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“So, that is my life—the life of a schoolgirl-revolutionary, a student-dreamer, a friend and lover of the great man and poet Aleksandr Iaroslavskii, an eternal wanderer, an itinerant anti-religious lecturer, a writer for Rul, a street newspaper vendor, a thief with a long criminal record, and a travelling fortune-teller.” (from My Autobiography, E. Iaroslavskaia-Markon)

The manuscript, completed on February 3, 1931, anticipated by a few months the execution of the authour at the age of twenty-nine, which took place in the courtyard of the isolation block in the gulag of the Solovki Islands. The manuscript – thirty-nine pages written in dense, tight handwriting – was discovered in 1996 in the archives of the FSB headquarters of the Arkhangelsk region. In her autobiography, Evgeniia talks about herself, her life, her comrade and companion Aleksandr Iaroslavskii and their commitment in fighting ’til their last breath against the tyranny of the Bolshevik power.

Evegeniia Iaroslavskaia-Markon, With blood and words

133 pages / 5 euros

Printed June 2020

 

 

Claudio Lavazza, rebel, anarchist, bank robber and gentleman. During the 70s in Italy he participated in the struggle against State and Capital, arms in hand. Contrary to the grave-diggers of subversion, after this experience, he never traded his desire to overthrow the existent for a political career. He never resigned, nor sought refuge in any State, which could have granted him a controlled freedom. He kept fighting, against winds and tides.

After 16 years on the run, never renouncing his anarchist coherence, nor the joy of living as a free man, he was arrested after a bank robbery in Córdoba, Spain, in 1996. On this occasion, three comrades, including Claudio, were seriously injured and two policewomen lost their lives. Claudio was subsequently locked up in the special prison regime FIES, where – even in this toxic place – he continued his battle with firmness and perseverance.

After serving twenty-two years in the Spanish dungeons, he was temporarily extradited to France – since his sentence in Spain is not yet finished – in the summer of 2018. Here he would stand trial for a bank robbery of the National Bank of Saint-Nazaire, which took place in 1986. For this robbery he had already been sentenced in absentia to thirty years of prison.

Going to take money where there is plenty is always a possibility, as a refusal of the blackmail of work and exploitation, to seize the necessary means to carry out a struggle against the State. However, back then in Saint-Nazaire, “the tightrope robbers”1 did not just touch any safe. They expropriated the State’s vault, emptying the pockets of those who oil the gears of power of almost twenty-six million euros.

Even when faced with the most adverse conditions, when everything needed to be rebuilt and re-imagined, Claudio beat his own path, with countless smiles and struggles. As an anarchist, his passion is freedom; his enemy is power. There is no time to waste when one is armed with this conscience.

It is up to each one of us to forge our own journeys, to undermine, harm, expropriate and destroy everything that belongs to power, its structures and its servants.

Claudio Lavazza, My Pestiferous Life

300 pages / 8 euros

Printed  May 2020