Goldman is a horribly biased source for the Russian Civil War. She lived in Russia during the Civil War, 1920-1921, wrote that piece in '22 from Stockholm, and then the Civil War concluded in '23. She grew up with anti-Russian biases common of western Europeans (still continues today), spoke relatively broken Russian, and chiefly was entirely wrong about the anarchist movement in Russia.
The anarchists, who were faced with a dillema between supporting the bolsheviks and the Whites, majority decided to support the bolsheviks and were comrades in arms. Bandits like Makhno’s faction that were slaughtering villagers and stealing soviet supplies were killed, but the overwhelming majority of anarchists joined the Red Army, called “soviet-anarchists.” Goldman is primarily pointing to the minority of anarchists that denied the bolsheviks as the only anarchists.
Goldman was also contested by other anarchists at the time. Kropotkin, while displeased that the revolution wasn’t an anarchist one, supported the revolution nonetheless. Lucy Parsons was another principled anarchist that nonetheless supported the bolsheviks, and also agreed with labelling Makhno a bandit. Goldman, however, was a friend of Makhno, showing the real allegiances Goldman had.
Goldman’s anti-communism was ultimately based in unprincipled chauvanism. Her writings on anarchist theory are valuable, but we should not take her as any sort of authority on actually existing socialism, which she had denounced before it even finished fighting for its own existence.
Goldman is a horribly biased source for the Russian Civil War. She lived in Russia during the Civil War, 1920-1921, wrote that piece in '22 from Stockholm, and then the Civil War concluded in '23. She grew up with anti-Russian biases common of western Europeans (still continues today), spoke relatively broken Russian, and chiefly was entirely wrong about the anarchist movement in Russia.
The anarchists, who were faced with a dillema between supporting the bolsheviks and the Whites, majority decided to support the bolsheviks and were comrades in arms. Bandits like Makhno’s faction that were slaughtering villagers and stealing soviet supplies were killed, but the overwhelming majority of anarchists joined the Red Army, called “soviet-anarchists.” Goldman is primarily pointing to the minority of anarchists that denied the bolsheviks as the only anarchists.
Goldman was also contested by other anarchists at the time. Kropotkin, while displeased that the revolution wasn’t an anarchist one, supported the revolution nonetheless. Lucy Parsons was another principled anarchist that nonetheless supported the bolsheviks, and also agreed with labelling Makhno a bandit. Goldman, however, was a friend of Makhno, showing the real allegiances Goldman had.
Goldman’s anti-communism was ultimately based in unprincipled chauvanism. Her writings on anarchist theory are valuable, but we should not take her as any sort of authority on actually existing socialism, which she had denounced before it even finished fighting for its own existence.