In 1920, Emma Goldman entered Soviet Russia as a devoted anarchist who had spent years in American prisons fighting for revolution. She left in 1921 brokenhearted but unbowed. This is her account of watching an idealistic movement devour itself. Goldman arrived believing the Bolsheviks represented humanity's best hope. She witnessed the crushing of the Kronstadt sailors, the betrayal of genuine workers' movements, the creation of a secret police state that terrorized the very proletariat the revolution claimed to liberate. Her critique cuts deepest because it comes from the left: she mourns what the revolution was supposed to be and denounces what it became. The New Economic Policy struck her as the final admission that Marxian theory had failed in practice. Goldman's voice is passionate, precise, and unflinching. She does not gloat or grandstand. She bears witness to disillusionment as an act of intellectual integrity. This book remains essential for understanding how revolutionary movements lose their soul, and what it costs to admit it.
