This is an excellent look at how the Bolsheviks destroyed the promise of the Russian revolution. The writer was a defender of Bolshevism before her exile from the United States to to Russia in 1919 and reluctantly arrived at that realization after living and traveling there for two years and talking to many people at every level and viewing living conditions and the operations of the Bolsheviks.

Due to a publishing error, about a third of this book was left out but was later published as "My Further Disillusionment in Russia". Both are free at archiv.org. ( )

Full text here: http://www.ditext.com/goldman/russia/russia.html
Renowned anarchist Emma Goldman was deported by the US to Russia in 1919 for her "anti-war agitation." This is her firsthand account of the two years she spent living and traveling in Lenin's post-revolutionary Russia and her impressions of the state of the revolution. She goes in with the most optimistic of expectations, but what she observes is not pretty. ( )