Emma Goldman

Author profile

born

in Kaunas, Lithuania 

June 27, 1869

died

May 14, 1940

gender

female

genre

Politics, Women & Gender Studies, Philosophy

influences

Alexander Berkman

About this author

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Emma Goldman was a feminist anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.

Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania), Goldman emigrated to the US in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement.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.

She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Although Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two 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.

In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were 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.

Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1923, she wrote a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940, aged 70.

During her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution.Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman's iconic status was revived in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest in her life.

Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman, 1911

Emma Goldman (Kaunas, Litouwen, 27 juni 1869 – Toronto, Canada, 14 mei 1940) was een Amerikaanse anarchist en feministe van Joodse afkomst.

Afkomstig uit Litouwen verhuisde haar familie tijdens haar tienerjaren naar Sint-Petersburg. Daar deed ze haar eerste revolutionaire ideeën op. Daarvandaan emigreerde ze op haar zeventiende naar de Verenigde Staten. Later woonde ze ook in Rusland (daar vanwege haar revolutionaire overtuiging naartoe getransporteerd), Zuid-Frankrijk en Groot-Brittannië.
Ze heeft zowel de Russische Revolutie alswel de Spaanse Burgeroorlog meegemaakt.

Haar bekendste werk is Anarchism, and Other Essays.

Het bekende citaat 'If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution' wordt vaak aan Emma Goldman toegeschreven, maar het is onduidelijk of zij dit werkelijk heeft gezegd.

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In New York ontmoette ze Alexander Berkman. Ze waren spilfiguren binnen de anarchistische beweging in de VS.

Door haar ervaringen in Rusland veranderde ze van mening over het gebruik van geweld. Nadat het Rode Leger ingezet werd tegen stakers, ging ze geweld verwerpen behalve in het geval van zelfbescherming.

In 1936 ging ze naar Spanje om de Spaanse revolutie te steunen en om te vechten tegen Franco's fascisme in de Spaanse Burgeroorlog. Gedurende deze tijd schreef ze de grafrede van de prominente Spaanse anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, getiteld "Durruti is Dead, Yet Living".

Emma Goldman ligt begraven in Chicago.