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My Further Disillusionment in Russia
My Further Disillusionment in Russia is a 1924 non-fiction book by Emma Goldman, her continuation of My Disillusionment in Russia, the original publication in which the last twelve chapters were entirely missing, including the Afterword.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
98 pages, Paperback
Published August 10, 2018
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About the author
Emma Goldman
361 books1,045 followersEmma Goldman was a feminist anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.
Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania), Goldman emigrated to the US in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement.Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands.
She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Although Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth.
In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia.
Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1923, she wrote a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940, aged 70.
During her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution.Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman's iconic status was revived in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest in her life.
Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania), Goldman emigrated to the US in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement.Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands.
She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Although Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth.
In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia.
Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1923, she wrote a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940, aged 70.
During her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution.Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman's iconic status was revived in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest in her life.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 1, 2020
This is a continuation of Goldman's "My Disillusionment in Russia", to which I gave five stars and wrote a goodreads review. Here she does two things. She continues to provide evidence of what she saw and heard talking to many people high and low in several locales during nearly two years (1920-1921) in Russia following the 1917 revolutions there: the crushing of the revolution by the top-down brutal dictatorship imposed by the Bolsheviks where the ends justified any means whatever and the means then replaced the ends.
Goldman finishes with an afterword that is about a fifth of the book and discusses her ideas about revolutions. It is not without interest, but it has anarchist view, rather unlike the rest of these two books which appear to be fairly neutral reporting of facts. Goldman writes well, thinks well and has done her own thinking. She cares about people.
With these two first-hand accounts and later similar reports by others about the Soviet system, there was no excuse whatever for the worship of Soviet communism that swept socialists, communists and others off their feet around the world during subsequent decades, worship that hardly abated after the Moscow show trials of the late 1930's, the crushing of the Hungarian revolution 0f 1956 and the Czech uprising of 1968, the Berlin Wall of 1961, and many other outrages. There are worshipers still.
Goldman finishes with an afterword that is about a fifth of the book and discusses her ideas about revolutions. It is not without interest, but it has anarchist view, rather unlike the rest of these two books which appear to be fairly neutral reporting of facts. Goldman writes well, thinks well and has done her own thinking. She cares about people.
With these two first-hand accounts and later similar reports by others about the Soviet system, there was no excuse whatever for the worship of Soviet communism that swept socialists, communists and others off their feet around the world during subsequent decades, worship that hardly abated after the Moscow show trials of the late 1930's, the crushing of the Hungarian revolution 0f 1956 and the Czech uprising of 1968, the Berlin Wall of 1961, and many other outrages. There are worshipers still.
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April 8, 2015pdf - us.archives.org
July 31, 2023
The final second part- hammers home the problems with the Bolshevik communist revolution and painting it as a failure- something I think history would corroborate. What I like here is that this isn’t about vilifying the left but in essence stating that the Russian experiment did not go far enough to allow self and community determination- a form of liberalism that even some staunch republicans could buy into- a very interesting document.
January 3, 2024
Defender el bolchevismo en el siglo XxI en como ser Confederado, no te enteras de en qué mundo vives
March 12, 2025
As much as I like EG, this is sobering to see how wrong she was in her optimism and praise of Russia. Different system, same problems.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews