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

new social conditions. It is the threshold to the new life, the new house of man and humanity. As such it must he of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.

Today is the parent of tomorrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone. Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved. Revolution is the mirror of the coming day; it is the child that is to be the Man of Tomorrow.

Endnotes

Mother Earth Publishing Association, New York, February, 1917. ↩

Baltic Fleet. ↩

Master. ↩

Permit. ↩

Trial and Speeches of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman Before the Federal Court of New York, June-July, 1917. Mother Earth Publishing Co., New York. ↩

Shooting. ↩

Whip. ↩

Boiled water. ↩

Alarm. ↩

Revolutionary peasants. ↩

Severe imprisonment, one third of the term in chains. ↩

Ideyni. ↩

Boiled water. ↩

Skinners. ↩

Iron handcuffs. ↩

Father. ↩

People with bags. ↩

Executive Committee of the Soviet. ↩

Jewish Communist Section. ↩

About thirteen miles. ↩

About ninety-nine miles. ↩

Communist Saturday and Sunday voluntary workdays. ↩

About fifty miles. ↩

Nearly five miles. ↩

Political bureaus. ↩

Armed units organized by the Bolsheviki for the purpose of suppressing traffic and confiscating foodstuffs. ↩

Individual small-scale. ↩

Special Department of the Cheka. ↩

Happy villagers and their model homes, specially prepared and shown to Catherine the Great by her Prime Minister Potemkin to deceive her about the true condition of the peasantry. ↩

Succour. ↩

About sixty-six miles. ↩

Colophon

My Disillusionment in Russia
was published in 1924 by
Emma Goldman.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Weijia Cheng,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2019 by
Tim Lindell, Martin Pettit, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and a transcription produced in 2009 by
Dana Ward
for
The Anarchist Library
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive (My Disillusionment in Russia and My Further Disillusionment in Russia).

The cover page is adapted from
Destruction of the Ghetto, Kiev,
a painting completed in 1919 by
Abraham Manievich.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
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