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My Disillusionment in Russia
A teenager when she and her family emigrated to the United States, Emma Goldman (1869–1940) was so greatly affected by Chicago's Haymarket Square tragedy in 1886 that she became a revolutionary and campaigned for such then-controversial transformations in society as higher wages, the eight-hour workday, birth control, and abolition of the draft during World War I. Because of these activities, she was deported to Russia in 1919, where she was able to witness the Revolution's aftermath firsthand. Horrified by what she saw in major cities and revolted by the Bolshevik dictatorship, she left the country in 1921 and, soon after, set down her thoughts in two books — My Disillusionment in Russia and My Further Disillusionment in Russia. She wrote passionately about political harassment and forced labor inflicted upon the masses, rampant opportunism raging throughout the Soviet government, industrial militarization, persecution of anarchists, and the government's increased use of deportation as a political weapon. Her writings helped turn a large number of socialists against the Bolshevik government. Her two books have been combined in this Dover edition — a volume that will be of value to teachers, students, and anyone interested in the socio-economic problems of the early 20th century.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1923
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About the author
Emma Goldman
367 books1,047 followersEmma Goldman was a feminist 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 (present-day Kaunas, 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. Although 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, aged 70.
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.
Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, 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. Although 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, aged 70.
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.
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October 15, 2020
In My Disillusionment in Russia Emma Goldman uncovered the failure of the Bolsheviks to bring about a new era of social justice through revolution in Russia. Leninism was the tragic flaw. She summed up in the Afterword:
The italics are hers.
By 1923, she had glimpsed the future and seen the ethical and moral wasteland that was the Soviet Union. She knew it was doomed from the start.
No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the Means used to further it be identified in spirit and tendency with the Purposes to be achieved...Today is the parent of tomorrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.
The italics are hers.
By 1923, she had glimpsed the future and seen the ethical and moral wasteland that was the Soviet Union. She knew it was doomed from the start.
February 26, 2025
Emma Goldman: the pinnacle critical thinker.
Welcome weary traveler who has come across my review for My Further Disillusionment with Russia. Like you, I have read plenty of communist sympathetic texts as well as western society critiques. Like you, I enjoy the Marxist critiques of capitalism and generally endorse social democratic policy. Like you, I’m horrified by the history of the Soviet communist regime. Like you, my mind has been utterly blown away when I’m gaslighted by modern day communists when I criticize Soviet Russia and have been belittled into believing that I’m simply an indoctrinated western propagandist. Well, my friend, this book is for you.
Is there anyone more apt to critique and provide an unbiased opinion of Soviet Russia and the Bolshevik revolution than a lefty leftist anarchist who was imprisoned and then deported from the US for being too radical left who visited Russia in 1921? In this book, there is no “western revisionist history”. Anarchist Emma Goldman simply gives her unadulterated opinion of the Bolshevik movement and what does she find?
It was bad. Very bad.
Goldman was hoping for an anarchist promised land when she came to Russia but she only found state-inflicted famines, political prisoners, rationing of food, tiered salary from the state, arrest and writers with dissenting opinions, state capitalism and an overall oppressive authoritarian regime. Hmm, sounds like everything else I’ve read about the USSR that is allegedly just western propaganda. All the bolshevik revolution did was a scene-change from the Romanovs sitting on a throne to Lenin sitting on that throne. Lenin was a politician, contorting his rhetoric and actions to stay in power just like any other politician before and after. The bolshevik’s bastardized the concept of revolution.
Goldman’s observations in the Afterword are simply brilliant. She is a fiercely intelligent thinker (she was also kind of a terrorist who plotted the assassination of Henry Clay Frick, so she’s no paragon of virtue). Goldman argues that the peasant class revolution that happened in Russia actually subverted Marxist ideas. Marx argued that a society needed a sufficient degree of industrialization to then move to a socialist revolution. Goldman states that the largely agrarian people of Russia didn’t even know about Marx theory and went ahead and started a revolution anyway, totally upending that theory. It was then the bolsheviks and the Lenin cadre that co-opted the movement and rebranded their own authoritarianism.
Reading this book was an exercise in confirmation bias for me and it honestly felt very good. I won’t let another modern day communist lead me to believe that the Soviets were “building communism” and how wonderful they were because they gave free education and healthcare to people. I got news for you: other modern “western” societies have done that except without the overt authoritarianism and overt civil rights violations. I’m sick and tired of the Soviet apologetics. It’s unfathomable insulting to the victims of that terrible, terrible, regime.
Welcome weary traveler who has come across my review for My Further Disillusionment with Russia. Like you, I have read plenty of communist sympathetic texts as well as western society critiques. Like you, I enjoy the Marxist critiques of capitalism and generally endorse social democratic policy. Like you, I’m horrified by the history of the Soviet communist regime. Like you, my mind has been utterly blown away when I’m gaslighted by modern day communists when I criticize Soviet Russia and have been belittled into believing that I’m simply an indoctrinated western propagandist. Well, my friend, this book is for you.
Is there anyone more apt to critique and provide an unbiased opinion of Soviet Russia and the Bolshevik revolution than a lefty leftist anarchist who was imprisoned and then deported from the US for being too radical left who visited Russia in 1921? In this book, there is no “western revisionist history”. Anarchist Emma Goldman simply gives her unadulterated opinion of the Bolshevik movement and what does she find?
It was bad. Very bad.
Goldman was hoping for an anarchist promised land when she came to Russia but she only found state-inflicted famines, political prisoners, rationing of food, tiered salary from the state, arrest and writers with dissenting opinions, state capitalism and an overall oppressive authoritarian regime. Hmm, sounds like everything else I’ve read about the USSR that is allegedly just western propaganda. All the bolshevik revolution did was a scene-change from the Romanovs sitting on a throne to Lenin sitting on that throne. Lenin was a politician, contorting his rhetoric and actions to stay in power just like any other politician before and after. The bolshevik’s bastardized the concept of revolution.
Goldman’s observations in the Afterword are simply brilliant. She is a fiercely intelligent thinker (she was also kind of a terrorist who plotted the assassination of Henry Clay Frick, so she’s no paragon of virtue). Goldman argues that the peasant class revolution that happened in Russia actually subverted Marxist ideas. Marx argued that a society needed a sufficient degree of industrialization to then move to a socialist revolution. Goldman states that the largely agrarian people of Russia didn’t even know about Marx theory and went ahead and started a revolution anyway, totally upending that theory. It was then the bolsheviks and the Lenin cadre that co-opted the movement and rebranded their own authoritarianism.
Reading this book was an exercise in confirmation bias for me and it honestly felt very good. I won’t let another modern day communist lead me to believe that the Soviets were “building communism” and how wonderful they were because they gave free education and healthcare to people. I got news for you: other modern “western” societies have done that except without the overt authoritarianism and overt civil rights violations. I’m sick and tired of the Soviet apologetics. It’s unfathomable insulting to the victims of that terrible, terrible, regime.
March 29, 2019
So far, I've been extremely impressed with this book and will probably give it a 5. She's an excellent writer and each page contains interesting insights. The writer, who immigrated to the US from Russia as a child, was deported from the US back to the Soviet Union for her political views along with hundreds of other left-wing immigrants. The book gives a clear picture of what life was like in the USSR soon after the Russian Revolution.
Having now finished the book, I would say it will reward any reader interested in post revolutionary Russia - Ms. Goldman rips away any illusions about what the Bolsheviks wrought, in the wake of the revolution that started before Lenin seized power. All in all, she paints a dispiriting picture of life under the Bolsheviks, a highly restrictive system that would persist until Russians finally let it die in 1991. Ms. Goldman says that this is exactly what a revolution should not be: Hobbling discourse, using any and all means to achieve goals, etc. She likens the Bolsheviks to the Jesuits - and condemns both.
It is also worth reading the book to get glimpses of well-known figures of the Russian Revolution, such as Lenin, and famous anarchist figures such as Kropotkin. No, not all anarchists are crazies etc. Although I don't know much about it, it seems to me some who espouse those beliefs may be similar to today's libertarians. One thing is for sure: They dislike centralized States. They may have helped Russia with its revolution, but they disliked the Bolshevik state led by the Russian CP. That was why thousands of them were jailed by the Russian gov, despite the anarchists having been allies and defenders of the revolution.
Having read the book, I looked up the author in Wikipedia. I obviously do not agree with Ms. Goldman's plan to assassinate Frick - that was definitely wrong. She went to jail for that - correctly so. That wasn't the only thing she did, nor the only time she was jailed, but it does jump out as a noteworthy and negative part of her life story. IMO, if an idea has merit, you should not have to force it on people violently. I would say that my position on social change would support step wise evolution rather than revolution. There is something very wrong with a society in which the 1% have so much and the 99% so little. Where so many live paycheck to paycheck, and the alternative may well be homelessness. But I do not think a revolution is the solution. A social revolution would probably have very little support in any event, a fact which Goldman acknowledged then, and is as true today, plus it would nullify the very thing people identify the US with: A chance to start over, do new things, try and possibly succeed or fail. The near-chaotic system that allows people to try new things - start new businesses, think of new things -- evidently can't be duplicated under a centrally planned economy, even though the Russians did make tremendous strides under communism such as spreading literacy and health care etc., the system was also quite oppressive and stultifying.
