Emma Goldman
Who was Emma Goldman?
Russian-born American anarchist writer and activist who became a prominent figure in the early 20th century labor movement. She was deported from the United States in 1919 for her radical political activities and anti-war stance.
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Emma Goldman (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Emma Goldman was born on June 27, 1869, in Kaunas, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, into a Lithuanian Jewish family. She moved to the United States in 1885 and eventually settled in New York City. There, she worked in garment factories and got involved in radical political groups. The execution of the Haymarket anarchists in 1887 deeply affected her, pushing her toward anarchism and starting her lifelong political activism. She became one of the most well-known and controversial radical figures in America, attracting large crowds to her lectures on anarchism, women's rights, free love, and social reform.
Goldman's activism often put her at odds with the law. She was jailed multiple times, including for inciting a riot during an 1893 speech to unemployed workers and for illegally distributing birth control information. In 1892, she and her longtime partner Alexander Berkman planned to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick during the Homestead Steel Strike. Berkman carried out the attack but Frick survived, and Berkman got a 22-year prison sentence. Although Goldman wasn't charged for the plot, it increased public suspicion of her. In 1906, she started the anarchist journal Mother Earth, which she edited for over a decade, becoming a major outlet for radical views in America.
In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were convicted of conspiring to obstruct the new military draft and sentenced to two years in prison. After their release, they were caught up in the Palmer Raids of 1919, a government crackdown on suspected radicals during the First Red Scare. Since Goldman never became a U.S. citizen, she was deported to Russia in December 1919 with 248 others. She arrived in the Soviet Union with cautious hope about the Bolshevik Revolution, but her experiences, especially witnessing the violent suppression of the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion, led to her profound disappointment with Soviet communism. She left Russia and, in 1923, published My Disillusionment in Russia and then My Further Disillusionment in Russia, which gave a critical firsthand look at life under Bolshevik rule.
She spent the rest of her life mostly in exile, living in England, France, and Canada. She finished her autobiography, Living My Life, published in two volumes in 1931 and 1935, which is still an important piece of anarchist literature and political memoir. In the mid-1930s, the start of the Spanish Civil War pulled her back into active organizing. She went to Spain to support the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist groups fighting against Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces, working as a propagandist and spokesperson for their cause worldwide. Goldman died on May 14, 1940, in Toronto, Canada, following a stroke, and was buried in Chicago near the Haymarket martyrs, whose deaths had first inspired her radical beliefs.
Before Fame
Emma Goldman had a tough upbringing in the Russian Empire, dealing with a strict father and widespread antisemitism in the Pale of Settlement. Her formal education was minimal, and she started working in factories at a young age, first in St. Petersburg and later in Rochester, New York, after emigrating in 1885. Her brief marriage to Jacob Kershner was unhappy and didn't last. She then moved to New York City, where she got involved in radical labor politics and met Alexander Berkman, starting a partnership that greatly influenced her activist work.
The 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago, where labor protesters were killed and several anarchists were later executed after a controversial trial, strengthened Goldman's political beliefs. She saw the Haymarket case as proof of state violence against workers and fully embraced anarchism as her philosophy and lifestyle. By the early 1890s, she was a powerful public speaker who could attract thousands of listeners, becoming one of the most well-known radical voices of her time.
Key Achievements
- Founded the influential anarchist journal Mother Earth in 1906, which she edited for over a decade
- Authored Living My Life (1931–1935), one of the most widely read political autobiographies of the twentieth century
- Became one of the foremost public lecturers on anarchism, women's rights, and free speech in the United States, regularly attracting audiences of thousands
- Published My Disillusionment in Russia (1923), an early and influential critique of Bolshevik authoritarianism from a left-anarchist perspective
- Played an active role as an international spokesperson for the anarchist cause during the Spanish Civil War from 1936 onward
Did You Know?
- 01.Goldman was deported from the United States on the USS Buford, a transport ship that the press nicknamed 'the Soviet Ark,' along with 248 other alleged radicals in December 1919.
- 02.She was arrested in 1916 for distributing pamphlets about contraception and birth control methods, charges that reflected the then-illegal status of such information under the Comstock Act.
- 03.Goldman's journal Mother Earth, which she founded in 1906, published early work by a range of radical writers and ran for eleven years before being suppressed by the U.S. government during World War I.
- 04.Despite her disillusionment with the Soviet Union, Goldman initially agreed to give lectures there and was even offered a position by the Bolshevik government before her break with the regime.
- 05.Goldman is buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, near the graves of the Haymarket martyrs, whose execution she described as the defining moment that made her an anarchist.