist “Red Virgin”

Louise Michel led Montmartre’s Women’s Vigilance Committee and fought in the Paris Commune. Deported to New Caledonia after its defeat, she returned to France in 1880 and devoted herself to workers’ meetings and anarchist activism.

Born in a château in Haute-Marne to a servant, she became a teacher, opened a school in Montmartre in the 1850s and frequented republican and socialist clubs. On 18 March 1871 she turned out to defend the cannon on Montmartre, and during the Commune she served on the vigilance committee, in ambulance work and with a Guard battalion. After Bloody Week she surrendered in place of her mother, demanded death in court and was sentenced to deportation to New Caledonia, where she supported the Kanak revolt of 1878. Amnestied in 1880, she spoke and was jailed again and again as an anarchist, dying on a lecture tour in Marseille in 1905.

Anarchists 1839–1871 ✕ Shot

Bookbinder who led the Paris International, ran the Commune’s finances and was shot on the last day of Bloody Week

He linked the bookbinders’ union to the First International and helped build a Paris federation of workers’ associations, then organised the Commune’s finances and labour relations. Captured by Versailles forces, he was shot with other prisoners at Montmartre on 28 May 1871.

A peasant’s son who became a bookbinder in Paris, he led the bookbinders’ strike of 1864 and founded mutual-aid societies and the cooperative restaurant La Marmite. The central figure of the International’s Paris section, he was tried twice in 1868 and organised a federation of trade unions. In 1871 he joined the Central Committee of the National Guard and, as a member of the Commune, handled finance and supplies; he belonged to the minority that opposed the Commune's Committee of Public Safety. Captured on 28 May, he was dragged to Montmartre, beaten by a crowd and shot.

Anarchists 1842–1921 ○ Illness

Rurikid prince, founder of anarcho-communism, geographer of Mutual Aid: escaped the Peter and Paul Fortress

When Kerensky offered him any cabinet post in 1917, Kropotkin replied he considered 'the trade of a bootblack more honest and useful' — Emma Goldman.

A Rurikid prince and geographer who founded anarcho-communism. Escaped a tsarist prison and spent 41 years in European exile writing The Conquest of Bread and Mutual Aid. After returning in 1917, openly criticized the Bolshevik Red Terror.

Anarchists 1869–1940 ○ Died

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).

Anarchists 1870–1936 ✕ Suicide

Anarchist writer who served 14 years for the Frick assassination attempt, then broke with the Soviet state

At his farewell banquet in Chicago, told of Frick's death, Berkman remarked: 'Frick had been deported by God.'

Russian-born anarchist revolutionary and writer who emigrated to the United States in 1888. Outraged by the repression of striking Homestead steelworkers, he attempted to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick in 1892, served 14 years in prison, and chronicled the experience in Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1912). After his release he became editor of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth and a central figure in the American anarchist movement; in 1919 he was deported to Soviet Russia for anti-war activism. Initially enthusiastic about the Bolshevik Revolution, he became disillusioned after witnessing the Kronstadt rebellion's suppression and documented the early Soviet state's authoritarianism in The Bolshevik Myth (1925); in French exile he wrote the anarcho-communist primer Now and After (1929).