Jews From Ukraine

"During these years of exile in the - 1920s and 1930s, Senya and Mollie received a steady stream of visitors-Harry Kelly, Rose Pesotta, Rudolf and Milly Rocker, among others-some of whom recorded their impressions of their old friends. Kelly, for example, found Mollie "as childlike in appearance as ever, and as idealistic too." Goldman, however, thought her "narrow and fanatical," while Senya was always "ill and broken." Emma again compared Mollie to Alexander Berkman as a young militant and "a fanatic to the highest degree. Mollie is a repetition in skirts. She is terribly sectarian, set in her notions, and has an iron will. No ten horses could drag her from anything she is for or against. But with it all she is one of the most genuinely devoted souls living with the fire of our ideal.""

"Alas," wrote Mollie in November 1927, "the entire spirit of the 'platform' is penetrated with the idea that the masses MUST BE POLITICALLY LED during the revolution. There is where the evil starts, all the rest ... is mainly based on this line. It stands for an Anarchist Communist Workers' Party, for an army ... for a system of defense of the revolution which will inevitably lead to the creation of a spying system, investigators, prisons and judges, consequently a TCHEKA."

"To the end, her revolutionary passion had burned with an undiminished flame."

"It is difficult not to be overwhelmed by Mollie Steimer's fidelity to principle throughout decades of persecution. Whether such constancy is a virtue or a flaw may be argued; nevertheless, despite an almost identical sociocultural background to Marie Ganz, Steimer was inspired by intellectual, social, and psychological forces that profoundly distinguished her from the more changeable Ganz. Steimer's conversion to anarchism derived less from an emotional response to a crisis situation than from her acceptance of the basic tenets of anarchist ideology. As a disciple of Kropotkin, Steimer possessed an intellectual and moral vision of the future."

"I first met Berkman in New York City in the late Fall, 1919, at the home of Stella Ballantine, Emma Goldman’s niece. We discussed the Russian Revolution and the need to expose the atrocities of the Bolsheviks against the anarchists, socialists and all who dared to criticize their new dictatorial regime in Moscow...Sasha argued that the Bolsheviks should be given a chance, that it was too early to start an organized opposition because the revolution was surrounded by enemies...Our second meeting with Sasha and Emma took place in Berlin four years later, November, 1923, where they had been living for two years, since January, 1922. They had left Soviet Russia greatly disillusioned with the Bolshevik regime. Sasha and Emma were each writing about their experiences in Russia. In addition, Sasha was active organizing help for the anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists and other political Opponents held in prison by the Bolsheviks. He appealed for funds, issued a bulletin in English, translated the letters from men and women prisoners in Russia. He assembled and translated all the material that was published in the book, Letters From Russian Prisons."

"Alexander Berkman, “Sasha” to his friends, was a rebel from early childhood. He protested against injustice wherever he saw it...After Berkman was released from prison he continued to devote his life to the revolutionary cause, a convinced anarchist. He worked with all his energies and dedication for the movement, for freedom, and wound up a political refugee in the various countries where he was permitted to live. He was one of the finest, most generous people I ever knew. Although he had very few material possessions, he was always ready to give everything away to others and had to be reminded not to deny himself his urgent personal needs. Berkman made every possible effort to understand and help people...He radiated warmth and comfort, like the rays of the sun."

"Life was difficult for everyone in Germany after World War I and particularly so for the political refugees. Many of us felt that we had to leave Germany. A number of us went to France, including Sasha and Emma."

"In October, 1919, I was illegally sentenced to six months imprisonment in Blackwell Island Prison where I was placed in solitary confinement, entirely separated from the outside world, wt without mail, without visitors. Even my mother was not allowed to visit with me. One day, in January, 1920, a slip of paper was smuggled into my cell informing me that Abrams, Lachowsky; and Lipman were caught while trying to flee to Mexico. That same day a newspaper clipping giving the history of our group a was thrown into my cell."

"We were informed that the exchange with Russian prisoners of war would take effect on the 23rd of November, 1921. We were all deported to Russia."

"His name will live as long as there are and will continue to be rebels who struggle for genuine, true liberty."

