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Mollie Steimer
Mollie Steimer (Ukrainian: Моллі Штаймер; November 21, 1897 – July 23, 1980) was an anarchist activist. A Ukrainian Jew, she left Russia and settled in New York City in 1913. She quickly became involved in the local anarchist movement and was caught up in the case of Abrams v. United States. Charged with sedition, she was eventually deported to Soviet Russia, where she met her lifelong partner Senya Fleshin and agitated for the rights of anarchist political prisoners in the country. For her activities, she and Fleshin were again deported to western Europe, where they spent time organising aid for exiles and political prisoners, and took part in the debates of the international anarchist movement. Following the rise of the Nazis in Europe, she and Fleshin fled to Mexico, where they spent the rest of their lives working as photographers.
On November 21, 1897, Mollie Steimer was born in Dunaivtsi, a village in the south-west of the Russian Empire. At the age of 15, she and her family emigrated to the United States, settling in a ghetto of New York City and setting to work at a garment factory. At this time, she started to read radical political literature, such as Women and Socialism by August Bebel and Underground Russia by Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky.
By the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Steimer had gravitated towards anarchism, inspired by the works of the Russian anarchists Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman. Together with other Jewish anarchists, Steimer helped form a clandestine collective called Der Shturm ("The Storm"), which published radical works in the Yiddish language. Following some internal conflict, in January 1918, the group reorganized and launched a new monthly journal titled Frayhayt ("Freedom"), which published articles by Jewish radicals such as Georg Brandes and Maria Goldsmith. The journal's motto was a Henry David Thoreau quote: "That government is best which governs not at all" (Yiddish: Yene regirung iz di beste, velkhe regirt in gantsn nit).
Several of the collective's members, including Steimer, lived and worked together in a six-room apartment on Harlem's East 104th Street. Due to the political repression brought by the Espionage Act of 1917 and the tense political climate that preceded the First Red Scare, the collective was forced to distribute Frayhayt in secret, as it had been among the papers banned by the federal government for its anti-war and far-left political stances. By the summer of 1918, the group had drawn the attention of the authorities after they had begun distributing leaflets denouncing the allied intervention in the Russian Civil War and calling for a social revolution in the United States by means of a general strike.
Steimer herself distributed thousands of leaflets around New York. On August 23, 1918, she distributed copies around the factory she worked in and threw a handful of the leaflets out of an upper window, which alerted the police. Steimer was arrested after police received information from an informant within the Frayhayt group. Their apartment was subsequently raided and a number of their other members were arrested, on charges of conspiracy, under the Sedition Act of 1918. During their trial, which came to be known as the case of Abrams v. United States, Steimer gave a speech in which she declared:
By anarchism, I understand a new social order, where no group of people 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.
On October 25, 1918, Steimer and her co-defendants were found guilty, with Steimer herself being sentenced to 15 years in prison and a $500 fine (equivalent to $11,000 in 2025). With support from both radicals and liberals, notably including Zechariah Chafee and other legal scholars of Harvard University, the sentence was appealed and the defendants were released on bail. Steimer returned to activism, for which she was arrested multiple times over the following year. On March 11, 1919, during a police raid against the Russian People's House on New York's East 15th Street, Steimer was arrested on charges of incitement and subsequently transferred to Ellis Island. Following a hunger strike against the conditions of her solitary confinement, Steimer was released before she could be deported, although the government kept her under surveillance. Back in New York, she met Emma Goldman, with whom she developed a lifelong friendship.
On October 30, 1919, Steimer was arrested again and imprisoned on Blackwell's Island. For six months, she was again held in solitary confinement, which she likewise protested with another hunger strike and by loudly singing revolutionary songs. When the Supreme Court upheld her conviction, her co-defendants informed her of a plan to flee the country into exile, but Steimer herself refused to cooperate, as she did not want to dishonor the workers who had paid her $40,000 in bail (equivalent to $743,000 in 2025). In April 1920, Steimer was transferred to Jefferson City, Missouri, where she was held for a year and a half. For her penal labor, she was required to manufacture 100 jackets per day. She found this task difficult, injuring her arm while attempting to fulfil the quota, but persevered to not bring "further persecution" against her family.
