Emma Goldman Reference Archive

My Disillusionment in Russia

Written: 1922-23, of her experience in 1920 - 1921;

First Published: 1923;

Source: New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1923;

Transcription: Dana Ward and Brian Baggins;

Proofed: Zdravko Saveski;

Online Version: Anarchy Archives; Emma Goldman Reference Archive (marxists.org) 2000.

Deported American anarchist Emma Goldman travels to Russia for the first time in 30 years. She provides a revealing picture on the rampant oportunism throughout the Soviet government and its steady roots throughout the bureacracy. In addition she focuses on how the Soviet government began to open its arms after the Civil War to those who once had fought against it: the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and even the old tsarists. While these forces of the right were now coming into cooperation with the Soviet government, those on the extreme left saw an utter betrayal of revolutionary principles. At the one hand, during the Civil War, the Bolsheviks were much to brutal to the rightists, now they were much to nice. The extreme left then began to adamantly push for the overthrow of the Soviet government. Goldman explains life in Soviet Russia from the viewpoint of the extreme left revolutionaries, and charts the undemocratic injustices that occur to them as a result.

Goldman was dismayed when she discovered that Doubleday, Page & Company had, without informing her, changed the title of her work from "My Two Years in Russia" to "My Disillusionment in Russia." Even worse, the publisher cut the last twelve chapters of the manuscript (starting with Chapter 22: Odessa), omitting her account of crucial events such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the afterword in which she reflected on the trajectory of the revolution after the Bolsheviks seized power. At Goldman's insistence, the omitted chapters were published as a separate volume: My Further Disillusionment in Russia (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1924). The complete text in one volume, with an introduction by Rebecca West, appeared the following year: My Disillusionment in Russia (London: C. W. Daniel Company, 1925).

Contents:

To First Volume of American Edition

To Second Volume of American Edition

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 Schlusselburg

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

Preface to last 12 Chapters

Chapter XXII : Odessa

Chapter XXIII : Returning to Moscow

Chapter XXIV : Back in Petrograd

Chapter XXV : Archangel and Return

Chapter XVI : Death and Funeral of Peter Kropotkin

Chapter XXVII : Kronstadt

Chapter XXVIII : Persecution of Anarchists

Chapter XIX : Travelling Salesmen of the Revolution

Chapter XXX : Education and Culture

Chapter XXXI : Exploiting the Famine

Chapter XXXII : The Socialist Republic Resorts to Deportation

Afterword

