Living My Life - Emma Goldman [130]
The dear, faithful pal—how big and brave it was of him so frankly to admit the change! As I read on I grew even more astounded at the amount of knowledge Sasha had acquired since his imprisonment. Works of science, philosophy, economics, even metaphysics—he had evidently read a great many of them, critically studied and digested them. His letter stirred a hundred memories of the past, of our common life, our love, our work. I was lost in recollections; time and space disappeared; the intervening years became blotted out, and I relived the past. My hands caressed the letter, my eyes dreamily wandering over the lines. Then the word “Leon” fastened my gaze, and I continued to read:
“I have read of the beautiful personality of the youth, of his inability to adapt himself to brutal conditions, and of the rebellion of his soul. It throws a significant light upon the causes of the Attentat. Indeed, it is at once the greatest tragedy of martyrdom and the most terrible indictment of society that it forces the noblest men and women to shed human blood, though their souls shrink from it. The more imperative it is that drastic methods of this character be resorted to only as a last extremity. To prove of value they must be motived by social rather than individual necessity and be aimed against a direct and immediate enemy of the people. The significance of such a deed is understood by the popular mind, and in that alone lies the propagandistic, educational import of an Attentat, except if it is exclusively an act of terrorism.”
The letter dropped from my hand. What could Sasha mean? Did he imply that McKinley was not “an immediate enemy of the people”? Not a subject for an Attentat of “propagandistic, educational import”? I was bewildered. Had I read right? There was still another passage: “I do not believe that Leon’s deed was terroristic, and I doubt whether it was educational, because the social necessity for its performance was not manifest. That you may not misunderstand, I repeat: as an expression of personal revolt it was inevitable, and in itself an indictment of existing conditions. But the background of social necessity was lacking, and therefore the value of the act was to a great extent nullified.”
The letter fell to the floor, leaving me in a daze. A strange, dry voice screamed out: “Yegor! Yegor!”
My brother ran in. “What has happened, dear? You’re all trembling. What’s the matter?” he cried in alarm. “The letter!” I whispered hoarsely. “Read it; tell me if I’ve gone mad.”
“A beautiful letter,” I heard him say, “a human document, though Sasha does not see social necessity in Czolgosz’s act.”
“But how can Sasha,” I cried in desperation, “he of all people in the world—himself misunderstood and repudiated by the very workers he had wanted to help—how can he misunderstand so?”
Yegor tried to soothe me, to explain what Sasha had meant by “the necessary social background.” Picking up another slip of the letter, he began reading to me:
“The scheme of political subjection is subtle in America. Though McKinley was the chief representative of our modern slavery, he could not be considered in the light of a direct and immediate enemy of the people. In an absolutism the autocrat is visible and tangible. The real despotism of republican institutions is far deeper, more insidious, because it rests on the popular delusion of self-government and independence. That is the source of democratic tyranny, and as such it cannot be reached with a bullet. In modern capitalism economic exploitation rather than political oppression is the real enemy of the people. Politics is but its handmaid. Hence the battle is to