Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was a political activist, feminist, and one of the most significant figures of radical anarchism in early 20th-century America. Born in the city of Kovno, Russia (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania), she immigrated to New York in 1885. Her thoughts and political stance were influenced by thinkers such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, as well as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Together with the anarchist writer, lover, and lifelong companion Alexander Berkman, she engaged in acts of political activism, including the attempted assassination of American industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick—for which Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison and Goldman was imprisoned for two years—and the declaration of political disobedience regarding American participation in World War I. In 1906, she published the anarchist magazine "Mother Earth." Her initial sympathy for the Russian Revolution was followed by her disappointment over the suspension of individual freedoms, which she documented in a series of reports for Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper "The New York World," later published in two volumes. During her lifetime, she published the books: "Anarchism and Other Essays," 1910, "The Social Significance of the Modern Drama," 1914, "My Disillusionment in Russia" (a title given by her publisher), 1923, "My Further Disillusionment in Russia," 1924, "Living My Life," 1931.