Verdier Publishing had the excellent idea of publishing the fascinating
account of the strange defeat of the libertarian writer MikhailOsorguine. Mikhail Osorguine was born in 1878 in Perm. He joined the
revolutionary movement and participated in the 1905 Revolution. Exiled
in Europe between 1906 and 1917, he returned to Russia in February 1917.
There, he participated in the founding of the Writers' Union. He was
judged a counter-revolutionary by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. He was first
imprisoned and then expelled from the USSR in 1922. He settled in France
in 1923. It was in exile that he published his main books on Russia,
including A Street in Moscow, which showcases his writing talents. ----
In 1940, he was forced to leave Paris and settled in Chabris, a small
town in the Cher region. There, he kept a journal, which he planned to
turn into a novel. Death surprised him in 1942, and the work was
therefore published in an unfinished form.
Ossorguine describes the situation in the country and simultaneously
reflects on his past, which was strongly influenced by the libertarian
ideal for personal reasons: a distrust of all forms of authority and
family; his partner, the writer Tatiana Bakunin, was the niece of the
"anarchist demon."
Distrustful of authority, he watched the arrival of the Germans with
disgust and openly despised the Vichy authorities.
The work is disjointed; Ossorguine jumps from one subject to another.
A passionate libertarian, he relishes reading Ludovic Halévy's Monsieur
et Madame Cardinal, whose section "The Insurgent" is a short manifesto
of the rebel. He enjoys revisiting some of Kropotkin's texts, examining
their contemporary meaning.
He also evokes his memories of Soviet Russia, the violence of the
political police, the Cheka prisons, and the early days of the communist
regime. The book is also a lively analysis of the population's
difficulties, from the first instances of discrimination to food
shortages as early as the summer of 1940, but also of the bonds of
solidarity that can exist in semi-rural communities.
A text that is sometimes disconcerting, yet fascinating.
In a Peaceful Village in France
Mikhaïl Ossorguine
Verdier 2025 EUR22 280 p.
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8275
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