Anarchist, journalist, drama critic, advocate of birth control and free love, Emma Goldman was one of the most famous - and notorious - women in the early twentieth century. Against a dramatic backdrop of political argument, show trials, imprisonment, and tempestuous romances, Goldman chronicles the epoch that she helped shape: the reform movements of the Progressive Era, the early years of and later disillusionment with Lenin's Bolshevik experiment, and more.
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The digital version of this text was originally published at Anarchy Archives.
On March 1, 1921, a citizen’s assembly in Kronstadt approved the Petropavlovsk Resolution listing 15 demands to the Bolshevik government in Petrograd. This date marks the start of the Kronstadt Rebellion in which sailors, soldiers and citizens took a stance against the demagoguery of the Bolsheviks in power.
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1921 uprising, we are republishing Emma Goldman’s account of the material and ideological motivations behind it and her reflections on the government’s repression, which, in her words, “was characterized by ruthless savagery” and led her to break all ties with the Communist Party.