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Title: Emma Goldman Author: Patricia McCarthy Date: 1996 Language: en Topics: Emma Goldman, Workers Solidarity Source: Retrieved on 11th December 2021 from http://struggle.ws/ws/gold49.html Notes: Published in Workers Solidarity No. 49 â Autumn 1996.
Emma Goldman was a legend in her own lifetime. Born in Lithuania on
27^(th) June 1869, she emigrated to the United States with her sister
Helena in 1885. Like so many other East European immigrants, she found
work in a clothing factory. The following year four Chicago anarchists
were executed.
They had been prominent trade union activists leading the struggle for
an eight-hour day. Framed for a bombing, the authorities hoped that this
would scare off the emerging trade union movement, especially its
anarchist component. The international outcry which followed these
executions on trumped up charges helped to shape Emmaâs radical and
anarchist ideals, which lasted throughout her long life.
Emma Goldman was a formidable public speaker and a prolific writer. Her
whole life was devoted to struggle and she was controversial even within
the radical and anarchist movement itself. She was one of the first
radicals to address the issue of homosexuality, she was a fighter for
womenâs rights, and she advocated the virtues of free love. These ideas
were viewed with suspicion by those who placed their faith in the
cure-all solution of economic class warfare and they were denounced by
many of her contemporaries as âbourgeois inspiredâ at best.
To mainstream Americans, Emma was known as a demonic âdynamite eating
anarchistâ. She toured the States, agitating and lecturing everywhere
she went. She was hounded for much of her life by FBI agents and was
imprisoned in 1893, 1901, 1916, 1918, 1919, and 1921 on charges ranging
from incitement to riot to advocating the use of birth control to
opposition to World War 1.
A self proclaimed anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, assassinated President
William McKinley in 1901 and this event unleashed a massive wave of
anti-anarchist hysteria throughout the States. Emma was blamed for his
action and was forced into hiding for a time. She was deported from the
United States, Holland, France, and was denied entry to many other
countries. None of this daunted her, she began publishing âMother Earthâ
magazine in 1906 and was very active in the No-Conscription League.
She shared a life long friendship with her political comrade Alexander
Berkman. Both of them were deported from the USA to Russia in 1919. At
first, Emma was excited to see at first hand the revolution she had
fought to bring about all her life. However, it did not take long for
her to realise that the Bolsheviks were not lovers of freedom nor
partisans of workersâ control. What had been created was a massive
dictatorship. The suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion by the
Bolsheviks In 1921 was too much for Emma and Berkman, and they left
Russia in a state of disillusionment.
She spent the next number of years moving from country to country and
writing a long series of articles and two books about her experiences
and struggles. She eventually lived in Britain for many years where she
wrote her autobiography and continued supporting workersâ struggles in
different parts of the world. Suffering from grave illness, Alexander
Berkman committed suicide in 1936. Just a week later an anarchist
inspired revolution erupted in Spain. Over the next three years Emma
committed herself to the support of the anarchists and their fight
against fascism and Stalinism.
Her long and incredible life came to an end in 1940. Only after her
death was she admitted back into America where she was buried in Chicago
near the Haymarket martyrs who had helped to shape her life.