You have to wonder how much progress they might have made by now had they not been trapped in the centrally planned system for about 70 years. The country lost about 27 million people in the Second World war, after losing many in the First World War, then many more in the course of the Civil War, then many more in famines, then many more under Stalin's purges. If you add up all the people lost, it is probably close to 100 million lost, and then there were also many whose lives were just ruined by the repression, even if they weren't killed. There was also environmental/ecological catastrophe throughout the E. Bloc states - in the rush to develop - so there are probably even more millions who died prematurely through exposures to industrial or radioactive toxicity.
The country in a way took the bait of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, the nobles, the big landowners and industrialists, in a class French revolution type revolution, but the outcome was certainly not ideal. Far from it. They ended up in an even more repressive system than that of the tsar.
Still, it's all history now. Once they fell into the rabbit hole of Bolshevik dictatorial control it was impossible to break out, until the Red Army finally decided it wasn't going to move on Soviet orders. That was when the Soviet Union fell, and with it communist party power.
Does every country get the form of government they want, despite their protests to the country? Is that why each government in Russia post tsardom was either a dictatorship or authoritarian? Are Russians so accustomed to a strong central gov that they can't deal with a less central, looser form of gov - more "chaotic" perhaps, but much less repressive, etc.? Putin has managed to bring authoritarianism back to Russia - he's captured the vast majority of the press, and many journalists and opposition figures have been murdered, seemingly with impunity. Is a brutal, centralized government what Russians always want, since they've more or less had the same thing for centuries? Who knows..
Here are some of the quotes, meanwhile:
From the Introduction by Rebecca West:
"For thirty years or so [Goldman] ... traveled around the United States saying things that struck her as being true: that free speech was a good think; that war was a bad thing."
"The exact duplication under the Tsardom and under Bolshevism of a system that impede the development of material prosperity, destroys individual liberty, and imposes general discomfort on the community, is a sign that, odd as it may seem to the Western mind, these are the ends toward which Russia likes its government to work."
From A Biographical Sketch of Emma Goldman by Frank Harris
"...if you get her to talk of her experiences in Soviet Russia, or in American prisons, she will astonish you with the width and depth of her knowledge an the uncanny impartiality that shines through all she says."
"...Emma Goldman's confession of how she lost her sympathy with Bolshevism and the Russian revolutionaries."
"[Goldman:] ...I saw that drink or bribery decided the issue [at an election meeting in America]."
"[Goldman:] ...it was this election experience which saved me from putting any trust in politics -- social democratic politics included."
"[Goldman:] ...the heart-breaking scenes of drafting and brutality of the officers had a decisive effect upon my sympathies; they marked the beginning of my hatred of militarism and my struggle against it as an inhuman institution."
"[Goldman:] Judith became my ideal... I too, would become a Judith, and avenge the cruel wrongs of my race."
"[Goldman:] Night after night, at the end of ten hours of exhausting work in a clothing shop, for $2.50 per week, I would bury myself in the papers and spell out, word for word, the story of the Haymarket trial."
"[Goldman:] Two years later, in 1889, when I was just twenty, I entered the Anarchist movement; took the thorny road that leads up the long hill to Calvary."
"She delivered an impassioned speech [at a monster demonstration in Union Square] pictured the sordid misery of the wage-slave's life, and roused the wild applause of the crowd by quoting the famous words used a little while before in London by Cardinal Manning: "Necessity knows no law, and the starving man has a natural right to a share of his neighbors' bread.""
"For the first time, [after personally experiencing police brutality] she says, she realized the bestial stupidity and ignorant prejudice of the average American, and for the first time she saw that enlightenment would not come in her lifetime, if ever; and for months the sad understanding of human savagery depressed her almost to despair."
"[Goldman:] ...I had won the heart of the students [after they had initially tried to shout her down], and of Ann Arbor, which I revisited several times a year."
"[Goldman:] [In June 1917, Goldman's] "Mother Earth" [magazine] declared itself against registration, conscription, and the war."
"[Goldman:] Nietzsche said that 'the criterion o love is the power of endurance.'"
"[Goldman:] The schools, too, are barracks where the child is drilled into submission to 'various social and moral spooks and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression...'"
"A ... judge... gave her the maximum penalty of two years, though she protested that she did not believe in trying to overthrow the Government by force, but by persuasion."
"After serving two years in prison, Emma was deported, with Alexander Berkman and some 247 Anarchists, in the crazy leaky "Buford" to Russia."
"Two points stand out for ever undeniable in her tremendous indictment of the Soviet leaders she had defended time and again, and praised when it was disastrous to her to praise them. Lenin she declares, destroyed the co-operative movement in Russia and shut up its 15,000 shops; Lenin invented the infamous Tcheka, and gave it more power than the secret police of the Tsar to torture, imprison, exile, and murder without form of law or the formality even of a hearing. Lenin, the pinch-beck Robespierre, went even further in tyrannical misuse of power than any Tsar or even than the capitalist despotism of the United States. In November, 1921, the Tcheka began to deport native-born Russians, chiefly the "intelligentzia," and make outcasts of Russia's noblest. The whole story is the most impressive account yet written of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet despots."
"Under Wilson the American Republic sank lower in despotic violence than any tyranny yet known among men. And it has not recovered since the war: in this year 1923 Upton Sinclair was arrested and thrown into prison for reading a part of the Constitution on a vacant plot of land."
From Preface to First Volume of American Edition
"I found reality in Russia grotesque, totally unlike the great ideal that had borne me upon the crest of high hope to the land of promise."
"...Kronstadt...was the final wrench. It completed the terrible realization that the Russian Revolution was no more. I saw before me the Bolshevik State, formidable, crushing every constructive revolutionary effort, suppressing, debasing, and disintegrating everything."
"...I decided to leave the country."
"...the Bolshevik regime in Russia was, on the whole, a significant replica of what had happened in France more than century before."
"The actual Russian Revolution took place in the summer months of 1917. During that period the peasants possessed themselves of the land, the workers of the factories, thus demonstrating that they knew well the meaning of social revolution. The October change was the finishing touch to the work begun six months previously. In the great uprising the Bolsheviki assumed the voice of the people."
"International intervention, the blockade, and the very efficient world propaganda of the Communist Party have kept the Bolshevik myth alive. Even the terrible famine is being exploited to that end."
"For thirty years I fought the Marxian theory as a cold, mechanistic, enslaving formula. In pamphlets, lectures and debates I argued against it. I was therefore not unaware of what might be expected from the Bolsheviki. But the Allied attack upon them made them the symbol of the Russian Revolution, and brought me to their defense."
"Observation and study, extensive travel though various parts of the country, meeting with every shade of political opinion and every variety of friend and enemy of the Bolsheviki--all convinced me of the ghastly delusion which had been foisted upon the world."
"...my final decision to speak out is for the sole reason that the people everywhere may learn to differentiate between the Bolsheviki and the Russian Revolution."
"Two years of earnest study, investigation, and research convinced me that the great benefits brought to the Russian people by Bolshevism exist only on paper, painted in glowing colors to the masses of Europe and America by efficient Bolshevik propaganda. As advertising wizards the Bolsheviki excel anything the world had ever known before. But in reality the Russian people have gained nothing from the Bolshevik experiment."
"Try as I might I could find nowhere any evidence of benefits received either by the workers or the peasants from the Bolshevik regime."
"...an insignificant minority bent on creating an absolute State is necessarily driven to oppression and terrorism."
"In the case of the Bolsheviki...tyranny is masked by a world-stirring slogan: thus they have succeeded in blinding the masses. Just because I am a revolutionist I refuse to side with the master class, which in Russia is called the Communist Party."
From the Preface (Revised) to Second Volume of American Edition
"Nothing can be further from the desire or intention of Leninism than the "preservation of the remnants of civilization."
"The Russian Revolution -- more correctly, Bolshevik methods -- conclusively demonstrated how a revolution should not be made. The Russian experiment has proven the fatality of a political party usurping the functions of the revolutionary people, of an omnipotent State seeking to impose its will upon the country, of a dictatorship attempting to "organize" the new life."
"Since the death of Lenin the Bolsheviki have returned to the terror of the worst days of their regime. Despotism, fearing for its power, seeks safety in bloodshed."
"If my work will help in these efforts to throw light upon the real situation in Russia and to awaken the world to the true character of Bolshevism and the fatality of dictatorship -- be it Fascist or Communist -- I shall bear with equanimity the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of foe or friend."
From Chapter 1 - Deportation to Russia
"Our anti-war agitation added fuel to the war hysteria of 1917, and thus furnished the Federal authorities with the desired opportunity to complete the conspiracy begun against me in Rochester, N.Y., 1909."
"...the Communists had made many mistakes, but what they did was inevitable, imposed upon them by Allied interference and the blockade."
From Chapter 2 - Petrograd
"[Zinoviev] ... was anxious to know "how soon the revolution would be expected in the United States.""
"...I listened to a recital of the betrayal of the Revolution by the Bolsheviki. Workers from the Baltic factories spoke of their enslavement, Kronstadt sailors voiced their bitterness and indignation against the peole they had helped to power and who had become their masters. One of the speakers had been condemned to death by the Bolsheviki for his Anarchist ideas, but had escaped and was now living illegally."
"On the way home I spoke to Zorin about it. He laughed. "Fee speech is a bourgeois superstition," he said; "during a revolutionary period there can be no free speech.""
From Chapter 3 - Disturbing Thoughts
"...the stories I learned every day -- stories of systematic terrorism, of relentless persecution, and suppression of other revolutionary elements..."
"[Maxim Gorki] ... had come [to America] believing in her democracy and liberalism, and found bigotry and lack of hospitality instead."
