True name: Ovsej Berkman; born in Kovno, Lithuania 1870, died in Nice, France 1936; militant anarchist, writer; emigrated to the USA in 1888; in 1892, after the shooting of strikers at the Carnegie Steel mills in Homestead, Pennsylvania, tried to shoot the manager Henry C. Frick; imprisoned until 1906; coeditor of Mother Earth New York from 1906 and founder and editor of The Blast San Francisco 1916-1917; involved in all kinds of anarchist activities, e.g. in organizing the defense of Tom Mooney and in antiwar propaganda; imprisoned in 1917 and deported to Russia in 1919; left Russia disillusioned in 1921; active in exile in particular with the defense of persecuted anarchists in Russia and elsewhere; main founder and secretary of the Joint Committee for the Defense of Revolutionists Imprisoned in Russia, Berlin 1923-1926 and member of Relief Fund of the International Working Men's Association (IWMA) for Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists Imprisoned or Exiled in Russia (in Paris and Berlin) 1926-1932; from 1925 he lived in France and worked as a translator; suffering from illness and poverty, he shot himself; his publications include `Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist' 1912, `The Bolshevik Myth' 1925 and `Now and After' 1929.

The IISH acquired this collection in 1939 with financial support of the Centrale Arbeiders-Verzekerings- en Deposito-Bank (the Centrale) from Emma Goldman. The collection was mentioned in letters from 23 January 1939 and 8 Febuary 1940.

The papers were offered to the IISH in 1939 by Emma Goldman, who visited Amsterdam and went through the archive in the process of the transfer. Captions in her handwriting were present on most of the original folders, which have been kept.

Originally the papers were arranged in several alphabetical series of correspondence, each covering a period of three to five years, next to files, more or less on subjects or containing various documents. These files also contained correspondence, often with the same persons whose letters were included in the series of correspondence.

In the present inventory most of the letters can be found in the general correspondence, while only a minor part, concerning very specific topics, is described separately. Examples are among others the financial correspondence, correspondence with Tom Mooney(inv. no. 133) and correspndence relating to his expulsion (inv. no. 145-147). In this last case it concerns only the correspondence exclusively dealing with his expulsion. Most of the letters of his friends, trying to help, have been returned to the general correspondence where they are included in an exchange of letters often covering many years and many subjects. Rather a lot of documents, and in particular clippings and manuscripts, were not dated. If they were found together with dated documents they have been left there - if it seemed reasonable - not to disturb the context referring to a possible date.

Diaries 1910-1911, 1916, [1918?]-1933, including his 'Russian' diary; extensive correspondence with Emma Goldman 1917, 1924-1936; correspondence c. 1906-1913, 1919-1936, with Rafail Abramovič 1930-1934, Angelica Balabanoff 1925-1936, Stella Ballantine 1924, 1927-1936, Roger Baldwin 1925-1927, 1931, Voltairine de Cleyre 1906, 1908, 1910-1912, Michael A. Cohn 1922-1936, M. Eleanor Fitzgerald 1919-1936, Isadora [Duncan?] 1925 and n.d., Mollie Steimer 1925, 1931-1936, Frank and Nellie Harris 1925-1936, Thomas H. Keell 1922-1936, Harry Kelly 1924-1935, Nestor Machno 1924-1925, Tom and Anna Mooney 1927-1928, 1931, 1934-1936, Max Nettlau 1912, 1924-1936, Rudolf and Millie Rocker 1913, 1925-1936, Augustin and Therese Souchy 1925-1927, 1931-1935, Modest Stein 1930-1936, Pauline Helen Turkel 1924-1935, John Turner 1925, 1930-1932, Harry Weinberger 1924, 1928-1931 and many others;

Some identity papers and residence permits, documents on household and finances, health and celebrations 1922-1936; documents on his imprisonment in the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, including some letters 1892, 1903-1904; diary on his last days in prison 1905; 25 handwritten copies of a small illegal magazine published by Berkman and two other anarchists; documents on political agitation 1906-1917, including correspondence on The Blast 1915-1916, on his imprisonment in Atlanta, Georgia and deportation to Soviet Russia 1917-1920; documents on releif work for Russian and Polish anarchist prisoners and exiles c. 1925-1933, on the Tom Mooney and Ben Billings case [c. 1917], 1927-1933, on the anarchist movement and theory 1928, 1931-1935 and his fight against expulsion from France 1930-1935;

Documents relating to 'Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist' (1912) including a manuscript of Jack London's (unpublished) preface to the memoirs 1912 and drawings of the prison published in the memoirs; documents on other books; notes for and manuscripts of articles mainly on Soviet Russia, American society and anarchism, and of scenario's and stories; documents on translations of plays and nonfiction, consisting of correspondence and manuscripts 1927-1936; some manuscripts by others; clippings 1911-1935;

Papers of others: correspondence by Emma Goldman with publishers on Berkman's behalf 1925, 1929, 1932-1934 and with Emmy Eckstein 1929-1936; correspondence by Emmy Eckstein 1929-1936.

Inventory made by Atie van der Horst in 2003.

Revised for purposes of digitization by Eva van Oene in 2015.

Complete papers digitized: inv.nos. 1-362 digitized from the microfilms in 2011; inv.no.363-368 digitized from the original documents as part of the Centrale Project 2012-2016.

33 security microfilms (Metamorfoze, 2003) of inv.nos. 1-362. See appendices for a full list.

All correspondence with, and documents by and relating to Emma Goldman from the Berkman papers have been included in the microfilm publication The Emma Goldman Papers Archives, (Cambridge 1991).