6/99 From the Encyclopedia database Need to clean up entries for Mollie steimer & senya Fleshin (Fleshine, Felchine) in Bleed; much miscellany dumped in them Dec 2002, page is done & posted for Fleshine; can use the same coding/format for a template for page for Mollie Senya Fleshine (alternate spellings, Fléchine, Fleshin) dies. Born December 19, 1894 in Kiev, Russia. Emigrated to the US in 1910, became an anarchist, collaborating on Emma Goldman's newspaper, "Mother Earth". Flechine returned to Russia with the Revolution of 1917, & participated in the "Nabat" anarchist conference in the Ukraine. In November 1918, & again in January & June 1920, he was arrested by the Bolchevik police, the dreaded "Tcheka", then released after a few weeks of prison. In December 1921, Flechine worked with the museum of the revolution in Petrograd, where he met Mollie Steimer (recently expelled from the US), who became his lifelong companion -- through love & war. On November 1, 1922, they were both tried & condemned to two years exile in Siberia. They began a hunger strike & were released thanks to the action of May Picqueray at the time of the Red Congress of Trade Unions in Moscow. July 9, 1923, were again arrested, then finally expelled from Russia, in September, after a new hunger strike. In Berlin, Flechine participated in the Committee of Defense of the Russian Revolutionists, formed by Alexander Berkman. In 1924, they live in Paris with Voline & with Jacques Doubinsky, where he helped form, in 1927, a mutual aid group for the exiled anarchists. Senya became a photographer & went to Berlin to practice his trade in 1929, but was forced to leave in 1933 with the rise of Nazism, returning again to France. May 18, 1940, Mollie was arrested, but managed to escape from an internment camp & join Senya in Marseilles, from where they both departed for Mexico. Many anarchists will visit them. Senya, which opened a studio of photograph in Mexico City, finishes its life with Cuernavaca a few months after Mollie died. Among Goldman's closest comrades were Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin, who also left Soviet Russia after conditions there became intolerable for anarchists. On Steimer, see Marsh, Anarchist Women, Avrich, Anarchist Portraits; Polenberg, Fighting Faiths; and the pamphlet, Sentenced to Twenty Years Prison (New York: Political Prisoners Defense & Relief Committee, 1919). See also the memorial volume edited by Abe Bluestein, Fighters for Anarchism: Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin ([New York]: Libertarian Publications Group, 1983). Goldman distressed that she and Berkman depart Russia just days before the arrival of Mollie Steimer, Jacob Abrams, Samuel Lipman, and Hyman Lachowsky, deported from the United States on Nov. 24, 1921
July 9, 1923 Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin are arrested in Russia for propagating anarchism; released soon after they begin a hunger strike. September-October 1923, Following their deportation from Russia, Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin join Goldman and Berkman in Berlin. 1928 March-May In Paris, Goldman is reunited with old friends and comrades, including Berkman, Mollie Steimer, and Senya Fleshin. She arranges to rent the same cottage in St. Tropez that she had in the summer of 1926, and makes a brief excursion to London in May to pick up material she had left two years earlier. 1931 August-September Goldman is preoccupied throughout the summer with the urgency of Berkman's need to secure new papers and with Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin's precarious financial situation in Berlin September 1935 Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin from Paris and Modest Stein from New York visit Bon Esprit this month. 1936 August Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin arrive in St. Tropez to comfort Goldman (Berkman recently died) during her worst period of grief and psychological depression. - Among Goldman's closest comrades were Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin, who also left Soviet Russia after conditions there became intolerable for anarchists. On Steimer, see Marsh, Anarchist Women, Avrich, Anarchist Portraits; Polenberg, Fighting Faiths; and the pamphlet, Sentenced to Twenty Years Prison (New York: Political Prisoners Defense & Relief Committee, 1919). See also the memorial volume edited by Abe Bluestein, Fighters for Anarchism: Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin ([New York]: Libertarian Publications Group, 1983).
