Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits

by John Merriman

  22 Marchand, Paris, histoire d’une ville, xixe–xxe siècle, p. 208; Rearick, Paris Dreams, Paris Memories, p. 41.

  23 Weber, France, Fin-de-Siècle, pp. 90–91, 102–104; McAuliffe, Twilight of the Belle Epoque, pp. 151–152.

  24 Shattuck, The Banquet Years, p. 5.

  25 Morand, 1900, pp. 190–191.

  26 Christophe Charle, La crise des sociétés impériales (1900–1940) (Paris, 2001), p. 107.

  27 Charle, La crise des sociétés impériales (1900–1940), pp. 112, 116.

  28 This arguably provided a surprising stability that allowed the regime to survive right-wing challengers who wanted to destroy the Republic, notably the followers of General Georges Boulanger, who in 1889 wanted to overthrow the Republic, and the opponents of Captain Alfred Dreyfus during that monumental crisis that lasted from 1894 to 1906. Dreyfus, who was Jewish, was falsely accused in 1894 of handing over military secrets to Germany. The Dreyfus Affair divided France, pitting the army, much of the French right wing, and some conservative Catholics against Dreyfus’s defenders, who notably included Émile Zola. The great novelist published a shot across the bow with his newspaper article that memorably began “J’Accuse,” accurately denouncing the General Staff for lying and using blatant forgeries in the attempt to convict Dreyfus. The Jewish captain was convicted, formally humiliated, and sent to Devil’s Island before finally being pardoned in 1897.

  29 Winock, La Belle Époque, p. 21.

  30 The politics of the Third Republic during this period have been described as having “found a surprisingly stable balance between corruption, passionate conviction, and low comedy” (Shattuck, The Banquet Years, p. 3).

  31 Dominque Kalifa, L’Encre et du sang (Paris, 1995), p. 56.

  Chapter 2: Victor Kibaltchiche

  1 Victor Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire 1901–1941, edited by Jean Rière (Paris, 2010), 7–9, 14.

  2 Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (New York, 2012), pp. 7–8.

  3 Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 10–12; Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 82; Victor Serge, Le Rétif: Articles parus dans “L’Anarchie,” 1909–1912, edited by Yves Pagès (Paris, 1989), 215–216; Victor Serge, “Méditation sur l’anarchie,” Esprit, 55, April 1, 1937, p. 29.

  4 Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 12–14; Steiner, Rirette l’insoumise, p. 39; J(ean) Maitron, “De Kibaltchiche à Victor Serge. Le Rétif (1909–1919),” Mouvement social, 47, avril–juin 1964, p. 45; Serge, “Méditation sur l’anarchie,” p. 29.

  5 JA 17, dossier Callemin, report of July 3, 1913; Serge, “Méditation sur l’anarchie,” p. 30; Émile Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits: étude de psychologie criminelle (1913), pp. 190–193.

  6 Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 9.

  7 Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 10–17; Serge, “Méditation sur l’anarchie,” pp. 30–31.

  8 Victor Méric, Les bandits tragiques (Paris, 1926), p. 54.

  9 JA16, “Mes Mémoires: (Callemin dit Raymond la Science): Pourquoi j’ai cambriolé Pourquoi j’ai tué”; Méric, Les bandits tragiques (Paris, 1926), p. 65; Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 28.

  10 JA16, “Mes Mémoires: (Callemin dit Raymond la Science): Pourquoi j’ai cambriolé Pourquoi j’ai tué.”

  11 Serge, ibid.; Serge, Le Rétif: Articles parus dans “L’Anarchie,” 1909–1912, p. 216; Susan Weissman, Victor Serge: The Course Is Set on Hope (London: Verso, 2001), pp. 15–16.

  12 Serge, Memoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 15–19; Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 82; Serge,“Méditation sur l’anarchie,” pp. 31–35, adding in retrospect that revolution did not appear possible “dans ce grand calme d’avant-guerre.”

  13 Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 14–15.

  14 J(ean) Maitron, “De Kibaltchiche à Victor Serge. Le Rétif (1909–1919),” Mouvement social, 47, avril–juin 1964, pp. 48–49.

  15 JA16, “Mes Mémoires: (Callemin dit Raymond la Science): Pourquoi j’ai cambriolé Pourquoi j’ai tué.”

  16 Victor Serge, Le Rétif: Articles parus dans “L’Anarchie,” 1909–1912 (Paris, 1989), including “Notice autobiographique,” p. 216.

