Biography
Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was an anarchist, revolutionary, and feminist who played an important role in the development of anarchism in the United States and Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. She was born in Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire), and at the age of 13 she moved with her family to St. Petersburg. Due to financial difficulties, she was forced to leave school and work in a factory, where working conditions were very harsh. There, she first came into contact with anarchist and revolutionary ideas.At the age of 17, she immigrated to the United States with her sister, found work in a textile factory, and married a fellow worker. In 1889, after the bloody May Day events in Chicago and the execution of four anarchist trade unionists, Emma left her husband (without ever divorcing him) and became an active member of the anarchist movement. She moved to New York, where she began giving speeches and soon became a target of the authorities.
In 1893, she was imprisoned for one year after telling unemployed workers in a speech:
“Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.”
During 1895–1896 and again in 1899–1900, she traveled across Europe delivering lectures. In 1901, she was arrested again and held for weeks, but released due to lack of evidence. In 1906, she began publishing the monthly anarchist magazine Mother Earth. In 1916, she was briefly imprisoned for speaking publicly in favor of contraception, and in 1917 she was sentenced to two years in prison for organizing rallies against World War I.
After her release, she was deported to Russia. At first she supported the Bolsheviks, but political repression, bureaucracy, and forced labor led her to write My Disillusionment in Russia. She later fled Russia and settled in France, where she wrote her autobiography, Living My Life.
Her next major destination was Spain during the Spanish Civil War. She traveled there three times before 1938, met with members of the anarchist and communist movements, and sent reports and responses to British newspapers.
Goldman argued that the only just war was the class struggle against exploitation, and she warned that wars between states would lead to mass destruction on a global scale. Her fears were confirmed by World War II, the outcome of which she did not live to see, as she died of a heart attack in Toronto on May 14, 1940.