Documentary film, Anarchism in America (1982) weaves together archival footage--including a newsreel clip of Goldman on her return to the United States for a lecture tour in 1934--and interviews with participants to tell the history of anarchism in twentieth-century America. Among those interviewed is Mollie Steimer, one of Goldman's closest friends and comrades. - See also Anarchist Portraits by Paul Avrich 1987
- Fighters for Anarchism by Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin
- MOLLIE STEIMER by Patrick Keppel Directed by Monica Heber Nora Theatre Company Spring 1999 http://www.bu.edu/english/calendar.html Fri., May 28: 8 pm Sat., May 29: 2 pm {Mat.}
A young woman anarchist struggles to breathe ---though it may kill her--in a stifling, turn-of-the-century America.. (Based on a true story, c. 1918.) Donations Accepted. Among Goldman's closest comrades were Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin, who also left Soviet Russia after conditions there became intolerable for anarchists. On Steimer, see Marsh, Anarchist Women, Avrich, Anarchist Portraits; Polenberg, Fighting Faiths; and the pamphlet, Sentenced to Twenty Years Prison (New York: Political Prisoners Defense & Relief Committee, 1919). See also the memorial volume edited by Abe Bluestein, Fighters for Anarchism: Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin ([New York]: Libertarian Publications Group, 1983). http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsteimer.htm
// -- TO DO: Mollie Steimer, ARTICLE TAKEN FROM SPARTACUS SCHOOL ONLINE|
Mollie Steimer was born in Dunaevtsky, Russia, on 21st November, 1897. When she was fifteen her family emigrated to the United States and settled in New York.
Steimer found work in a garment factory and soon became involved in trade union activities. This led to her reading books on politics including those by August Bebel (Women and Socialism), Mikhail Bakunin (Statehood and Anarchy), Peter Kropotkin (Memoirs of a Revolutionist) and Emma Goldman (Anarchism and Other Essays).
In 1917 Steimer joined the Frayhayt, a group of Jewish anarchists based in New York. Steimer shared a six-room apartment at 5 East 104th Street in Harlem with members of the group. This also became the place where the Frayhayt held its meetings and published its newspaper, Der Shturm (The Storm).
The Frayhayt group were opposed to the United States becoming involved in the First World War. On 23rd August, 1918, six members of the group were arrested for publishing articles that undermined the American war effort. This included criticizing the United States government for invading Russia after the Bolshevik government signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.
One of the group, Jacob Schwartz, was so badly beaten by the police when he was arrested that he died soon afterwards. The others, charged under the terms of the Espionage Act, appeared in court and on 25th October, Steimer was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment. Three of the men, Samuel Lipman, Hyman Lachowsky and Jacob Abrahams received twenty years.
Many people in the United States were appalled by these sentences. This included people such as Roger Baldwin, Norman Thomas, Felix Frankfurter, Margaret Sanger and Lincoln Steffens. A group, the League of Amnesty of Political Prisoners was formed and it published a leaflet on the case, Is Opinion a Crime? Steimer and the the other three anarchists were released on bail to await the results of their appeal.
Over the next few months Steimer was arrested seven times but after being held in various prisons was always released without charge. On the 30th October, 1919, she was arrested she was taken to Blackwell Island. While in prison the Supreme Court upheld her conviction under the Espionage Act. Steimer was now transferred to the Jefferson City Prison in Missouri.
During this period A. Mitchell Palmer, the attorney general and his special assistant, John Edgar Hoover, used the Sedition Act to launch a campaign against radicals and their organizations. Using this legislation it was decided to deport immigrants from Europe who had been involved in left-wing politics. This included Steimer, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and 245 other people who were deported to Russia.
Deported to Russia on the Estonia, Steimer arrived in Moscow on 15th December, 1921. The Bolshevik government hated anarchists and soon became a target for the Russian Secret Police. On 1st November, 1922 she was arrested with her partner, Senya Fleshin and charged with aiding criminal elements in Russia.
Sentenced to two years in Siberia, Steimer managed to escape and return to Moscow where she worked for the Society to Help Anarchist Prisoners. She was soon arrested and on 27th September she was deported to Germany where she joined Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in Berlin.
With Senya Fleshin Steimer opened a photographic studio in Berlin. Steimer was also active in the Joint Committee for the Defense of Revolutionaries (1923-1926) and the Relief Fund of the International Working Men's Association for Anarchists (1926-32).
When Hitler came to power Steimer and Senya Fleshin were forced to flee to Paris. When France was invaded by the German Army the couple moved to Mexico where they ran a photographic studio. Mollie Steimer died in Cuernava, Mexico, on 23rd July, 1980. 