  17 Serge, “Méditation sur l’anarchie,” p. 30.

  18 Steiner, Les En-dehors, pp. 68–70.

  19 Serge, “Méditation sur l’anarchie,” pp. 35–37; Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 19–21.

  20 Serge, “Méditation sur l’anarchie,” pp. 35–37; Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 19–21; Serge, Le Rétif: Articles parus dans “L’Anarchie,” 1909–1912, pp. 9–10. Victor noted accurately that such colonies “périclitaient de coutume assez vite, faute de ressources” and that even though jealousy was formally forbidden, “les histoires de femmes” posed considerable problems.

  21 Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 24–25.

  22 Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 21–22; Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang (London, 1987), p. 37.

  23 Susan Weissman, Victor Serge: The Course Is Set on Hope (London, 2001), p. 16, writes that Victor was expelled from Belgium, but I find no confirmation of this.

  24 Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 22–23.

  Chapter 3: Another Paris

  1 Francis Carco, La Belle Époque au temps de Bruant (Paris, 1954), p. 18.

  2 Dominique Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande: Le tourbillon sanglant (Paris, 2009), p. 31.

  3 Louis Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime (Paris, 1995), pp. 303–304; Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (New York, 2012), p. 27.

  4 Mary McAuliffe, Twilight of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust, Renault, Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, and Their Friends Through the Great War (New York, 2014), p. 25.

  5 Charles Rearick, Paris Dreams, Paris Memories: The City and Its Mystique (Stanford, 2011), pp. 29–34; Alexander Varias, Paris and the Anarchists: Aesthetes and Subversives during the Fin-de-Siècle (New York, 2002); Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 269; Carco, La Belle Époque au temps de Bruant, p. 154.

  6 The first Browning pistols were manufactured in the United States in the mid-1890s and were used by American troops during the Spanish-American war.

  7 Rearick, Paris Dreams, Paris Memories, pp. 29–34; Varias, Paris and the Anarchists; Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 269; Carco, La Belle Époque au temps de Bruant, p. 154; McAuliffe, Twilight of the Belle Epoque, pp. 98–99, 105–106, 147, 178. See Sue Row’s recent In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art (New York, 2014). Excelsior, October 20, 1911: “Le browning, malheuresement, joit aujourd’hui d’une égale faveur dans tous les classes de société. Il est adapté à tous les usages. Une élégante jeune femme le manie aussi bien qu’un cambrioleur” (Frédéric Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 47).

  8 Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France 1885 to World War I (New York, 1958), p. 33.

  9 As described by Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 301. Chevalier argues that there was little difference between poets and artists who became anarchists and “voyous” who became anarchists.

  10 Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, pp. 271–272.

  11 Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, pp. 245, 271–277.

  12 Dominique Kalifa, “Belle Époque: invention et usages d’un chrononyme,” Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, 52 (2016/1), pp. 119–132; Kalifa, La Véritable Histoire de la “Belle Époque” (Paris, 2017). Octave Mirbeau referred to “une belle époque” in 1892, but not “la belle époque” when France never had seemed before “aussi forte, assui grande, aussi respecté.” But the expression was not used in the 1920s. The 1930s represented the “protohistoire de la Belle Époque,” initiated by 1900 (1931), Paul Morand’s diatribe against the alleged pretentiousness of the period. The retrospective embrace of the period was launched, bu
t not yet the nostalgic concept of “la Belle Époque,” except with reference of specific trends, such as symbolism or style. That would come at the end of the 1930s. Abel Gance’s Le paradis perdu filmed in 1939 and released in 1940, the same year as the Radio-Paris program, “Ah la Belle Époque.” During the German occupation, amid the frenzy of seeking distractions, echoes of a much better time were required in the turn of the century, a vision of a Belle Époque of French rural life, music, theater, and luxury goods in a then-European power in the pre-Communist era. And after the horrors of World War II, Nicole Vedère’s 1946 film Paris 1900 offered a “document authentique et sensationnel de la Belle Époque 1900–1914.” Jean Gourguet’s film Sur des airs d’autrefois appeared the same year. With the United States joining the Soviet Union as the other great world power, the 1950s kept alive the importance of the memory of a “Belle Époque” when France and its empire were still strong. Beginning in the 1970s, another wave of nostalgia gripped France, centering on the collection of old postcards from the turn of the century, carrying the nostalgia for the “Belle Époque” beyond Paris into every corner of France, urban and rural.

  13 Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime, p. 302.