From Chapter 4 - First Impressions
""The barin [Bolshevik master] has everything," [the Russian folk] ... would say, "white bread, clothing, even chocolate, while we have nothing." "Communism, equality, freedom, " they jeered, "lies and deception.""
"...the scarcity of food, fuel, and clothing ...was responsible for much of the graft and corruption..."
"Many verbal battles I had ...with the type of Communist who had become callous and hard, altogether barren of the qualities which characterized the Russian idealist of the past."
"...nearly all of my callers related an identical story, the story of the high tide of the Revolution, of the wonderful spirit that led the people forward, of the possibilities of the masses, the role of the Bolsheviki as the spokesmen of the most extreme revolutionary slogans and their betrayal of the Revolution after they had secured power."
"They supported their statements by evidence of the havoc wrought by the methods of forcible requisition and the punitive expeditions to the villages, of the abyss created between town and country, the hatred engendered between peasant and worker."
"The Russian masses, I was told, were exhausted by hunger and cowed by terrorism. Moreover, they had lost faith in all parties and ideas. Nevertheless, there were frequent peasant uprisings in various parts of Russia, but these were ruthlessly quelled. There were also constant strikes in Moscow, Petrograd, and other industrial centers, but the censorship was so rigid little ever became known to the masses at large."
Having now finished the book, I would say it will reward any reader interested in post revolutionary Russia - Ms. Goldman rips away any illusions about what the Bolsheviks wrought, in the wake of the revolution that started before Lenin seized power. All in all, she paints a dispiriting picture of life under the Bolsheviks, a highly restrictive system that would persist until Russians finally let it die in 1991. Ms. Goldman says that this is exactly what a revolution should not be: Hobbling discourse, using any and all means to achieve goals, etc. She likens the Bolsheviks to the Jesuits - and condemns both.
It is also worth reading the book to get glimpses of well-known figures of the Russian Revolution, such as Lenin, and famous anarchist figures such as Kropotkin. No, not all anarchists are crazies etc. Although I don't know much about it, it seems to me some who espouse those beliefs may be similar to today's libertarians. One thing is for sure: They dislike centralized States. They may have helped Russia with its revolution, but they disliked the Bolshevik state led by the Russian CP. That was why thousands of them were jailed by the Russian gov, despite the anarchists having been allies and defenders of the revolution.
Having read the book, I looked up the author in Wikipedia. I obviously do not agree with Ms. Goldman's plan to assassinate Frick - that was definitely wrong. She went to jail for that - correctly so. That wasn't the only thing she did, nor the only time she was jailed, but it does jump out as a noteworthy and negative part of her life story. IMO, if an idea has merit, you should not have to force it on people violently. I would say that my position on social change would support step wise evolution rather than revolution. There is something very wrong with a society in which the 1% have so much and the 99% so little. Where so many live paycheck to paycheck, and the alternative may well be homelessness. But I do not think a revolution is the solution. A social revolution would probably have very little support in any event, a fact which Goldman acknowledged then, and is as true today, plus it would nullify the very thing people identify the US with: A chance to start over, do new things, try and possibly succeed or fail. The near-chaotic system that allows people to try new things - start new businesses, think of new things -- evidently can't be duplicated under a centrally planned economy, even though the Russians did make tremendous strides under communism such as spreading literacy and health care etc., the system was also quite oppressive and stultifying.
You have to wonder how much progress they might have made by now had they not been trapped in the centrally planned system for about 70 years. The country lost about 27 million people in the Second World war, after losing many in the First World War, then many more in the course of the Civil War, then many more in famines, then many more under Stalin's purges. If you add up all the people lost, it is probably close to 100 million lost, and then there were also many whose lives were just ruined by the repression, even if they weren't killed. There was also environmental/ecological catastrophe throughout the E. Bloc states - in the rush to develop - so there are probably even more millions who died prematurely through exposures to industrial or radioactive toxicity.
The country in a way took the bait of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, the nobles, the big landowners and industrialists, in a class French revolution type revolution, but the outcome was certainly not ideal. Far from it. They ended up in an even more repressive system than that of the tsar.
Still, it's all history now. Once they fell into the rabbit hole of Bolshevik dictatorial control it was impossible to break out, until the Red Army finally decided it wasn't going to move on Soviet orders. That was when the Soviet Union fell, and with it communist party power.
Does every country get the form of government they want, despite their protests to the country? Is that why each government in Russia post tsardom was either a dictatorship or authoritarian? Are Russians so accustomed to a strong central gov that they can't deal with a less central, looser form of gov - more "chaotic" perhaps, but much less repressive, etc.? Putin has managed to bring authoritarianism back to Russia - he's captured the vast majority of the press, and many journalists and opposition figures have been murdered, seemingly with impunity. Is a brutal, centralized government what Russians always want, since they've more or less had the same thing for centuries? Who knows..
Here are some of the quotes, meanwhile:
From the Introduction by Rebecca West:
"For thirty years or so [Goldman] ... traveled around the United States saying things that struck her as being true: that free speech was a good think; that war was a bad thing."
"The exact duplication under the Tsardom and under Bolshevism of a system that impede the development of material prosperity, destroys individual liberty, and imposes general discomfort on the community, is a sign that, odd as it may seem to the Western mind, these are the ends toward which Russia likes its government to work."
From A Biographical Sketch of Emma Goldman by Frank Harris
"...if you get her to talk of her experiences in Soviet Russia, or in American prisons, she will astonish you with the width and depth of her knowledge an the uncanny impartiality that shines through all she says."
"...Emma Goldman's confession of how she lost her sympathy with Bolshevism and the Russian revolutionaries."
"[Goldman:] ...I saw that drink or bribery decided the issue [at an election meeting in America]."
"[Goldman:] ...it was this election experience which saved me from putting any trust in politics -- social democratic politics included."
"[Goldman:] ...the heart-breaking scenes of drafting and brutality of the officers had a decisive effect upon my sympathies; they marked the beginning of my hatred of militarism and my struggle against it as an inhuman institution."
"[Goldman:] Judith became my ideal... I too, would become a Judith, and avenge the cruel wrongs of my race."
"[Goldman:] Night after night, at the end of ten hours of exhausting work in a clothing shop, for $2.50 per week, I would bury myself in the papers and spell out, word for word, the story of the Haymarket trial."
"[Goldman:] Two years later, in 1889, when I was just twenty, I entered the Anarchist movement; took the thorny road that leads up the long hill to Calvary."
"She delivered an impassioned speech [at a monster demonstration in Union Square] pictured the sordid misery of the wage-slave's life, and roused the wild applause of the crowd by quoting the famous words used a little while before in London by Cardinal Manning: "Necessity knows no law, and the starving man has a natural right to a share of his neighbors' bread.""
"For the first time, [after personally experiencing police brutality] she says, she realized the bestial stupidity and ignorant prejudice of the average American, and for the first time she saw that enlightenment would not come in her lifetime, if ever; and for months the sad understanding of human savagery depressed her almost to despair."
"[Goldman:] ...I had won the heart of the students [after they had initially tried to shout her down], and of Ann Arbor, which I revisited several times a year."
"[Goldman:] [In June 1917, Goldman's] "Mother Earth" [magazine] declared itself against registration, conscription, and the war."
"[Goldman:] Nietzsche said that 'the criterion o love is the power of endurance.'"
"[Goldman:] The schools, too, are barracks where the child is drilled into submission to 'various social and moral spooks and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression...'"
"A ... judge... gave her the maximum penalty of two years, though she protested that she did not believe in trying to overthrow the Government by force, but by persuasion."
"After serving two years in prison, Emma was deported, with Alexander Berkman and some 247 Anarchists, in the crazy leaky "Buford" to Russia."
"Two points stand out for ever undeniable in her tremendous indictment of the Soviet leaders she had defended time and again, and praised when it was disastrous to her to praise them. Lenin she declares, destroyed the co-operative movement in Russia and shut up its 15,000 shops; Lenin invented the infamous Tcheka, and gave it more power than the secret police of the Tsar to torture, imprison, exile, and murder without form of law or the formality even of a hearing. Lenin, the pinch-beck Robespierre, went even further in tyrannical misuse of power than any Tsar or even than the capitalist despotism of the United States. In November, 1921, the Tcheka began to deport native-born Russians, chiefly the "intelligentzia," and make outcasts of Russia's noblest. The whole story is the most impressive account yet written of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet despots."
"Under Wilson the American Republic sank lower in despotic violence than any tyranny yet known among men. And it has not recovered since the war: in this year 1923 Upton Sinclair was arrested and thrown into prison for reading a part of the Constitution on a vacant plot of land."
From Preface to First Volume of American Edition
"I found reality in Russia grotesque, totally unlike the great ideal that had borne me upon the crest of high hope to the land of promise."
"...Kronstadt...was the final wrench. It completed the terrible realization that the Russian Revolution was no more. I saw before me the Bolshevik State, formidable, crushing every constructive revolutionary effort, suppressing, debasing, and disintegrating everything."
"...I decided to leave the country."
"...the Bolshevik regime in Russia was, on the whole, a significant replica of what had happened in France more than century before."
"The actual Russian Revolution took place in the summer months of 1917. During that period the peasants possessed themselves of the land, the workers of the factories, thus demonstrating that they knew well the meaning of social revolution. The October change was the finishing touch to the work begun six months previously. In the great uprising the Bolsheviki assumed the voice of the people."
