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“Psychologic social moment” was Berkman’s attempt to explain the timing of attentats and other militant actions that he considered would be effective in having the maximum social impact for being carried out. He used this terminology, for instance, to account for the planned bombing of John D. Rockefeller’s Tarrytown house in 1914 by a group of anarchists protesting against the Ludlow massacre. In essence, it’s the right action at the right time.
59 Frank Mollock was a baker and member of the Autonomist group that had planned to kill Frick. He had sent Berkman some money, on behalf of the group, to cover expenses. Police found the letter when they searched Nold’s house and Mollock was arrested on July 25 in Long Branch, New Jersey on charges of complicity in the attack on Frick. He denied knowing Berkman and was eventually released for lack of evidence after the police had fruitlessly searched his New York apartment.
60 Berkman is referring to Paul Eckert who lived with Nold at 5 Cherry St., Allegheny City. Although questioned by the police, Eckert was never arrested or charged. In July 1885, writing for the underground paper Zuchthausblüthen (Prison Blossoms), that he, Bauer, Nold, and others had created in the Western Penitentiary, Berkman is much clearer in his belief that Eckert gave the police information. Indeed, Eckert was called as a state witness in the trial of Bauer and Nold. There is however some contradictory evidence from the contemporary anarchist press that Eckert also made attempts to raise money to help the three imprisoned men.
61 Berkman suggests that Stein liked the good things in life a little too much to be a serious revolutionary.
62 The paper Berkman mentions here is Varhayt (Truth), which was produced in New York for twenty issues between February and June 1889 and published by the Pioneers of Liberty.
63 Berkman is consciously echoing Sergey Nechayev’s Catechism of a Revolutionist (1869) with its assertion that “The character of the true revolutionary has no place for any romanticism, sentimentality, enthusiasm or seduction.”
64 Sophia Perovskaya (1853–1881) was part of the Directive Committee of Narodnaya Volya that planned the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in March 1881. Previously she had helped plan unsuccessful attempts on the life of the Tsar. She was hung on April 3, 1881 alongside some of her fellow conspirators. Vera Figner (1852–1942) was also part of the Directive Committee of Narodnaya Volya that planned the assassination attempts on Tsar Alexander II. She was captured later than her other comrades and served over twenty years in prison before being allowed to go abroad in 1905. Vera Zasulich (1849–1919) attempted to assassinate Trepov, the governor of St. Petersburg in 1878 but only succeeded in wounding him. Found not guilty she fled the country fearing her re-arrest, and eventually joined the Menshevik branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
65 Figner served over a year of solitary confinement in the Petropavloka, The Peter and Paul Fortress, in St. Petersburg before her trial, and Perovskaya was briefly imprisoned there before her trial and execution. None of the women mentioned by Berkman seem to have been imprisoned in Schüsselburg Prison (near St. Petersburg) although Michael Bakunin and other Russian revolutionaries were. It appears to have been the prison that housed those considered to be the most dangerous political prisoners.
66 A reference to Michael Strogoff, the 1876 novel by Jules Verne that is a little hard to identify by Billy’s somewhat cavalier re-telling. The novel has nothing to do with nihilists but with the efforts of Strogoff, an agent of the Tsar, to deal with a Tartar rebellion. He does, for some of the novel, pretend he has been blinded as a result of being tortured by the Tartars.
67 Carl Nold was arrested on Monday, July 25 as he returned from his lunch break to the forge in the Taylor and Dean factory on Market St. Henry Bauer was arrested at 9am the next day at his home, 73 Spring Gardens Avenue, Allegheny. Bauer was released on $5,000 bail in early August. Nold was released on $7,000 bail on August 13. Both were charged with intent to riot at Homestead (as a result of the leaflet they had handed out there on July 8) and conspiracy with Berkman to murder Frick.
68 Most gave an interview to the New York World on July 27, 1892 in which he criticized the attempt by Berkman on Frick’s life. He berated Berkman for joining the Autonomists and accused him of making the attempt on Frick’s life because he wanted “glory.” His more considered response would appear in Freiheit on August 27, under the title “Attentats-Reflexionen.” In this article, which was composed on July 31 and apparently agreed to by “press committees” of anarchists in New York and Allegheny, Most argued against the tactical efficacy of Berkman’s act, suggesting anarchists could not afford “the luxury of assassination in America” while still acknowledging Berkman’s personal courage in the matter.
69 Berkman, Goldman, and Stein began to associate with the German autonomists in the Radical Workers’ League around August 1891. They appear to have tired of Most’s rather dominant personality and grown more and more interested in the anarchist communist ideas of the autonomists who favored working in small groups and were suspicious of leadership of any kind. Most, who had employed Berkman as a typesetter on Freiheit, was angry at what he considered their betrayal, especially as Berkman became a rather vocal critic of Most. The most public example of this took place at an anarchist convention held at New York’s Clarendon Hall at the end of 1891. Matters were not helped by the fact that Most was in prison at the time and could not reply to any criticism. Most had also previously been in a relationship with Goldman and there may well have been personal as well as political factors that added to the bitterness.
70 Johann Most is often credited with popularizing the concept of “propaganda by the deed” and was the author of Revolutionare Kriegswissenschaft, or The Science of Revolutionary Warfare: A Little Handbook of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerine, Dynamite, Gun-Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, Etc., Etc. (1885).
71 For details of the speech see note 51 above.
72 Most was elected twice to the Reichstag, the second time in January 1878. However constant harassment by the government, and the passing of anti-Socialist laws, drove him to leave Germany in December 1878 after being expelled from Berlin. He would never return.
73 In 1890, Berkman and Stein considered returning to Russia to carry out reprisals against those responsible for the killing of prisoners at a camp in Siberia. They had read about this incident in an article by George Kennan published in Century Magazine. Most arranged for Berkman to learn typesetting so he could run a printing press once they were back in Russia and produced a circular recommending the two men to anarchists and other radicals in Europe.
74 The “Colonel” was Col. W. D. Moore. The “younger man” was Attorney J. Friedman. Both had been engaged by a Defense Committee (probably created by Harry Gordon and Max Metzkow) to represent Berkman, Bauer, and Nold.
75 August Reinsdorf (1849–1885) was a German anarchist who, in September 1883, attempted to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm I, Emperor of Germany, by blowing up the train the Emperor was traveling