Sasha and Emma the ANARCHIST ODYSSEY OF
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Sasha and Emma THE ANARCHIST ODYSSEY OF ALEXANDER BERKMAN AND EMMA GOLDMAN PAUL AVRICH KAREN AVRICH SASHA AND EMMA SASHA and EMMA 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 . c m . Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 674- 06598- 7 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Berkman, Alexander, 1870– 1936. 2. Goldman, Emma, 1869– 1940. 3. Anarchists— United States— Biography. 4 . A n a r c h i s m — U n i t e d S t a t e s — H i s t o r y . I . A v r i c h , K a r e n . 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 Rus sia 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 a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s 4 7 5 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-century friendship between legendary activist Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, a Russian- born 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- century 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, Rus sia, and Eu rope. 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. preface x Many of the quotations in Sasha and Emma come from contemporaneous letters, journals, and newspapers, and from Paul Avrich’s conversations with people mentioned in these pages, whose memories remained sharp, their stories comprehensive and clear. Other quotes can be found in the doc- uments of Berkman and Goldman, who on occasion infused their recol- lections with zest, ideological portent, and a touch of bravado. In Gold- man’s autobiography, Living My Life, published in 1931, she recounts her tale with characteristic verve and dramatic fl air, describing events long since passed. Some of her comments are necessarily colored by time and temperament. In writing Sasha and Emma, I endeavored to preserve not just the story Paul Avrich was eager to share, but also the sensibility and integrity of his scholarship. It was a curious, and curiously fulfi lling, way for me to experi- ence my father’s life work after his death. I have come to understand why the lush, remarkable histories of these two dauntless radicals entranced him for so long. Karen Avrich SASHA AND EMMA PROLOGUE On July 23, 1892, a young anarchist named Alexander Berkman armed himself with a revolver and a handmade dagger, burst into the Pitts- burgh offi ces of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, and shot and stabbed Frick as onlookers rushed to intervene. Berkman was wrestled to the ground, hauled off to the police station, then hastily tried and convicted. He spent the next fourteen years behind bars. Frick survived, but Berkman described his shocking crime as “the fi rst terrorist act in America.” Berkman may no longer be remembered as a leading player in modern American life, but he remains anchored in its history by Emma Goldman, perhaps the nation’s most famous female radical. Berkman was Goldman’s closest companion and confi dant, and their bond lasted nearly half a cen- tury, ending only with his death in 1936. Both were born and raised in tsarist Rus sia, emigrated to the United States as teenagers, and met as young adults in 1889 in a coff ee shop on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Th ey became fast friends, briefl y lovers, and then loyal comrades, their lives and destinies forever intertwined. Th ough at times separated by prison terms and circumstance, they always re united, working together, living together, lecturing together, fi ght- ing for an improbable ideal of an anarchist utopia in which society could exist without government, the poor might be elevated from their wretched conditions, labor would have a voice, and full equality would be shared by all. It was a cause Berkman cherished as “the fi nest thing that humanity has ever thought of.” By striking down Frick, a wealthy business leader whom he regarded as the emblematic enemy of the working people, Berkman believed he was prologue 2 serving the human cause. Without apology, he embraced violence as a tool for social transformation, convinced such methods were justifi ed in the battle for a better country, a better world. Berkman imagined that his attack on Frick would “shed light on the questions involved” and “draw the attention of the world.” With surprise, he soon discovered that what he considered a heroic act was viewed with confusion, horror, and disdain by a reproving society; he achieved nothing but a lengthy prison sentence. While Berkman spent his twenties and early thirties locked away, Goldman saw her unlikely star rise as an activist and revolutionary, develop- ing a national reputation as an orator and becoming personally acquainted with many of the great thinkers of the age. After his release in 1906, Berk- man rejoined Goldman’s eff orts and served as her most constant source of support. But their extreme views and aggressive actions frightened the pub- lic and provoked government leaders. Th ey were deemed menacing symbols of revolution and chaos, and eventually were deported to Rus sia in 1919 for violating the Espionage Act. Despite the unremitting censure at home and abroad, they remained participants in the intellectual and po liti cal upheavals across the United States, Eu rope, and Russia, off ering potent descriptions of what they witnessed fi rsthand. Berkman, known as Sasha, was an “eternal rebel” whose disturbing acts of violence were tempered by his tireless eff orts to improve the lot of the oppressed. Serving his sentence for his assault on Frick, he wrote the cele- brated chronicle Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, which detailed his bleak experience and exposed corruption in the American penal system. Between his release in 1906 and his deportation in 1919, he edited the two most prominent anarchist periodicals of the era, or ga nized mass protests on behalf of radical and labor causes, and gave speeches around the country about his tribulations and beliefs. A spare but strong man with a soulful countenance, he was plagued by bouts of melancholy, the consequence of years spent in a cell. Admired by his friends for his brains and his nerve, he also could be self- centered and dogmatic, and his twin desires for justice and revenge met with disastrous results. Yet he possessed a gentle demeanor, a disarming humor. Within him mingled the visionary and the subversive, the humane and the harsh, the passionate and the pitiless. As a child growing up in tsarist Rus sia, Sasha was captivated by the notion of revolution as a means of expression and defi ance. When he im- migrated to New York as a youth and found himself disillusioned by the prologue 3 policies and politics of the United States, he adopted the anarchist philoso- phy as a distillation of his early radical dreams.