Emma Goldman

Publisher description: Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years redefines the historical memory of Emma Goldman and illuminates a forgotten yet influential facet of the history of American and European radicalism. This definitive multivolume work, which differs significantly from Goldman's autobiography, presents original texts--a significant group of which are published in or translated into English for the first time--anchored by rigorous contextual annotations. The distillation of years of scholarly research, these volumes include personal correspondence, newspaper articles, government surveillance reports from America and Europe, dramatic court transcripts, unpublished lecture notes, and an array of other rare items and documentation. Biographical, newspaper, and organizational appendixes are complemented by in-depth chronologies that underscore the complexity of Goldman's political and social milieu. The first volume, Made for America, 1890-1901, tracks the young Emma Goldman's introduction into the anarchist movement, features her earliest known writings in the German anarchist press, and charts her gradual emergence from the radical immigrant circles of New York City's Lower East Side into a political and intellectual culture of both national and international importance. Goldman's remarkable public ascendance is framed within a volatile period of political violence: within the first few pages, Henry Clay Frick, the anti-union industrialist, is shot by Alexander Berkman, Goldman's lover the book ends with the assassination of President William McKinley, an act in which Goldman was falsely implicated. The documents surrounding these events shed light on difficult issues--and spark an important though chilling debate about Goldman's strategy for reconciling her "beautiful vision" of anarchism and the harsh realities of her times. The documents articulate the force of Goldman's rage, tracing the development of her political and social critique as well as her originality and her remarkable ability to synthesize and popularize cutting-edge political and cultural ideas. Goldman appears as a rising luminary in the mainstream press--a voice against hypocrisy and a lightning rod of curiosity, intrigue, and sometimes fear. The volumes include newspaper accounts of the speaking tours across America that eventually established her reputation as one of the most challenging and passionate orators of the twentieth century. Themes that came to dominate Goldman's life--anarchism and its possibilities, free speech, education, the transformative power and social significance of literature, the position of labor within the capitalist economic system, the vital importance of women's freedom, the dynamics of personal relationships, and strategies for a social revolution--are among the many introduced in Made for America.

My Disillusionment in Russia is a book by Emma Goldman, published in 1923 by Doubleday, Page & Co. The book was based on a much longer manuscript entitled "My Two Years in Russia" which was an eyewitness account of events in Russia from 1920 to 1921 that ensued in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and which culminated in the Kronstadt rebellion. Long-concerned about developments with the Bolsheviks, Goldman described the rebellion as the "final wrench. I saw before me the Bolshevik State, formidable, crushing every constructive revolutionary effort, suppressing, debasing, and disintegrating everything" ([Wikipedia](

Living My Life is the autobiography of Lithuanian-born anarchist Emma Goldman, who became internationally renowned as an activist based in the United States. It was published in two volumes in 1931 (Alfred A. Knopf) and 1934 (Garden City Publishing Company). Goldman wrote it while living in Saint-Tropez, France, following her disillusionment with the Bolshevik role in the Russian Revolution. The text thoroughly covers her personal and political life from early childhood through to 1927. The book has constantly remained in print since, in original and abridged editions. Since the autobiography was published nine years before Goldman died in 1940, it does not record her role in the Spanish Civil War. (Source: [Wikipedia](

My Disillusionment in Russia is a book by Emma Goldman, [published in 1923 by Doubleday, Page & Co.]( The book was based on a much longer manuscript entitled "My Two Years in Russia" which was an eyewitness account of events in Russia from 1920 to 1921 that ensued in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and which culminated in the Kronstadt rebellion. Long-concerned about developments with the Bolsheviks, Goldman described the rebellion as the "final wrench. I saw before me the Bolshevik State, formidable, crushing every constructive revolutionary effort, suppressing, debasing, and disintegrating everything". Much to Goldman's dismay, only upon receiving the first printed copies of the book did she become aware that (1) the publisher had changed the title; and (2) the last twelve chapters were entirely missing, including an Afterword which Goldman felt was "the most vital part" of the book. Sympathetic to the initial Russian Revolution, the complete book is an impassioned left critique of the Bolshevik Revolution as well as Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy—an "all-powerful, centralized Government with State Capitalism as its economic expression". The complete book is also critical of Marxian theory, which Goldman describes as "a cold, mechanistic, enslaving formula". After much back and forth with the publishers, the missing portions of Goldman's original manuscript were published in a second (American) volume [My Further Disillusionment in Russia (also titled by the publisher) in 1924]( In the preface to the second "volume" of the American edition, Goldman wryly observes that only two of the reviewers sensed the incompleteness of the original American version, one of whom was not a regular critic, but a librarian. A complete version of the complete manuscript was published in England with an introduction by Rebecca West, also with the title My Disillusionment in Russia (London: C. W. Daniel Company, 1925). (Source: [Wikipedia](

