Living My Life - Emma Goldman [320]
5 Kronstadt: a naval fortress on an island in the Gulf of Finland, guarding the approach to Petrograd (today St. Petersburg). Detachments of sailors from Kronstadt were shock troops of both the February and October revolutions.
6 Labor lawyer, prominent Socialist Party theoretician Morris Hillquit (1869-1933) defended Eugene Debs and other antiwar activists against espionage charges. EG first met Hillquit at a Yom Kippur celebration held as a protest against Jewish orthodoxy, during which the young Hillquit held forth in the interior of the building while pitched battles raged between religious and non-religious Jews outside (see EG’s description in LML, 1970, 635).
7 The new Espionage Law: Enacted in June 1917, the law made interference with the military or obstruction of the draft illegal. Renamed the Sedition Act in 1918, its punishments were stiffened, and “disloyal” language about the government was prohibited.
8 Sam Gompers (1850-1924): English-born Jewish American labor leader, first president of the AFL (American Federation of Labor) 1886-1924.
CHAPTER XLVII
1 The October Revolution: In 1917 Russia underwent two revolutions. In February the czarist government was overthrown and replaced by a provisional government. In October the Bolshevik party led Russian workers and peasants to overthrow the provisional government.
2 Georgii Lvov (1861-1925): first prime minister of the provisional government. Pavel Miliukov (1859-1943): minister of foreign affairs in the provisional government.
3 Alexander Kerensky (1881-1970): prime minister of the provisional government from July 21, 1917, to October 1917; he fled St. Petersburg. He moved to the United States in 1940 and taught at American universities. Viktor Tchernov (1876-1952): minister of agriculture in the provisional government.
4 Helen Keller (1880-1968): Deaf and blind from early childhood, she achieved a remarkable literary and socially active career. After obtaining a bachelor of arts degree from Radcliffe College, she became a member of the Socialist Party of Massachusetts, publishing “Out of the Dark” in 1913, a series of essays on socialism. In subsequent essays she supported the IWW, antiwar activist and socialist Eugene Debs, and the infant Soviet Union. She was an outspoken supporter of the American volunteer Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought in the Spanish Civil War against fascism, earning thereby her own FBI file under the administration of J. Edgar Hoover. A world traveler and advocate for the blind and deaf, Keller lectured in more than 25 countries and on five continents.
5 Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950): daughter of prominent female suffragists Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell; a journalist, suffragist, and later a poet and translator. EG met Blackwell, whom she called “an energetic champion of liberty” (see LML, 1970, 360) when they both solicited American support for the Russian revolution. Blackwell was also active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP), among other progressive organizations.
6 White generals : in Russia, the color identified with anti-Communism, implying purity, harmony, and absence of violence, as opposed to red, the color of revolution. In czarist Russia, whites referred to the silk linings of the expensive uniforms worn by wealthy university students. After the October Revolution, Bolsheviks used the term pejoratively to refer to czarist and counter-revolutionary troops.
CHAPTER XLVIII
1 Kate Richards O‘Hare (1877-1948): American socialist and reformer, writer, journalist, antiwar agitator.
2 Ella: a fellow prisoner, a young American anarchist (see LML, 1970, 671).
3 Aggie: a fellow prisoner, a “piteous sight,” “withered at thirty-three” (see LML, 1970, 673 ).
CHAPTER L
1 Mollie Steimer (1897-1980): a young Russian American anarchist who was imprisoned for distributing pamphlets opposing American intervention in the Russian revolution. EG