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"He who has no means of subsistence, has no duty to acknowledge or respect other people's property, considering that the principles of the social covenant have been violated to his prejudice."
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814)
MANY OF THE principal characters involved with the Bonnot Gang (but not Bonnot himself) spent some time in Belgium in the couple of years prior to 1911, although some of them only became acquainted later, in Paris.
Nevertheless, the Belgian experience was a formative one, during which they learned the ground rules of clandestinity and illegality.
However, if these rebels served their apprenticeship in Belgium, their practice was to be firmly centred on Paris.
Towards the end of August 1909, a nineteen year-old future editor of l'anarchie arrived in the French capital from Brussels.
His name was Victor-Napoleon Lvovich Kibalchich, to become better known as Victor Serge, the pro-Bolshevik revolutionary and critic of Stalinism.
At this time though he was the fiery young anarchist who wrote for the Brussels anarchist weekly Le Révolté (The Rebel) under the pseudonym Le Rétif — 'the Restless One'.
He had been born in the winter of 1889 into a poor Russian refugee family living in exile in Verviers in Belgium.
While still very young he had his first major initiation into the ways of Capitalism: his brother Raoul died of hunger because the family did not have enough money for food.
His father was a university lecturer who decorated their rooms with portraits of executed revolutionaries.
Victor's earliest memories were of adult conversations about "...trials, executions, escapes, and Siberian highways, with great ideas incessantly argued over, and with the latest books about these ideas".
Idealism and self-sacrifice were the reigning values of his parents' milieu, and, although Victor was determined to abandon self-sacrifice as a positive virtue, he never could nor would abandon the revolutionary idealism of the Russians.
His earliest childhood friend was Raymond Callemin, born in Brussels in 1890, whose French father was a drunkard and an "old socialist disgusted with socialism" who patched shoes from morning till night.
He disowned his son for keeping bad company.
Together, Victor and Raymond read Zola's Paris and Louis Blanc's History of the French Revolution and joined the 'Socialist Young Guards'.
Neither of them went to school or college because, as Victor put it, "learning was life itself".
After some French deserters brought them a "whiff of the aggressive trade unionism of the anarcho-syndicalists" they became revolted with electoral politics and abandoned socialism, as it did not demand that harmony between deeds and words, the personal and the political, that anarchism appeared to demand:
"Anarchism swept us away completely because it both demanded everything of us and offered everything to us".
Absolute liberty was at the same time a revolutionary method for the individual and a revolutionary goal for everyone, to be realized immediately.
This was both the greatness and weakness of anarchism as each individual's method could be argued as valid due to the 'truth' invested in its extrapolated conclusion.
After reading Kropotkin's To the Young People*, Victor and Raymond decided to go and stay at a communitarian colony at Stockel in the forest of Soignes just south of Brussels.
*Mahkno has a work by this title, but Kropotkin does not. ed
Over the gate hung the slogan from Rabelais: "Do what thou wilt".
The colony had been founded by Emile Chapelier, an ex-miner and ex-con; here they met a cobbler, a painter, some primers, gardeners and tramps, a Swiss plasterer, an ex-officer from Russia converted to Tolstoyan anarchism, and Sokolov, a chemist from Odessa, the latter shortly to become infamous.
The two teenage comrades quickly read their way through the series of pamphlets published by the French syndicalist confederation, the CGT; subjects covered included The Crime of Obedience, The Immorality of Marriage, Planned Procreation, The New Society and antimilitarist literature.
For serious entertainment they read novels by Anatole France and poetry by the Belgian Emile Verhaeren or the Parisian Jehan Rictus, the latter famous for his Soliloquys of the Poor and use of the hard-style slang spoken on the streets.
The colony moved to Boitsfort, and here Victor Kibalchich learnt to proofread, edit, set-up and print their irregular four-page journal, Communiste.
One day a newcomer arrived, having been unable to find work due to his known anarchist sympathies.