1 online resource (315 pages leaf of plates)

This political zine, first published in 1914 by celebrated anarchist Emma Goldman, was reprinted with the help of Anarchy Archives. In the essay, Goldman asserts that marriage is not an indicator of love and that the institution disenfranchises women and discounts female sexuality.

"Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of existence,--the savage struggle which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short, Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establish well-being for all." - Emma Goldman Please Note: This book has been reformatted to be easy to read in true text, not scanned images that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. The Microsoft eBook has a contents page linked to the chapter headings for easy navigation. The Adobe eBook has bookmarks at chapter headings and is printable up to two full copies per year. Both versions are text searchable.

Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, the Russian Jewish immigrants who were once called "the two most notorious anarchists in the United States" by the New York Times, were the most outstanding revolutionary activists of their generation. Arrested in 1917 for their anti-conscription campaign during the First World War, they were subsequently deported to Russia in the 1919 1920 Red Scare. Although they were initially optimistic about returning to Russia in the midst of social revolution, over the next two years Goldman and Berkman would come face-to-face with the contradictions of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" as they witnessed the persecution of Russian anarchists, the suppression of revolutionary labor movements, and the brutal annihilation of the 1921 Kronstadt Uprising. The two anarchists quickly learned that the Bolshevik Party's dictatorship was not the embodiment of the workers' revolution, but was in fact "the very antithesis of revolution." Through their first-hand accounts of the situation in Russia, Goldman and Berkman reminded revolutionaries everywhere that "the state whatever its name or form is ever the mortal enemy of liberty and popular self-determination" and that true social revolution can never be managed or manipulated by political parties seeking state power, but must emerge from the creative self-activity of working people themselves. This new volume collects selected writings by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman that recount their experiences in Russia from 1920 to 1922. Famous essays like "Bolsheviks Shooting Anarchists," "The Prisons of Russia," and "There Is No Communism in Russia" are collected here alongside immortal pamphlets like The Crushing of the Russian Revolution, The Russian Tragedy, and The Kronstadt Rebellion. Selections from Emma Goldman's memoir, My Disillusionment in Russia, are also included, as well as many other documents and manuscripts.

My Disillusionment in Russia is a book by Emma Goldman, published in 1923 by Doubleday, Page & Co. The book was based on a much longer manuscript entitled "My Two Years in Russia" which was an eyewitness account of events in Russia from 1920 to 1921 that ensued in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and which culminated in the Kronstadt rebellion. Long-concerned about developments with the Bolsheviks, Goldman described the rebellion as the "final wrench. I saw before me the Bolshevik State, formidable, crushing every constructive revolutionary effort, suppressing, debasing, and disintegrating everything". Much to Goldman's dismay, only upon receiving the first printed copies of the book did she become aware that (1) the publisher had changed the title; and (2) the last twelve chapters were entirely missing, including an Afterword which Goldman felt was "the most vital part" of the book. Sympathetic to the initial Russian Revolution, the complete book is an impassioned left critique of the Bolshevik Revolution as well as Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy—an "all-powerful, centralized Government with State Capitalism as its economic expression". The complete book is also critical of Marxian theory, which Goldman describes as "a cold, mechanistic, enslaving formula". After much back and forth with the publishers, the missing portions of Goldman's original manuscript were published in a second (American) volume [My Further Disillusionment in Russia (also titled by the publisher) in 1924]( In the preface to the second "volume" of the American edition, Goldman wryly observes that only two of the reviewers sensed the incompleteness of the original American version, one of whom was not a regular critic, but a librarian. A complete version of the complete manuscript was published in England with an introduction by Rebecca West, also with the title [My Disillusionment in Russia (London: C. W. Daniel Company, 1925)]( (Source: [Wikipedia](