Description:

Goldman Emma 1869 - 1940

Emma Goldman TLS about the death of lover Alexander Berkman.

Emma Goldman was a political activist and anarchist who immersed herself in the socialist movement and the Russian Revolution.

Single page TLS, 8.25" x 13". Dated "25th August 1936", and signed by Emma Goldman as "Emma Goldman". Staple in upper left corner, expected folds. Near fine.

Emma Goldman, a part of a local New York group of activists and artists, anarchists, and journalists, resided in a Bohemian neighborhood in the Village. The group included Eugene O'Neil, Jack Reed, Crustal Eastman, Ida Raub, Zona Gale, Louise Bryant, Mary Auction, and Charlotte Perkins, and Gilman among others. These artist and activist were the movers and shakers of their day. Goldman's belief in anarchy drove all her passions and writings. Although anarchism itself does not offer a fixed body of doctrine from a single particular world view, it fluxes and flows as a philosophy- often advocating self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions, often described as stateless societies.

Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands.

"No single event has influenced the history of labor in Illinois, the United States, and even the world, more than the Chicago Haymarket Affair. It began with a rally on May 4, 1886, but the consequences are still being felt today. Although the rally is included in American history textbooks, very few present the event accurately or point out its significance," according to labor studies professor William J. Adelman.

The signed typed letter offered here shows her highly moving writing style reflecting on both herself and her lifelong friend, lover and co-anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, who had just passed away. As partners in crime, early in their careers the two had planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Frick survived the attempt on his life in 1892 and Berkman was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal "Mother Earth".

By 1917, the two "comrades", Goldman and Berkman were at it again, and sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested along with hundreds of others and deported to Russia in the midst of the Russian Revolution. Others from the voices of the "Village" including Jack Reed quickly followed, trying to incite a socialistic movement both in Russia with the hope that it would then carry over to the U.S. Emma Goldman originally supported Russia's October Revolution which brought the Bolsheviks to power, however Goldman and the others became embittered to see how the philosophy of the revolt became a very different political regime in actual practice. Berkman and Goldman soon became disillusioned, voicing their opposition to the Soviet's use of terror after seizing power and their repression of fellow revolutionaries.

Her life came at a time of enormous unrest, with governments in enormous flux, and the populace willing to engage in activism. A period where people held firm beliefs, but more importantly were willing to voice their beliefs, and rally for change, and not fall into the comfortable state of complacency or apathy. A period where fighting for your beliefs was more important that just existing, a period where people believed they could make a difference.

Her letter wrote about her friend and lover as he decided to take his life: "The endless struggle of life in exile, the uncertainty of his legal status in France had gradually undermined his iron constitution ... my departed comrade had always said he would go by his own hand, if overtaken by illness that would prevent him from working for his ideal, to which he had so lavishly consecrated all his life. He keep his word ..." Goldman continues to describe their relationship which was inseparable from their work, "Forty-seven years in the life of two ordinary people ... A friendship that never wavered, a friendship of the same dreams, the same ideals and, not the least, the same struggle for the ideal ..."

A wonderful letter from a woman activist, whose life was led even before the right for woman to vote in the United States. Goldman found a voice using whatever means she had.

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