Edouard Carouy, born in 1883 at Montignies-les-Lens, had had a hard childhood, both his parents having died when he was only three years old.
He had spent many years apprenticed to a metal-turner in Brussels, and had subsequently worked in Malines, St Nicholas and the Dutch port of Terneuzen, where he'd pilfered from the docks.
He too decided to make the colony his home.
In 1908, aged eighteen, Victor wrote his first article for the September issue (no 18) of Le Révolté, which/ was the old Communiste transformed; the format remained a small, four-page newsheet however.
It was subtitled 'Organ of Anarchist Propaganda — appearing at least once a month' — later changed to twice a month.
Although the back page was devoted to the 'Mouvement Social', the paper was hostile to trade-unionism, the more so as the Belgian unions were mainly controlled by the Socialist Party.
There were numerous occasions of anarchists being expelled from unions and being prevented from speaking at meetings.
The conviction that theory and practice be unified in each individual's life led to Le Révolté adopting an approach very similar to that of l'anarchie; they sometimes printed reports from Paris, and shed a tear for the passing away of Libertad in their obituary.
Victor Kibalchich, alias Le Rétif, wrote many articles for the paper, including some that make interesting reading in the light of his subsequent involvement with the 'Bonnot Gang'.
In February 1909, under the title 'Anarchist-Bandits', he praised "our audacious comrades who fell at Tottingham [sic]" and expressed "much admiration for their unequalled bravery", which proved that "anarchists don't surrender".
The comrades in question were Paul 'Elephant' Hefeld and Jacob Lepidus,[6] both sailors from Riga in Latvia, who belonged to a cell of the clandestine revolutionary network called 'Leesma' or ' Flame'.
[6] Lepidus' brother was the revolutionary, 'Stryga', who had been killed by his own bomb in the Bois de Vincennes three years earlier.
They had carried out a wages snatch on a Tottenham (North London) engineering factory, and in the course of a chase lasting for several miles had shot almost two dozen of their pursuers, three of whom died, one being a boy of ten.
The two men committed suicide, but not before successfully passing on their haul to a waiting accomplice who was never caught.
Le Rétif continued his article:
"Reader, I detect on your lips a sentimental objection:
But those poor twenty-two people shot by your comrades were innocent.
Haven't you any remorse? — No!
Because those who pursued them could only have been 'honest' citizens, believers in the State and Authority; oppressed perhaps, but oppressed people who, by their criminal inertia, perpetuate oppression:
Enemies!
For us the enemy is whoever impedes us from living.
We are the ones under attack, and we defend ourselves".
In the next issue a reader protested against the article, saying that there was nothing anarchist about the reprise individuelle and that anarchists couldn't be thieves from above or below.
Victor Kibalchich disagreed.
Not long afterwards a bomb was found in Brussels and claimed by the self-styled 'International Anarchist Group' to have been the work of their chemist.
It had been destined for the ex-Minister of Justice, responsible for numerous expulsions of foreign refugees; the group also declared that it had recently carried out an expropriation of three thousand francs.[7]
[7] At this time three thousand francs would have been a year's salary for a skilled worker.
A clerical worker might expect to earn about eighteen hundred francs.
All this bravado led to the undoing of one of their members.
Police in Ghent raided the house of twenty-two year-old Abraham Hartenstein, who was none other than Sokolov, the Odessa chemist from the old libertarian community of Stockel.
At the sight of police uniforms he reacted as he would have done in Czarist Russia, he drew his revolver and shot two policemen dead.
But he did not escape arrest.
Victor Kibalchich probably had a hand in drafting the statement printed in Révolté by the 'Brussels Revolutionary Group', which lashed out at the 'honest' anarchists who criticized Sokolov on the grounds that the situation in Belgium bore no relation to that in Russia.
The BRG was defiant and supported Sokolov unconditionally, declaring that "anarchists do not surrender...we are in permanent insurrection!".
Sokolov was sentenced to life imprisonment.
