Anarchism and Other Essays | Page 5

the miserable life of a soldier. She heard the weeping
of the poor peasant women, and witnessed the shameful scenes of
official venality which relieved the rich from military service at the
expense of the poor. She was outraged by the terrible treatment to
which the female servants were subjected: maltreated and exploited by
their BARINYAS, they fell to the tender mercies of the regimental
officers, who regarded them as their natural sexual prey. The girls,
made pregnant by respectable gentlemen and driven out by their
mistresses, often found refuge in the Goldman home. And the little girl,
her heart palpitating with sympathy, would abstract coins from the
parental drawer to clandestinely press the money into the hands of the
unfortunate women. Thus Emma Goldman's most striking characteristic,
her sympathy with the underdog, already became manifest in these

early years.
At the age of seven little Emma was sent by her parents to her
grandmother at Konigsberg, the city of Emanuel Kant, in Eastern
Prussia. Save for occasional interruptions, she remained there till her
13th birthday. The first years in these surroundings do not exactly
belong to her happiest recollections. The grandmother, indeed, was
very amiable, but the numerous aunts of the household were concerned
more with the spirit of practical rather than pure reason, and the
categoric imperative was applied all too frequently. The situation was
changed when her parents migrated to Konigsberg, and little Emma
was relieved from her role of Cinderella. She now regularly attended
public school and also enjoyed the advantages of private instruction,
customary in middle class life; French and music lessons played an
important part in the curriculum. The future interpreter of Ibsen and
Shaw was then a little German Gretchen, quite at home in the German
atmosphere. Her special predilections in literature were the sentimental
romances of Marlitt; she was a great admirer of the good Queen Louise,
whom the bad Napoleon Buonaparte treated with so marked a lack of
knightly chivalry. What might have been her future development had
she remained in this milieu? Fate--or was it economic
necessity?--willed it otherwise. Her parents decided to settle in St.
Petersburg, the capital of the Almighty Tsar, and there to embark in
business. It was here that a great change took place in the life of the
young dreamer.
It was an eventful period--the year of 1882--in which Emma Goldman,
then in her 13th year, arrived in St. Petersburg. A struggle for life and
death between the autocracy and the Russian intellectuals swept the
country. Alexander II had fallen the previous year. Sophia Perovskaia,
Zheliabov, Grinevitzky, Rissakov, Kibalchitch, Michailov, the heroic
executors of the death sentence upon the tyrant, had then entered the
Walhalla of immortality. Jessie Helfman, the only regicide whose life
the government had reluctantly spared because of pregnancy, followed
the unnumbered Russian martyrs to the etapes of Siberia. It was the
most heroic period in the great battle of emancipation, a battle for
freedom such as the world had never witnessed before. The names of

the Nihilist martyrs were on all lips, and thousands were enthusiastic to
follow their example. The whole INTELLIGENZIA of Russia was
filled with the ILLEGAL spirit: revolutionary sentiments penetrated
into every home, from mansion to hovel, impregnating the military, the
CHINOVNIKS, factory workers, and peasants. The atmosphere pierced
the very casemates of the royal palace. New ideas germinated in the
youth. The difference of sex was forgotten. Shoulder to shoulder fought
the men and the women. The Russian woman! Who shall ever do
justice or adequately portray her heroism and self-sacrifice, her loyalty
and devotion? Holy, Turgeniev calls her in his great prose poem, ON
THE THRESHOLD.
It was inevitable that the young dreamer from Konigsberg should be
drawn into the maelstrom. To remain outside of the circle of free ideas
meant a life of vegetation, of death. One need not wonder at the
youthful age. Young enthusiasts were not then--and, fortunately, are
not now--a rare phenomenon in Russia. The study of the Russian
language soon brought young Emma Goldman in touch with
revolutionary students and new ideas. The place of Marlitt was taken
by Nekrassov and Tchernishevsky. The quondam admirer of the good
Queen Louise became a glowing enthusiast of liberty, resolving, like
thousands of others, to devote her life to the emancipation of the
people.
The struggle of generations now took place in the Goldman family. The
parents could not comprehend what interest their daughter could find in
the new ideas, which they themselves considered fantastic utopias.
They strove to persuade the young girl out of these chimeras, and daily
repetition of soul-racking disputes was the result. Only in one member
of the family did the young idealist find understanding--in her elder
sister, Helene, with whom she later emigrated to America, and whose
love and sympathy