"Steimer remained convinced that constitutional safeguards of freedom were a sham."

"Russia of today is a great prison where every individual who is known not to be in full agreement with the Communists is spied upon and booked by the “GPU” (Tcheka) as an enemy of the government. No one can receive books, newspapers, or even a plain letter from his relatives without control of the censor. This institution which keeps the people in absolute ignorance of all news detrimental to the interests of the Bolshevists is now better organized and more strict than was the famous Black Cabinet under Czar Nicholas II. The prisons and concentration camps of Moscow, Petrograd, Kharkov, Odessa, Tashkent, Vologda, Archangel, Solovki, and Siberia are filled with revolutionaries who do not agree with the tyrannical regime enforced by the Bolsheviks. The inhuman treatment that those people receive at the hands of their jailers can have only one purpose: that is, to wear them out physically and mentally so that their lives may become a mere burden to them."

"Among other things it has been stated in the American press that I was very happy to leave Russia, and that I preferred exile in Germany to freedom in Russia. This statement attributed to me, is a deliberate lie! It is true that the hypocrisy, intolerance, and the treachery of the Bolsheviks arouse in me a, feeling of indignation and revolt, but, as an Anarchist, I have no admiration nor defence for any government of any land, and the statement that I prefer exile in Germany rather than freedom in Russia is ridiculous and false. I made it very clear to the press correspondent with whom I spoke that in spite of all the difficulties with which I had to put up with in Russia, I was deeply grieved when I was forced to leave that country. This was not true when I left America. Although I have my entire family, good comrades and many dear friends in the U.S.A. Yet, when I was deported from there by the capitalist government, my heart was light. It was not so in the case of Russia. Never have I felt so depressed as since I have been sentenced to exile from Russia. My love for Russia and its people is too deep for me to rejoice that I am an exile, especially at a time when they are undergoing extreme suffering and most severe persecution. On the contrary, I would prefer to be there, and together with the workers and peasants, search for a way to loosen the chains of Bolshevik tyranny...No, I am NOT happy to be out of Russia. I would rather be there helping the workers combat the tyrannical deeds of the hypocritical Communists"

"I left her with a heavy heart. While the Communists are issuing long protests against the persecution of political prisoners (they mean only Communists) in “capitalist” countries, they themselves are imposing savage sentences upon their opponents and are forcing many of our best comrades to die slowly in the jails and concentration camps, and hundreds of others to suffer the bitter pangs of hunger and the unbearable cold of northern Russia and Siberia. The real revolutionaries of Russia today are exiled and cut off from the entire world, forbidden the right of communication with any loving person except the damnable spies who are forever shadowing their footsteps.s"

"All our members sincerely believed that the Revolution was around the corner. Events were taking place very rapidly. In Russia a Revolution had broken out which filled us with great enthusiasm. It was then that our discussions began. Should we give up our stand against war and take the side of the allies, or side with the German militarists? Bernard Sernaker wrote an article for Our paper supporting Peter Kropotkin and the famous sixteen in favor of the allied side against the German Government, to safeguard the libertarian traditions of the French revolutionary movement. After exhaustive discussions we did not accept Sernaker’s article for our paper. We decided to continue our call to the world against war and to stop the bloodbath. But we were not able to continue our agitation much longer because of the Espionage and Sedition Act of October, 1917. We could no longer work openly and freely. All criticism of the government was prohibited. The printshops refused to print our leaflets and our paper. We were compelled to operate underground, illegally."

"Anarchism is a new social order where no group shall be governed by another group of people. Individual freedom shall prevail in the full sense of the word. Private ownership shall be abolished. Every person shall have an equal opportunity to develop himself well, both mentally and physically. We shall not have to struggle for our daily existence as we do now. No one shall live on the product of others. Every person shall produce as much as he can, and enjoy as much as he needs – receive according to his need. Instead of striving to get money, we shall strive towards education, towards knowledge. While at present the people of the world are divided into various groups, calling themselves nations, while one nation defies another – in most cases considers the others as competitive – we, the workers of the world, shall stretch out our hands towards each other with brotherly love. To the fulfilment of this idea I shall devote all my energy, and, if necessary, render my life for it."