As no further word was heard from the so-called 'International Anarchist Group' it could be inferred that its existence was in fact Sokolov's own creation, in the tradition of Bakunin's 'World Revolutionary Alliance'; anarchists sometimes show a surprising propensity for creating organizations.
During the summer of 1909, Kibalchich went to work in Armentières, just inside the French border, as a photographic assistant; he found lodgings in a small mining village outside Lille.
One evening in July he attended an anarchist meeting in Lille and struck up a conversation with Mauricius who'd come from Paris, and was at the time the principal speaker on the Causeries Populaires circuit.
Victor was evidently attracted by Mauricius' companion and apparently whispered to him:
"Who's that skinny little bird with you?".
Henriette Maîtrejean, née Anna Estorgues, was better known as 'Rirette'; born in Tulle (Corrèze) in central France, she had come to Paris in 1905 in the company of her anarchist husband Louis whom she'd married at seventeen, a year after her conversion to anarchism.
One day at the Sorbonne university, when she was nineteen, she met a 'scientific anarchist' whom she found more stimulating than her rather down-to-earth husband, the 'anarchist worker', and she began to while away her time with him in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Although now only twenty-two years old she already had two young children, Maud and Chinette, but she still had the looks of a girl in her teens.
The 'scientific anarchist' in question was in fact Mauricius.
During the course of the meeting in Lille, Victor argued against her, but far from impressing her, only made her think "What a poser!".
According to the Brussels Gendarmerie, Rirette and Victor were expelled together from Belgium in August 1909.
In fact, a few months earlier Rirette had lent her papers to another anarchist to enable her to cross the Franco-Belgian border; this comrade happened to be expelled from Brussels for anarchist propaganda at the same time as Kibalchich.
Victor's last article for Révolté was dated 7th August 1909; his status as a refugee put him at the mercy of the Belgian authorities and after the Sokolov affair they had obviously had enough of him.
He went immediately to Paris.
The leading light of the 'Brussels Revolutionary Group' now took over the management of Révolté.
Jean De Boe was an orphan from Anderlecht, a typographer blacklisted for his anarchist opinions who had been imprisoned in another's place for antimilitarist articles; a 'Russian living in Brussels' had been the real author.
Raymond Callemin, Victor's childhood friend, was now back from his travels in the Ardennes and Switzerland, and helping out at Révolté alongside Jean De Boe and Edouard Carouy.
He began to write occasional articles for the paper, and in February 1910 was questioned by police about some antimilitarist articles that had appeared.
He had previous convictions for theft in Charleroi and Seraing, and for fighting with police during the general strike; this time, however, he was released.
The socialists also did not welcome his return to Brussels and ejected him from the Maison du Peuple (union headquarters).
Meanwhile, in the wake of the Sokolov affair, the collective at Révolté had split into two factions: the 'revolutionaries' and the 'individualists', with Raymond, Jean and Edouard being in the latter group.
The individualists kept control of the paper and Jean De Boe wrote the major article in February 1910, outlining the troubles they had gone through.
By this time, though, Edouard Carouy was in charge of the paper, as Jean was living outside Brussels.
In 1910, Edouard became acquainted with Octave Garnier, a handsome twenty year-old French anarchist and draft-dodger who was to become, alongside Bonnot, the prime founder of the 'Bonnot Gang'.
Born in Fontainbleau, near Paris, on Christmas Day 1889, he later looked back on his life as a long struggle against oppression:
"From my earliest years I rebelled against the authority of my father and mother, as well as that of school, before being old enough really to know why."
At the age of thirteen, he started work.
"Having attained the age of reason, I began to understand what life and social injustice was all about; I saw bad individuals and said to myself: 'I must search for a way of getting out of this filthy mess of bosses, workers, bourgeois, judges, police and others'.
I loathed all these people, some because they put up with and took part in all this crap.
"Not wishing to be either exploited nor an exploiter, I went stealing from shop displays, which didn't yield very much; at seventeen I was caught for the first time and sentenced to three months in prison.