"International intervention, the blockade, and the very efficient world propaganda of the Communist Party have kept the Bolshevik myth alive. Even the terrible famine is being exploited to that end."
"For thirty years I fought the Marxian theory as a cold, mechanistic, enslaving formula. In pamphlets, lectures and debates I argued against it. I was therefore not unaware of what might be expected from the Bolsheviki. But the Allied attack upon them made them the symbol of the Russian Revolution, and brought me to their defense."
"Observation and study, extensive travel though various parts of the country, meeting with every shade of political opinion and every variety of friend and enemy of the Bolsheviki--all convinced me of the ghastly delusion which had been foisted upon the world."
"...my final decision to speak out is for the sole reason that the people everywhere may learn to differentiate between the Bolsheviki and the Russian Revolution."
"Two years of earnest study, investigation, and research convinced me that the great benefits brought to the Russian people by Bolshevism exist only on paper, painted in glowing colors to the masses of Europe and America by efficient Bolshevik propaganda. As advertising wizards the Bolsheviki excel anything the world had ever known before. But in reality the Russian people have gained nothing from the Bolshevik experiment."
"Try as I might I could find nowhere any evidence of benefits received either by the workers or the peasants from the Bolshevik regime."
"...an insignificant minority bent on creating an absolute State is necessarily driven to oppression and terrorism."
"In the case of the Bolsheviki...tyranny is masked by a world-stirring slogan: thus they have succeeded in blinding the masses. Just because I am a revolutionist I refuse to side with the master class, which in Russia is called the Communist Party."
From the Preface (Revised) to Second Volume of American Edition
"Nothing can be further from the desire or intention of Leninism than the "preservation of the remnants of civilization."
"The Russian Revolution -- more correctly, Bolshevik methods -- conclusively demonstrated how a revolution should not be made. The Russian experiment has proven the fatality of a political party usurping the functions of the revolutionary people, of an omnipotent State seeking to impose its will upon the country, of a dictatorship attempting to "organize" the new life."
"Since the death of Lenin the Bolsheviki have returned to the terror of the worst days of their regime. Despotism, fearing for its power, seeks safety in bloodshed."
"If my work will help in these efforts to throw light upon the real situation in Russia and to awaken the world to the true character of Bolshevism and the fatality of dictatorship -- be it Fascist or Communist -- I shall bear with equanimity the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of foe or friend."
From Chapter 1 - Deportation to Russia
"Our anti-war agitation added fuel to the war hysteria of 1917, and thus furnished the Federal authorities with the desired opportunity to complete the conspiracy begun against me in Rochester, N.Y., 1909."
"...the Communists had made many mistakes, but what they did was inevitable, imposed upon them by Allied interference and the blockade."
From Chapter 2 - Petrograd
"[Zinoviev] ... was anxious to know "how soon the revolution would be expected in the United States.""
"...I listened to a recital of the betrayal of the Revolution by the Bolsheviki. Workers from the Baltic factories spoke of their enslavement, Kronstadt sailors voiced their bitterness and indignation against the peole they had helped to power and who had become their masters. One of the speakers had been condemned to death by the Bolsheviki for his Anarchist ideas, but had escaped and was now living illegally."
"On the way home I spoke to Zorin about it. He laughed. "Fee speech is a bourgeois superstition," he said; "during a revolutionary period there can be no free speech.""
From Chapter 3 - Disturbing Thoughts
"...the stories I learned every day -- stories of systematic terrorism, of relentless persecution, and suppression of other revolutionary elements..."
"[Maxim Gorki] ... had come [to America] believing in her democracy and liberalism, and found bigotry and lack of hospitality instead."
From Chapter 4 - First Impressions
""The barin [Bolshevik master] has everything," [the Russian folk] ... would say, "white bread, clothing, even chocolate, while we have nothing." "Communism, equality, freedom, " they jeered, "lies and deception.""
"...the scarcity of food, fuel, and clothing ...was responsible for much of the graft and corruption..."
"Many verbal battles I had ...with the type of Communist who had become callous and hard, altogether barren of the qualities which characterized the Russian idealist of the past."
"...nearly all of my callers related an identical story, the story of the high tide of the Revolution, of the wonderful spirit that led the people forward, of the possibilities of the masses, the role of the Bolsheviki as the spokesmen of the most extreme revolutionary slogans and their betrayal of the Revolution after they had secured power."
"They supported their statements by evidence of the havoc wrought by the methods of forcible requisition and the punitive expeditions to the villages, of the abyss created between town and country, the hatred engendered between peasant and worker."
"The Russian masses, I was told, were exhausted by hunger and cowed by terrorism. Moreover, they had lost faith in all parties and ideas. Nevertheless, there were frequent peasant uprisings in various parts of Russia, but these were ruthlessly quelled. There were also constant strikes in Moscow, Petrograd, and other industrial centers, but the censorship was so rigid little ever became known to the masses at large."
May 5, 2020
“Is there any change in the world? Or is it all an eternal recurrence of man’s inhumanity to man?” – Emma Goldman, 1921
In 1919, then-notorious anarchist Emma Goldman was exiled to still-revolutionary Russia, along with several other anarchists who had endorsed targeted assassins of those deemed political enemies — a tactic they called “Propaganda of the Deed”, but which today we’d understand more concisely as terrorism. Goldman later realized that such violence generally backfired (see Red Emma Speaks), but in 1919, she looked to the promise of revolution. As the title indicates, however, she found in Russia not a hopeful future but a thing whose new terrors were rivaled only by the return of familiar elements from the Tsars.
My Disillusionment in Russia records her first year or so in Russia, traveling between different cities and meeting luminaries of the age – including Peter Kropotkin, Bertrand Russell, and Lenin. Having spent time in Russia as a girl – emigrating to America when she was thirteen – she still retained a workable use of the language, and was able to speak with men and women at all strata of society. Goldman eagerly sought out American emigres who had ventured to Russia to fight for their dream of the future, but she found many of them either crushed and disappointed, or – more foreboding – in prison. At every turn she encountered starving wretches much abused by the State, while a new aristocracy had ensconced itself. Those with “pull” did well for themselves – -getting choice appointments, free meal tickets without work, etc. Those without pull, or those who were ideological enemies of the State, could expect starvation, prison, exile, or execution. Some horrors came from intent, others from sheer incompetence: even a couple of years into the experiment, bureaucracy had grown so rapidly that getting anything done was virtually impossible.
At first, as Goldman talked to people and took in the sights before her, she excused it as being a consequence of the western blockade, or the war, or perhaps even the violent birth inevitable in a revolution. Even seven months into her stay she was still holding on to some meager way to justify what was happening. By the time a year had passed, however, and she’d seen the vigorous persecution of anarchists and the absolute hostility towards actual democracy, let alone free speech – Goldman could no longer view the Bolsheviks as anything other than the same enemy she’d railed against in America. Most damning was their conviction that the ends justified all means. In the end, she could only wonder: is there anything to history, or is it merely a continual loop of man’s inhumanity to man?
Goldman makes for an especially fascinating critic of the Soviet state because she shares much of their contempt for say, religion and capitalism, while at the same time holding the State itself in condemnation. For the future reader, it’s astonishing to see that so many of the inevitable failures of the soviet system ere present from the start: their inability to effectively manage an economy without market prices, the stagnation owing from so little incentive to work (aside from the minimum as not to get shot), the mere shifting of privilege from those with royal sanction to those with ideological sanction, etc. The horrors, too – the gulags, the executions – were present from the beginning, vouched for here Goldman just as they were by Solzhenitsyn’s research a few decades later, and documented in The Gulag Archipelago.
In 1919, then-notorious anarchist Emma Goldman was exiled to still-revolutionary Russia, along with several other anarchists who had endorsed targeted assassins of those deemed political enemies — a tactic they called “Propaganda of the Deed”, but which today we’d understand more concisely as terrorism. Goldman later realized that such violence generally backfired (see Red Emma Speaks), but in 1919, she looked to the promise of revolution. As the title indicates, however, she found in Russia not a hopeful future but a thing whose new terrors were rivaled only by the return of familiar elements from the Tsars.
My Disillusionment in Russia records her first year or so in Russia, traveling between different cities and meeting luminaries of the age – including Peter Kropotkin, Bertrand Russell, and Lenin. Having spent time in Russia as a girl – emigrating to America when she was thirteen – she still retained a workable use of the language, and was able to speak with men and women at all strata of society. Goldman eagerly sought out American emigres who had ventured to Russia to fight for their dream of the future, but she found many of them either crushed and disappointed, or – more foreboding – in prison. At every turn she encountered starving wretches much abused by the State, while a new aristocracy had ensconced itself. Those with “pull” did well for themselves – -getting choice appointments, free meal tickets without work, etc. Those without pull, or those who were ideological enemies of the State, could expect starvation, prison, exile, or execution. Some horrors came from intent, others from sheer incompetence: even a couple of years into the experiment, bureaucracy had grown so rapidly that getting anything done was virtually impossible.
At first, as Goldman talked to people and took in the sights before her, she excused it as being a consequence of the western blockade, or the war, or perhaps even the violent birth inevitable in a revolution. Even seven months into her stay she was still holding on to some meager way to justify what was happening. By the time a year had passed, however, and she’d seen the vigorous persecution of anarchists and the absolute hostility towards actual democracy, let alone free speech – Goldman could no longer view the Bolsheviks as anything other than the same enemy she’d railed against in America. Most damning was their conviction that the ends justified all means. In the end, she could only wonder: is there anything to history, or is it merely a continual loop of man’s inhumanity to man?