  14 Victor Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire 1901–1941, edited by Jean Rière (Paris, 1978), p. 28.

  15 Pierre Castelle, Paris Républicain 1871–1914 (Abbeville, 2003), pp. 135–136; Nancy Green, The Pletzl of Paris (New York, 1986).

  16 Colin Jones, Paris: Biography of a City (London, 2004), pp. 411–412.

  17 Bernard Marchand, Paris, histoire d’une ville, xixe–xxe siècle (Paris, 1993), pp. 163, 194–204.

  18 Lenard Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871–1914 (Baltimore, 1984), pp. 23–27.

  19 Michelle Perrot, “The Three Ages of Industrial Discipline in France,” in John M. Merriman, ed., Consciousness and Class Experience in Nineteenth-Century France (New York, 1979); Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871–1914, pp. 74–87, 97, 200–201.

  20 Michel Winock, La Belle Époque (Paris, 2002), pp. 56–59, 68, 138; Castelle, Paris Républicain 1871–1914, pp. 191, 195, 203, 210; Christophe Charle, La crise des sociétés impériales (1900–1940) (Paris, 2001), p. 83.

  21 Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871–1914, pp. 7–9, 71–73, 107–110; Jones, Paris, p. 413.

  22 Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871–1914, pp. 104–105.

  23 Jones, Paris, p. 413; Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871–1914, p. 44.

  24 Serge Pacaud, Vie quotidienne des français à la Belle Époque (Romorantin-Lanthenay, 2008), pp. 50–54, 68; Castelle, Paris Républicain 1871–1914, pp. 192–197.

  25 Winock, La Belle Époque, pp. 138–141. At the turn of the century, a working family of four consumed two kilos of bread a day [Antoine Prost, Si nous vivions en 1913 (Paris, 2014), pp. 33–34]; Pierre Castelle, Paris Républicain, pp. 153–155, drawing on the work of Adeline Daumard’s study of inheritance.

  26 Winock, La Belle Époque, pp. 56–59, 68, 138; Pierre Castelle, Paris Républicain 1871–1914 (2003), pp. 191, 195, 203, 210; Charle, La crise des sociétés impériales (1900–1940), p. 83.

  27 Winock, La Belle Époque, pp. 56–59, 68, 138; Castelle, Paris Républicain 1871–1914, pp. 191, 195, 203, 210; Charle, La crise des sociétés impériales (1900–1940), p. 83.

  28 Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871–1914, p. 49; Marchand, Paris, histoire d’une ville, xixe-xxe siècle, p. 227; Pacaud, Vie quotidienne des français à la Belle Époque, p. 89; Eugen Weber, France, Fin-de-Siècle (Cambridge, MA, 1986), pp. 65–66; Castelle, Paris Républicain, , pp. 192–194; Charle, La crise des sociétés impériales (1900–1940), pp. 106–107; Frédéric Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque (Lyon, 2008) p. 34.

  29 Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 35.

  30 Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871–1914, p. 58.

  31 Winock, La Belle Époque, p. 367; Weber, France, Fin-de-Siècle, p. 58; Jones, Paris, pp. 416–419; Marchand, Paris, histoire d’une ville, xixe–xxe siècle, p. 228; Castelle, Paris Républicain, pp. 145–146; Frédéric Lavignette, p. 36, from Le Petit Parisien, May 22, 1912, and p. 38, from Lectures pour tous, April 1913; James Cannon, The Paris Zone: A Cultural History, 1840–1944 (Farnham, UK, 2015), pp. 108–109. Tuberculosis struck 39,477 of 77,149 Parisian residential buildings.

  32 Cannon, The Paris Zone: A Cultural History, 1840–1944, pp. 89, 95–99, 112–116.

  33 Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871–1914, p. 137.

  34 Antoine Prost, Si nous vivions en 1913 (Paris, 1914), p. 23.

  35 Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871–1914, p. 141; Castelle, Paris Républicain, p. 139; Prost, Si nous vivions en 1913, pp. 12, 16; Frédéric Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 53.

  36 Marchand, Paris, histoire d’une ville, xixe–xxe siècle, p. 194.

  Chapter 4: Anarchists in Conflict

  1 Ian Birchall, “Proletarian Culture,” in Susan Weissman, ed., The Ideas of Victor Serge: A Life as a Work of Art (Glasgow, 1997), pp. 76–77; Anne Steiner, Les En-dehors: anarchistes individualistes et illégalistes à la “Belle Époque” (Paris, 2008), pp. 68–73; Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (New York, 2012), p. 32.

  2 Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pp. 30–32; see Dominique Kalifa, Les Bas-fonds; l’histoire d’un imaginaire (Paris, 2013).

