Biography
Alexander Berkman Alexander 'Sasha' Berkman was a Russian-born anarchist writer, editor, and lifelong companion of Emma Goldman whose own imprisonments span more than two decades and two separate political campaigns. In 1892, in retaliation for the killing of striking steelworkers at the Homestead strike, Berkman attempted to assassinate Carnegie Steel chairman Henry Clay Frick at Frick's office in Pittsburgh, shooting and stabbing him without killing him. He was tried in Pennsylvania and sentenced to 22 years for attempted murder; he served fourteen years at the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh and the Allegheny Workhouse before his release in 1906. He later wrote about the experience in his Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1912), one of the foundational texts of American prison literature. Back in New York, he edited the anarchist magazine The Blast and worked alongside Goldman on Mother Earth and on free-speech and labor defense campaigns. Following U.S. entry into World War I in April 1917 he co-founded the No-Conscription League with Goldman and was arrested with her on June 15, 1917 under the Espionage Act for conspiring to obstruct the draft. Convicted and sentenced to two years, he served his sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta. Released in October 1919, he was rearrested under the Anarchist Exclusion Act and on December 21, 1919, deported with Goldman aboard the U.S. Army transport Buford to Soviet Russia. He spent the rest of his life in European exile and died in France in 1936.
From Kenyon Zimmer's Red Scare Deportees index (kenyonzimmer.com, compiled from INS deportation case files): Born Ovsei Osipovich Berkman into a prosperous Jewish family. Joined the Russian Populist movement as a student. After migrating to the United States, he became an anarchist and a lifelong collaborator of Emma Goldman. In 1892 he attempted to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick in retaliation for the deaths of several steelworkers during the Homestead Strike. He served fourteen years of a twenty-one-year sentence for attempted murder. Upon his release in 1906 he was one of the country’s most prominent anarchists. He later edited Goldman’s Mother Earth and in 1915 established The Blast in San Francisco. A co-founder of the No-Conscription League, he was arrested under the Selective Service Act in June 1917, served two years in federal prison, and was deported on the Buford on December 21, 1919.
In Soviet Russia he and Goldman gathered materials for a projected Museum of the Revolution. Initially critically supportive of the Bolshevik dictatorship, he broke with it completely after the Kronstadt mutiny of 1921, prompting his departure with Goldman later that year. Berkman lived precariously in Germany, France, and other European countries and became an important critic of the Soviet regime, most notably through his book The Bolshevik Myth (1925). He co-founded and served as secretary of the Joint Committee for the Defense of Revolutionists Imprisoned in Russia and was active in the RRelief Fund of the International Working Men’s Association for Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists Imprisoned or Exiled in Russia. In ill health and financial distress, he died by suicide in Nice, France, on June 28, 1936.
