Goldman, Emma

born June 27, 1869, Kovno, Lith., Russian Empire

died May 14, 1940, Toronto, Ont., Can.

International anarchist.

She immigrated to the U.S. in 1885, settling in Rochester, N.Y. Moving to New York City in 1889, she formed a close association with the Russian anarchist Alexander Berkman (1870–1936); the two corresponded regularly during Berkman's imprisonment (1892–1906) for an assassination attempt on Henry Clay Frick. In 1893 Goldman herself was jailed for inciting a riot when a group of unemployed workers reacted to a fiery speech she had delivered. She founded and edited (1906–17) the anarchist magazine Mother Earth and wrote on anarchism, feminism, birth control, and other social problems. After Berkman's release she continued anarchist activities with him until 1917, when they were arrested for agitating against the military draft. Upon her release in 1919, she and other anarchists were deported to the Soviet Union. She moved to England in 1921 and later to Canada and Spain, continuing to lecture throughout Europe.

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▪ American anarchist

born June 27, 1869, Kovno (now Kaunas), Lithuania, Russian Empire

died May 14, 1940, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

 international anarchist (anarchism) who conducted leftist activities in the United States from about 1890 to 1917.

      Goldman grew up in her native Lithuania, in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), and in St. Petersburg. Her formal education was limited, but she read widely and in St. Petersburg associated with a radical student circle. In 1885 she immigrated to the United States and settled in Rochester, New York. There, and later in New Haven, Connecticut, she worked in clothing factories and came into contact with socialist and anarchist groups among her fellow workers. Moving to New York City in 1889, Goldman formed a close association with Alexander Berkman, who was imprisoned in 1892 for attempting to assassinate Henry Clay Frick (Frick, Henry Clay) during the Homestead steel strike. The following year she herself was jailed in New York City for inciting a riot when a group of unemployed workers reacted to a fiery speech she had delivered.

      In 1895, upon her release, Goldman embarked on lecture tours of Europe and the United States. Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President William McKinley, claimed to have been inspired by her, although there was no direct connection between them, and by that time she had repudiated her earlier tolerance of violence as an acceptable means of achieving social ends. In 1906 Berkman was freed, and he and Goldman resumed their joint activities. In that year she founded Mother Earth, a periodical that she edited until its suppression in 1917. Her naturalization as a U.S. citizen was revoked by a legal stratagem in 1908. Two years later she published Anarchism and Other Essays.

      Goldman spoke often and widely, not only on anarchism and social problems but also on the contemporary dramatic works of Henrik Ibsen (Ibsen, Henrik), August Strindberg (Strindberg, August), George Bernard Shaw (Shaw, George Bernard), and others. She was instrumental in introducing the American audience to many European playwrights, and her lectures on their work were published in 1914 as The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. She also lectured on “free love,” by which she meant an uncoerced attachment between two persons for whom conventions of law and church were irrelevant, and she was jailed briefly in 1916 for speaking out on birth control.

      When World War I broke out in Europe, Goldman opposed U.S. involvement, and later she agitated against military conscription. In July 1917 she was sentenced to two years in prison for these activities. By the time of her release in September 1919, the United States was caught up in hysteria over a largely imaginary network of communist operatives. Goldman—“Red Emma,” as she was called—was declared a subversive alien and in December, along with Berkman and 247 others, was deported to the Soviet Union. Her stay there was brief. Two years after leaving, she recounted her experiences in My Disillusionment in Russia (1923). She remained active, living at various times in Sweden, Germany, England, France, and elsewhere, continuing to lecture and writing her autobiography, Living My Life (1931). At the time of her death, she was working for the antifascist cause in the Spanish Civil War.

Additional Reading

Selected correspondence from exile is found in Nowhere at Home, ed. by Richard Drinnon and Anna Maria Drinnon (1975). Examinations of Goldman's life and work include Martha Solomon, Emma Goldman (1987); Alice Wexler, Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life (also published as Emma Goldman in America, 1984); Emma Goldman in Exile (1989); Candace Serena Falk, Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman, rev. ed. (1990); and Marian J. Morton, Emma Goldman and the American Left (1992).

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