Published Essays and Pamphlets
Alexander Berkman's Last Daysby Emma Goldman[Published in The Vanguard
(New York), Aug.-Sept. 1936.]
St. Tropez July 12th, 1936
It is only two weeks since our beloved comrade
Alexander Berkman passed away. Yet it seems an eternity to me.
The blow his untimely death has struck me has left me completely
shattered. I find it difficult to collect my thoughts. But I feel
sure you will want to know all about Sasha's end. For have you
not loved him all through the years?
Sasha left a note which we found after we
returned from his last resting place. It reads: "I don't
want to live a sick man. Dependent. Forgive me Emmie darling.
And you too Emma. Love to All. Help Emmie." signed, Sasha.
I ha... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
The text is from my copy of Alexander Berkman, The Bolshevik Myth, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925. Page numbers are in the source code.
CHAPTER XIII
LENIN
March 9.---Yesterday Lenin sent his auto for me, and I drove to the Kremlin. Times have changed, indeed: the old stronghold of the Romanovs is now the home of "Ilyitch,"* of Trotsky, Lunatcharsky, and other prominent Communists. The place is guarded as in the days of the Czar; armed soldiers at the gates, at every building and entrance, scrutinize those entering and carefully examine their "documents." Externally everything seems as before, yet I felt something different in the atmosphere, something symbolic of the great change that has taken place. I sensed a new spirit in the bearing and looks of the people, a new will and huge energy tumultuously seeking an outlet, yet ineffectively exhausting themselves in a ...
"The Constitutional Agitation in Russia." The Nineteenth Century, January, 1905.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL AGITATION IN RUSSIA
The greatest excitement has prevailed in Russia for the last few weeks since it became known that representatives of the Zemstvos of thirty-four provinces of the Empire were going to meet at St. Petersburg in order to discuss the necessary reforms in the general political organization of the country. The very fact that such an authorization had been granted was equivalent to an invitation to discuss a scheme of a Constitution; and so it was understood everywhere. When the Zemstvo delegates were leaving their respective provincial towns they were sent off by groups of enthusiastic friends, whose parting words we... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
This manuscript is part of the International Institute for Social History's Alexander Berkman archive and appears in Anarchy Archives with ISSH's permission.
EARLY DAYS: Life at home and school in St. Petersburg. My bourgeois father and aristocratic mother. Jews and gentiles. I question my father about the Turkish prisoners of war begging alms in the streets.
OUR FAMILY SKELETON: Strange rumors about my mother and her brother Maxim. Echoes of the Polish rebellion of 1863. I hear of the dreaded Nihilists and revolution.
A TERRIFIED HOUSEHOLD: A bomb explodes as I recite my lesson in school. The assassination of Czar Alexander II. Secret groups in our class. Police search our house. Uncle Maxim is arrested for conspiring aga... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
On the shooting of Henry Clay Frick
by Alexander Berkman
From 'Living My Life'by Emma Goldman
"It was May 1892. News from Pittsburg announced that trouble had broken out between the Carnegie Steel Company and its employes organized in the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. It was one of the biggest and most efficient labor bodies of the country, consisting mostly of Americans, men of decision and grit, who would assert their rights. The Carnegie Company, on the other hand, was a powerful corporation, known as a hard master. It was particularly significant that Andrew Carnegie, its president, had temporarily turned over the entire management to the company chairman, Henry Clay Frick, a man known for his en... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
THE PRESENT CRISIS IN RUSSIA.
BY PRINCE KROPOTKIN.
The North American Review, Vol. 172, No. 534 (May, 1901), pp. 711-723
The last students' disturbances in Russia were quite different from all the disturbances which have taken place in the Russian universities for the last forty years. They began, as all students' movements begin, with an insignificant incident, which concerned the students alone; but, owing to a series of circumstances quite peculiar to Russia, they took, all of a sudden, a political complexion ; and in this respect they acquired such a significance that they will now count in the history of the constitutional movement in Russia as an important milestone. Consequently it is impossible to speak of the last events wit... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Berkman, Alexander (1912) Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, Mother Earth Press.
1
THE CALL OF THE HOMESTEAD
I
CLEARLY EVERY DETAIL of that day is engraved on my mind. It is the sixth of July, 1892. We are quietly sitting in the back of our little flat-Fedya and I-when suddenly the Girl enters. Her naturally quick, energetic step sounds more than usually resolute. As I turn to her, I am struck by the peculiar gleam in her eyes and the heightened color.
"Have you read it?" she cries, waving the half-open newspaper.
"What is it?"
"Homestead. Strikers shot. Pinkertons have killed women and children."
She speaks in a quick, jerky manner. Her words ring like the cry of a wounded animal, the melodious voice tinged with the harshness of bitterness-the bitterness of helpless agony.
I take the paper from ...