"In July, 1918, we learned that President Wilson had sent ten thousand American troops to Vladivostock to intervene militarily against the Russian Revolution. At that time we were all very much in sympathy with the Russian Revolution. We sent out a call for a mass protest meeting against intervention and sent it to the American press. Samuel Lipman attended the mass meeting even though he considered himself a Marxian Socialist and we were glad to have him."

"The well-known liberal periodical, The Nation, printed an editorial challenging the legality of the proceedings and raising embarrassing questions for the government to answer. The policy of military intervention in the Russian Revolution was abandoned. We won, in spite of the fact that Abrams, Lachowsky and Sam Lipman were sentenced to twenty years imprisonment, and I to fifteen years."

"One former member of [the antiparty] group Molotov] became an ambassador. True, the country Outer Mongolia] may not be large, but it is an ambassadorship. I do not want to mention names, but you have some former Secretaries of State. I do not know where they are today, but they are not ambassadors. A second member of the group [Kaganovich] is now head of the state asbestos trust. Is that punishment, to head up a big monopoly? … It is better to confess to one's errors than to persist in them."

"First, Stalin is disowned, now, little by little, it gets to prosecute socialism, the October Revolution, and in no time they will also want to prosecute Lenin and Marx."

"Without Stalin's politics, we would never have achieved anything, we would all have died."

"Every time they say that what's happening in the country is... Stalin's fault. It's the moral of every speech: Stalin's guilty, it was Stalin, Stalin, Stalin, everyone against him. But Stalin died 35 years ago! 35 years! What does that have to do with today's troubles?"

"Iosif Vissarionovich was a really cautious man. Really cautious. A man who could see far."

"Let me examine the alleged "distinction from capitalism" characteristic of the Soviet Union and see whether it isn't a distinction from a certain stage of capitalism rather than from capitalism as a whole. The determining factor in analyzing the class nature of a society is not whether the means of production are the private property of the capitalist class or are state-owned, but whether the means of production ... are monopolized and alienated from the direct producers. The Soviet Government occupies in relation to the whole economic system the position which a capitalist occupies in relation to a single enterprise. ... "Bureaucratic state socialism" is an irrational expression behind which there exists the real economic relation of state-capitalist-exploiter to the propertyless exploited."

"But Sisyphus is not, finally, a useful image. You don't roll some unitary boulder of language or justice uphill; you try with others to assist in cutting and laying many stones, designing a foundation...Another was Raya Dunayevskaya, who wrote vividly and trenchantly of the concrete revolutionary lives of women, and whose fusion of Marx's humanism with contemporary feminisms expanded my sense of the possibilities of both."

"Raya Dunayevskaya was a major thinker in the history of Marxism and of women's liberation-one of the longest continuously active woman revolutionaries of the twentieth century. In fierce intellectual and political independence, her life and work defied many mind-numbing labels that self-described conservatives, liberals, and radicals have applied to voices for political and social change."

"The critics are occasionally pleased to compliment a pianist by saying that he plays in the grand style. Exactly what do they mean by that phrase? In the broadest sense, they mean a style of playing which penetrates deeper than the physical conquering of the piano. It concerns itself with the release of music. The “grand style” moved listeners through interpretation."

"I am startled, occasionally, to find “intelligence” used as the antithesis of “feeling”, as though the two played against each other. Nothing could be further from the truth. No intelligent interpretation is lacking in emotional values. What this probably means is that, depending on gifts and degree of maturity, some natures emphasize brain over heart. Where such an imbalance occurs, it must be corrected by conscious and concentrated application to emotional content. If an interpretation is unduly cerebral, liveness and color can be infused into it by attention to whether the theme is now in the right hand, now in the left; whether it is supported by an accompaniment which has significance of its own, or merely hums along."

"Like nearly all of the Leschetizky pupils, he represented the last vestiges of romanticism as it was actually practiced in the romantic period — which means pliancy, a perpetually singing line, concentration on inner voices and a free approach and a free approach to the notes. In Moiseiwitsch's case, freedom was always tempered by impeccable musicality."

