Frederick Harold Berger

Born: 1885, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to US 1913
Affiliation: IWW; anarchist

An anarchist, Berger was involved in “revolutionary groups in Russia” and participated in the 1905 Revolution before migrating to the United States. Shortly thereafter he joined the Industrial Workers of the World. Arrested in Fresno, California, in September 1917 for public drunkenness, he was detained when authorities discovered his IWW membership card. Berger stated: “I hold allegiance to no country. The world is my country…I was a syndicalist since I was a lad of 13 or 14.” He was deported aboard the Buford on December 21, 1919.

Sources: INS file 54407/17.

Otto Berglind (a.k.a. August Berdland)

Born: 1880, Västmanland County, Sweden
Nationality: Swedish
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to Canada 1908; then to US 1913
Affiliation: IWW

Joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1913. Arrested in Everett, Washington, in January 1918 and deported on October 31, 1918.

Sources: INS file 54379/33.

Alexander Berkman

Born: 1870, Vilnius, Russia (present-day Lithuania)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Jewish
Occupation: Laborer; typesetter; editor
Migration: Immigrated to US 1888
Affiliation: Anarchist

Born Ovsei Osipovich Berkman into a prosperous Jewish family. Joined the Russian Populist movement as a student. After migrating to the United States, he became an anarchist and a lifelong collaborator of Emma Goldman. In 1892 he attempted to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick in retaliation for the deaths of several steelworkers during the Homestead Strike. He served fourteen years of a twenty-one-year sentence for attempted murder. Upon his release in 1906 he was one of the country’s most prominent anarchists. He later edited Goldman’s Mother Earth and in 1915 established The Blast in San Francisco. A co-founder of the No-Conscription League, he was arrested under the Selective Service Act in June 1917, served two years in federal prison, and was deported on the Buford on December 21, 1919.

In Soviet Russia he and Goldman gathered materials for a projected Museum of the Revolution. Initially critically supportive of the Bolshevik dictatorship, he broke with it completely after the Kronstadt mutiny of 1921, prompting his departure with Goldman later that year. Berkman lived precariously in Germany, France, and other European countries and became an important critic of the Soviet regime, most notably through his book The Bolshevik Myth (1925). He co-founded and served as secretary of the Joint Committee for the Defense of Revolutionists Imprisoned in Russia and was active in the RRelief Fund of the International Working Men’s Association for Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists Imprisoned or Exiled in Russia. In ill health and financial distress, he died by suicide in Nice, France, on June 28, 1936.

Sources: INS file 52410/43; Alexander Berkman, The Bolshevik Myth (Diary 1920–1922); Emma Goldman, Living My Life; Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman; Alexander Berkman Papers, International Institute for Social History.

Grigoriy Berko (or Gregory Berko/Berkoff/Bezko)

Born: 1894, Grodno, Russia (present-day Belarus)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Belarusian
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to US 1913
Affiliation: Communist Party of America

Became a member of the Communist Party branch in Rockford, Illinois. Arrested in Chicago during the January 1920 Palmer Raids, he “voluntarily departed” for Soviet Russia on October 16, 1920.

Sources: INS file 54809/8; FBI file BS 202600-150-1.

Charles Bernat

Born: 1879, Russia (somewhere in present-day Estonia)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Estonian
Occupation: Lumber worker
Migration: Immigrated to US 1902
Affiliation: IWW

Hoined the Industrial Workers of the World around 1908 and became an IWW delegate and organizer. In 1917 he was appointed Secretary of Lumber Workers Industrial Union Local No. 500 in Seattle. Arrested there in June 1918, he was deported on February 1, 1921.

Sources: INS file 54517/491.