Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940) is a Russian anarchist and feminist, leader of the anarchist movement in the United States, known for her writings and works.
Flight to the United States
Born June 27, 1869, Emma Goldman was born into a Jewish family in Kowno, Lithuania, so left Russian Empire. After the assassination of Alexander II, Emperor of Russia, on March 13, 1881, a period of political repression forced his family to move to Saint Petersburg. At 13, for economic reasons, she was forced to leave school to work in the factory. There she learns about revolutionary ideas and reads What to do? by Chernyshevsky, a work that had a great influence on young Russian revolutionaries.
At 15, her father wants to marry her off and Emma flees to the United States with her half-sister. In May 1886, clashes in Haymarket Square during the strike at the McCormick factory in Chicago led to the death of seven policemen. Seven anarchists were arrested for murder and four were executed on November 11, 1887. Very marked, Emma joined the anarchist movement. Married for a few months to a Russian immigrant, she left Chicago and moved to New York.
Convictions
In New York, Emma Goldman meets Russian writer and activist Alexander Berkman, with whom she has a relationship. She became the main leader of the American anarchist movement. In 1892, Alexander Berkman tried to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, a wealthy industrialist who had called in armed strikebreakers to break a social movement in his steelworks. Frick survives the attack and Alexandre Berkam is sentenced to 22 years in prison; it will make 14.
In 1893, Emma was imprisoned for a year for publicly inciting unemployed workers to revolt. During her imprisonment, she developed a great interest in the education of children and made it her main field of struggle. On September 10, 1901, Emma was briefly detained on suspicion of complicity in the assassination of President William McKinley. On February 11, 1916, she was imprisoned again for distributing literature on contraception.
“One of the most dangerous women in America”
When the First World War broke out, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman organized meetings against the war and campaigned against the enlistment of soldiers at the front. In 1917, considered by the director of the FBI "one of the most dangerous women in America", Emma was again imprisoned for two years before being exiled to Russia. A witness to the Russian revolution, Emma wishes to support the Bolsheviks but the policy carried out in Bolshevik Russia quickly makes her disillusioned. Faced with the violence used by the Red Army against strikers, she revisits her ideas on violence in a context other than self-defense. In 1936, she supported the Spanish Revolution and fought against Franco's nationalists.
Emma Goldman died in Toronto on May 14, 1940, at age 70. She leaves six books including an autobiography, as well as anarchist and feminist writings.