Ph.D. 1992. 389 p. The Catholic University of America, Director: Catherine Cline
DAI, VOL. 53-02A, Page 0597

The Anarcho-communist and Narodnik ideas of Aleksandr Osipovich Berkman (1870-1936) and Emma Avramovna Goldman (1869-1940) developed and changed radically in Russia and the United States in the final decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. In the case of Goldman, this shift was a consequence of her ideological isolation and for Berkman it was the 1917 revolution that transformed his thinking. The revolutionary philosophy of Berkman and Goldman came to approximate aspects of Leninism, and the two greeted the October coup in Russia and the establishment of the Bolshevik state with elation. Their embracing of these elements denied much of their Russian and European intellectual background and betrayed much of their anarcho-communism. It was their stay in the Soviet Union from 1920 to late 1921 that forced them not only to rethink their ideological stances, but also governed their social thought for the remainder of their lives as they tried to compromise between the normally antagonistic ideas of anarchism and Bolshevism. The intellectual biographies of Berkman and Goldman are presented jointly because they shared a similar type of anarcho-communism, which linked their lives for years. Their written works, like their lives, reflected the isolated Russian radical tradition in America. This new analysis of the evolution of these two figures is based on their published writings, works of those who influenced them, their private correspondence preserved in various archives, as well as declassified government records, contemporary descriptions, comments by acquaintances, and newspaper articles. Bolshevik and recent Soviet interpretations of anarchism are also brought to bear in order to highlight Berkman and Goldman’s ideological relationship with Lenin. The intellectual biographies of Berkman and Goldman based on written publications, correspondence and declassified government records. “Bolshevik and recent Soviet interpretations of anarchism are also brought to bear in order to highlight Berkman and Goldman’s ideological relationship with Lenin”.