The Propaganda of the Deed

The insurrections in France and Spain were on the whole spontaneous uprisings, but those disturbances in Italy in which the anarchists played a part were largely the result of agitation. Of course, adverse political and economic conditions were the chief causes of that general spirit of unrest which was prevalent in the early seventies in all the Latin countries, but after 1874 the numerous riots in which the anarchists were active were almost entirely the work of enthusiasts who believed they could make revolutions. The results of the previous uprisings had a terribly depressing effect upon nearly all the older men, but there were four youths attached to Bakounin’s insurrectionary ideas whose spirits were not bowed down by what had occurred. Carlo Cafiero, Enrico Malatesta, Paul Brousse, and Prince Kropotkin were at the period of life when action was a joyous thing, and they undertook to make history. Cafiero we know as a young Italian of very wealthy parents. Malatesta “had left the medical profession and also his fortune for the sake of the revolution.” ( ¹ ) Paul Brousse was of French parentage, and had already distinguished himself in medicine, but he cast it aside in his early devotion to anarchism. He had rushed to Spain when the revolution broke out there, and he was always ready to go where- ever an opportunity offered itself for revolutionary activity. The Russian prince, Kropotkin, the fourth member 50of the group, was a descendant of the Ruriks, and it was said sometimes, in jest, that he had more right to the Russian throne than Czar Alexander II. The fascinating story of his life is told in the “Memoirs of a Revolutionist,” but modesty forbade him to say that no one since Bakounin has exercised so great an influence as himself over the principles and tactics of anarchism. Kropotkin first visited Switzerland in 1872, when he came in close contact with the men of the Jura Federation. A week’s stay with the Bakouninists converted him, he says, to anarchism. ( ² ) He then returned to St. Petersburg, and shortly after entered the famous circle of Tchaykovsky, and, as a result of his revolutionary activity, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. After his thrilling escape from prison, in 1876, Kropotkin returned to Switzerland, and for several years gave himself up entirely to the cause of anarchism. These four young men, all far removed by training and position from the working class, after the death of Bakounin, devised the Propaganda of the Deed, a method of agitation that was destined to become famous throughout the world.