My Disillusionment in Russia: "With Pictures and Maps"

by Emma Goldman

Overview

My Disillusionment in Russia is a famous book by Emma Goldman. The book was based on a much longer manuscript entitled "My Two Years in Russia" which was an eyewitness account of events in Russia from 1920 to 1921 that ensued in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and which culminated in the Kronstadt rebellion. Long-concerned about developments with the Bolsheviks, Goldman described the rebellion as the "final wrench. I saw before me the Bolshevik State, formidable, crushing every constructive revolutionary effort, suppressing, debasing, and disintegrating everything".

Much to Goldman's dismay, only upon receiving the first printed copies of the book did she become aware that the publisher had changed the title; and the last twelve chapters were entirely missing, including an Afterword which Goldman felt was "the most vital part" of the book. Sympathetic to the initial Russian Revolution, the (complete) book is nonetheless a strong and impassioned left critique of the Bolshevik Revolution as well as Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy-an "all-powerful, centralized Government with State Capitalism as its economic expression". The complete book is also critical of Marxian theory, which Goldman describes as "a cold, mechanistic, enslaving formula".

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9786257120302
Publisher:	E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books
Publication date:	01/01/1923
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Emma Goldman (1869 - 1940) was an anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

Born in Kaunas, Russian Empire (now Lithuania) to a Jewish family, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885. Attracted to anarchism after the Chicago 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 industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Frick survived the attempt on his life in 1892, and Berkman was sentenced to 22 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.

Table of Contents

About the Book & Author

PREFACE

CHAPTER I: DEPORTATION TO RUSSIA

CHAPTER II: PETROGRAD

CHAPTER III: DISTURBING THOUGHTS

CHAPTER IV: MOSCOW: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

CHAPTER V: MEETING PEOPLE

CHAPTER VI: PREPARING FOR AMERICAN DEPORTEES

CHAPTER VII: REST HOMES FOR WORKERS

CHAPTER VIII: THE FIRST OF MAY IN PETROGRAD

CHAPTER IX: INDUSTRIAL MILITARIZATION

CHAPTER X: THE BRITISH LABOUR MISSION

CHAPTER XI: A VISIT FROM THE UKRAINA

CHAPTER XII: BENEATH THE SURFACE

CHAPTER XIII: JOINING THE MUSEUM OF THE REVOLUTION

CHAPTER XIV: PETROPAVLOVSK AND SCHLÜSSELBURG

CHAPTER XV: THE TRADE UNIONS

CHAPTER XVI: MARIA SPIRIDONOVA

CHAPTER XVII: ANOTHER VISIT TO PETER KROPOTKIN

CHAPTER XVIII: EN ROUTE

CHAPTER XIX: IN KHARKOV

CHAPTER XX: POLTAVA

CHAPTER XXI: KIEV

Editorial Reviews

"Is there any change in the world? Or is it all an eternal recurrence of man's inhumanity to man?"

" 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."

- Emma Goldman, 1921

From the Publisher