The Nexus Archive
Anarchism and Political Memoir
Goldman
The Witness of Revolt · Modern America and Russia, 1869-1940
Goldman records revolutionary hope colliding with repression, prisons, censorship, and Kronstadt.
- Disillusionment
- Liberty
- Repression
- Anarchism
- Witness
Life
Emma Goldman was an anarchist writer, lecturer, and political activist. Her Russian-disillusionment volumes document her break with Bolshevik power after witnessing repression in revolutionary Russia.
The question
“What happens when a revolution betrays the freedom it promised?”
Argued against
State absolutism, political prisons, censorship, and revolutionary excuses for repression.
Why Goldman matters
Goldman's Russian memoirs supply the route's direct testimony of revolutionary disillusionment and show what happens when promised liberation becomes state repression.
Works
- My Disillusionment in Russia Memoir · Advanced Goldman's complete 1923 and 1924 Russian-disillusionment volumes in sequence, from her arrival and travels through Kropotkin, Kronstadt, famine, exile, and the final argument about means and ends.