Living My Life - Emma Goldman [294]
The committee was at last organized and ready to call on Lenin. None of them was a match for the shrewd Grand Mogul. He knew better how to divert their attention than they to compel his. [...] But the Labour Syndicalists refused to be side-tracked by the solicitous inquiries of Ilich about the conditions of labour abroad, the strength of the Syndicalists and their prospects. They insisted on knowing what he had to say about the revolutionary hunger-strikers in Russia. Lenin stopped short. He did not care if all the politicals perished in prison, he declared. He and his party would brook no opposition from any side, Left or Right. He would consent, however, to have the imprisoned anarchists deported from the country, on pain of being shot if they should return to Soviet soil. Lenin’s ears had become attuned for nearly four years to shooting and he had grown infatuated with the sound of it. [ ... ]
On the tenth day of the hunger-strike the joint committee finally met in the Kremlin. Sasha and Schapiro46 had been asked by the Taganka prisoners to represent their demands. [ ... ] A letter signed by the joint committee, but not concurred in by Alexander Berkman, was forwarded [...] to the Taganka men. [...]
I was glad Sasha had refused to concur in the outrageous decision that established the precedent of deportation of revolutionists from Soviet Russia, of men who had valiantly defended the Revolution, had fought on its fronts, and had suffered untold danger and hardships. What a commentary on the Communist State outdoing Uncle Sam! He, poor boob, went only as far as deporting his foreign-born opponents. Lenin and Company, themselves political refugees from their native land only a short time ago, were now ordering the deportation of Russia’s native sons, the best flower of her revolutionary past. [...]
The Red Trade Union Congress was over. Its most pathetic harlequin proved to be Bill Haywood. The founder of the I.W.W. in America and its dominant figure for twenty years, he allowed himself to be persuaded to vote at the Congress for the Communist plan to “liquidate” the militant minority labour organizations, including the I.W.W., and force their members to join the American Federation of Labor, which Haywood had for years denounced as “capitalistic and reactionary.” [...]
Soviet Russia had become the modern socialist Lourdes, to which the blind and the lame, the deaf and the dumb were flocking for miraculous cures. I was filled with pity for these deluded ones, but I felt only contempt for those others who had come, had seen with open eyes and understood, and had yet been conquered. Of these was William Z. Foster, once the champion of revolutionary syndicalism in America. He was keen-eyed and he had come as a press correspondent. He went back to do Moscow’s bidding.
No word had arrived from our comrades in Germany in reply to the letter sent them about securing visas. Sasha was chafing under the delay of getting out of Russia. He could stand the fearful tragi-comedy no longer, he said. A German Syndicalist delegate, member of the Seamen’s and Transport Workers’ Union, had also taken a letter from us and had promised to see our people in Berlin. There was no news yet. As in his early days after his coming out of the Western Penitentiary, Sasha became very restless. He could not endure being indoors or seeing people. He would roam the streets of Moscow most of the day and late into the night, and my anxiety about him grew. [...]
Sasha returned from one of his long tramps in the city looking unusually pale and distressed. When he made sure that I was alone, he said in a whisper: “Fanya Baron47 is