My Disillusionment in Russia

by Emma Goldman

Overview

In 1919, at the height of the anti-leftist Palmer Raids conducted by the Wilson administration, the anarchist activist and writer Emma Goldman was deported to the nascent Soviet Union. Despite initial plans to fight the deportation order in court, Goldman eventually acquiesced in order to take part in the new revolutionary Russia herself. While initially supportive of the Bolsheviks, with some reservations, Goldman's firsthand experiences with Bolshevik oppression and corruption prompted her titular disillusionment and eventual emigration to Germany. In My Disillusionment in Russia, Goldman records her travels throughout Russia as part of a revolutionary museum commission, and her interactions with a variety of political and literary figures like Vladimir Lenin, Maxim Gorky, John Reed, and Peter Kropotkin. Goldman concludes her account with a critique of the Bolshevik ideology in which she asserts that revolutionary change in institutions cannot take place without corresponding changes in values. My Disillusionment in Russia had a troubled publication history, since the first American printing in 1923 omitted the last twelve chapters of what was supposed to be a thirty-three chapter book. (Somehow, the last chapters failed to reach the publisher, who did not suspect the book to be incomplete.) The situation was remedied with the publication of the remaining chapters in 1924 as part of a volume titled My Further Disillusionment in Russia. This Standard Ebooks edition compiles both volumes into a single volume, following the intent of the original manuscript.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9791041802715
Publisher:	Culturea
Publication date:	06/27/2023
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.73(d)

About the Author

Emma Goldman (1869 - 1940) was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (now Kaunas in Lithuania), Goldman emigrated to the US in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Though Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth. In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested-along with hundreds of others-and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1923, she wrote a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940. During her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman's iconic status was revived in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest in her life.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
I.	Deportation to Russia	1
II.	Petrograd	8
III.	Disturbing Thoughts	15
IV.	Moscow: First Impressions	22
V.	Meeting People	31
VI.	Preparing for American Deportees	38
VII.	Rest Homes for Workers	44
VIII.	The First of May in Petrograd	48
IX.	Industrial Militarization	51
X.	The British Labour Mission	58
XI.	A Visit from the Ukraina	60
XII.	Beneath the Surface	68
XIII.	Joining the Museum of the Revolution	75
XIV.	Petropavlovsk and Schlusselburg	80
XV.	The Trade Unions	84
XVI.	Maria Spiridonova	90
XVII.	Another Visit to Peter Kropotkin	97
XVIII.	En Route	101
XIX.	In Kharkov	105
XX.	Poltava	122
XXI.	Kiev	133
XXII.	Odessa	153
XXIII.	Returning to Moscow	160
XXIV.	Back to Petrograd	169
XXV.	Archangel and Return	178
XXVI.	Death and Funeral of Peter Kropotkin	186
XXVII.	Kronstadt	193
XXVIII.	Persecution of Anarchists	201
XXIX.	Travelling Salesmen of the Revolution	212
XXX.	Education and Culture	221
XXXI.	Exploiting the Famine	233
XXXII.	The Socialist Republic Resorts to Deportation	237
XXXIII.	Afterword	242