  3 Victor’s article carried the title “L’Ouvrièrisme.”

  4 Dominique Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande (Paris, 2009), pp. 31–32; Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie (Paris, 2005), p. 20. Victor never met Libertad, who died before Victor arrived in Paris.

  5 BA 928, commissaire de police, September 5, 1907; Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, pp. 20–21.

  6 BA 928, report of October 34, 1904; Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, pp. 72–73.

  7 Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, pp. 22, 72–73; Victor Serge, “Méditation sur l’anarchie,” Esprit, 55, April 1, 1937, pp. 36–37; Anne Steiner, Rirette l’insoumise (Tulle, 2013), pp. 13–15; André Salmon, La Terreur noir (Paris, 2008), pp. 267, 302.

  8 Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 28–29; Serge, “Méditation sur l’anarchie,” pp. 36–37; Louis Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime (Paris, 1995), pp. 303– 304; Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, pp. 20–22, 74–76; JA 16, report of June 3, 1912; Steiner, Rirette l’insoumise, pp. 136–138. The influence of Victor Méric in Le Libertaire could be seen. For his part, Lorulut accepted the idea of anarchist “organisation cellulaire” (Vivien Bouhey and Philippe Levillain, Les anarchistes contre la République: contributions à l’histoire des reseaux sous la Troisiène République [1880–1914] [Rennes, 2008], pp. 381–386). Just before the war, Le Libertaire accepted the federative model of organization. Les Temps Nouveaux adopted a middle line between the two.

  9 BA 928, June 26, 1905; Victor Méric, Les bandits tragiques (Paris, 1926), p. 82.

  10 BA 928, January 1, 1908; BA 928, August 17 and November 16, 1907, January 1, 1908.

  11 BA 928, April 10, 1908.

  12 Steiner, Rirette l’insoumise, pp. 13–18.

  13 Victor Serge (Le Rétif), “Les Pauvres,” October 21, 1909, L’Anarchie, pp. 99–101, 173; and L’Anarchie, July 20, 1911.

  14 Cited in Steiner, Rirette l’insoumise, p. 99, published in L’Anarchie, August 19, 1909.

  15 Hubert Juin, Le Livre de Paris 1900 (Paris, 1994), pp. 9–13.

  16 Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 32.

  17 Eugen Weber, France Fin de Siècle (Cambridge, MA, 1986), p. 119.

  18 L’Anarchie, September 7, 1911 and July 25, 1912; André Girard, Anarchistes et bandits (Paris, 1914), p. 19; Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 23.

  19 Gaetano Manfredonia, Anarchisme et changement social: Insurrectionnalisme, syndicalisme, éducationnisme-réalisateur (Loriol, 2007), pp. 346–347; Anne
Steiner, Le gout de l’émeute: manifestations et violences de rue dans Paris et sa banlieue à la “Belle Époque” (Paris, 2012), p. 114.

  20 Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 24–25.

  21 Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, pp. 38–39; Victor Serge (Le Rétif), “Révolutionnaires? oui. Mais Comment?,” L’Anarchie, December 14, 1911, pp. 64–67; Susan Weissman, Victor Serge: The Course Is Set on Hope (London: Verso, 2001), p. 16.

  22 Serge, Le Retif, “Les Épaves,” p. 36.

  23 Serge, Le Rétif, “Les Épaves,” pp. 36–37; L’Anarchie, June 2, 1910, p. 49; L’Anarchie, March 9, 1911.

  24 Steiner, Rirette l’insoumise, pp. 19–20; Jean Maitron, ed., Le mouvement anarchiste en France. Vol. 1, Des origines à 1914 (Paris, 1975), pp. 423–424.

  25 Victor Serge, Le Rétif, pp. 36–37, 58–59, 63, 77, from L’Anarchie, April 28, 1910, March 9, 1911, and December 6, 1911.

  26 Serge, Le Rétif, pp. 102, 105. L’Anarchie, March 24, 1910. “Organiser la classe ouvriére en vue d’une transformation sociale, c’est perdre du temps et de l’énergie.… Par conséquent: il n’est qu’une besogne urgente, utile, indispensable—celle qui en créant des individus enfin dignes du titre d’hommes amérliore petit à petit le milieu—la besogne d’éducation et de combat anarchiste” (p. 110, February 24, 1910). In Brussels, Victor had already become acutely aware of the bitter division developing at Le Révolté between more traditional, intellectual anarchists and those espousing pure “individualism.”