My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia is a book by Emma Goldman, published in 1923 by Doubleday, Page & Co. It grew out of a much longer manuscript, "My Two Years in Russia", an eyewitness account of events in Russia between 1920 and 1921, in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution and culminating in the Kronstadt rebellion. Goldman called that uprising the "final wrench": before it she saw a formidable Bolshevik state crushing every constructive revolutionary effort.

Sympathetic to the February Revolution, the author wrote an impassioned left-wing critique of the later Bolshevik Revolution and of Lenin's New Economic Policy, which she described as an all-powerful centralized government with state capitalism as its economic expression. The book also challenges Marxist theory, which she regarded as a cold, mechanistic and enslaving formula.

The American edition had an editorial problem: the publisher changed the title and left out the last twelve chapters, including an afterword Goldman considered the most vital part. Those pages later appeared in a second volume, My Further Disillusionment in Russia, in 1924. In Britain a complete version appeared in 1925, with an introduction by Rebecca West, restoring the full text.