Goldman makes for an especially fascinating critic of the Soviet state because she shares much of their contempt for say, religion and capitalism, while at the same time holding the State itself in condemnation. For the future reader, it’s astonishing to see that so many of the inevitable failures of the soviet system ere present from the start: their inability to effectively manage an economy without market prices, the stagnation owing from so little incentive to work (aside from the minimum as not to get shot), the mere shifting of privilege from those with royal sanction to those with ideological sanction, etc. The horrors, too – the gulags, the executions – were present from the beginning, vouched for here Goldman just as they were by Solzhenitsyn’s research a few decades later, and documented in The Gulag Archipelago.
December 13, 2010
Emma Goldman is great. This book is about her experiences in Russia after being deported from the United States during the hysteria of World War I. In two years in the Soviet Union, Goldman got a peek into its problems that many on the left missed for years: its lack of freedom of press or speech, its rule by dictatorship and its centralized and inefficient bureaucracy. One thing that interested me....Goldman was very critical of Leon Trotsky, who has avoided much of the stain that Joseph Stalin (totally deservedly, obviously) and even Vladimir Lenin carry.
Here is one passage I highlighted, quoting the criticism of the writer Vladimir Korolenko:
"'We lack the simplest requisites of the real essence of a social revolution, and yet we pretend to have placed ourselves at the head of a world revolution. Poor Russia will have to pay dearly for this experiment. It may even delay for a long time fundamental changes in other countries. The bourgeoisie will be able to defend its reactionary methods by pointing to what has happened in Russia.'"
Here is one passage I highlighted, quoting the criticism of the writer Vladimir Korolenko:
"'We lack the simplest requisites of the real essence of a social revolution, and yet we pretend to have placed ourselves at the head of a world revolution. Poor Russia will have to pay dearly for this experiment. It may even delay for a long time fundamental changes in other countries. The bourgeoisie will be able to defend its reactionary methods by pointing to what has happened in Russia.'"
October 29, 2016
Don't meet your heroes. That's what they say. Emma Goldman is kind of a hero--she was a true radical in early 20th Century America, and they expelled her for it. This book is a chronicle of her disappointment in the radical revolution--arguably the revolution with the greatest potential for paradigm change in human history--in Russia, and her gradual realization that humans massing under aspirational banners and behind idealistic rhetoric are nonetheless subject to human vices. I say don't meet your heroes because this book was quite boring. Boring, repetitive, and without much poetic voice--and this from the woman who deployed the rallying cry "No gods, no masters!"
Still, it's admirable that Goldman didn't take the wholesale refutation of the Communist principle and go all Ayn Rand on us. It must have been superhuman to have resisted that impulse, but Goldman succeeds, as we know from history, and continued on as a radical and anarchist for the rest of her life.
I think next I may read a book about Emma Goldman, as opposed to a memoir by her own hand.
Still, it's admirable that Goldman didn't take the wholesale refutation of the Communist principle and go all Ayn Rand on us. It must have been superhuman to have resisted that impulse, but Goldman succeeds, as we know from history, and continued on as a radical and anarchist for the rest of her life.
I think next I may read a book about Emma Goldman, as opposed to a memoir by her own hand.
June 11, 2007
emma goldman destroys the myth of communism in russia in the most decisive and cunning way. she writes in a first-person perspective detailing her two years living in the early soviet union after being expelled from the united states. she chronicles the bolsheviks' clamp-down on rights and freedoms and ultimately their cruel betrayal of all who made the revolution, even the revolution itself.
the book made me abandon marxism finally.
the book made me abandon marxism finally.
January 11, 2021
librazo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"La Revolución Rusa ha demostrado más allá de toda duda que la idea del Estado, del socialismo de Estado, en todas sus manifestaciones (económica, política, social, educativa) está completa y desesperadamente en bancarrota. Nunca antes en la historia de la autoridad, el gobierno, el Estado ha resultado ser tan intrínsecamente estático, tan reaccionario e incluso contrarrevolucionario en sus efectos" y PUNTO
"La Revolución Rusa ha demostrado más allá de toda duda que la idea del Estado, del socialismo de Estado, en todas sus manifestaciones (económica, política, social, educativa) está completa y desesperadamente en bancarrota. Nunca antes en la historia de la autoridad, el gobierno, el Estado ha resultado ser tan intrínsecamente estático, tan reaccionario e incluso contrarrevolucionario en sus efectos" y PUNTO
March 21, 2016
My Disillusionment in Russia show's Emma Goldman's experience in Russia after the revolution. She expected things to be much different than she saw once she was there. She went to Russia from the United States, where she had been involved with the Anarchists in the United States. In Russia, she interacted with the Bolshevik's and people in government. At first she wanted to believe their side and that things weren't really as she expected. She wanted to hope for the best, not accept the reality.
If you read this book, you will be getting a first hand look at how things were for Russia after the Russian Revolution. In a sense, this book gives the perspectives or at least ideas of both sides of the story as Goldman analyzes what she is witnessing first hand.
If you read this book, you will be getting a first hand look at how things were for Russia after the Russian Revolution. In a sense, this book gives the perspectives or at least ideas of both sides of the story as Goldman analyzes what she is witnessing first hand.
January 23, 2016
Прочитала с большим интересом.
Оказывается, еще в начале 1920-х все уродства большевицкого режима были прекрасно видны, и Эмма Гольдман рассказала о них миру.
Ее блестящий ум и смелость просто поражают. И особенно - способность отказаться от собственных заблуждений, это такое редкое и ценное качество!
Оказывается, еще в начале 1920-х все уродства большевицкого режима были прекрасно видны, и Эмма Гольдман рассказала о них миру.
Ее блестящий ум и смелость просто поражают. И особенно - способность отказаться от собственных заблуждений, это такое редкое и ценное качество!
March 9, 2012
"There was no forum even for the most inoffensive social intercourse, no clubs, no meeting places, no restaurants, not even a dance hall. I remember the shocked expression of Zorin when I asked him if the young people could not occasionally meet for a dance free from Communist supervsion. "Dance-halls are gathering places for counter-revolutionists; we closed them," he informed me.
The emotional and human needs of the people were considered dangerous to the regime."
how convienent to have the term 'counter-revolutionary' to banter about. it was brilliant - everything the regime hated and wanted to destroy could be labelled as counter-revoluntionary, and all their despicable acts could be legitimized as the means by which they protected the values of the revolution. AND, that the Bolsheviks had so closely tied themselves to the revolution that most people saw their rise to power and the revolution as one and the same thing, gave extra validity to the argument. bloody brilliant.
how horribly sad and disheartening for all those who fought for years -not just for those few months on the streets in Moscow during the spring of 1917, but for years beforehand- to create change. groups like the anarchists who now found themselves without influence and being denied jobs because they were not party members - even though they had been fighting with as much passion and committment as any Bolshevik.
and women like Vera Zasulich and Marie Spiridonova and Emma Goldman who witnessed the betrayal must have suffered terribly knowing that their efforts had been wasted; the Russian people were no better off.
Emma Goldman in this account of her two years (1919 - 1921) living in Russia gives example after example of the Bolshevik betrayal of the people. how -even by 1919- the prisons were already full of those who found fault with Lenin or the party, how no teacher was allowed a position in a school unless s/he was a party member, and schools in remote areas had even been closed when no party member could be found to teach there, how libraries were mandated to eliminate everything but the classics and communist literature. by 1919! only two years after the revolution. eventually Goldman decided the best way to serve the people of Russia would be outside it's borders, informing the rest of the world of what was happening. given that J. Edgar Hoover had earlier dubbed her 'one of the most dangerous women in America' i'm guessing no one within the mainstream was much interested in listening to what she had to say.
The emotional and human needs of the people were considered dangerous to the regime."
how convienent to have the term 'counter-revolutionary' to banter about. it was brilliant - everything the regime hated and wanted to destroy could be labelled as counter-revoluntionary, and all their despicable acts could be legitimized as the means by which they protected the values of the revolution. AND, that the Bolsheviks had so closely tied themselves to the revolution that most people saw their rise to power and the revolution as one and the same thing, gave extra validity to the argument. bloody brilliant.
how horribly sad and disheartening for all those who fought for years -not just for those few months on the streets in Moscow during the spring of 1917, but for years beforehand- to create change. groups like the anarchists who now found themselves without influence and being denied jobs because they were not party members - even though they had been fighting with as much passion and committment as any Bolshevik.
and women like Vera Zasulich and Marie Spiridonova and Emma Goldman who witnessed the betrayal must have suffered terribly knowing that their efforts had been wasted; the Russian people were no better off.
Emma Goldman in this account of her two years (1919 - 1921) living in Russia gives example after example of the Bolshevik betrayal of the people. how -even by 1919- the prisons were already full of those who found fault with Lenin or the party, how no teacher was allowed a position in a school unless s/he was a party member, and schools in remote areas had even been closed when no party member could be found to teach there, how libraries were mandated to eliminate everything but the classics and communist literature. by 1919! only two years after the revolution. eventually Goldman decided the best way to serve the people of Russia would be outside it's borders, informing the rest of the world of what was happening. given that J. Edgar Hoover had earlier dubbed her 'one of the most dangerous women in America' i'm guessing no one within the mainstream was much interested in listening to what she had to say.