(1) Molly Steimer, speech made in court during her trial under the Espionage Act (October, 1918)
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 fulfillment of this idea I shall devote all my energy, and, if necessary, render my life for it. (2) Agnes Smedley was imprisoned for distributing birth control leaftlets in 1918. While in prison she met Molly Steimer and wrote about her in her book Cell Mates (1920)
Mollie Steimer championed the cause of the prisoners - the one with venereal disease, the mother with diseased babies, the prostitute, the feeble-minded, the burglar, the murderer. To her they were but products of a diseased social system. She did not complain that even the most vicious of them were sentenced to no more than 5 or 7 years, while she herself was facing 15 years in prison. She asked that the girl with venereal disease be taken to a hospital; the prison physician accused her of believing in free love and in Bolshevism. She asked that the vermin be cleaned from the cells of one of the girls; the matron ordered her to attend to her own affairs - that it was not her cell. "Lock me in," she replied to the matron; "I have nothing to lose but my chains." (3) Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931)
The Espionage Act resulted in filling the civil and military prisons of the country with men sentenced to incredibly long terms; Bill Haywood received twenty years, his hundred and ten International Workers of the World co-defendants from one to ten, Eugene V. Debs ten years, Kate Richards O'Hare five. These were but a few among the hundreds railroaded to living death. Then came the arrest of a group of our young comrades in New York, comprising Mollie Steimer, Jacob Abrams, Samuel Lipman, Hyman Lachowsky and Jacob Schwartz. Their offence consisted in circulating a printed protest against American intervention in Russia. |
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsteimer.htm
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Mollie Steimer An Anarcha-feminist Profile - Mollie Steimer Mollie Steimer died of a heart attack on July 23, 1980 at her home in Cuernavaca. Mexico. Mollie was 82 years old, and throughout her long life she was consumed with a passion to work for the good of the people. Born on November 21, 1897, in southwestern Russia, Mollie emigrated to the United States in 1913 with her family. She immediately went to work in a garment factory to help support her family. She came across radical literature including the works of Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, and Emma Goldman. By 1917 Mollie had become an anarchist, to which she dedicated her life. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, she plunged into agitational activity. She joined a young group of anarchists called Frayhart which contained a dozen or so young women and men, all of them workers of East-European Jewish origin. The Frayhart collective, edited and distributed their newspaper (also called Frayhart) which was outlawed by the federal government for its opposition to the American War effort. It also had anti-capitalist, pro-revolutionary, and pro soviet content. On August 23, 1918 Mollie was arrested for distributing leaflets against the landing of American troops in Soviet Russia, along with several other members of her group. The Abrams case as it became known, constitutes a landmark in the repression of civil liberties in the United States. It was the first important prosecution under the Espionage Act. It has been cited in all standard histories, as one of the most flagrant violations of constitutional rights during the Red Scare hysteria that followed the First World War. The trial which lasted two weeks, opened on October, 1918, at the Federal Court House in New York. The defendants were Abrams, Steimer, Schwartz, Lachows ky, and Lipman. Schwartz, however, never appeared in court. Having been severely beaten by the police, he was removed to hospital, where he died on October 14. The judge who tried the case grilled the defendants about their "free love" activity. They were mocked and humiliated by the judge. Before the conclusion of the trial, Mollie Steimer delivered a powerful speech in which she explained her political belief s. "By anarchism," she declared, "I understand a new social order, where no group of people shall be in power, no group of people shall be governed by another group of people. Individual freedom shall prevail in the full sense of the word. Private owner ship shall be abolished. Every person will 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 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." The jury found all the defendants guilty. The Judge sentenced the three men to the maximum penalty of twenty years in prison and a $1000 fine, while Mollie received fifteen years and a $500 fine. The barbarity of the sentenced for the mere distribution o f leaflets shocked liberals and radicals alike. However the four were temporarily released on bail to await the results of their appeal. Mollie immediately resumed her political activities. As a result, she was continually hounded by the authorities. Over the next eleven years she was arrested no less than eight times, kept in the station house for brief periods, released then rearrested, sometimes without charges being preferred against her. On March 11, 1919, she was arrested at the Russian People's House on the East 15th Street during a raid by the federal and local police which netted 164 radicals. Charged with inciting to riot, Mollie