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Title: An Enemy of Society
Author: Alexander Berkman
Language: en
Topics: autobiography
Source: Online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=4879, retrieved on November 18, 2020.
Notes: This manuscript is part of the International Institute for Social History’s Alexander Berkman archive and appears in Anarchy Archives with ISSH’s permission.

Alexander Berkman

An Enemy of Society

EARLY DAYS: Life at home and school in St. Petersburg. My bourgeois

father and aristocratic mother. Jews and gentiles. I question my father

about the Turkish prisoners of war begging alms in the streets.

OUR FAMILY SKELETON: Strange rumors about my mother and her brother

Maxim. Echoes of the Polish rebellion of 1863. I hear of the dreaded

Nihilists and revolution.

A TERRIFIED HOUSEHOLD: A bomb explodes as I recite my lesson in school.

The assassination of Czar Alexander II. Secret groups in our class.

Police search our house. Uncle Maxim is arrested for conspiring against

the Czar’s Life. The funeral of the dead Czar. A terrorized city.

FAMILY TROUBLES: Rumors of my beloved Uncle Maxim’s execution. My

terrible grief. Death of my father. We lose the right of residing in the

capital. Race prejudice and discrimination. Breaking up our business and

home.

PROVINCIAL RUSSIA: The ghetto. Life in Wilne and Kovno. My sisterSonya

and my two elder brothers. In school and university. My rich uncle

Nathan — dictator of Kovno. His peculiar family.

THE TROUBLES OF YOUTH: Class distinctions in school and at home. I am

forbidden to associate with menials. Our warring school gangs on the

River Neman. Boys and girls — the mysteries of sex. Visiting university

students initiate me into Nihilism. Secret associations and forbidden

books.

MY FIRST REBELLION: I defy I my rich uncle Nathan and defend a servant

girl against my mother. Punished in school for my essay, “There is no

God”, written when I was 13 years old. Chumming with a factory boy and

teaching him to read. I discover capitalism. I worship my martyred Uncle

Maxim.

PLANNING AN ESCAPE: I learn that Uncle Maxim is alive and has escaped

from Siberia. My brother Max is refused admission to universities,

because he is a Jew. My violent indignation. More trouble at school. Max

preparing to enter a German university. I conspire to accompany him. A

narrow escape in stealing our way across the border. I go to Hamburg.

Traveling steerage to America.

IN FREE AMERICA: Life on the East Side of New York. A new-fledged

working man at 17. The troubles of a greenhorn. I find friends and a

sweetheart. Wealth and poverty. I meet Russian political exiles and

frequent revolutionary groups in New York. I join the Anarchists. Echoes

of the Chicago Haymarket affair.

THE WORLD OF LABOR: Factories and machines. I work as cigar maker and

cloak-operator. Friends and enemies. East-side cafés and meetings. The

Great proletariat. The troubles of an emigrant. Prominent

revolutionaries.

REALITY VERSES IDEALISM: Life and struggle. Devotion to my ideals. My

intimate comrades and our first “commune colony”. Planning to return to

Russia for revolutionary work. John Most and the German anarchist

movement in America. My friends Emma Goldman and Fedya. Love, friendship

and revolution.

THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE: The steelworkers of Pennsylvania. Carnegie and H.

C. Frick. the blood-bath on the Monongahela. Andrew Carnegie and his

hired Pinkertons. The whole country shocked. I decide to go to

Homestead. Carnegie escapes to his castle in Scotland. My attempt on the

life of Henry Clay Frick. The travesty of my trial. I am sentenced to 22

years’ prison.

IN THE PENITENTIARY: Life in prison. Guards and convicts. I organize a

strike for better food and treatment. Am sentenced to the dungeon.

Prison torture. Attempting suicide and escape. I spend 10 years in

solitary confinement. The grist of the prison-mill. Types of prisoners.

Stories of crime. Robbing the stomach. Fake prison investigations. My

prison chums. Love and sex in prison.

MY RESURRECTION: Freedom after 14 years in prison. The shocks of

reality. Great expectations and crushing disillusionment. How the world

had changed. Old-time friends and new actualities. Afraid of meeting

people. My first lecture tour. I am in Frick’s stronghold again. A visit

to Homestead . I disappear: either dead or kidnapped by Frick.

A NEW LEASE ON LIFE: Police brutality and the arrest of my comrades. I

am roused to work and fight. The Labor and new revolutionary movement.

Russian political refugees: echoes of the Russian revolution of 1905. By

new activities. I start a cooperative printing shop. The “Americanized”

East Side. Labor leaders, Socialists, I.W.W., Bundists, and Anarchists.

SOME MORE TROUBLE: A massmeeting in Cooper Union. I object to a

speaker’s remarks and am railroaded to Blackwell’s Island. I am editor

of MOTHER EARTH, Emma Goldman’s anarchist publication. Trouble with

Comstock. Illiberal American liberals and muddle-headed radicals. I

organize the first Anarchist Federation in America. Trouble with the

police. Free-speech fights.