July 20, 2013
This book, with a title she didn't approve of, is written by fascinating and unique anarchist Emma Goldman. It is part of a genre of works by anarchists, socialists, and former Communists who went to Russia full of optimism for the revolution and had their hopes dashed when faced by the terror, corruption, and incompetence of what they saw.
I recently read Memoirs of a Revolutionary by another anarchist, Victor Serge, which also offers a view of despair from the early days of the revolution but Goldman's account is a much different sort of book. While Serge gives us one terrifying scene and anecdote after another, Goldman's memoir is more like a methodical collection of evidence. He was given amazing access to a large range of important political figures, early Soviet institutions, and different geographical areas, and in this work she gives voice to not only her many fellow anarchists trying to find a place in the revolution, but to a wide range of different characters. She is increasingly harsh in her criticism but always separates her final condemnation of the Communists with her evaluation of the many diverse characters who worked among them.
I recently read Memoirs of a Revolutionary by another anarchist, Victor Serge, which also offers a view of despair from the early days of the revolution but Goldman's account is a much different sort of book. While Serge gives us one terrifying scene and anecdote after another, Goldman's memoir is more like a methodical collection of evidence. He was given amazing access to a large range of important political figures, early Soviet institutions, and different geographical areas, and in this work she gives voice to not only her many fellow anarchists trying to find a place in the revolution, but to a wide range of different characters. She is increasingly harsh in her criticism but always separates her final condemnation of the Communists with her evaluation of the many diverse characters who worked among them.
April 17, 2020
A revealing look into the conditions of life in post-revolutionary Russia through the eyes of the very people the revolution should have benefitted. Goldman's narrative style explains better than any dry account of historical events could the sheer strength of feeling generated by the Bolshevik betrayal of the revolution, and serves as a worrying indictment of just how much damning physical evidence can be presented to a believer in a cause before they start to question their beliefs.
Despite the numerous translation issues, that frankly are in many cases beyond explanation, the book is a clear and interesting read that will ground readers in the conditions of Bolshevik Russia.
Despite the numerous translation issues, that frankly are in many cases beyond explanation, the book is a clear and interesting read that will ground readers in the conditions of Bolshevik Russia.
April 17, 2009
Full text here: http://www.ditext.com/goldman/russia/...
Renowned anarchist Emma Goldman was deported by the US to Russia in 1919 for her "anti-war agitation." This is her firsthand account of the two years she spent living and traveling in Lenin's post-revolutionary Russia and her impressions of the state of the revolution. She goes in with the most optimistic of expectations, but what she observes is not pretty.
Renowned anarchist Emma Goldman was deported by the US to Russia in 1919 for her "anti-war agitation." This is her firsthand account of the two years she spent living and traveling in Lenin's post-revolutionary Russia and her impressions of the state of the revolution. She goes in with the most optimistic of expectations, but what she observes is not pretty.
February 4, 2025
The importance of the work bolsters the actual writing to earn the full 5 stars. For certainly there is a good deal of repetition, but then this is basically a chronological statement of what she saw and heard, not an organized history of the era. And while Goldman might not be an entirely trustworthy deliverer of news, and certainly has a bias in favor of the organized Anarchist groups where she'd made her home for so many decades, I believe her statements here - which were possibly some of the earliest (1920-1921) western looks behind the curtain to discover the true state of affairs - have been borne out by history.
The book shines most of all in the lengthy Afterword, where she synthesizes those findings in clear, organized dissection of how the Bolsheviks utterly destroyed the underlying motive of the Revolution itself, by simply exchanging a new dictatorship for the old. "The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being." But to the Bolsheviks, they would use any means necessary to a single end: "the retaining of the State power in the hands of the Communist Party."
What's worse is that in today's USA, the right wing hurls such slurs as "Marxist" and "Communist" against anyone with whom they disagree, while deliberately employing the very techniques, and pursuing the very goals, of the Bolsheviks. 2025's White House wishes to also create "a system in which political usefulness rather than professional merit played the main role" where people will be "placed in responsible positions not because of their fitness but owing to party membership. Political usefulness was the first consideration and it naturally resulted in general abuse of power and confusion." And in recent decades the conservative "political demagogues play upon the ignorance of the masses, teach them that education and culture are bourgeois prejudices, that the workers can do without them." Just as Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov so succinctly warned about anti-intellectualism, even decades earlier Goldman threw out the warning:
The book shines most of all in the lengthy Afterword, where she synthesizes those findings in clear, organized dissection of how the Bolsheviks utterly destroyed the underlying motive of the Revolution itself, by simply exchanging a new dictatorship for the old. "The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being." But to the Bolsheviks, they would use any means necessary to a single end: "the retaining of the State power in the hands of the Communist Party."
What's worse is that in today's USA, the right wing hurls such slurs as "Marxist" and "Communist" against anyone with whom they disagree, while deliberately employing the very techniques, and pursuing the very goals, of the Bolsheviks. 2025's White House wishes to also create "a system in which political usefulness rather than professional merit played the main role" where people will be "placed in responsible positions not because of their fitness but owing to party membership. Political usefulness was the first consideration and it naturally resulted in general abuse of power and confusion." And in recent decades the conservative "political demagogues play upon the ignorance of the masses, teach them that education and culture are bourgeois prejudices, that the workers can do without them." Just as Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov so succinctly warned about anti-intellectualism, even decades earlier Goldman threw out the warning:
If the Western world is to profit by the lessons of Russia, the demagogic flattery of the masses and blind antagonism toward the intelligentsia must cease.
November 26, 2017
(This is a joint review of "My Disillusionment in Russia" and "Further Disillusionment," as they were intended to be one book.)
Reads almost like a crude parable about how the ends don't always justify the means and authoritarian "socialism" is bad, except it's taken from Emma's actual experience. Bolshevik apologists tell her that free speech is bourgeois and that the level of repression was only necessary because Russia was under threat from outside forces (both sentiments not uncommon among contemporary leftists). At first she wants to believe them, but as she sees the preponderance of crushing poverty, corruption, and state violence, and speaks to more people outside of the Party, she realizes the Revolution has been quashed. Important to note this is years before Stalinism--Lenin and Trotsky come off looking reeeeal bad.
Most of it is told in a linear narrative structure that would get boring if the content weren't so engrossingly horrific. I was struck by the prominent role of straight-up corruption--it's not just bad ideology of powerful actors that will get you, but unequal power distribution itself. Emma also talks a lot about the political repression of anarchists and any dissidents really, there's some ugly stuff that eventually moves her to speak out against the Bolshevik state, though at first she didn't want to give ammunition for Western capitalist propaganda (sound familiar?). She saves most of her analysis for the afterword, and pins the blame on the whole statist model of revolution itself. I don't know that she's wrong.
Reads almost like a crude parable about how the ends don't always justify the means and authoritarian "socialism" is bad, except it's taken from Emma's actual experience. Bolshevik apologists tell her that free speech is bourgeois and that the level of repression was only necessary because Russia was under threat from outside forces (both sentiments not uncommon among contemporary leftists). At first she wants to believe them, but as she sees the preponderance of crushing poverty, corruption, and state violence, and speaks to more people outside of the Party, she realizes the Revolution has been quashed. Important to note this is years before Stalinism--Lenin and Trotsky come off looking reeeeal bad.
Most of it is told in a linear narrative structure that would get boring if the content weren't so engrossingly horrific. I was struck by the prominent role of straight-up corruption--it's not just bad ideology of powerful actors that will get you, but unequal power distribution itself. Emma also talks a lot about the political repression of anarchists and any dissidents really, there's some ugly stuff that eventually moves her to speak out against the Bolshevik state, though at first she didn't want to give ammunition for Western capitalist propaganda (sound familiar?). She saves most of her analysis for the afterword, and pins the blame on the whole statist model of revolution itself. I don't know that she's wrong.
February 8, 2024
Essential reading.
March 31, 2013
It's always interesting to study disillusionment, that internal necessity to reevaluate one's beliefs when reality intrudes. Emma Goldman was a Russian immigrant to the U.S. who was deported for political reasons and returned to Russia for two years. What she saw there, unexpectedly to her, was repression and violence. In 1923–24 she published two books, My Disillusionment in Russia and My Further Disillusionment in Russia.
Goldman was an anarchist, the roots of which word mean "without a ruler." Latter-day "anarchist" punks must have thought it meant "without rules" too. Even the hippies knew that "You who are on the road must have a code that you can live by" (Crosby Stills & Nash). But it's unnatural for human beings to live without either rulers or rules. "Anarchism" as a historical political theory had some other careful definition, but that would only demonstrate further how words don't always mean what they mean. Goldman was what we might call a libertarian now.
She wrote of a young follower of Makhno, an anarchist rebel, who said, "He is trying to direct the innate rebellious spirit of the Ukrainian peasant into organized Anarchist channels." In any case, Goldman distinguished between Anarchism, Syndicalism, Revolution, Bolshevism, Leninism, Marxism, and Communism (yes, all capitalized, no pun intended).
She also referred to the political "right" and "left" in unfamiliar ways, as in "the developing tendency of the Bolsheviki toward the right." And no, it won't do to make an analogy between the Bolsheviki and what we call the "right" in the U.S. today. Or the "left." Those terms are obfuscating.
