Creative History

  It began in the Spring of 1921 while much of Russia was still in the grips of frigid winter weather.  It started four years after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and it began after years of bloody Civil War, between Communist forces called Bolsheviks by some, and Reds by others under the dictatorial leadership of Vladimir Lenin against the so-called Whites, those forces still loyal to the Romanov Dynasty of the Czar or those seeking a Capitalist and more democratic Russia for the 20th century. By early 1921 Vladimir Lenin and his Communist forces had consolidated control over most of the country, and the White forces who were backed by the victors of World War One, most notably the United States and Great Britain, were on the run and clinging to isolated outposts along Russia’s Pacific coast far from central Europe.   During 1921 Russia was suffering through one of the most severe and prolonged periods of drought on record.  Almost no rain at all, just .03 milliliters, had fallen

  “No quarter is given; it is sheer butchery; a struggle between savage beasts maddened with blood and fury.  Even the wounded fight to the last gasp.  When they have no weapon left, they seize their enemies by the throat and tear them with their teeth…” The text quoted above is from a work of narrative military history published in 1862 entitled A Memory of Solferino .  It was written by a Swiss banker, a gentleman and a devout Christian, who happened to be an unexpected witness to one the 19th century’s largest and most ferocious battles on mainland Europe. That man was Jean Henry Dunant who today is best remembered for winning the inaugural Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 and for being the founding inspiration behind the formation of the International Committee of the Red Cross.  Today, the Red Cross in conjunction with its partner organization, the Red Crescent, is the single largest and most influential humanitarian organization in the world and it all began on a bloody battlefield

He has been employed as a silk weaver, and fittingly enough, Gaetano Bresci has traveled all the way from Paterson--New Jersey’s ‘Silk City’-- to the land of his birth, a small resort town called Monza located just outside of Milan in northern Italy. It is mid-afternoon on July 29, 1900. Gaetano Bresci is a thirty year old Italian-American immigrant; he’s married to an Irish-American woman named Sophie Kneiland who grew up in Hoboken, with whom he has fathered  two young daughters.  Despite being a devout family man, which by all accounts Gaetano Bresci most definitely was, he is also an anarchist. He had immigrated to New Jersey several years before after running afoul of Italian legal authorities for publishing supposedly dangerous and insurrectionist anarchist literature.  Bresci eventually settled in Paterson, New Jersey, a hotbed of anarchist meetings and activity in the United States, where he was able to not only continue to carry on his war against all world governments,