Anarchist Terrorism in Europe and Russia

The second form of political violence during this period was anarcho- terrorism, which was shaped not only by horror at the consequences of rapid industrialisation and growing state power in Europe and the United States but also by complicated political and ideological developments across the political spectrum.

The radicals most threatened by the partial amelioration of working-class demands and the growing might of centralised states were anarchists. Like socialists, anarchists lamented what they understood to be working-class repression at the hands of capitalists and the states that they controlled. But anarchists decried the solutions proposed by socialists, which were seen as the substitution of one kind of repression for another.

Most anarchists were peaceful, even pacifistic, but a small fringe of the movement turned to violence in the hopes of bringing about a liberating revolution. But if they were few in number - as were the number of casualties - their impact was significant. Anarchist terrorists struck targets in Europe, Russia, South America and the United States, and their violence stretched from the 1880s to its last gasp in the early 1920s. While some anarchist attacks were carried out by small cells and loosely affiliated net­works, individuals were responsible for most of the mayhem.

Anarcho-terrorists acted on a range of motives, but three stand out. The first was articulated by Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian who was one of the key anarchist theorists of the nineteenth century. He theorised that individual attacks, motivated by anything from thievish greed to altruistic idealism, could foment chaos and wear down the state, eventually creating opportu­nities for revolutionaries to overthrow the state and establish self-governing communes. ‘Everything in this fight is equally sanctified by the revolution', Bakunin declared. ‘[Never mind that those destined to perish] will call it terrorism!'¹¹ While his vision of an anarchist heaven-on-earth never materi­alised, his strategy of using essentially random violence to create a revolutionary moment has become second nature to modern radicals willing to use terrorism, particularly against civilians.

The second motive behind anarcho-terrorism was best articulated by the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin who popularised the phrase ‘propaganda of the deed'. For him, this meant acts of violence or even simple insubordina­tion that, through visceral, immediately experienced examples, pushed com­moners past their passivity, their sense of inferiority, and their ingrained reluctance to act against their oppressors.

The European most associated with the direct promotion of terroristic ‘propaganda of the deed' was the German Johann Most, who published the anarchist newspaper Die Freiheit (Freedom), first in Germany and then in New York after he emigrated in 1882. Most essentially brought the Bakuninist and Kropotkinite justifications for terrorism together. He claimed that terrorism could ‘stoke the fire of revolution and incite people to revolt in any way we can'.^{[935] [936]} Most did not just encourage propaganda of the deed; the pages of Die Freiheit contained detailed descriptions of how to make and deploy poisons, dynamite and letter bombs. And after he moved to the United States, he spoke to rapturous audiences at anarchist clubs across the country - a speech in Chicago reportedly drew 6,000 - and directly contrib­uted to the spread of the doctrine of the propaganda of the deed in the New World.

Terrorist actions in Europe during this period were often prompted by the desire to avenge fellow anarchist revolutionaries. This was the case in France in the first half of the 1890s, when a string of intertwined bombings killed only a handful of victims but horrified and entranced the nation. The attacks were carried out, in two separate threads, first as responses to the suppression of a parade and a strike and then proceeded as reactions to the arrests of the others. Also notable was the nature of the targets, which included the home of a judge and a prosecutor, the headquarters of a mining company, cafes, the French Chamber of Deputies itself, and finally, in 1894, the French president, Sadi Carnot, who was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist. The terrorists used their trials to rail against the evils of capitalism and state power and to plead for other anarchists to take up the fight.

The same could be said for Russia, where, after a nearly two-decade lull, terrorism reached dizzying heights of destructiveness during and shortly after the 1905 Revolution. In that year, terrorism was only one of many kinds of violence and disruption alongside organised political opposition, peasant revolts, massive labour strikes, and mutinies by soldiers and sailors. Only Tsar Nicholas II's last-minute concessions of a limited constitution, a legislature and limited civil rights prevented the collapse of the state. Even then, terrorist violence was only finally brought down to manageable levels by 1911.

The most frequently told story of these years is the return of targeted assassination by the Combat Organisation, a small, secret group that carried out terrorist operations on behalf of the populist Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs). The SRs, who aspired to build a mass movement, valued terror for its ability to attract recruits, keep pressure on the state, and potentially create a revolutionary situation. The Combat Organisation assassinated two ministers of the interior (essentially national police chiefs) and a host of other officials, including the tsar's own uncle, the Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich.

While these attacks garnered headlines at home and abroad, they did not and could not seriously undermine the state itself. Far greater damage was done to both the state and society by a tidal wave of uncoordinated terrorist violence that swamped Russia during and for some time after 1905. Anna Geifman has estimated that nearly 17,000 people were killed or wounded in these terrorist attacks from 1905 to 1910.^[937] While local Socialist Revolutionary cells were responsible for some of these attacks, the vast majority were carried out by anarchists. While some were undoubtedly political, many were crimes sheathed in ideology, such as was the case with so-called ‘revolutionary expropriations'. These were robberies and murders carried out to raise funds for revolutionary purposes or, as was often the case, for personal gain but with the Bakuninist claim that such crimes struck at the capitalist system.