Emma Goldman: An Exceedingly Dangerous Woman Page #7

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found the city

to be a total surprise

And I think that

part of the problem

before we can even talk

about the political situation

is the fact that

she was American

She had become

Americanized

She had become used to

a certain way of thinking

a certain way

of being

The economic conditions there were

just absolutely devastating

People were dying of hunger

There was famine, there was disease

Russia had been

propelled back into the

you know, medieval period practically

by the destruction of the war

Horses lay in the street dead

because there was nothing to feed them

Rubbish began to collect

in the cities because

nobody could be

dragooned into clearing them

Vermin spread

One could almost say that the rats

were the only thing left to eat

Faced with

growing unrest

the Bolsheviks

cracked down hard on dissent

Goldman soon confided

her disillusionment

to a friend who was

close to Lenin

"Suppression, persecution"

Goldman wrote

"was it for this the

Revolution had been fought?"

Her friend arranged for

Goldman and Berkman to meet Lenin

Lenin sat behind

a huge desk

We were treated

to a volley of questions

"When could the social revolution

be expected in America?"

"Was the rank and file a fertile soil

for boring from within?"

"What about the I.W.W.?"

And they argue

for free speech

What about

free speech?

And he looks on them

and he treats them rather like

adolescents who are learning

you know, about life

And he says, look that's a very

bourgeoisie notion, he says roughly

Here we are surrounded

by enemies on all sides

What do you mean

free speech?

The White Russians are attacking us

We've got traitors inside

We've got

collaborators inside

We've got all sorts of people

operating in this country

What do you mean, 'free speech?

You can't have free speech

in this

revolutionary situation

I think ultimately

she's probably

an enlightened fool

in that she

intellectualized a revolution

she didn't really understand

And projected onto

Russia her own

hopes of liberation

Hopes

which I suppose

were rooted in her own

personal trajectories

And that was a pretty

foolish thing to do

For Goldman and Berkman

the decisive moment

came on March 16, 1921

That night, the Bolsheviks

attacked Kronstadt

a naval base

near Petrograd

and the last bastion

of anarchist dissent

Then to hear

the cannon suppress

the very people who

had brought it about

Destroy the idea

of democracy

that they still until that moment had hoped

might emerge from the revolution

To hear that

to feel it crushed

must to a certain extent have destroyed

something in themselves

I think Russia

shattered that

That was something very close

to her core, to who she was

So clearly this was

no place for Goldman

It was no place for Berkman

This was not a place for any kind of joy

leave alone a place

for any kind of dissent

This was a place where vodka

very quickly became

a palliative for pain

and not an occasion for dancing

In December 1921

after two years

Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman

left Russia

They vowed to tell the rest of the world

of the Bolshevik terror

She did something that many of us

find damned hard to do

She realizes

she's been a fool

She realizes

she's been wrong

She's realized

she's made an error

Not just

a casual error

but an error of huge

awful magnitude

to support

the Bolsheviks

And she turns

and she accepts that

She accepts it totally

Revealing the truth about

the Bolshevik regime

became a crusade

for Goldman and Berkman

Their old enemies

on the Right

praised their analysis

of a revolution gone wrong

Old comrades on the Left

condemned them

So there must have been

a sense of frustration

Hell, we've seen it but we can't

convince people of how it really is

and we can't uphold

any real belief in socialism anymore

And that's a very tragic

situation to be in

When you both lose

everything you believe in

and yet have

no where else to go

And so she found herself

once again in no-mans land

So by her hand

in fact she sent herself

into an intellectual exile

as well

so she, she was a specialist

of exile

For years Goldman lived with old friends

in England, Canada and France

Then in the spring

of 1927

she received a cable from the

American arts patron Peggy Guggenheim

A group of friends had raised funds

to buy her a cottage in St. Tropez

a then-obscure fishing village

on the French Riviera

There

she could live and work

Berkman named it

"Bon Esprit"

At Bon Esprit

Goldman generated a mountain of

correspondence with old friends

Her letters were filled with restless energy

and longing for the United States

"You may as well know once and for all"

she had written a comrade

"that I will never be able to free myself

from the hold America has on me"

That's where she had her own sense

of who she was

was most developed

when she was in America

And let's be quite frank

it's also

where she had

the adoring audiences

and where she felt

she could do something

For a political activist

sitting in a little

on a hillside cottage in St. Tropez

without the glamour

that we associate with it now

where you can actually effect

hardly anything is hell

After nearly forty years

in the public eye

Goldman was welcome

nowhere

Berkman shared

her despair

"The truth is"

he wrote

"our movement has accomplished nothing

anywhere"

The bond between

Emma and Sasha

grew stronger

during their years of exile

even though

they lived apart

He was now in desperately

poor health

There is not much to congratulate

one's self on, is there dear?

Except that

after all these years

our old friendship

has remained unchanged

and indeed stronger

and more understanding

and intimate

than ever

And that is a

very great deal

they were comrades

And they were comrades, and comrades

is a word we don't use anymore

except mockingly maybe

Or half in jest

or cynically

But they

were comrades

Their relationship

was bigger than disagreement

bigger than

sexual relationships

bigger than emotional

entanglements

It was somehow all of those

and more

And they were

bound together

Emma says of him

in 1928

he was a leit motif

of her life

"My dear, whom else should I write

on this day but you

Only there was

nothing to tell

I keep thinking

what a long time to live

For whom?

For what?

But there is no answer

One thing, I can still find relief

in housework and cooking

Let me hear from you

how you are Sasha dear

Affectionately

Emma

P.S. Do you want me to send you

the Manchester Guardian

and the

Times Literary Supplement?

Let me know

E"

He never got

her letter

In the middle of the night

on June 28, 1936

Goldman received

a telephone call from Nice

imploring her to

"come at once"

Arriving in Sasha's apartment

Goldman learned that he

had shot himself in the chest

He died that night

This great centerforce

of her life is gone

I think it

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