It wasn't just rhetoric that led Goldman to use many religious terms to describe what she saw in Russia in the 1920s. She called Lenin a Puritan as well as a "shrewd Asiatic," who said free speech was a bourgeois notion, and that there can be no free speech in a revolutionary period. The Bolsheviki were "social puritans who sincerely believed that they alone were ordained to save mankind." In describing Russia and the Revolution(s), where "Communism is the State religion," Goldman freely used terms like faith, crucify, spiritual, sacrifice, dogma, zealot, superstition, military and civic priesthood, pope, "Lenin and the other Grand Seigneurs of the Communist Church," Bull, excommunicated, heretic, Holy See (the Third International Communist gathering), the infallibility of their creed, martyr, devout, "the Immaculate Conception of the Communist State which by the aid of the Revolution was to redeem the world," and deity. A young factory worker "reasoned like a nun dedicated to the service of the Church." "The Bolsheviki were the Jesuits of the Socialist Church; they believed in the Jesuitic motto that the end justifies the means." "The country must be forced to be saved by the Communist Party." Oddly enough, Goldman, a Jew, wrote of celebrating Christmas with colleagues in a railroad car; they even decorated a tree and gave each other gifts.
Russia produced a 1984-like Newspeak of contradiction in which thought had to be contorted bizarrely to try to fit conditions. Pledges and responsibilities, value of human life, quality of character, even the importance of revolutionary integrity as the basis of a new social order were considered bourgeois sentimentality, observed Goldman. She couldn't have known then that this was the foundation of the Soviet purges in the '30s. (See my review of The Red Decade by Eugene Lyons.) The laborers who were to be the new rulers had to be forced to work. Lenin said "Rob the robbers," which carried the seeds of contradiction much like the old puzzler, "Everything I say is a lie, including this." A woman named Angelica Balabanov "suffered keenly from the reality which was so unlike her ideal," and finally concluded that it wasn't that the revolution had failed, but that life itself was a failure. Others eventually decided the Revolution was a fraud.
In the end, Goldman saw that the so-called Revolution merely replaced one set of tyrants with another. Manipulation of language could not change the reality. It's a paltry god that's made so crudely in man's image — bound to disappoint.
Goldman was an anarchist, the roots of which word mean "without a ruler." Latter-day "anarchist" punks must have thought it meant "without rules" too. Even the hippies knew that "You who are on the road must have a code that you can live by" (Crosby Stills & Nash). But it's unnatural for human beings to live without either rulers or rules. "Anarchism" as a historical political theory had some other careful definition, but that would only demonstrate further how words don't always mean what they mean. Goldman was what we might call a libertarian now.
She wrote of a young follower of Makhno, an anarchist rebel, who said, "He is trying to direct the innate rebellious spirit of the Ukrainian peasant into organized Anarchist channels." In any case, Goldman distinguished between Anarchism, Syndicalism, Revolution, Bolshevism, Leninism, Marxism, and Communism (yes, all capitalized, no pun intended).
She also referred to the political "right" and "left" in unfamiliar ways, as in "the developing tendency of the Bolsheviki toward the right." And no, it won't do to make an analogy between the Bolsheviki and what we call the "right" in the U.S. today. Or the "left." Those terms are obfuscating.
It wasn't just rhetoric that led Goldman to use many religious terms to describe what she saw in Russia in the 1920s. She called Lenin a Puritan as well as a "shrewd Asiatic," who said free speech was a bourgeois notion, and that there can be no free speech in a revolutionary period. The Bolsheviki were "social puritans who sincerely believed that they alone were ordained to save mankind." In describing Russia and the Revolution(s), where "Communism is the State religion," Goldman freely used terms like faith, crucify, spiritual, sacrifice, dogma, zealot, superstition, military and civic priesthood, pope, "Lenin and the other Grand Seigneurs of the Communist Church," Bull, excommunicated, heretic, Holy See (the Third International Communist gathering), the infallibility of their creed, martyr, devout, "the Immaculate Conception of the Communist State which by the aid of the Revolution was to redeem the world," and deity. A young factory worker "reasoned like a nun dedicated to the service of the Church." "The Bolsheviki were the Jesuits of the Socialist Church; they believed in the Jesuitic motto that the end justifies the means." "The country must be forced to be saved by the Communist Party." Oddly enough, Goldman, a Jew, wrote of celebrating Christmas with colleagues in a railroad car; they even decorated a tree and gave each other gifts.
Russia produced a 1984-like Newspeak of contradiction in which thought had to be contorted bizarrely to try to fit conditions. Pledges and responsibilities, value of human life, quality of character, even the importance of revolutionary integrity as the basis of a new social order were considered bourgeois sentimentality, observed Goldman. She couldn't have known then that this was the foundation of the Soviet purges in the '30s. (See my review of The Red Decade by Eugene Lyons.) The laborers who were to be the new rulers had to be forced to work. Lenin said "Rob the robbers," which carried the seeds of contradiction much like the old puzzler, "Everything I say is a lie, including this." A woman named Angelica Balabanov "suffered keenly from the reality which was so unlike her ideal," and finally concluded that it wasn't that the revolution had failed, but that life itself was a failure. Others eventually decided the Revolution was a fraud.
In the end, Goldman saw that the so-called Revolution merely replaced one set of tyrants with another. Manipulation of language could not change the reality. It's a paltry god that's made so crudely in man's image — bound to disappoint.
January 25, 2016
Letto ad un anno di distanza dal capolavoro di Victor Serge, “Memorie di un Rivoluzionario” – che chissà, forse un giorno recensirò…
Tanti sono i punti di contatto fra i due testi e quindi il paragone fra Goldman e Serge sorge spontaneo, a tutto vantaggio – almeno secondo me – di quest’ultimo. Nella mia personale classifica, (per quel che può valere), le “Memorie” rimangono il miglior acquisto del 2013: leggerle è un po’ come seguire l’autore nell’incendio in cui lui decise volontariamente di gettarsi, perché per lui le fiamme dell’inferno russo erano comunque preferibili all’ipocrisia dei grigi paradisi artificiali delle società d’Occidente. Il bilancio finale è impietoso, ma sopravvive fino all’ultima pagina la convinzione che il destino non era scritto e che la storia è troppo complessa per essere giudicata sbrigativamente, con due formulette di rito e col senno di poi.
Emma Goldman invece scrive un diario di viaggio in cui, aneddoto dopo aneddoto, tappa dopo tappa, riporta luci e ombre (soprattutto le ombre) del regime bolscevico, ma sempre mantenendo una certa distanza dalla realtà che descrive. Mentre Serge si tuffa anima e corpo nella corrente impetuosa, Emma Goldman non abbandona mai il proprio distacco critico: sempre vigile e lucida, non si lascia abbagliare dalle parate, dai banchetti in cui ad ogni brindisi s’intona l’Internazionale, scava a fondo e cocciutamente continua la sua inchiesta, ovunque vada. La povertà e la fame sono del resto sotto gli occhi di tutti, non serve uno speciale acume per notarli; altrettanto dicasi del mercato nero, della prostituzione e soprattutto dell’ipertrofica macchina burocratica bolscevica. La polizia segreta, la Cheka, istituita nel 1918, completerà il quadro già non troppo roseo.
Nulla che oggi non si sappia già, ma non è nell’informazione nuda che risiede il valore di questa scrittura – è nei vividi e intensissimi ritratti di cui Emma Goldman ci fa dono, ed è nella complessità del suo racconto, che nulla ha a che spartire con la piattezza della letteratura di denuncia della propaganda anticomunista, non meno monolitica e settaria di quella bolscevica.
Brillano i capitoli dedicati a Kropotkin, a Maria Spiridonova e ad Angelica Balabanoff (figura assai degna di nota: ucraina di nascita, italiana d’adozione, fu allieva di Antonio Labriola, divenne membro del PSI, poi in Russia fu eletta segretaria del Comintern per due anni ed infine nel 1922, in disaccordo con Lenin per la gestione di Kronstadt, decise di ritornare a Roma); e, al di là dei grandi personaggi “che hanno fatto la storia”, come si suol dire, non sono da meno le descrizioni della gente comune, dei mille volti anonimi della folla, o di quelli noti allora ma poi dimenticati. Come la giovane sposa di Nestor Makhno, che rischia la vita per incontrare Emma e fissare fra lei e suo marito un incontro che non avverrà mai, ma già che è lì, ne approfitta per chiederle se in Occidente le donne fanno un uso consapevole della contraccezione. O come l’oggi ignoto Vladimir Korolenko, che così commenta la Rivoluzione:
“It was always my conception that revolution meant the highest expression of humanity and of justice. In Russia to-day both are absent. At a time when the fullest expression and cooperation of all intellectual and spiritual forces are necessary to reconstruct the country, a gag has been placed upon the whole people. To dare question the wisdom and efficacy of the so-called dictatorship or the proletariat of the Communist Party leaders is considered a crime. We lack the simplest requisites of the real essence of a social revolution, and yet we pretend to have placed ourselves at the head of a world revolution. Poor Russia will have to pay dearly for this experiment. It may even delay for a long time fundamental changes in other countries. The bourgeoisie will be able to defend its reactionary methods by pointing to what has happened in Russia.”
Consigliato a: chi non trema né compie strani e buffi gesti di scongiuro al solo udire la parola “rivoluzione”; i più temerari clicchino qui:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_...
