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All posts for the month January, 2011

Russians in London: the anarchist threat

For my final post in the series (for now), I want to discuss events rather than individuals. As a couple of my recent posts have suggested, by the end of the nineteenth century, the nature and number of Russian visitors to, and settlers in, London had changed considerably. It was no longer the preserve of […]

Document: An Appeal to Public Opinion

In my last post, I referred to a political pamphlet from 1916, An Appeal to Public Opinion: Should the Russian Refugees be Deported? It was published by the Committee of Delegates of the Russian Socialist Groups in London in response to the threat to deport Russian immigrants who refused to serve in the British Army, […]

Russians in London: Russian and Jewish radicals

In this post, the penultimate in the series, instead of focusing on a single figure, I’m going to explore one of the lines that connects Russian radicals, and in particular their agitational/publishing activities, to the work of their Russian-Jewish counterparts. Some may suggest that this stretches the definition of ‘Russians’ too far, as Jews would […]

Russians in London: Lenin

I’m no fan of Lenin, but he spent a good deal of time in London, so must be included in this series. I haven’t chosen this mugshot as an expression of my disapproval – it’s just that most of the photos that are available were taken after the revolution, and this one is the closest […]

Kropotkin: an addendum

I’ve finally got round to reading Rudolf Rocker, The London Years, trans. Joseph Leftwich (Nottingham: Five Leaves; Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005). It’s a powerful and readable book, even if the translation is a bit clunky. Among many points of interest, it contains a couple of marvellous descriptions of Kropotkin that really give a very strong […]

Russians in London: Pyotr Kropotkin

The geographer and anarchist Prince Pyotr Kropotkin first arrived in England in July 1876, fresh from his legendary escape from the Peter and Paul fortress in St Petersburg. He lived briefly in Edinburgh, and earned a living writing for The Times and the journal Nature, but it would be another ten years before he settled […]

Russians in London: Vladimir Solov’ev

On 11 July 1875, the philosopher and poet Vladimir Solov’ev arrived in London. Having finished his studies (in natural sciences, then history and philology) at Moscow University and at the seminary at Sergiev Posad, Solov’ev was already, at the tender age of 22, teaching philosophy at Moscow University. On the advice of various friends and […]