The idea of CIRA was created during a meeting which was held in Geneva in 1956 between 'an Italian conscientious objector, a French war resister, a Bulgarian refugee and an elderly Swiss anarchist, former activist at the Ligue d'Action du Bâtiment Geneva.'
CIRA was founded in the following year and for six years was run in a rented room in the city by Italian anarchist Pietro Ferrua. Ferrua was deported from Switzerland in 1963 after an anti-Francoist attack was made on the Spanish consulate in Geneva two years previously. In the following year CIRA was moved to Lausanne into a room in a family boarding house which was kept by Marie-Christine Mikhaïlo, who ran the library with her daughter Marianne Enckell. In 1975 CIRA returned to Geneva, where it stayed until 1989, after which it finally moved to its current address.
Recent history
CIRA is an association which is recognised by the city council under articles 60 et seq of the Swiss Civil Code and is supervised by an international committee, while a local committee runs the centre with volunteers. Moran (2014) observed that the centre employed a worker, as well as taking people undertaking alternative civilian service instead of being conscripted for military service. Cleminson (2012) described it as follows:
'CIRA is a major research centre containing a vast range of historical and contemporary materials, mainly but not exclusively European. As well as housing an extensive anarchist library, it holds research papers, pamphlets, a substantial collection of newspapers and periodicals and provides an extremely convivial environment for research and learning. Available at www.cira.ch/.' (Cleminson 2012, p.366).
There are branches of CIRA in Marseille and Fujinomiya. CIRA Nippon was set up in 1970 in Fujinomiya, and as of 2011, the archive contained 2000 books.
In 2020 the Lausanne library held 20,000 books and pamphlets and 4,000 periodicals (100 of which were active).
Publications
CIRA has published a yearly bulletin since 1959, which is available to subscribers and is also online. The bulletin contains articles in French, Spanish, Italian and English, along with listings of their acquisitions for the year, and information about research, libraries and conferences. The edited collection Refuser de parvenir (The refusal to make a career) was published by the CIRA collective in 2016 following discussions held at CIRA in 2013 and 2014.
'Centre International de Recherches sur l’Anarchisme (CIRA), Marseille, France. This gives access not only to Felip Equy’s annually updated "anarchist bibliographies", but also to an archive of the Centre’s Bulletins. The latter has often carried historical or biographical studies, and information on current research. Available at http://cira.marseille.free.fr/.' (Cleminson 2012, p.366).
Cleminson, Richard (2012). "Anarchism, Anarcho-syndicalism and the Libertarian Movement in Spain, Portugal and Latin America". In Kinna, Ruth (ed.). The Continuum Companion to Anarchism(PDF). London: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN978-1-4411-4270-2.
Kashdan, Sylvie (2017). "CIRA at sixty". Fifth Estate. Fall (399).
Hoyt, Andrew (2012). "The international anarchist archives: A report on conditions and a proposal for action". Theory in Action. 5 (4): 30-46. doi:10.3798/tia.1937-0237.12031.
