Criminal
03-11-2004, 02:26 PM
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Exhibition/spanishcivilwar.html
Emma Goldman and the Spanish Civil War
Goldman was sixty-seven years old when the Spanish Civil War erupted in July of 1936. It was less than a month after the tragic suicide of Alexander Berkman, her closest comrade and "chum of a life-time." The promise of an anarchist revolution in Spain revived Goldman's broken spirit. Despite her advanced age, Emma hurled herself into the Spanish cause with an enthusiasm reminiscent of her early activist years in America.
Goldman thought the Spanish Civil War was not only crucial to the international struggle against fascism, but also a great moment in the history of Spain and the world. It was in her view the only peasant and working-class revolution ever to be inspired by anarchist ideals. Building on more than a half-century of agitation and organization, the Spanish anarchists by the mid-1930's had won popular support in parts of Spain--with Catalonia their strongest base. When Emma visited collectivized towns and farms in Aragon in 1936 and the Levante in 1937, she was electrified by what seemed to her to be the beginnings of a Spanish anarchist revolution.
In 1936, the Spanish comrades asked Goldman to direct their English propaganda campaign, designating her the London representative of the National Confederation of Labor and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (CNT-FAI). She worked tirelessly, writing hundreds of letters to supporters and editors in the English-speaking world. Dismayed but not vanquished by Franco's triumph in early 1939, Goldman moved to Canada, where she devoted the last year of her life to securing political asylum and financial support for the women and children refugees of the Spanish war and to publicizing legislative dangers to free speech in Canada.
Emma Goldman died in Toronto on May 14, 1940. After her death, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service allowed Goldman's body to be re-admitted to the United States. She was buried in Chicago's Waldheim Cemetery, near the Haymarket anarchists who so inspired her.
Emma Goldman and the Spanish Civil War
Goldman was sixty-seven years old when the Spanish Civil War erupted in July of 1936. It was less than a month after the tragic suicide of Alexander Berkman, her closest comrade and "chum of a life-time." The promise of an anarchist revolution in Spain revived Goldman's broken spirit. Despite her advanced age, Emma hurled herself into the Spanish cause with an enthusiasm reminiscent of her early activist years in America.
Goldman thought the Spanish Civil War was not only crucial to the international struggle against fascism, but also a great moment in the history of Spain and the world. It was in her view the only peasant and working-class revolution ever to be inspired by anarchist ideals. Building on more than a half-century of agitation and organization, the Spanish anarchists by the mid-1930's had won popular support in parts of Spain--with Catalonia their strongest base. When Emma visited collectivized towns and farms in Aragon in 1936 and the Levante in 1937, she was electrified by what seemed to her to be the beginnings of a Spanish anarchist revolution.
In 1936, the Spanish comrades asked Goldman to direct their English propaganda campaign, designating her the London representative of the National Confederation of Labor and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (CNT-FAI). She worked tirelessly, writing hundreds of letters to supporters and editors in the English-speaking world. Dismayed but not vanquished by Franco's triumph in early 1939, Goldman moved to Canada, where she devoted the last year of her life to securing political asylum and financial support for the women and children refugees of the Spanish war and to publicizing legislative dangers to free speech in Canada.
Emma Goldman died in Toronto on May 14, 1940. After her death, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service allowed Goldman's body to be re-admitted to the United States. She was buried in Chicago's Waldheim Cemetery, near the Haymarket anarchists who so inspired her.