Emile Henry

In Paris of the 1890s, there was a series of bombings and other acts of "propaganda by the deed" commited by anarchists and others fed-up with bthe corruption of French society, and by its apparently intractable resistance even to moderate reform, much less a thorough house-cleaning. Three anarchists, one known to history as Ravachol, and two others, Vaillant and Henry were arrested, tried and punished savagely, in three separate trials. Ravachol's death had provoked another act like the one which had led to his death, and then there was a revenge-bombing, another trial, and yet another revenge-bombing. This Russian-language text is a transation of Henri's speech in his own behalf at his particular trial. This copy probably came from the papers of G. P. Maximoff, long-time anarchist militant and multi-lingtual propagandist. It is noteworthy that at-least some members of the Union of Russian Workers, the publishers of this text thought it of sufficient importance to have issued it many years after the trial itself. The sense is that they considered it an anarchist classic. On the back page of this little pamphlet is a list of three other items in a companion series, concerning the double-agent Father Gapon, Pyotr Kropotkin, and Mikhail Bakunin… (altro)