Source
The Story Of The French Illegalists by Richard Parry
The first murmurings of discontent came over the question of communal eating and the ideological correctness of one's diet.
Some consternation was caused by Victor and Rirette's refusal to give up tea and coffee; they grew irritated by the salt and pepperless vegetarian diet and sat at the communal table less and less frequently.
Soon the two of them were dining separately and were declared by some of the others to be "insufficiently evolved".
There were disagreements over the contents of the paper:
Victor refused, as de facto editor, to insert an article by Garnier entitled 'Salt is Poison', and was annoyed at alterations made to articles by Raymond.
As illegalism increasingly became an article of faith for Octave Garnier and Edouard Carouy, their denunciations of Victor as a do-nothing intellectual and armchair anarchist became more virulent.
One day, in the last week of August, Edouard Carouy suddenly disappeared from Romainville.
He had apparently been denounced to the police as an accomplice in an attempted burglary in the suburb of Maisons-Alfort on the night of 23rd-24th August, in the course of which two men had been arrested.
Jeanne gathered up their belongings and herself left two days later.
Eight days after this, in the first week of September, Octave and Marie, René and Anna, as well as Raymond all decamped for equally mysterious locations, but presumably back to Paris.
This left just Victor, Rirette, the two kids and Huc the gardener.
Edouard Carouy was obviously worried that if he stayed he might be picked up for the Maisons-Alfort job, and if his real identity was discovered he would also face extradition for the attempted murder of the policeman in Charleroi.
He had tasted prison life and was determined not to return there under any circumstances.
He and Jeanne rented a small, typically-suburban pavilion from a teacher in St Thibault-les-Vignes, further west of Romainville on the River Marne.
He rented the place in the name of Raoul 'Leblanc' — the name of the author of Arsène Lupin, a novel based on the exploits of the anarchist burglar Marius Jacob.
The other comrades departed from Romainville encouraged by the arrests of certain of Octave's friends in July and triggered by the hasty departure of Edouard.
Besides this, they were evidently not getting on too well, with Victor and Rirette.
Victor still got on with René, and Raymond was an old friend, but it seems that they were both now under the influence of Octave and his mentor, Edouard.
In the wake of the latter's departure, and given his dislike for Victor, it seems most plausible that it was Octave Garnier who suggested that the rest of them leave; he also had other schemes in mind.
In his memoirs, however, Victor Kibalchich recalled a split on theoretical lines.
He said that, as a condition of his taking up the editorship of the paper, "the previous editing and printing staff, whose leading light was Raymond, should get out and...I should be allowed to recruit my own colleagues.
Nevertheless, for a month two staffs co-existed: the old one and mine".
He had wanted to give l'anarchie a new emphasis, "in the form of a turn from individualism to social action" (whereas it could be said that those who had left were to make a turn from individualism to anti-social action).
It has even been suggested that he began to lead some sort of campaign against illegalism, which he said was a theory that had "emerged out of Armand's spluttering".
In fact, Armand had very little to do with illegalism, despite having written a play called The Illegalists.
He had edited 'L'Ere Nouvelle (New Era) for the previous ten years — a mainly Tolstoyan, pacifist journal, since turned to individualist anarchism.
He had lived in Orleans for over a year (a town much favoured by criminals banned from living in Paris, due to its proximity to the capital) from where he was about to start publication of a new magazine called Hors du Troupeau (Outside of the Herd).
He had written a few casual justifications of illegalism, but then so had most anarchist individualists, including Victor himself.
The latter's later disagreements with Armand seem to have clouded his memory somewhat.
Further problems with Kibalchich's story are raised given the following article which appeared on the inside pages of l'anarchie between the time of Carouy's disappearance and the departure of the other five comrades.
It was entitled 'Considerations on the present state of anarchist propaganda and action' and its author was Lorulot.
He came out firmly against illegalism as some sort of anarchist panacea that could remedy social injustice.
He suggested that in its pride, brutality and lack of intelligence, the mentality of the illegalist could be no more than a mirror image of the mentality of a stupid cop.
Comrades full of pride, vanity and 'perverted temperaments', doing everything to profit themselves, were bad propagandists and bad comrades.
He was against 'swindling, exploitation and laziness' and for 'reason, education and conscience'; some comrades were guilty of such vile acts as defrauding comrades and parasitism.
Yet they presented the illegalist alone as a 'true anarchist', and boasted of their exploits, unaware that this 'playing to the gallery' and loose talk could easily put the police on their trail and endanger others.
Lorulot saw their individualism as 'perverted' with a tendency to embourgeoisement; the same impulsiveness which can make rebels can also make them unsuited for real comradeship.
"For my part, I would not want to assume the responsibility of leading naive youths to do acts for which they are unprepared, and who, tomorrow, would be victims of their own stupidity and my own blindness."
It's not hard to see why Lorulot left Romainville; he must have had violent arguments with Garnier, Carouy and their supporters, although he kept his strongest words until after he was back in Paris.
Nevertheless, it was up to Kibalchich as de facto editor to see that the article went in, although it would have been difficult to refuse space to the former editor.
The article was obviously directed against the comrades in Romainville, and its insertion in l'anarchie must have led to further recriminations between them and Victor Kibalchich, despite the fact that he did not agree with the contents.
Indeed, he welcomed a reply written by Levieux that treated Lorulot's article as verging on the hysterical and compared his argument to the pro-legality line put forward by Jean Grave in Temps Nouveaux.
Levieux denied that everything illegal was presented as an anarchist act by the illegalist comrades, and described imprisoned comrades as victims of the law, not of illegalism.
The risks of resignation were as great, if not worse, than the risks of revolt.
By October, Lorulot was calm enough to accept that illegal actions were a necessity imposed by society, but that illegalism could only be a last resort.
The surprising thing about all this is that Kibalchich later put himself in the role of Lorulot, as leading a campaign against illegalism and for 'social action', something which forced a split between him and his erstwhile comrades.
On the evidence (or inferences from such) this story seems untenable.
There was no turn from individualism to social action.
Le Rétif was consistent in his articles from the time of Révolté until his arrest the following year: he fiercely defended the actions of comrades who had taken up arms against the State and society.
What is certain, however, is that Kibalchich never committed any burglaries or acts of armed resistance; he remained an intellectual, and it was probably this, combined with his 'unscientific diet', which caused the hostility between him and the illegalists.
After Carouy's departure, the insertion of Lorulot's article was the final straw, and, under the dominating influence of Octave Garnier, the others quit l'anarchie.
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.