1917

On the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution, Black Rose Books presents a collective edition of three books by Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Ida Mett that provide eyewitness accounts of its triumphs, disappointments and horrors. After their scandalous deportation from the United States in 1919, Goldman and Berkman were greeted as heroes by the new Bolshevik government in Russia, with Berkman describing it as “the most sublime day of his life.” Why then, barely two years later, did they both decide to leave Russia for good? Their books ‘My Disillusionment in Russia’ and ‘The Russian Tragedy’, printed here together for the first time, trace their shared frustration with the revolution’s descent from an authentic people’s movement to a spectacle of Bolshevik authoritarian violence. This edition also includes Ida Mett’s harrowing account of the Red Army’s brutal repression of the Kronstadt Uprising, written shortly before her own exile from Russia. Mett’s book features an introduction from pioneering anarchist and ecological writer Murray Bookchin (1921-2006).