Review of "Living My Life" by Emma Goldman

I've never read any Emma Goldman before, though I used to read a certain amount of anarchist stuff, and I've returned to it recently via Kevin Carson, who I mainly think is great. This was the book for Stroud Radical Reading Group this month, and though I didn't read all 900 pages in time for the meeting

I got a lot out of it. EG lived through a huge part of the history of the left, in Europe, Russia and America, and she's a great witness - she picks up on little details that other left authors might ignore, like the tea that Kropotkin and his wife served when they visited him in 1920.

The most interesting part for me was the very long chapter about her time in Russia in the early 1920s, which I think has been published as a separate book. It's very painful to read in some places, because contrary to my vague Trotskyish legacy, it's clear that there were some major things wrong with the revolution as early as 1920 - particularly the already-crushing bureaucracy, and the extent of privileges for Communist Party members - extra rations, better accomodation, and so on. 

She's very good at conveying the pain of someone who doesn't want to line up with the enemies of the revolution, but is finding it increasingly hard to be part of. There's a little bit when she meets up with some Jews in the Ukraine, including a Zionist, a Bundist, some rabbis, and the Zionist poet Bialik. She's interested in what they have to say, and doesn't treat it as an opportunity for a polemic. Inspired by this I went and found something that she'd written about Zionism in 1938, which struck me as much more nuanced than I might have expected.

I note in passing that when she's in the Ukraine and southern Russia she is covering much the same territory that my great-grandfather did, and at about the same time.