My Further Disillusionment in Russia
By Emma Goldman
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & company; 1924
PREFACE
The annals of literature tell of books expurgated, of whole chapters eliminated or changed beyond recognition. But I believe it has rarely happened that a work should be published with more than a third of it left out and-without the reviewers being aware of the fact. This doubtful distinction has fallen to the lot of my work on Russia.
The story of that painful experience might well make another chapter, but for the present it is sufficient to give the bare facts of the case.
My manuscript was sent to the original purchaser in two parts, at different times. Subsequently the publishing house of Doubleday, Page & Co. bo... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER I
ODESSA
AT THE numerous stations between Kiev and Odessa we frequently had to wait
for days before we managed to make connections with trains going south. We
employed our leisure in visiting the small towns and villages, and formed many
acquaintances. The markets were especially of interest to us.
In the Kiev province by far the greater part of the population is Jewish. They
had suffered many pogroms and were now living in constant terror of their
repetition. But the will to live is indestructible, particularly in the
Jew; otherwise centuries of persecution and slaughter would long since have
destroyed the race. It... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER II
RETURNING TO MOSCOW
In a country where speech and press are so completely suppressed as in Russia it is not surprising that the human mind should feed on fancy and out of it weave the most incredible stories. Already, during my first months in Petrograd, I was amazed at the wild rumors that circulated in the city and were believed even by intelligent people. The Soviet press was inaccessible to the population at large and there was no other news medium. Every morning Bolshevik bulletins and papers were pasted on the street corners, but in the bitter cold few people cared to pause to read them. Besides, there was lit... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER III
BACK IN PETROGRAD
The Expedition was to proceed to Petrograd the next day, but Louise begged me to remain for the funeral. Sunday, October 23rd, several friends rode with her to the Trade Union House where Reed's body lay in state. I accompanied Louise when the procession started for the Red Square. There were speeches-much cold stereotyped declamation about the value of Jack Reed to the Revolutionand to the Communist Party. It all sounded mechanical, far removed from the spirit of the dead man in the fresh grave. One speaker only dwelt on the real Jack Reed-Alexandra Kollontay. She had caught the artist's soul, in... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER IV
ARCHANGEL AND RETURN
On November 28th the Expedition again got under way, this time with three members only: Alexander Berkman, the Secretary, and myself. We traveled by way of Moscow to Archangel, with stops in Vologda and Yaroslavl. Vologdahad been the seat of various foreign embassies, unofficially engaged in aiding the enemies of the Revolution; We expected to find historic material there, but we were informed that most of it had been destroyed or otherwise wasted. The Soviet institutions were uninteresting: it was a plodding, sleepy provincial town. In Yaroslavl, where the so- called Savinkov uprising had taken plac... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER V
DEATH AND FUNERAL OF PETER KROPOTKIN
When I reached Moscow in January, 1921, I learned that Peter Kropotkin had been stricken with pneumonia. I immediately offered to nurse him, but as one nurse was already in attendance and the Kropotkin cottage was too small to accommodate extra visitors, it was agreed that Sasha Kropotkin, who was then in Moscow, should go to Dmitrov to find out whether I was needed. I had previously arranged to leave for Petrograd the next day. Till the moment of departure I waited for a call from the village; none coming, I concluded that Kropotkin was improving. Two days later, in Petrograd... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER VI
KRONSTADT
In February, 1921, the workers of several Petrograd factories went on strike. The winter was an exceptionally hard one, and the people of the capital suffered intensely from cold, hunger, and exhaustion. They asked an increase of their food rations, some fuel and clothing. The complaints of the strikers, ignored by the authorities, presently assumed a political character. Here and there was also voiced a demand for the Constituent Assembly and free trade. The attempted street demonstration of the strikers was suppressed, the Government having ordered out the military kursanti. Lisa Zorin, who of all the Communi... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER VII
PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS
In a country State-owned and controlled as
completely as Russia it is almost impossible to live without
the "grace" of the Government. However, I was
determined to make the attempt. I would accept nothing, not
even bread rations, from the hands stained with the blood of
the brave Kronstadt sailors. Fortunately, I had some clothing
left me by an American friend; it could be exchanged for
provisions. I had also received some money from my own people
in the United States. That would enable me to live for some
time.
In Moscow I procured a small room formerly occupied by
the daughter of P... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
My Further Disillusionment in Russia
By Emma Goldman
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & company; 1924
CHAPTER VIII
TRAVELING SALESMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
Great preparations were being made by the Communists for the Third Congress of the Third International and the First Congress of the Red Trade Union International. A preliminary committee had been organized in the summer of 1920, while delegates from various countries were in Moscow. How much the Bolsheviki depended upon the First Congress of the Red Trade Union International was apparent from a remark of an old Communist. "We haven't the workers in the Third International," he said; "unless we succeed in welding together the proletariat of the world into the R. T. U. I., t... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER IX
EDUCATION AND CULTURE
The proudest claims of the Bolsheviki are education, art, and culture. Communist propaganda literature and Bolshevik agents at home and abroad constantly sing the praises of these great achievements.
To the casual observer it may indeed appear that the Bolsheviki have accomplished wonders in this field. They have organized more schools than existed under the Czar, and they have made them accessible to the masses. This is true of the larger cities. But in the provinces the existing schools met the opposition of the local Bolsheviki, who closed most of them on the alleged ground of counter-rev... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER X
EXPLOITING THE FAMINE
Late in the summer of 1921 there came the harrowing news of the famine. To those who had kept in touch with inner affairs the information was not quite unexpected. We had learned during the early part of the summer that a large proportion of the population was doomed to death from starvation. At that time a group of scientific agriculturists had assembled in Moscow. Their report showed that, owing to bureaucratic centralization, and corruption and delay in seed distribution, timely and sufficient sowing had been prevented. The Soviet press kept the report of the agricultural conference from the ... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER XI
THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC RESORTS TO DEPORTATION
The Tcheka had succeeded in terrorizing the whole people. The only exceptions were the politicals, whose courage and devotion to their ideals defied the Bolsheviki as it had the Romanovs. I knew many of those brave spirits, and I saw in them the only hope to sustain one amid the general wreckage. They were the living proof of the powerlessness of terror against an Ideal.
Typical of this class was a certain Anarchist who had long been sought for by the Tcheka as an important Makhnovetz. He was a member of the military staff of the revolutionary povstantsi of the Ukraina ... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER XII
AFTERWORD
Non-Bolshevik Socialist critics of the Russian failure contend that the Revolution could not have succeeded in Russia because industrial conditions had not reached the necessary climax in that country. They point to Marx, who taught that a social revolu tion is possible only in countries with a highly developed industrial system and its attendant social antagonisms. They therefore claim that the Russian Revolution could not be a social revolution, and that historically it had to evolve along constitutional, democratic lines, comple mented by a growing industry, in order to ripen the country economically f... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