Through this I understood the meaning of 'justice': my companion, who had been charged with the same offence as me, as we were caught together, was only sentenced to two months, and that was suspended…
When I got out of prison I went back to my parents, who reprimanded me with some violence.
But having submitted to what is known as 'justice' and prison had made me even more rebellious."
Garnier had worked previously in an office, and for a butcher and a baker.
Knowing the latter trade quite well, he wished to return to it.
Unfortunately, he was confronted with employers who demanded formal certificates from him, which of course he did not have, something which angered him even more.
Having forged the required documents, he found himself working a sixteen or eighteen-hour day, seven days a week, for seventy to eighty francs.
It was enough to satisfy his principal needs, but no more.
It irked him that his boss was coining it while doing nothing but giving him and the other employees a hard time.
Finally, fed up with doing repetitive tasks he chucked the job in.
"I really would have liked to educate myself, to know more about things, and develop my mind and body, in a word, to become a being able to run my own affairs in every way, at the same time having the least possible dependence on others."
However, he was still tied down by the need to work in order to survive.
He was interested in becoming a mechanic, but found it impossible to find an opening, so he looked for a labouring job.
Society began singularly to disgust him.
He took part in strikes, but soon became disillusioned and cynical about them.
Most workers, rather than trying to change their miserable situation for the better, preferred to drink themselves into a stupor, so becoming more brutish, easily led and fooled.
Even successful strikes didn't change anything: workers got a few coppers more, but prices went up, and soon enough they were no better off than before.
The promises of the union leaders were no better than those made by the capitalists: Garnier saw both groups as manipulating the workers for their own ends.
He left the syndicalist milieu for a brief flirtation with 'revolutionary politics', but found the latter almost identical to the former.
So I became an anarchist.
I was about eighteen and no longer wanted to go back to work, so once more I began la reprise individuelle, but with no more luck than the first time.
At the end of three or four months I was caught and sentenced to two months.
I came out, and this time tried to work again.
I took part in a strike, in the course of which there was a fight with the police, and I was arrested and sentenced to six days in prison.
As I was in frequent contact with anarchists, I came to understand their theories, and became a fervent partisan of them, not because these theories gave me any particular pleasure, but because I found them to be the most fair and open to discussion.
Within this milieu, I met individuals of integrity who were trying as much as possible to rid themselves of the prejudices which have made this world ignorant and barbaric.
They were men with whom I found discussion a pleasure, for they showed me not utopias but things which one could see and touch.
Moreover, these individuals were quite sober.
When I discussed with them, I didn't need, as was the case amongst the great mass of barbarians, to turn my head away as they chatted to me, for their mouths didn't reek of alcohol or tobacco.
I found them to be fair, and encountered amongst them great energy and strength of view.
My views were soon set, I became one of them. No longer did I want to go and work for someone else, I wanted to work for myself, although as to how, I didn't have much choice.
But, having acquired some experience, and full of energy, I resolved to defend myself to the death against the stupid mass and the iniquity of present Society."
Horrified at the idea of joining the army, he left Paris in the middle of 1909, in the hope of delaying his call-up; he would be of military age on Christmas Day.
It was not until May 1910, however, that Garnier began to work his way towards the frontier with Belgium — the traditional refuge of draft-dodgers, criminals and political refugees from France.
His recruitment group was due to be called up at the end of September, for a period of two years (as fixed by the law of 1905), but Garnier was intent on joining the ever-increasing ranks of the seventy thousand draft-dodgers and deserters wanted by the French authorities, a number equivalent to two army corps.
In the meantime, in July, Garnier was arrested for actual bodily harm. However, he was lucky enough to receive a sentence (two months) that would allow his release before his call-up papers arrived.
Out of prison once more, he worked for a few days as a navvy in order to get enough money to buy a ticket to the frontier.
He only paid for part of the journey, as he needed the rest of his money for food.
He was spotted by the Station Master sneaking out of the station at Valenciennes, but managed to talk him out of calling the police.