STRUGGLES OF LABOR: The beginning of American imperialism and my first

anti-war work. The Industrial Workers of the World and the Amarican

Federation of Labor. Outstanding personalities. I help to found the

Francisco Ferrer Association for libertarian education. My new role as a

radical Sunday-school teacher. I write my prison memories. The

unemployed movement; taking possession of churches. The Ludlow massacre;

strikes and great labor trials. Big Bill Haywood, Hillquit, Emma

Goldman, Margaret Sanger, Gurley Flynn, Tresca, and other personalities.

The Union Square tragedy. I defend the McNamra brothers. The Los Angeles

TIMES explosion. General Otis. Mother Jones and martial law. Clarence

Darrow gets acquitted and convicts the McNamara brothers, his clients.

Golden-rule Lincoln Steffens is double-crossed at his own game. We fight

it out with the police at Union Square. I lead the siege of Tarrytown,

home of Rockefeller. The inside story of some explosions. I am charged

with inciting to riot and face prison again.

ON THE COAST: A lecture tour across the country. The Mexican

revolutionists in California. I meet a descendant of the Aztecs. THE

BLAST, my revolutionary labor paper in San Francisco. Persectuion by the

Catholic Church. The Mexican Revolution. THE BLAST editorial: “Wilson or

Villa — which the greater bandit?” THE BLAST suppressed, but continues

to circulate. The American war hysteria. The Preparedness Parade bomb

exlosion in San Francisco. The arrest of Tom Monney, Billings, and other

labor men. I organize their defense. The conspiracy against Mooney.

Fremont Older and the labor leaders assure me Mooney is guilty.

I tour the country in his behalf and work for Mooney in New York.

THE WAR: America enters the war. Jingo Quakers and radicals. The NO-WAR

campaign and my fight against conscription. Exciting mass meetings. I

break my leg and talk on crutches. Defying police and soldiers. The

Revolution breaks out in Russia and I plan to go there. I am arrested

for obstructing the draft. In the Tombs. California demands my

extradition in connection with the Mooney case. The Kronstadt (Russia)

sailors threaten the life of the American ambassador Francis in case I

am extradited to California. Wilson sends a confidential messenger

(Colonel House) to the Governor of New York. The Governor refuses to

extradite me. My trial for “conspiracy to obstruct the draft”.

THE ATLANTA PENITENTIARY: Two years in the Georgia State Prison.

“Politicals worse than criminals”. Conscientious objectors and Eugene V.

Debs. Our chain-gang Warden. I protest against and officer shooting a

negro in the back and killing him. Punished in the dungeon and solitary

for the rest of my time.

DEPORTATION: First deportation of politicals from the United States. The

hell of Ellis Island and our kidnapping in the dead of night. The leaky

boat “Buford” and its passengers. A near-mutiny. Sailors and soldiers

offer to turn the ship over to me. The “sealed orders of the captain”.

We make demands and gain them. In danger of landing in the country of

the Whites. Traveling in Finland under military convoy. Finnish soldiers

steal our provisions. Crossing the border.

IN THE SOVIET RUSSIA: The Revolution day by day. Meeting Bolshevik

leaders: Lenin, Tchicherin, Lunatcharsky, Zinoviev, etc. Trying to work

with the Communists. The Tcheka and the counter-revolution. Trotsky and

military communism. Bolshevik policies verses revolutionary aims. The

madness of power. Discrimination and terror. My work in Russia.

Adventures on the western frontier. Up and down through the country. The

fourteen changes of government in the Ukraina. The uprising of the

Kronstadt sailors. Trotsky massacres them. The new economic policy of

Lenin. I break with the Bolsheviki and leave Russia.

FROM PILLAR TO POST: Arrested in Latvia: the revenge of a Tchekist.

Spending Christmas in prison with Emma Goldman and another friend.

Liberated with apologies and “advised” to leave the country. Chasing for

visas. Danger and fun. Invited to Sweden by Prime Minister Branting.

I KEEP GOING: I write an article for a Stockholm paper in behalf of the

persecuted politicals in Russia. Result: the bourgeois press attacks

Prime Minister Branting for offering the hospitality of Sweden to

“dangerous anarchists”. We are requested to leave. Refused a visa by

several countries, I stowaway on a tramp steamer during a great

snow-storm. I manage to get to Hamburg and lose no time reaching Berlin.

Life in Germany during the inflation. I have suddenly become a

millionaire. Six billion marks for one dollar. I rechristen myself “Dr.

Schmidt” and try I to explain where and why I was born. The adventure of

living without “documents”. Discovery in Bavaria and my timely escape.

Paris and Montparnasse. Types and doings. The Latin quarter: artists,

bohemians, and their various “movements”. The expatriated of the world.

I am suddenly expelled from France. Mysterious enemies. An involuntary

journey to Belgium and my arrest on the border. I am ordered to leave

but remain “underground”. Adventures with diamond speculators and

contrabandists. A perfect stranger risks his wealth and liberty for my

sake and refuses my thanks. My faith in humanity grows 100 percent.

Back in France. Soon again requested to leave. Expelled again, and

again. Must get off the earth, but am still here. Nowhere to go, but

awaiting the next order.

INTERESTING PERSONALITIES: Some men I have met and women I have known.

Love and friendships. How the world keeps turning round.