The Bolshevik Myth: Diary 1920-22

Berkman worked on his own book, The Bolshevik Myth, throughout 1923 and it was finally published in January 1925. Parts of The Russian Revolution and the Communist Party were used by Berkman for the concluding chapter of the book, The Anti-Climax. This concluding chapter was omitted by the publisher in the original edition of The Bolshevik Myth in 1925 and Berkman had to publish it separately, as a pamphlet.

Here it has been brought back, to make the definitive version of Berkman’s diary – complete with a new introduction written by Mikhail Tsovma, this is the book that highlights how quickly the revolution was lost, and who conspired against it.

From the text:

“We live on the eve of tremendous social changes. The old forms of life are breaking and falling apart. new elements are coming into being, seeking adequate expression. The pillars of present-day civilisation are being shattered. The principles of private ownership, the conception of human personality, of social life and liberty are being transvalued. Bolshevism came to the world as the revolutionary symbol, the promise of the better day. To millions of the disinherited and enslaved it became the new religion, the beacon of social salvation. But Bolshevism has failed, utterly and absolutely.” – so says Berkman in this first hand account of the death of the hopes of revolutionaries in the outcome of the Russian revolution.