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Sasha and Emma : the anarchist odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman PDF

527 Pages·2012·3.112 MB·English
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Sasha Emma and THE ANARCHIST ODYSSEY OF ALEXANDER BERKMAN AND EMMA GOLDMAN paul avrich karen avrich SASHA AND EMMA S A S H A and E M M A The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich Th e Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, En gland • 2012 Copyright © 2012 by Karen Avrich. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Avrich, Paul. Sasha and Emma : the anarchist odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman / Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 674- 06598- 7 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Berkman, Alexander, 1870– 1936. 2. Goldman, Emma, 1869–1 940. 3. Anarchists— United States— Biography. 4. Anarchism— United States— History. I. Avrich, Karen. II. Title. HX843.5.A97 2012 335'.83092273—dc23 [B] 2012008659 For those who told their stories to my father For Mark Halperin, who listened to mine Contents preface ix Prologue 1 i impelling forces 1 Mother Russ ia 7 2 Pioneers of Liberty 20 3 Th e Trio 30 4 Autonomists 43 5 Homestead 51 6 Attentat 61 7 Judgment 80 8 Buried Alive 98 9 Blackwell’s and Brady 111 10 Th e Tunnel 124 11 Red Emma 135 12 Th e Assassination of McKinley 152 13 E. G. Smith 167 ii palaces of the rich 14 Resurrection 181 15 Th e Wine of Sunshine and Liberty 195 16 Th e Inside Story of Some Explosions 214 17 Trouble in Paradise 237 18 Th e Blast 252 19 Th e Great War 267 20 Big Fish 275 iii open eyes 21 Th e Rus sian Dream 291 22 Th e Bolshevik Myth 303 23 Charlottengrad 314 24 Globe- Trotters and Colonizers 324 25 Now and After 333 26 Bon Esprit 347 27 Pillar to Post 356 28 Old Glory 365 29 Nothing but Death Can End 379 30 Waldheim 390 notes 405 ac know ledg ments 475 index 477 Preface When my father, Paul Avrich, died in 2006 after a long illness, he left behind an unfi nished manuscript about the passionate half-c entury friendship between legendary activist Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, a Russian-b orn anarchist who achieved notoriety when he attempted to assassinate the industrialist Henry Clay Frick in 1892. My father published a number of books on Rus sian history and anarchism, yet he was endlessly fascinated by the magnetic Goldman, a leading fi gure in early twentieth-c entury America, and the brilliant Berkman, who served fourteen years for the attack on Frick, and was rigidly, fervently devoted to the anarchist creed. It was the story of Berkman and Goldman’s intense connection and intertwined lives that my father planned to write, and he spent de cades gathering material for the book. In my father’s last days, he asked me to take over the project and see it through to publication. Over six years I shaped Shasha and Emma, using an early draft, his notes, the hundreds of interviews he conducted during his forty- year career, and the information he collected in the United States, Russ ia, and Eur ope. To this bounty I added my own research, examining hundreds of newspaper and journal articles from the period; the works of Berkman and Goldman, including their editorials, tracts, and memoirs; scores of letters exchanged with their comrades; and numerous other pri- mary sources. I also retraced my father’s steps, visiting sites instrumental to the narrative. Th e scope and depth of my father’s scholarly eff ort was nothing short of extraordinary; I alone accept full responsibility for errors or omissions in the book.

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