Emma Goldman: her name is almost forgotten, but what a life hers is!
We might as well say it straight away, if Vivian Gornick's book,
Emma Goldman.
The revolution as a way of life
is as passionate as it is, but it owes it less to an ideology than to the incredible journey of this young Lithuanian Jew who emigrated to the United States whose life resembles a Jack London novel.
Born in Kovno in 1869, Emma was just 17 years old when, fleeing a violent father and a stifling family environment, she encountered anarchism, the extent to which we have forgotten how influential it was in the working world at the end of the 19th century.
As a young worker in a factory in Rochester, near New York, she falls in love with Alexander Berkman, an adventurer worthy of appearing in a Dostoyevsky novel and who will be a lifelong friend.
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Emma, who read the cult novel
What to Do?,
by the Russian Chernyshevsky, which would influence Lenin so much, identifies with its heroine, the young Vera, who lives for and through the revolution.
Vivian Gornick describes the extreme brutality of capitalism…
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