Tanti sono i punti di contatto fra i due testi e quindi il paragone fra Goldman e Serge sorge spontaneo, a tutto vantaggio – almeno secondo me – di quest’ultimo. Nella mia personale classifica, (per quel che può valere), le “Memorie” rimangono il miglior acquisto del 2013: leggerle è un po’ come seguire l’autore nell’incendio in cui lui decise volontariamente di gettarsi, perché per lui le fiamme dell’inferno russo erano comunque preferibili all’ipocrisia dei grigi paradisi artificiali delle società d’Occidente. Il bilancio finale è impietoso, ma sopravvive fino all’ultima pagina la convinzione che il destino non era scritto e che la storia è troppo complessa per essere giudicata sbrigativamente, con due formulette di rito e col senno di poi.
Emma Goldman invece scrive un diario di viaggio in cui, aneddoto dopo aneddoto, tappa dopo tappa, riporta luci e ombre (soprattutto le ombre) del regime bolscevico, ma sempre mantenendo una certa distanza dalla realtà che descrive. Mentre Serge si tuffa anima e corpo nella corrente impetuosa, Emma Goldman non abbandona mai il proprio distacco critico: sempre vigile e lucida, non si lascia abbagliare dalle parate, dai banchetti in cui ad ogni brindisi s’intona l’Internazionale, scava a fondo e cocciutamente continua la sua inchiesta, ovunque vada. La povertà e la fame sono del resto sotto gli occhi di tutti, non serve uno speciale acume per notarli; altrettanto dicasi del mercato nero, della prostituzione e soprattutto dell’ipertrofica macchina burocratica bolscevica. La polizia segreta, la Cheka, istituita nel 1918, completerà il quadro già non troppo roseo.
Nulla che oggi non si sappia già, ma non è nell’informazione nuda che risiede il valore di questa scrittura – è nei vividi e intensissimi ritratti di cui Emma Goldman ci fa dono, ed è nella complessità del suo racconto, che nulla ha a che spartire con la piattezza della letteratura di denuncia della propaganda anticomunista, non meno monolitica e settaria di quella bolscevica.
Brillano i capitoli dedicati a Kropotkin, a Maria Spiridonova e ad Angelica Balabanoff (figura assai degna di nota: ucraina di nascita, italiana d’adozione, fu allieva di Antonio Labriola, divenne membro del PSI, poi in Russia fu eletta segretaria del Comintern per due anni ed infine nel 1922, in disaccordo con Lenin per la gestione di Kronstadt, decise di ritornare a Roma); e, al di là dei grandi personaggi “che hanno fatto la storia”, come si suol dire, non sono da meno le descrizioni della gente comune, dei mille volti anonimi della folla, o di quelli noti allora ma poi dimenticati. Come la giovane sposa di Nestor Makhno, che rischia la vita per incontrare Emma e fissare fra lei e suo marito un incontro che non avverrà mai, ma già che è lì, ne approfitta per chiederle se in Occidente le donne fanno un uso consapevole della contraccezione. O come l’oggi ignoto Vladimir Korolenko, che così commenta la Rivoluzione:
“It was always my conception that revolution meant the highest expression of humanity and of justice. In Russia to-day both are absent. At a time when the fullest expression and cooperation of all intellectual and spiritual forces are necessary to reconstruct the country, a gag has been placed upon the whole people. To dare question the wisdom and efficacy of the so-called dictatorship or the proletariat of the Communist Party leaders is considered a crime. We lack the simplest requisites of the real essence of a social revolution, and yet we pretend to have placed ourselves at the head of a world revolution. Poor Russia will have to pay dearly for this experiment. It may even delay for a long time fundamental changes in other countries. The bourgeoisie will be able to defend its reactionary methods by pointing to what has happened in Russia.”
Consigliato a: chi non trema né compie strani e buffi gesti di scongiuro al solo udire la parola “rivoluzione”; i più temerari clicchino qui:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_...
September 10, 2025
Es un libro clave para entender la revolución rusa desde la perspectiva de una persona que la defendía y ansiaba antes de vivir casi dos años en Rusia, y que después de experimentarla en en su propia carne fue desilusionada de sobremanera. Emma Goldman no solo relata los horribles acontecimientos perpetrados por el Estado bolchevique, sino que te deja sumergirte es su experiencia hasta tal punto que sientes vivirla.
January 19, 2014
If there is a more personal and riveting political memoir out there I would like to read it. Emma Goldman writes about her first hand experiences in Russia during the two years she lived there, from 1920 to 1921. She enjoyed wide access to public figures and intellectuals and her account covers just as much ground on their personalities as it does on social, economic, and political conditions in the country. It is a damning argument against socialism and communism, written by an Anarchist who was deported to Russia from the United States, with the gist being that these political concepts in Russia didn't maintain any general human ethics - they were purely political power plays. She is also a great writer and the language makes it an enjoyable read despite the bleak facts.
April 12, 2010
Emma Goldman, an anarchist, spent two years in Russia, finally leaving in 1921. This is the story of her increasing disillusionment with the Bolsheviks. She says that the red crackdown at Kronstadt is what precipitated her decision to leave. An interesting analysis of the revolution and its aftermath from a truly original character.
March 2, 2014
Emma Goldman was given the opportunity to see the hijacking of the Russian revolution first hand. An anarchist that was pro-communism, was given a one way ticket out of the U.S. To Russia. Her experience allowed idealism to meet brute power reality. It's a sad story but a good opportunity to understand the idealistic struggles in the early part of the 20th century.
April 1, 2010
I hate this book. Period.
Read
November 10, 2017great 1st person account of how the Bolsheviks killed the Russian Revolution
Want to read
April 8, 2015pdf - us.archives.org
May 6, 2024
Requires some contextualizing for those of us with a spotty grasp of Russian history. That said, this is a very interesting read by a proud and eloquent free thinker.
December 26, 2018
Emma Goldman's 'My Disillusionment in Russia' is one of the quintessential first-hand anarchist account/text on Russian Revolution. Goldman recounts her experience in Russia after being deported there from the US (via the Anarchist Exclusion Act and 1918 Alien Act) in December 1919. Goldman (along with Berkman) is initially a supporter of the Russian Revolution albeit from a distance. It is not until she experiences Bolshevik rule first hand, along with the unfolding of the Kronstadt rebellion and subsequent repression, that Goldman resigns her support.
Goldman is an honest commentator and very critical, which makes her account so important both for general readers and from an anarchist perspective. So often, accounts of the revolution are elevated/dismissed based on their ideological perspective. Goldman's book successfully accounts for this by demonstrating her commitment to revolution and examining Russia/Bolshevik experiment on its own terms. Goldman arrives exuberant about the opportunity to engage with the revolution; she speaks with people of all different persuasions including Lenin. Goldman is resolutely an anarchist, but attempts to ascertain if what is taking place in Russia is somehow necessary despite her principles. As time progress, Goldman becomes more and more disappointed and Bolshevik rule seem to confirm her worst fears about States, even communist ones, while re-affirming her commitment to her anarchist principles.
Goldman is an honest commentator and very critical, which makes her account so important both for general readers and from an anarchist perspective. So often, accounts of the revolution are elevated/dismissed based on their ideological perspective. Goldman's book successfully accounts for this by demonstrating her commitment to revolution and examining Russia/Bolshevik experiment on its own terms. Goldman arrives exuberant about the opportunity to engage with the revolution; she speaks with people of all different persuasions including Lenin. Goldman is resolutely an anarchist, but attempts to ascertain if what is taking place in Russia is somehow necessary despite her principles. As time progress, Goldman becomes more and more disappointed and Bolshevik rule seem to confirm her worst fears about States, even communist ones, while re-affirming her commitment to her anarchist principles.
January 31, 2025
Emma Goldman es devuelta a Rusia, regresaba de un Estados Unidos que la tenía en prisión y la había nombrado "la mujer más peligrosa del mundo" (risas por los términos alarmistas del usa government pero no risa, porque era en efecto, una mujer con una mente muy poderosa).
Regresa a Rusia con la emoción de conocer de cerca los logros alcanzados por la Revolución de Octubre. Durante su estancia, habla con los obreros y los campesinos, poco a poco va descubriendo que sus condiciones no habían cambiado. La revolución les falló. El régimen bolchevique confiscó las riquezas de la burguesía, pero no para redistribuirlas al proletariado, sino para repartírselos entre ellos. En este libro, describe incansablemente las conversaciones que mantiene con la población e incluso con el mismo Lenin y con nada más ni nada menos, que Kropotkin. Así como también narra los vericuetos de un régimen tirano, totalitario y burocrático. Agradezco también que haya hecho apuntes sobre la posición de la mujer en el pensamiento de izquierda: relegada y vista como una máquina para procrear y dedicarse exclusivamente a los cuidados.
Es la versión real de "Rebelión en la granja". Leerla se sintió frustrante, pero me alegra haberlo hecho.
Regresa a Rusia con la emoción de conocer de cerca los logros alcanzados por la Revolución de Octubre. Durante su estancia, habla con los obreros y los campesinos, poco a poco va descubriendo que sus condiciones no habían cambiado. La revolución les falló. El régimen bolchevique confiscó las riquezas de la burguesía, pero no para redistribuirlas al proletariado, sino para repartírselos entre ellos. En este libro, describe incansablemente las conversaciones que mantiene con la población e incluso con el mismo Lenin y con nada más ni nada menos, que Kropotkin. Así como también narra los vericuetos de un régimen tirano, totalitario y burocrático. Agradezco también que haya hecho apuntes sobre la posición de la mujer en el pensamiento de izquierda: relegada y vista como una máquina para procrear y dedicarse exclusivamente a los cuidados.
Es la versión real de "Rebelión en la granja". Leerla se sintió frustrante, pero me alegra haberlo hecho.
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