Living My Life - Emma Goldman [323]
31 Ahasverus is one of many names given to the character of the “Wandering Jew,” a figure from Christian folklore who represents metaphorically the Jewish Diaspora and its anti-Semitic subtext. According to this interpretation of the legend, the destruction of Jerusalem and the eternal homelessness of the Jewish people are divine retribution for their rejecting Jesus as the promised Messiah.
32 Georgii Chicherin (1872-1936): Russian revolutionary and diplomat who organized and trained a fledgling Soviet diplomatic corps.
33 pogromshtchik: one who advocates and participates in pogroms.
34 Peter Wrangel (1878-1928): Russian czarist general who fought the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine during the civil war (1918-20).
35 predsedatel: president.
36 Chaim Nachman Byalek (1873-1934): achieved international recognition with the publication of “The City of Slaughter,” a Hebrew poem inspired by the Kushnev pogrom of 1903.
37 Yatmanov: commissar of the Museum of the Revolution. Kaplan: secretary of the Museum of the Revolution.
38 shkurniky: slang for someone who has betrayed you.
39 Tukhachevsky: EG refers to the “notorious” commander of the Kronstadt attack (see LML, 1970, 883).
40 In Moscow EG learned that Henry Alsberg had been released from jail after the intervention of a friendly guard. Once free, Alsberg returned a $200 gift EG had given him at the time of his arrest, which she commented “was a veritable fortune to us now” (see LML, 1970, 852).
41 Nep: the New Economic Policy launched by Lenin.
42 Ella Reeves Bloor, “Mother Bloor” (1862-1951): a socialist and labor organizer. She helped organize the American Communist Party after the Bolshevik Revolution. William Z. Foster (1881- 1961): Irish Catholic American radical labor leader and Communist Party presidential candidate in 1924, 1928, and 1932.
43 Earl (“Jim”) Browder (1891-1973): American labor leader and socialist, later Communist Party organizer.
44 Agnes Smedley (1892-1950): journalist and author who was active in the Indian independence movement. She gained national prominence for reports from China in 1936. Chato: Indian nationalist leader Virendranath “Chatto” Chattopadhyaya.
45 Mikhail Tomsky (1880-1936): a Russian socialist and trade union organizer who led the Red International Trade Union in 1920. Elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1922 and later a member of the Politburo, Tomsky was purged by Stalin and committed suicide. A. Losovsky (1878-1952): a Russian Party and trade union official. Arrested under Stalin and died in prison.
46 EG met English anarchist and trade organizer Alexander Schapiro (?-1946) in 1907 at an international anarchist conference in Amsterdam (see LML, 1970, 403). Schapiro accompanied EG when she visited Kropotkin at his home outside Moscow (see LML, 1970, 769). Later an “intimate friend of the Kropotkin family” (see LML, 1970, 865), Schapiro assisted other anarchists in planning Kropotkin’s funeral (see LML, 1970, 865).
47 Fanya Baron (?—1921): a Russian anarchist, rumored to have assassinated the head of the Czarist secret police. She lived in the United States from 1915 to 1917, returning to Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. With Aaron Baron, she was among the first anarchists to meet with Goldman in the Soviet Union to inform her of the persecution of anarchists by Lenin (see LML, 1970, 812-13). While EG was traveling with the museum expedition in Kharkov, she was approached by Fanya, who was hoping to effect a meeting between EG and the peasant anti-Bolshevik leader Makhno. EG declined to leave the expedition, hoping for another opportunity to meet Makhno (see LML, 1970, 814).
48 Maksim M. Litvinov nominally subordinate to Chicerin, became People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs during 1930-39 (see LML, 1970, 923).
CHAPTER LIII
1 Hjalmar Branting (1860-1925): called “the father of socialism” in Sweden, served as prime minister in 1921 and 1924.
2 Maria