Living My Life, Vol. 2 by Emma Goldman

Author:Emma Goldman [Goldman, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

The methods of the “ clique ” in the politbureau of the party were also pervading the International and poisoning the entire labour movement, Angelica’s friend had told me. Was Lenin aware of it? And was that also a mere trifle in his estimation? I was certain now that he knew everything that was going on in Russia. Nothing escaped his searching eye, nothing could take place without first having been weighed in his scale and approved by his authoritative seal. An indomitable will easily bending everyone to its own curve and just as easily breaking men if they failed to yield. Would he also bend or break us? The danger was imminent if we made the first false step, if we accepted the tutelage of the Communist International. We were eager to help Russia and to continue our work for America’s liberation, to which we had given the best years of our lives. But it would mean a betrayal of our entire past and the complete abrogation of our independence to submit to the control of the clique. We wrote Lenin to that effect and enclosed a detailed outline of our plan, carefully prepared by Sasha.

We agreed with Lenin in one thing, the need of getting to work. Not, however, in any political capacity or in a Soviet bureau. We must find something that would bring us in direct touch with the masses and enable us to serve them. Moscow was the seat of the Government with more State functionaries than workers, bureaucratic to the last degree. Sasha had visited a number of factories, all of them in a palpably neglected and deserted condition. In most of them the Soviet officials and members of the Communist yacheika (cell) far outnumbered the actual producers. He had talked with the workers and found them embittered by the arrogance and arbitrary methods of the industrial bureaucracy. Sasha’s impressions only served to strengthen my conviction that Moscow was no place for us. If at least Lunacharsky had kept his promise! But he was swamped with work, he wrote, and unable just then to call the teachers’ conference. It might take weeks before it could be done. He understood how difficult it was for people used to doing things in their own independent manner to fit themselves into a groove. But it was the only effective place in Russia and I would have to reconcile myself to that. Meanwhile I must keep in touch with him, his letter concluded.

It was a subtle hint that the dictatorship was all-pervading and that it would brook no independent effort. Not in Moscow, at any rate. After all, every seat of government inevitably breeds the martinet and the flunkey, the courtier and the spy, a herd of hangers-on fed by the official hand. Moscow was evidently no exception. We could not find our place there, nor come close to the toiling masses. One more thing we would attempt—get to see our comrade Kropotkin and then back to Petrograd, we decided.

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