My Further Disillusionment in Russia

From a writer and anarchist the FBI once called, “the most dangerous woman in America,” a leftist critique of the failures of Bolshevik revolutionaries. The annals of literature tell of books expurgated, of whole chapters eliminated or changed beyond recognition. But I believe it has rarely happened that a work should be published with more than a third of it left out and without the reviewers being aware of the fact. This doubtful distinction has fallen to the lot of my work on Russia. . . . The present volume contains the chapters missing from the first edition, and I deeply appreciate the devotion of my friends who have made the appearance of this additional issue possible—in justice to myself and to my readers. So begins political activist Emma Goldman’s second volume, My Further Disillusionment with Russia, which continues her account of the years following the Russian Revolution. Having returned to Russia believing she would find a political utopia, Goldman reveals her disappointment with the Bolsheviks, who betrayed the ideals of the revolution by becoming an authoritarian party. Goldman’s memoir of life in Russia in the early years of the twentieth century is an important work of political commentary by an activist who played a fundamental role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in the United States and Europe.