He did another labouring job for a week before telling the boss to get stuffed, then did two burglaries and successfully crossed the frontier into Belgium.
Around the 6th October he arrived in Charleroi, found somc work, and met up with the local anarchists.
It was quite possibly here that he first met Edouard Carouy, Raymond Callemin and Jean De Boe, although these three were still concerned with Révolté, which was based thirty miles away in Brussels.
In the first week of November, he was arrested and held for eight days on an unknown charge, but released for lack of evidence.
His mother made a special trip to Belgium to see him, but was apparently rather disturbed at finding that her son had become a hardened and uncompromising anarchist.
She returned to Paris with a heavy heart, worried about what was to become of him.
Octave, meanwhile, had begun a liaison with a married woman, Marie Vuillemin, who was the same age as him.
She abandoned her husband, a housepainter to whom she'd only been married for one month, and ran away to Brussels with Octave.
She was completely devoted to her new-found lover, and Octave in turn was in love with her.
The comrades Octave had met in Charleroi, and with whom he'd carried out a few burglaries, had already preceeded them to the Belgian capital.
Here, he was further initiated into the art of house-breaking by Edouard Carouy, who carried out the odd burglary to supplement his meagre income from a part-time job as a fitter in a garage (or it might have been the other way round).
Octave also learned the art of counterfeiting, in association with Louis Maîtrejean, the separated husband of Rirette, and his friend Alphonse Rodriguez, an anarchist and professional crook from Lyon.
Raymond, however, seems to have kept out of such activities, being engaged in a sort of courtly romance with a young Russian refugee called 'Macha', of whom he later had fond reminiscences:
"I had just joined the revolutionary movement; I believed fanatically in universal brotherhood, in the reign of justice, soon to be inaugurated, in the equality of the sexes, in all the glowing and bountiful utopias that can overwhelm a young man who eagerly wants to burn up all that energy that he feels inside.
It was at that time, in our favourite meeting-place, that I met a newly-arrived young Russian exile girl, who was totally ignorant of French.
With her I spent the happiest hours of my life.
The (platonic) intimacy of two young people talking together about the goodness of humanity, building idyllic castles in the air, was something so sweet and good.
I can still picture the poor, neat little garret where she lived, the tiny table over which our heads always touched and our hair mingled, as we felt each others' hot breath; our hands never stopped meeting, and our cheeks brushed lightly, and in this way we experienced pleasures that were sweet and entirely innocent.
We had stormy discussions about which methods should be used to change the face of the world.
And she would often talk to me of that far-away place, her distant, dark homeland, and as she did so, furtive flashes would dart from her soft eyes.
But these bursts of well-founded revolt were moderated, in an almost comic way, by child-like feminine emotions.
Each time she knocked over a cup of tea, she couldn't help shouting 'Mama!'
We were two true friends, one of whom wore a dress. Sexual equality was no longer even discussed between us...yet she retained the most charming modesty sometimes; when she was getting dressed to go out, she forced me to look out of the window, which I always obediently did.
But this tender friendship did not last. I departed one fine day for fresh experiences, and new adventures. We wrote to each other a few times, then life's course separated us altogether."
The rebels.
Top left, VICTOR KIBALCHICH wearing the Russian peasant blouse he was later to wear in court.
Top right, RAYMOND CALLEMIN ('La Science') Victor's childhood friend.
Bottom left, EDOUARD CAROUY, metal worker, professional burglar and anarchist sympathizer, shown here in his early 30s.
Bottom right, JEAN DE BOE, organizer of the Brussels Revolutionary Group.
These four men worked together on Le Révolté.
This series of posts will insure that these anarchists' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
Don't lose hope now, dear reader.
We've made it this far.
At some point the ride gets easier.
Rule by force has had it's day.
When everybody sees the iron fist in the velvet glove we win.
We just have to survive its death throes.
There is a reason these facts are not in the modern curriculums.
Setting rewards to burn only burns the author portion of the payout.
The crowd isn't silenced.
Please cheer loudly, if that is your thing.
