Living My Life - Emma Goldman [56]
Soon my father and grandmother arrived. Aunt Yetta had telegraphed them to come. Father was shocked by my appearance; he actually took me in his arms and kissed me. Such a thing had not happened since I was four. There was a terrible scene between Grandmother and her son-in-law, which ended in his moving out of the house with his wife. Before long, Father took me back to Popelan. I then discovered that he had been sending forty roubles regularly every month, and that my uncle had just as regularly been reporting to him that I was doing splendidly at school.
Most was deeply moved by my story. He patted my head and kissed my hands. “Armes Aschenprödelchen,”1 he kept on saying; “your childhood was like mine after that beast of a stepmother came to our house.” He was now more convinced than ever, he told me, that it was the influence of my childhood that had made me what I was.
[...] In the winter of that year (1890) the radical ranks were aroused over the report brought from Siberia by George Kennan, an American journalist. His account of the harrowing conditions of the Russian political prisoners and exiles moved even the American press to lengthy comments. We on the East Side had all along known of the horrors through underground messages. A year before, fearful things had taken place in Yakutsk. Politicals who had protested against the maltreatment of their comrades were lured into the prison yard and fired upon by guards; a number of prisoners were killed, among them women, while several others were subsequently hanged in the prison for “inciting an outbreak.” We knew of other cases equally terrible, but the American press had kept silent on the inhumanities committed by the Tsar. [ ... ]
When we first learned of the Yakutsk outrage, Sasha and I began discussing our return to Russia. What could we hope to achieve in barren America? It would require years to acquire the language thoroughly, and Sasha had no aspirations to become a public speaker. In Russia we could engage in conspiratorial work. We belonged to Russia. For months we went about nursing the idea, but the lack of necessary funds compelled us to give it up. But now, with George Kennan’s expose of the Russian horrors, our plans were revived. We decided to speak to Most about them. He became enthusiastic over the idea. “Emma is fast developing into a good speaker,” he said; “when she will have mastered the language, she will become a force here. But you can do more in Russia,” he agreed with Sasha. He would issue a confidential appeal for funds to some trustworthy comrades in order to equip Sasha for his trip and for his work afterwards. In fact, Sasha himself could help draw up the document. Most also suggested that it would be advisable for Sasha to learn the printing trade so as to enable him to start a secret press for anarchist literature in Russia. [ ... ]
In New York we rented a flat on Forsythe Street. Fedya continued to make crayon enlargements whenever he was lucky enough to get orders. I again took up piece-work. Sasha worked as compositor on the Freiheit, still clinging to the hope that Most would enable him to go to Russia. The appeal for funds, composed by Most and Sasha, had been sent out, and we anxiously awaited the results.
I spent much time in the Freiheit office, where the tables were piled high with European exchanges. One of them particularly attracted my attention. It was Die Autonomie, a German anarchist weekly published in London. While not comparable with the Freiheit in force and picturesqueness of language, it nevertheless seemed to me to express anarchism in a clearer and more convincing manner. One time, when I had mentioned the publication to Most, he became enraged. He told me curtly that the people behind the venture were shady characters, that they had been mixed up with “the spy Peukert, who betrayed John Neve, one of our best German comrades, into the hands of the police.”2 It had never occurred to me then to doubt Most and I ceased reading the Autonomie.
But nearer acquaintance with the movement and my other