The World That Never Was: A True Story Of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, And Secret Agents (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
This is heavy going at times but stick with it and you get a fascinating, thrilling and jaw-dropping story. Under the cover of a historical study of anarchists and state security at the end of the 19th century, Butterworth gives us as much excitement as any Bond or Bourne film. Daring prison escapes, police dirty tricks homemade bombs and the true story which inspired Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent about the attempted bombing of Greenwich Observatory.Our action starts in 1870 and the rise and fall of the Paris commune an attempt to create a socialist government after defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, the workers taking to the streets, Paris under siege from surrounding Prussian forces and hot air balloons the only means of crossing the battle lines. Eventually this attempt at socialist government falls to bloody defeat, some of the survivors being sent to the harsh conditions of New Caledonia to serve sentence in exile.It ends with the Russian revolution the old anarchists who inspired the event were proclaimed heroes on their return but eventually driven out by Lenin.In-between is an extraordinary period of European history where anarchist networks spread across the continent carrying out assassinations on heads of state and prominent members of the establishment alike. Threatening to bring about their dream of a socialist utopia. Alongside this runs the secret police infiltrating the networks turning members to informants and as suggested in the book framing some for crimes uncommitted.The cast of characters is dense and fascinating. Alongside well known political activists like Bakunin and Kropotkin an aristocrat and a prince respectively who became disgusted with the treatment of the masses and others such as Louise Michel and Elisee Reclus there is Gabriel Jogand-Pages a serial hoaxer who once convinced the natives of Marseille they were being invaded by sharks and sent tourists flocking to a Swiss lake by telling them a fully intact Roman city was submerged underneath. Throw in cameos from Emma Goldman, William Morris, Allan Pinkerton founder of the detective agency and hovering over all of them Karl Marx and you have some incredibly colorful lives.And then there is Peter Rachkovsky the head of the Paris bureau of the Okrana Russia’s notorious secret police. Harassing the anarchists to the point of paranoid breakdowns by posting plainclothes officer outside their residences day and night, planting evidence to secure arrests and turning committed revolutionaries into committed police informants. A spider at the centre of Europe’s counter-revolutionary police his dodgy methods an interesting precursor to stories of police involvement in the protest movement. Whats striking is the ease with which assassins could attack politicians and heads of state simply walking up to their entourage and firing pistols or throwing bombs.The whole of Europe seems abuzz with plots and politics with various political protestors making front-page news and being treated like heroes. It’s a different world from todays political apathy.There are no easy guides to anarchism Karl Marx or socialist theory however Butterworth does his best to keep this political theory to a minimum it’s mainly about the people and their lives.This book feels like heavy going at first I felt the urge to pack it in during the first couple of chapters but I stuck with it and found myself surprised at how enjoyable it was. It shines a light on one of the most action packed periods in European history. Thrill seekers will enjoy and be educated. Giving up on this one after slogging through a little over half of it. Might come back to it at some point but it's been frustrating me for so long now that I feel I have to move onto something else or I'll go mad.It's a shame, really, since I feel like it fills a niche in the literature on anarchist history that confoundingly has never quite been filled. This is the only book I know of to focus specifically on 19th century anarchist terrorism. On top of that, it manages to tell the story of the terrorists themselves alongside the story of their pursuers in the various national intelligence agencies and secret police forces. This interweaving two-part structure is especially valuable for this topic, as it gives clear insight into how the movement was manipulated by the governments it opposed, undercover agents pushing the movement further and further toward violence which could then be used to justify even more violent repression.Also interesting is the fact that Butterworth is an outsider to the ideology he's discussing (another rarity in anarchist lit being intelligent and evenhanded appraisals of the movement by non-anarchists). Because of that, he's able to cut straight through the thick cloud of sanctity and fawning reverence with which too many anarchist texts shroud their pantheon of saints and martyrs. Some of the portraits he paints are refreshingly critical. Malatesta, for instance, is depicted as somewhat of a bumbling revolutionary wannabe with a comically unshakable optimism and an "unblemished record of failed insurrections." Likewise, Bakunin at the tail end of his life is described as a "corrupt husk," burning through a young acolyte's inheritance in order to refurbish his estate. The credulous Malatesta only leaves the old man, writes Butterworth, after the "belated realization that hiring picturesque milkmaids and excavating an artifical lake was not wholly essential to the creation of a revolutionary headquarters". Kropotkin (along with Communard exiles Elisee Reclus and Louise Michel) is given probably the most sympathetic treatment. That's not to say Butterworth isn't sympathetic in general. One gets the sense he agrees with the goals of the anarchists but abhors their violent methods (which, he convincingly demonstrates, ultimately led to their downfall).None of the positive features of this book can make up for its deficiencies, though. For one, Butterworth's accuracy is highly suspect. He freely admits that a paucity of records on certain figures and events has led him to do a little bit of papering over the gaps in his narrative. But some inaccuracies, such as the bewildering mistake of conflating Bakunin's "The Revolutionary Catechism" with Nechayev's "Catechism of a Revolutionary," can only be explained by sheer laziness and poor research skills. Written 4 years apart, the former is an anarchist manifesto, the latter a highly authoritarian manual for the formation of secret societies. Though Bakunin may have had input in Nechayev's text (the two had a tempestuous relationship), and despite the fact that it was reprinted in anarchist periodicals, its strong emphasis on hierarchy was in direct opposition to everything Bakunin stood for, and for Butterworth to think for an instant that it was a true collaboration between the two revolutionaries is enough to make me severely question everything else he has to say in the book. Oh and to top it off, the companion website where Butterworth claims his footnotes are located doesn't actually exist!There's also the problem of the book's scope and complexity. Though placing the events in a general historical context is appreciated, Butterworth does a horrible job deciding which details to include, often selecting things because they're bizarre or funny rather than essential to plot or analysis. The title and cover of the book goes a long way in describing its tone - constantly invoking an atmosphere of a STRANGE AND OTHERWORLDLY TIME, even when completely inappropriate to do so. As you can imagine, it gets old fast. Far too much time is spent discussing the failed French Commune and a few other political situations, and the cast of characters is simply too large. Many of them could have avoided mention entirely. And why on earth is Henri Rochefort, who has only a tangential relationship with anarchism, a major character whose life is followed closely throughout? At times it seems as if Butterworth began writing a book about the fallout of the Paris Commune, only later decided to focus more concretely on anarchism, and then just left in all the superfluous chapters. The book probably would have benefited too from more photographs of the people involved (would have helped keep them straight in my head) and perhaps a timeline. It's simply too much info to keep track of.The biggest issue is far simpler though: Butterworth is a bad writer. To be more specific, he's a pretentious, ostentatious writer. Others say it better than I can so I'll just quote them. One Amazon reviewer points out his "constant use of ten dollar words when fifty cent ones will do" - BINGO! Another writes, "the book clanks with long, convoluted, compound sentences that require more than one reading in many cases, but fails to provide the reader with a motivation to read them more than once" - BINGO AGAIN! I'm willing to bet Butterworth has read George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" but what he probably should have been reading was George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"!!
What do You think about The World That Never Was: A True Story Of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, And Secret Agents (2010)?
Still reading it, but absolutely fascinating especially with the current war on terrorism.
—Lola1234
Intro was the best part. did not get far into chapter 1. Writing was confusing to me.
—sohan
epub version - Oh my wishlist just keeps getting longer and longer. ;0
—Ilona
need to have some understanding of europe in the late 1800s
—juan
