Living My Life - Emma Goldman [247]
“Imagine,” I broke in, “capitalist America also divides the anarchists into two categories, philosophic and criminal. The first are accepted in the highest circles; one of them is even high in the councils of the Wilson Administration. The second category, to which we have the honour of belonging, is persecuted and often imprisoned. Yours also seems to be a distinction without a difference. Don’t you think so?” Bad reasoning on my part, Lenin replied, sheer muddle-headedness to draw similar conclusions from different premises. Free speech is a bourgeois prejudice, a soothing plaster for social ills. In the Workers’ Republic economic well-being talks louder than speech, and its freedom is far more secure. The proletarian dictatorship is steering that course. Just now it faces very grave obstacles, the greatest of them the opposition of the peasants. They need nails, salt, textiles, tractors, electrification. When we can give them these, they will be with us, and no counter-revolutionary power will be able to swerve them back. In the present state of Russia all prattle of freedom is merely food for the reaction trying to down Russia. Only bandits are guilty of that, and they must be kept under lock and key.
Sasha handed Lenin the resolutions of the anarchist conference and emphasized the assurance of the Moscow comrades that the imprisoned comrades were ideiny and not bandits. “The fact that our people ask to be legalized is proof that they are with the Revolution and the Soviets,” we argued. Lenin took the document and promised to submit it to the next session of the Party Executive. We would be notified of its decision, he said, but in any event it was a mere trifle, nothing to disturb any true revolutionist. Was there anything else? We had fought in America for the political rights even of our opponents, we told him; the denial of them to our own comrades was therefore no trifle to us. I, for one, felt, I informed him, that I could not co-operate with a regime that persecuted anarchists or others for the sake of mere opinion. Moreover, there were even more appalling evils. How were we to reconcile them with the high goal he was aiming at? I mentioned some of them. His reply was that my attitude was bourgeois sentimentality. The proletarian dictatorship was engaged in a life-and-death struggle, and small considerations could not be permitted to weigh in the scale. Russia was making giant strides at home and abroad. It was igniting the world revolution, and here I was lamenting over a little blood-letting. It was absurd, and I must get over it. “Do something,” he advised; “that will be the best way of regaining your revolutionary balance.”
Lenin might be right, I thought. I would take his advice. I would start at once, I said. Not with any work within Russia, but with something of propaganda value for the United States. I should like to organize a society of Russian Friends of American Freedom, an active body to give support to America’s struggle for liberty, as the American Friends of Russian Freedom had done in aid of Russia against the tsarist regime.
Lenin had not moved in his seat during the entire time, but now he almost leaped out of it. He swung round and stood facing us. “That’s a brilliant idea!” he exclaimed, chuckling and rubbing his hands. “A fine practical proposal. You must proceed to carry it out at once. And you, Tovarishtch Berkman, will you co-operate in it?” Sasha replied that we had talked the matter over and had already worked out the details of the plan. We could start immediately if we had the necessary equipment. No difficulty in that, Lenin assured us; we would be supplied with everything—an office, a printing outfit, couriers, and whatever funds would be needed. We must send him our prospectus of work and the itemized