"Red Emma" arrives in Russia in early 1920, "full of hopes" that she will find "a newborn country, with the people wholeheartedly devoted to the magnificent yet difficult work of revolutionary reconstruction." She offers to help with all her might. She meets Lenin, Zinoviev, Lunacharsky, Kropotkin, Kollontai, Gorky, John Reed, and others. She visits Petrograd, Moscow, Kharkov, Kiev, Odessa, Arkhangelsk. However, instead of the beauty and brilliance of the Revolution, she quickly encounters exploitation, abuses, and privileges of party members, deprivation of freedom of speech, censorship, centralization, and persecution of dissenters. Her dream fades, and in 1921, after the bloody suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, she finally decides to leave Soviet Russia. One of the most honest and authentic testimonies about the early years after the Bolshevik Revolution, published with great delay for the first time in our language. Emma Goldman is passionate about the truth, and her book, lively and always relevant, is an invaluable aid for anyone interested in learning about the great events of the 20th century. [Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]