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Mollie Steimer
Mollie Steimer (Ukrainian: Моллі Штаймер; November 21, 1897 – July 23, 1980) was an anarchist activist. A Ukrainian Jew, she left Russia and settled in New York City in 1913. She quickly became involved in the local anarchist movement and was caught up in the case of Abrams v. United States. Charged with sedition, she was eventually deported to Soviet Russia, where she met her lifelong partner Senya Fleshin and agitated for the rights of anarchist political prisoners in the country. For her activities, she and Fleshin were again deported to western Europe, where they spent time organising aid for exiles and political prisoners, and took part in the debates of the international anarchist movement. Following the rise of the Nazis in Europe, she and Fleshin fled to Mexico, where they spent the rest of their lives working as photographers.
On November 21, 1897, Mollie Steimer was born in Dunaivtsi, a village in the south-west of the Russian Empire. At the age of 15, she and her family emigrated to the United States, settling in a ghetto of New York City and setting to work at a garment factory. At this time, she started to read radical political literature, such as Women and Socialism by August Bebel and Underground Russia by Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky.
By the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Steimer had gravitated towards anarchism, inspired by the works of the Russian anarchists Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman. Together with other Jewish anarchists, Steimer helped form a clandestine collective called Der Shturm ("The Storm"), which published radical works in the Yiddish language. Following some internal conflict, in January 1918, the group reorganized and launched a new monthly journal titled Frayhayt ("Freedom"), which published articles by Jewish radicals such as Georg Brandes and Maria Goldsmith. The journal's motto was a Henry David Thoreau quote: "That government is best which governs not at all" (Yiddish: Yene regirung iz di beste, velkhe regirt in gantsn nit).
Several of the collective's members, including Steimer, lived and worked together in a six-room apartment on Harlem's East 104th Street. Due to the political repression brought by the Espionage Act of 1917 and the tense political climate that preceded the First Red Scare, the collective was forced to distribute Frayhayt in secret, as it had been among the papers banned by the federal government for its anti-war and far-left political stances. By the summer of 1918, the group had drawn the attention of the authorities after they had begun distributing leaflets denouncing the allied intervention in the Russian Civil War and calling for a social revolution in the United States by means of a general strike.
Steimer herself distributed thousands of leaflets around New York. On August 23, 1918, she distributed copies around the factory she worked in and threw a handful of the leaflets out of an upper window, which alerted the police. Steimer was arrested after police received information from an informant within the Frayhayt group. Their apartment was subsequently raided and a number of their other members were arrested, on charges of conspiracy, under the Sedition Act of 1918. During their trial, which came to be known as the case of Abrams v. United States, Steimer gave a speech in which she declared:
By anarchism, I understand a new social order, where no group of people 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.
On October 25, 1918, Steimer and her co-defendants were found guilty, with Steimer herself being sentenced to 15 years in prison and a $500 fine (equivalent to $11,000 in 2025). With support from both radicals and liberals, notably including Zechariah Chafee and other legal scholars of Harvard University, the sentence was appealed and the defendants were released on bail. Steimer returned to activism, for which she was arrested multiple times over the following year. On March 11, 1919, during a police raid against the Russian People's House on New York's East 15th Street, Steimer was arrested on charges of incitement and subsequently transferred to Ellis Island. Following a hunger strike against the conditions of her solitary confinement, Steimer was released before she could be deported, although the government kept her under surveillance. Back in New York, she met Emma Goldman, with whom she developed a lifelong friendship.
On October 30, 1919, Steimer was arrested again and imprisoned on Blackwell's Island. For six months, she was again held in solitary confinement, which she likewise protested with another hunger strike and by loudly singing revolutionary songs. When the Supreme Court upheld her conviction, her co-defendants informed her of a plan to flee the country into exile, but Steimer herself refused to cooperate, as she did not want to dishonor the workers who had paid her $40,000 in bail (equivalent to $743,000 in 2025). In April 1920, Steimer was transferred to Jefferson City, Missouri, where she was held for a year and a half. For her penal labor, she was required to manufacture 100 jackets per day. She found this task difficult, injuring her arm while attempting to fulfil the quota, but persevered to not bring "further persecution" against her family.
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