The Nexus Archive
Anarchism and Political Memoir · Memoir
My Disillusionment in Russia
by Goldman · The Witness of Revolt · Modern America and Russia, 1869-1940
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.
- Advanced
- 1923-1924
- ~6 hr 30 min read
- 14 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Volume I — Preface guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
The Revolution She Could No Longer Defend
Emma Goldman arrived in Soviet Russia in January 1920 as a deportee returning to the country of her birth. She had defended the Bolsheviks while facing imprisonment and expulsion from the United States. Now she hoped to help build the society for which she and her comrades had sacrificed so much.
Her account moves between public ceremonies and private conversations, official offices and crowded homes. Workers, party officials, prisoners, and old revolutionary friends give her sharply different pictures of the same country. She records what people tell her alongside what she sees, including kindness and courage that resist an easy judgment. Affection for individual Communists makes the political questions more painful.
Goldman was an anarchist: she believed people could organize their lives through free cooperation rather than government command. The revolution made by workers and peasants was therefore distinct, for her, from the state claiming to speak in their name. This memoir and political argument, published in two volumes in 1923 and 1924, grows from the strain between those commitments. Loyalty to freedom can demand criticism of people once defended as its champions.
The opening pages
Volume I — Chapter I: Deportation to Russia
On the night of December 21, 1919, together with two hundred and forty-eight other political prisoners, I was deported from America. Although it was generally known we were to be deported, few really believed that the United States would so completely deny her past as an asylum for political refugees, some of whom had lived and worked in America for more than thirty years.
In my own case, the decision to eliminate me first became known when, in 1909, the Federal authorities went out of their way to disfranchise the man whose name gave me citizenship. That Washington waited till 1917 was due to the circumstance that the psychologic moment for the finale was lacking. Perhaps I should have contested my case at that time. With the then-prevalent public opinion, the Courts would probably not have sustained the fraudulent proceedings which robbed me of citizenship. But it did not seem credible then that America would stoop to the Tsaristic method of deportation.
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.
It was on December 5, 1919, while in Chicago lecturing, that I was telegraphically apprised of the fact that the order for my deportation was final. The question of my citizenship was then raised in court, but was of course decided adversely. I had intended to take the case to a higher tribunal, but finally I decided to carry the matter no further: Soviet Russia was luring me.
Ludicrously secretive were the authorities about our deportation. To the very last moment we were kept in ignorance as to the time. Then, unexpectedly, in the wee small hours of December 21st we were spirited away. The scene set for this performance was most thrilling. It was six o'clock Sunday morning, December 21, 1919, when under heavy military convoy we stepped aboard the Buford.
For twenty-eight days we were prisoners. Sentries at our cabin doors day and night, sentries on deck during the hour we were daily permitted to breathe the fresh air. Our men comrades were cooped up in dark, damp quarters, wretchedly fed, all of us in complete ignorance of the direction we were to take. Yet our spirits were high--Russia, free, new Russia was before us.
All my life Russia's heroic struggle for freedom was as a beacon to me. The revolutionary zeal of her martyred men and women, which neither fortress nor katorga could suppress, was my inspiration in the darkest hours. When the news of the February Revolution flashed across the world, I longed to hasten to the land which had performed the miracle and had freed her people from the age-old yoke of Tsarism. But America held me. The thought of thirty years of struggle for my ideals, of my friends and associates, made it impossible to tear myself away. I would go to Russia later, I thought.
Chapter guides · 14
Volume I — Preface
A Defender Becomes A Witness
Goldman explains why loyalty to freedom requires her to criticize Bolshevik rule.
Main idea
Goldman separates the revolution made by ordinary people from the government claiming to represent it. She writes as a former defender of the Bolsheviks who now feels that silence would make her a party to the Revolution’s betrayal.
Recap
She describes her struggle to accept evidence against the party. She challenges accounts based on brief, guided visits and explains why some witnesses must remain unnamed. War can require defense, she argues, without justifying a permanent system of terror. She ends by pledging to oppose oppression wherever it occurs, even when speaking brings no immediate change.
Volume I — Chapter V
The Personal Test Begins
Meetings with Lenin and Kropotkin sharpen the conflict between party control and free cooperation.
Main idea
Goldman wants to help Russia without placing her work under party control. Her meetings show how differently revolutionaries understand freedom.
Recap
Anarchists describe repression and ask for the release of prisoners. Lenin welcomes her plan for a Russian society to aid American freedom but wants it under the Communist International; she refuses. He treats free speech as a lesser concern than supplying goods. Kropotkin, an anarchist thinker, instead stresses cooperation and warns against centralized rule. His worn appearance and poor health trouble Goldman. She leaves fearing that he may die before the world hears his views.
Volume I — Chapter X
The Revolution Performs For Outsiders
Lavish hospitality for foreign delegates troubles Goldman amid widespread hunger.
Volume I — Chapter XII
The Surface Breaks
Surveillance and neglected schools make party power harder for Goldman to excuse.
Volume I — Chapter XVI
Revolutionary Authority Meets Revolutionary Conscience
Maria Spiridonova challenges the party’s claim to speak for the peasants.
Volume I — Chapter XX
Ukraine Broadens The Case
Poltava and Fastov reveal both repression and the value of protection from massacres.
Volume I — Chapter XXI
Hope And Doubt In Kiev
Human courage and changing beliefs complicate Goldman’s growing disillusionment.
Volume II — Preface
The Missing Chapters Return
Goldman explains the incomplete publication and defends her criticism of dictatorship.
Volume II — Chapter V
Kropotkin Becomes A Measure
Kropotkin’s funeral brings public solidarity into conflict with prison authorities.
Volume II — Chapter VII
Persecution Continues After Kronstadt
Goldman traces raids, imprisonment, and killings of anarchists after her break with the party.
Volume II — Chapter IX
Culture Shows The Damage
Schools and theatres show the tension between creative freedom and party control.
Volume II — Chapter XI
Exile Replaces Liberation
Goldman decides to leave so that she can speak openly about repression.
Volume II — Chapter XII: Afterword, Part 1
Experience Becomes Principle
Goldman asks why a popular revolution gave way to a centralized state.
Volume II — Chapter XII: Afterword, Part 4
The Warning Becomes General
Goldman argues that a revolution’s methods shape the society it creates.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read My Disillusionment in Russia?
- About 6 hr 30 min in total.
- How difficult is My Disillusionment in Russia?
- Advanced. A long memoir; about 7 hours of reading.
- Which edition is this?
- The original English text, first published in 1923. The text follows My Disillusionment in Russia, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1923 / My Further Disillusionment in Russia, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1924.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 14 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Goldman
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.
“What happens when a revolution betrays the freedom it promised?”
Goldman's Russian memoirs supply the route's direct testimony of revolutionary disillusionment and show what happens when promised liberation becomes state repression.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. My Disillusionment in Russia is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.