Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman (English: Emma Goldman; June 27, 1869 - May 14, 1940, still born on June 15, 1869, or Emma Goldman), an anarchist political activist and writer. She was a key figure in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. Emma was born into a Jewish family in Kaunas, Russian Empire (now Lithuania), and immigrated to the United States in 1885. After the Haymarket Incident, Emma was deeply attracted by anarchism and became a writer and famous speaker in the fields of anarchist philosophy, women's rights and social issues, attracting thousands of audiences. She and her lover, the anarchist writer Alexander Beckmann, plotted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as propaganda for their actions. The assassination attempt failed and Beckmann was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Goldman was also imprisoned multiple times in the following years for "inciting riots" and illegally distributing birth control-related information. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist publication "Earth". In 1917, Emma and Beckmann were imprisoned for another two years for conspiring to "induce people not to register" for the newly enacted conscription law. After being released from prison, the two men were arrested again together with 248 other people and deported to Russia. Emma initially supported the October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power, but she changed her mind after the Kronstadt Uprising. She criticized the Soviet Union's violent suppression of dissent and published a book detailing her feelings in 1923, My Disillusionment with Russia. Later, she traveled to the UK, Canada and France, and wrote another autobiography, "Living My Own Life", which was published in two volumes in 1931 and 1935 respectively. After the Spanish Civil War broke out, Emma came to Spain to support the local anarchist revolution. She eventually died in Toronto, Canada on May 14, 1940. Throughout her life, Emma was hailed as a free-thinking rebellious woman by her supporters, and dismissed as a politically motivated murderer and advocate of violent revolution by her opponents. She writes and speaks on a variety of social issues, such as prisons, atheism, free speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its fight for female suffrage, she did pioneer new ideas that incorporated gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, feminist and anarchist scholars returned to the field in the 1970s