Deportation, its meaning and menace: Last message to the people of America by Alexander Berkman and Emma GoldmanGoldman, Emma
History
Deportation, its meaning and menace: Last message to the people of America by Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman
Goldman, Emma
Anarchism; Deportation
This state of affairs is the more significant because Russians, and the
Slavic people in general, were hitherto always welcomed to these shores
as the best offering Europe contributed to the Moloch of American
industry. The Slav was so good natured, and docile, such a patient
slave, so appreciative of the liberties he enjoyed in the new
land—“liberties” which the socially conscious American had long since
learned to see as a delusion and a snare. But to the unsophisticated
Russian peasant, always half-starved and browbeaten, they seemed real
and resplendant, the symbol of paradise found. By the thousands he
flocked to the promised land, swarmed into the centers of industry to
build our railroads, forge iron, dig coal, till the soil, weave cloth,
and toil at scores of other useful occupations, his reward a mere
pittance.
Nor was it only the workers in fields and factories who were welcomed
here from Russia. Russian culture was an honored guest in America. The
great literature of the Slav, his music, his dancing—all found the most
generous reception and fullest appreciation. Above all, the Russian
_intelligentzia_, the political refugees, exiles, and active
revolutionists that came to America, and came—most of them—not merely to
express their opinions but rather to plot the forcible overthrow of the
Russian autocracy, all found sympathetic hearing and generous purses in
this country, aye, even at the seat of Government.
And now? Now it is considered the most heinous crime to have been born
in Russia.
What has caused this peculiar change? What is back of this sudden
reversal of feeling?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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