#berkman — Public Fediverse posts

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗶𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀 ... 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗲 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘆𝗿𝘀, 𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗺𝘆 𝗴𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘀 said 𝗘𝗺𝗺𝗮 𝗚𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗺𝗮𝗻 https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-living-my-life I asked him whether I could hope to establish myself in New York as a dressmaker. I wanted so much to free myself from the dreadful grind and slavery of the shop. I wanted to have time for reading, and later I hoped to realize my dream of a co-operative shop. “Something like Vera’s venture in What’s to be Done?” I explained. “You have read #Chernishevsky?” #Berkman inquired, in surprise, “surely not in Rochester?” “Surely not,” I replied, laughing; “besides my sister Helena, I found no one there who would read such books. No, not in that dull town. In St. Petersburg.” He looked at me doubtfully. “Chernishevsky was a #Nihilist,” he remarked, “and his works are prohibited in Russia. Were you connected with the Nihilists? They are the only ones who could have given you the book.” I felt indignant. How dared he doubt my word! I repeated angrily that I had read the forbidden book and other similar works, such as #Turgeniev’s Fathers and Sons, and Obriv (The Precipice) by Gontcharov. My sister had got them from students and she let me read them. “I am sorry if I hurt you,” Berkman said in a soft tone. “I did not really doubt your word I was only surprised to find a girl so young who had read such books.”

How far I had wandered away from my adolescent days, I reflected. I recalled the morning in Königsberg when I had come upon a huge poster announcing the death of the Tsar, “assassinated by murderous Nihilists.” The thought of the poster brought back to my memory an incident of my early childhood which for a time had turned our home into a house of mourning. Mother had received a letter from her brother Martin giving the appalling news of the arrest of their brother Yegor. He had been mixed up with Nihilists, the letter read, and he was thrown into the Petro-Pavlovsky Fortress and would soon be sent away to Siberia. The news struck terror in us. Mother decided to go to St. Petersburg. For weeks we were kept in anxious suspense. At last she returned, her face beaming with happiness. She had found that Yegor was already on the way to Siberia. After much difficulty and with the help of a large sum of money she had succeeded in getting an audience with Trepov, the Governor General of St. Petersburg. She had learned that his son was a college chum of Yegor and she urged it as proof that her brother could not have been mixed up with the terrible Nihilists. One so close to the Governor’s own son would surely have nothing to do with the enemies of Russia. She pleaded Yegor’s extreme youth, went on her knees, begged and wept. Finally Trepov promised that he would have the boy brought back from the étape. Of course, he would put him under strict surveillance; Yegor would have to promise solemnly never to go near the murderous gang.

Our mother was always very vivid when she related stories of books she had read. We children used to hang on her very lips. This time, too, her story was absorbing. It made me see Mother before the stern Governor-General, her beautiful face, framed by her massive hair, bathed in tears. The Nihilists, too, I saw — black, sinister creatures who had ensnared my uncle in their plotting to kill the Tsar. The good, gracious Tsar — Mother had said — the first to give more freedom to the Jews; he had stopped the pogroms and he was planning to set the peasants free. And him the Nihilists meant to kill! “Cold-blooded murderers,” Mother cried, “they ought to be exterminated, every one of them!”

Mother’s violence terrorized me. Her suggestion of extermination froze my blood. I felt that the Nihilists must be beasts, but I could not bear such cruelty in my mother. Often after that I caught myself thinking of the Nihilists, wondering who they were and what made them so ferocious. When the news reached Königsberg about the hanging of the Nihilists who had killed the Tsar, I no longer felt any bitterness against them. Something mysterious had awakened compassion for them in me. I wept bitterly over their fate.

Years later I came upon the term “Nihilist” in Fathers and Sons. And when I read What’s to be Done? I understood my instinctive sympathy with the executed men. I felt that they could not witness without protest the suffering of the people and that they had sacrificed their lives for them. I became the more convinced of it when I learned the story of #VeraZassulich, who had shot Trepov in 1879. My young teacher of Russian related it to me. Mother had said that Trepov was kind and humane, but my teacher told me how tyrannical he had been, a veritable monster who used to order out his Cossacks against the students, have them lashed with nagaikas, their gatherings dispersed, and the prisoners sent to Siberia. “Officials like Trepov are wild beasts,” my teacher would say passionately; “they rob the peasants and then flog them. They torture idealists in prison.”

I knew that my teacher spoke the truth. In Popelan everyone used to talk about the flogging of peasants. One day I came upon a half naked human body being lashed with the knout. It threw me into hysterics, and for days I was haunted by the horrible picture. Listening to my teacher revived the ghastly sight: the bleeding body, the piercing shrieks, the distorted faces of the gendarmes, the knouts whistling in the air and coming down with a sharp hissing upon the half-naked man. Whatever doubts about the Nihilists I had left from my childhood impressions now disappeared. They became to me heroes and martyrs, henceforth my guiding stars.

I was aroused from my reverie by Berkman’s asking why I had become so silent. I told him of my recollections. He then related to me some of his own early influences, dwelling particularly on his beloved Nihilist uncle Maxim and on the shock he had experienced on learning that he had been sentenced to die. “We have much in common, haven’t we?” he remarked. “We even come from the same city. Do you know that Kovno has given many brave sons to the revolutionary movement? And now perhaps also a brave daughter,” he added. I felt myself turn red. My soul was proud. “I hope I shall not fail when the time comes,” I replied.