"Any artist worth his salt thinks music far more than he practices. Practice divides the mind between music and the mechanics of managing hands and feet. Inward hearing has its roots in musical thought."

"[Ilya Kabakov] saw Total Installation as a new art form that incorporated all the forms that had come before, including painting, drawing, sculpture, plus the theatrical forms of scene-making, music, and the atmosphere created by the interaction of light and color. If the artist has properly manipulated all these elements, those who enter become "simultaneously both a 'victim' and a viewer, who on the one hand surveys and evaluates the installation, and on the other, follows those associations, recollections which arise in him; he is overcome by the intense atmosphere of the total illusion."

"For me the art world is like a huge river, which began somewhere in the past and keeps flowing towards the future."

"Fear is the reason for making art. It is a means to freedom."

"Ilya and Emilia Kabakov have been collaborating since 1989, 3 years before their marriage in 1992. Ilya was born in 1933 and spent years working as an artist prior to meeting Emilia, but the couple’s meeting sparked the installation practice that defined their aesthetic trajectory."

"Marriage was the best business deal I ever made. After that, Jesus of Nazareth and The Muppets."

":700 thousand Germans from Western Poland, Danzig and Memel to Germany (1918-1925)"

":1.15 million Russians to Europe outside the Soviet Union (1918-1922) 1.1 million repatriated from Russia to Poland (1918-1925)"

":1.2 million Greeks to Greece from Turkey (1922-1923)"

":900 thousand Poles from former Russian and Austrian Poland to former German Poland (1918-1921)"

"Like a gigantic pump, the German Reich sucked in Europe's resources and working population."

"The migratory movement is at once perpetual, partial and universal. It never ceases, it affects every people … [and although] at a given moment it sets in motion only a small number of each population … in fact there is never a moment of immobility for any people, because no migration remains isolated."

"To illustrate how dramatically populations can displace each other over time, the historian E.M. Kulischer once reminded his readers that in A.D. 900 Berlin had no Germans, Moscow had no Russians, Budapest had no Hungarians, Madrid was a Moorish settlement, and Constantinople had hardly any Turks. He added that the Normans had not yet settled in Great Britain and before the sixteenth century there were no Europeans living in North or South America, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa."

"Eugene M. Kulischer, who introduced the phrase "displaced persons", is best known as an authority on human migration, and secondarily as an expert on Russia... He titled almost everything he published... as "migration", "displaced persons", or some other term designating migration."

"War is a mass phenomenon. To penetrate the basic causes of war, we must discern the factors which have made millions of people abandon their habitual modes of life, their occupations, and their moral concepts to participate in murder and destruction. We should therefore put greater stress upon the simple conscious and .subconscious impulses which rule the behavior of the masses."

"Today a host of foreigners unprecedented in number and unparalleled in character is living and working in Germary like a gigantic pump, the new German Reich is sucking in all it resources of Europe and masses of Europe's working population."

"Man's history is the story of his wanderings. Some epochs of the remote past have frequently been called 'periods of great migrations.' This terminology presumes that at other times migratory movements were at a standstill, especially in the case of a so-called 'sedentary' people. Every epoch is a period of "great migrations"."

""According to Eugene Kulischer's compilation... the largest flows within Europe and the adjacent sections of Asia from 1918 to 1939 were:"

"The resettlement of populations scattered by war and by enemy occupation is one of the problems with which Europe will be most urgently faced when the occupied countries are set free. Since hostilities began, millions of people have left homes destroyed or threatened with destruction; millions more have been transplanted, deported, or expelled to make room for foreign newcomers who have taken over their property; millions of others again have been taken prisoner or individually recruited as workers and sent away from their countries to serve the occupying power."

"The question of the size of the postwar population of the Soviet Union is not the least of the enigmas which have been baffling students of Russian affairs. Hardly any estimate or evaluation of an economic, sociological or military character for the U.S.S.R. can be made meaningful without an accurate knowledge of the demographic base."

"From time immemorial war has always caused widespread displacements of population. Driven abroad by the destruction of their homes, fleeing from the neighbourhood of the battlefields or from the threat of enemy occupation, floods of refugees have always taken to the roads in search of a haven which is never easy to find."