Gotman, Leah (1896-1978)

"the Bolsheviks are the worst enemies of the socialist revolution." Leah Gotman, at a Nabat meeting, 1920

‘Leah Gotman and Fanya Baron are two anarchist women of outstanding personality. In their teens they left Russia for America, where they were employed in factories and took active part in the labor movement. I knew the girls well, splendid specimens of independent womanhood, of attractive appearance, fine feeling, and strong mentality. At the first call of the February Revolution these two girls, together with scores of other Russian refugees, hurried to their native land. It was just such as they that had helped to make the October Revolution. Leah and Fanya felt their place to be in the midst of the proletariat, preferring particularly to work with the Southern muzhik, among the agricultural elements of the Ukraine, to whom they gave all the love and devotion of their rich natures. Subsequently both girls carried on cultural activities among the rebel peasantry led by their famous Bat’ka (“Little Father”) Nestor Makhno.’ Emma Goldman, Heroic Women of the Russian Revolution (1925)

‘Lea Gutman and Helena Ganshina were delegated by the Moscow Aid Society to travel North and distribute food, clothing and other necessaries among the politicals in the prisons and camps of Archangel Province. They went with the permission of the All-Russian G.P.U. (Tcheka). During their presence in the North, the Anarchists imprisoned in the Peretomansky camp declared a hunger strike, demanding better living conditions and transfer to Archangel. Because Gotman, Ganshina and Piot'r Skurikhin (an exile in Archangel fox 2 years) informed the comrades in Petrograd and Moscow about the Peretominsky hunger strike, they were arrested and sent to Moscow. Where the G.P.U. sentenced Gutman and Skurikhin to 2 years exile in Berezsov, in the Tobolsk Province. It required a hunger strike of seven days to change the sentence to exile to Narimski Kral, which is considered a more preferable place.’ Bulletin of the Joint Committee for the defense of revolutionists imprisoned in Russia, No 1. October 1923, Berlin.

Leah Isaakovna Gotman was born in Kovel, in the Volyn Governorate into a Jewish family. In the early 1900s, she emigrated to the United States, moving to Detroit, where she worked in a factory. In 1912 she married the anarchist Iosif Gotman (“Joseph the Emigrant”) and joined the movement. In 1917, she returned to Russia and engaged in anarchist activity in Odessa. In late 1918, the Gotmans took part in the founding conference of the Confederation of Anarchist Organizations (Nabat) and Leah was elected to the Nabat secretariat. In 1919, she and her husband joined the Makhnovist movement, where she worked in its cultural and educational department. under the pseudonym Elena Keller. During this period she was repeatedly arrested by the Bolshevik authorities in 1919–1920. After the agreement between the Makhnovists and the Soviet government, she travelled to Moscow, where she worked with Volin, who had also recently been released from prison. At this time, Iosif went missing, most likely murdered by the Cheka in the Millerovo district. Returning with Volin to Kharkiv, Leah was arrested on the night of November 26, 1920, and sent with Ivan Charin and other anarchists to Moscow, and then to Oryol prison.

Conditions in the Oryol prison were appalling, with no heating or electricity, and with damp running down the cell walls. Prisoners were kept in solitary confinement. The prisoners declared a hunger strike in protest, but it did not change their situation, and as a result of the hunger strike, Ivan had a mental breakdown.

The failure of the Bolsheviks to convict the Socialist Revolutionary leaders at a trial in early August 1922, meant that they did not want to repeat the same experience with anarchists. Therefore, they transferred the case to Ukraine. Thus, Leah Gotman, Charin and other anarchists were transferred to the prison at Nizhny Novgorod prison, then to Moscow, and finally to Kharkiv .On October 10, 1922, Leah Gotman, Alexei Olonetsky, and six other anarchists were released, whilst Charin and Aron Baron were sent into exile. Charin and Leah Gotman had struck up a relationship, and moved to Odessa for medical treatment.

The persecution of Charin continued. Following prison protests and hunger strikes, he was transferred to Arkhangelsk prison in April 1923. Leah, arrived in Arkhangelsk as an agent of the Society for the Assistance of Imprisoned Anarchists. She and fellow anarchists Elisaveta Ganshina and Petr Skurikhin were arrested for transmitting information about a hunger strike by anarchists at the Pertominsk concentration to Moscow and Petrograd, on March 28th, 1923. Leah was transferred to the OGPU prison in Moscow. She was sentenced to exile for two years in Berezov, in Tobolsk governorate.

In response, she went on hunger strike for a week on May 18th, 1923. On November 14th, Charin submitted a petition that Leah’s exile be replaced with detention at the Solovetsky camp, with the right to cohabitation. This was granted by the NKVD.

On December 19th prison guards opened fire on prisoners at Solovetsky, killing five SRs, and wounding three others, including the anarchist Leonid Lebedev. Leah Gotman, Charin and other anarchists issued an open letter, exposing this massacre, which was published in the foreign anarchist press.

Leah was released from the camp on April 10th, 1925, and forbidden to reside in Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Odessa, and Rostov-on- Don, she moved to Zinovievsk. Meanwhile Ivan Charin became chronically ill, bleeding from the throat. As a result, he was released in April, 1926 and placed in the military sanatorium in Sokolniki where he began to recover.

He joined Leah in Zinovievsk (now Kropyvnytskyi). Arshinov conducted a correspondence with them from France, monitored by the GPU, where he explained his disagreements with Volin over the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists. After the birth of their daughter Violina , in 1931, they ceased all political activity. They moved to Kalinin, where they both worked at the local youth theatre.

However, soon both Leah and Ivan were accused of being part of a “Right-Trotskyist” conspiracy and arrested with three actors from the theatre in 1940. However, these flimsy charges soon led to the release of all those arrested.

The family moved to Saratov in 1943. However, the repression continued and Charin was again arrested, in the late 1940s. He was interned in one of the gulags in the Irkutsk region. Here the film and theatre actor and director Vasily Leshchev discovered him, once again seriously ill, and was able to secure his early release. He probably died in Irkutsk, as no more records of him can be found. Leah died in Saratov in 1978.

Their daughter Violina, worked as a physics teacher in a Saratov school, dying in 1993. She and Leah are both buried in the Jewish cemetery at Saratov.

Nick Heath

Sources:
Ovsyannikov, Sergey. Anarchy and Theatre, Theatre and Anarchy: G.S. Khodes, E.P. Garin, and I.A. Charin’s engagements with the anarchist movement during the Russian Revolution (1917-1921) and its aftermath (in Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studes, 2025, 1.

Photo, Leah Gotman, front row, second from right. Aron Baron to her right, Ivan Charin to her left.