Alexander Berkman

Alexander Berkman was born in 1870 in Vilnius, then part of the Russian Empire. Emigrating to the United States in 1888, he became a prominent figure in the anarchist movement alongside Emma Goldman. His early notoriety came from an 1892 assassination attempt on industrialist Henry Clay Frick, for which he served 14 years in prison, later chronicled in his acclaimed 1912 memoir "Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist." Deported to Russia in 1919, Berkman initially supported the Bolshevik Revolution but grew disillusioned with its authoritarian turn. His 1925 work "The Bolshevik Myth" offers a firsthand critique of Soviet communism, blending political analysis with personal narrative. Berkman spent his final years in France, where he died by suicide in 1936. His literary legacy lies in his vivid prison writings and his unflinching examination of revolutionary ideals versus state power.