Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

The Russian Revolution /315
We live on the eve of tremendous social changes. The old forms of life are breaking
and faIling apart. New elements are coming into being, seeking adequate expression.
The pillars of present-day civilization are being shattered. The principles of
private ownership, the conception of human personality, of social life and liberty are
being transvalued. Bolshevism came to the world as the revolutionary symbol, the
promise of the better day. To millions of the disinherited and enslaved it became the
new religion, the beacon of social salvation. But Bolshevism has failed, utterly and absolutely.
As Christianity, once the hope of the submerged, has driven Christ and his
spirit from the Church, so has Bolshevism crucified the Russian Revolution, betrayed
the people, and is now seeking to dupe other millions with its Judas kiss.
It is imperative to unmask the great delusion, which otherwise might lead the
Western workers to the same abyss as their brothers in Russia. It is incumbent upon
those who have seen through the myth to expose its true nature, to unveil the social
menace that hides behind it-the red Jesuitism that would throw the world back to
the dark ages and the Inquisition.
Bolshevism is of the past. The future belongs to man and his liberty.
89. Emma Goldman: The Transvaluation o/ Values (1924)
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman left Russia together in December 1921. In September
1921, their anarchist comrades, Fanya Baron and the poet Lev Chernyi, had been summarily
executed by the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, as "bandits. " Berkman fwd met
with Fanya Baron just the day before. She was planning the escape of her husband, Aaron
Baron, who had been arrested with Voline and other members of the Nabat Confederation in
November 1920 (he went on to endure 18 years of imprisonment and internal exile, only to be
"liquidated" when released from custody in 1938). The fo llowing extracts are taken fro m
Goldman's My Disillusionment in Russia (London: C. W. Daniel, 1925; origillally published
1924), in which she argues that the fundamental task of the social revolution is the
"transvaluation of values, " a concept that has its roots il1 the philosophy of Nietzsche.
THE DOMINANT, ALMOST GENERAL, idea of revolution-particularly the Socialist
idea-is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one
social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist
class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political
scene shifting and institutional rearrangements. Bourgeois dictatorship is replaced
by the "dictatorship of the proletariat"-or by that of its "advance guard, " the
Communist Party; Lenin takes the seat of the Romanovs, the Imperial Cabinet is
rechristened Soviet of People's Commissars, Trotsky is appointed Minister of War,