was held for eight days in the notorious Tombs prison before being released on $1000 bail, only to be arrested again and taken to Ellis Island for deportation. Lock ed up for twenty hours a day, denied exercise and fresh air and the right to mingle with other political prisoners, she went on a hunger strike until the authorities met her demands. "the entire machinery of the United State! s government was being employed to crush this slip of a girl weighing no less than eighty pounds," Emma Goldman complained. The government however, was not yet ready to deport the 21 year old, prisoner whose case remained before the courts. Released from Ellis Island, Mollie was kept under constant surveillance. In the fall of 1919, when Emma Goldman returned to New York (af ter completing a two year prison sentence) Mollie took the opportunity to call on her. It was the beginning of a lasting friendship. Mollie reminded Emma of the Russian women revolutionaries under the Tsar, earnest, ascetic, and idealistic, "who sacrifice d their lives before they had scarcely begun to live ." In Emma's description, Mollie was "diminutive and quaint looking, altogether Japanese in features and stature". she was a wonderful girl Emma added, " with an iron will and a tender heart," but "fear fully set in her ideas." "A sort of Alexander Berkman in skirts", she jested to her niece Stella Ballantine. Soon after her meeting with Emma Goldman, Mollie was again arrested. She was imprisoned for six months. Locked up in a filthy cell, isolated once more from her fellow prisoners, and barred from all contact with the outside world. During, this period, word came that the Supreme Court had upheld the conviction of Mollie and her friends. In April 1920 she was transferred from Blackwell's Island to Jefferson City, Missouri, (where Emma Goldman had been confined before deportation with Berkman in December 1919) for eighteen months. Her lawyer, meanwhile, with the support of the Political Prisoners Defence Committee, had been trying to secure release for his clients on the condition of their deportation to Russia. In due course, an agreement was concluded, and Weinberger obtained the release of the four , with the stipulation that they would leave for Russia at their own expense and never return to the United states. On November 24, 1921, Mollie Steimer sailed for Soviet Russia. Victims of the Red Scare in America they soon became the victims of the red Terror in Russia. Arriving in Moscow on December 15, 1921, they found that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman had a lready departed for the West, disillusioned by the turn the revolution had taken. Kropotkin had died in Feb., and the Kronstadt rebellion had been suppressed in March. Makhno's insurgent army had been dispersed, hundreds of anarchists languished in prison. Amid the gloom, however, there were some bright spots. In Moscow, Mollie met Senya Fleshine (Fleshin), who became her lifelong companion. Mollie and Senya organised a Society to Help Anarchist Prisoners, travelling about the country to assist their incarcerated comrades. On November 1, 1992, they were arrested by the GPU on charges of aiding criminal elements in Russia and maintaining ties with anarchists abroad. Sentenced to two years' exile in Siberia, they declared a hunger strike on November 17 in their Petrograd jail, and ended up being released. They were forbidden to leave the city and were ordered to report to the authorities every 48 hours. However Mollie and Senya resumed their efforts on behalf of prisoned comrades. They were arrested again. Protests to Trotsky by foreign Anarcho Syndicalist delegates soon brought about their release. This time they were expelled from Russia and placed aboard a ship bound for Germany. In Berlin, and afterwards in Paris, Mollie and Senya resumed their relief work which had led to their deportation. In 1927 they formed the Mutual Aid Group of Paris to assist fellow anarchists exiles, not only from Russia, but also from Italy , Spain, Potugal, and Bulgaria, even though they were penniless, without legal documents, and in constant danger of deportation. Mollie assisted Senya in professional photography him until 1933 when Hitler's rise to power forced them to return to Paris. In the early months of the Second World War they were not molested but before long their Jewish origins and anarchist convictions caught up with them. On May 18, 1940, Mollie was placed in an internment camp, while Senya, aided by French friends, managed to escape to the occupied sector of the country. Somehow, Mollie secured her release. The pair reunited then crossed the Atlantic and settled in Mexico City. They arrived half starved and penniless and without a permanent passport. For the next 25 years they lived as "Nansen" citizens (i.e people without a passport), anarchists without a country, until they acquired Mexican citizenship in 1948. When deported from the United States, Mollie had vowed to stay true to her beliefs. In Russia, in Germany, in France, and now in Mexico, she remained faithful to her vow. Fluent in Russian, Yiddish, English, German, French, and Spanish, she corresponded with comrades and kept up with the anarchist press around the world. In early 1980 she was filmed by the Pacific Street Collective of New York, to whom she spoke of her beloved anarchism. In her last years, Mollie felt worn and tired. To the end, however, her revolutionary passion burned with an undiminished flame. |
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