My Disillusionment in Russia - Emma Goldman (top fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

My Disillusionment in Russia

By Emma Goldman.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Preface to First Volume of American Edition Preface to Second Volume of American Edition My Disillusionment in Russia I: Deportation to Russia II: Petrograd III: Disturbing Thoughts IV: Moscow: First Impressions V: Meeting People VI: Preparing for American Deportees VII: Rest Homes for Workers VIII: The First of May in Petrograd IX: Industrial Militarization X: The British Labour Mission XI: A Visit from the Ukraine XII: Beneath the Surface XIII: Joining the Museum of the Revolution XIV: Petropavlovsk and Schlüsselburg XV: The Trade Unions XVI: Maria Spiridonova XVII: Another Visit to Peter Kropotkin XVIII: En Route XIX: In Kharkov XX: Poltava XXI: Kiev XXII: Odessa XXIII: Returning to Moscow XXIV: Back in Petrograd XXV: Archangel and Return XXVI: Death and Funeral of Peter Kropotkin XXVII: Kronstadt XXVIII: Persecution of Anarchists XXIX: Travelling Salesmen of the Revolution XXX: Education and Culture XXXI: Exploiting the Famine XXXII: The Socialist Republic Resorts to Deportation XXXIII: Afterword I II III IV Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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Preface to First Volume of American Edition

The decision to record my experiences, observations, and reactions during my stay in Russia I had made long before I thought of leaving that country. In fact, that was my main reason for departing from that tragically heroic land.

The strongest of us are loath to give up a long-cherished dream. I had come to Russia possessed by the hope that I should find a newborn country, with its people wholly consecrated to the great, though very difficult, task of revolutionary reconstruction. And I had fervently hoped that I might become an active part of the inspiring work.

I found reality in Russia grotesque, totally unlike the great ideal that had borne me upon the crest of high hope to the land of promise. It required fifteen long months before I could get my bearings. Each day, each week, each month added new links to the fatal chain that pulled down my cherished edifice. I fought desperately against the disillusionment. For a long time I strove against the still voice within me which urged me to face the overpowering facts. I would not and could not give up.

Then came Kronstadt. It was the final wrench. It completed the terrible realization that the Russian Revolution was no more.

I saw before me the Bolshevik State, formidable, crushing every constructive revolutionary effort, suppressing, debasing, and disintegrating everything. Unable and unwilling to become a cog in that sinister machine, and aware that I could be of no practical use to Russia and her people, I decided to leave the country. Once out of it, I would relate honestly, frankly, and as objectively as humanly possible to me the story of my two years’ stay in Russia.

I left in December, 1921. I could have written then, fresh under the influence of the ghastly experience. But I waited four months before I could bring myself to write a series of articles. I delayed another four months before beginning the present volume.

I do not pretend to write a history. Removed by fifty or a hundred years from the events he is describing, the historian may seem to be objective. But real history is not a compilation of mere data. It is valueless without the human element which the historian necessarily gets from the writings of the contemporaries of the events in question. It is the personal reactions of the participants and observers which lend vitality to all history and make it vivid and alive. Thus, numerous histories have been written of the French Revolution; yet there are only a very few that stand out true and convincing, illuminative in the degree in which the historian has felt his subject through the medium of human documents left by the contemporaries of the period.

I myself⁠—and I believe, most students of history⁠—have felt and visualized the Great French Revolution much more vitally from the letters and diaries of contemporaries, such as Mme. Roland, Mirabeau, and other eyewitnesses, than from the so-called objective historians. By a strange coincidence a volume of letters written during the French Revolution, and compiled by the able German anarchist publicist, Gustav Landauer, came into my hands during the most critical period of my Russian experience. I was actually reading them while hearing the Bolshevik artillery begin the bombardment of the Kronstadt rebels. Those letters gave me a most vivid insight into the events of the French Revolution. As never before they brought home to me the realization that the Bolshevik regime in Russia was, on the whole, a significant replica of what had happened in France more than a century before.

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