The Manifesto and Life in Soviet Russia
Louise Berger remained active in the United States anarchist movement for three more years. In 1917, after the October Revolution in Russia, she decided to leave the United States to return to her homeland and assist in the worker’s revolution. Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman had recently finished compiling a communique to their comrades in Russia titled Manifesto to the Russian Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers! to explain the state of the U.S. antiwar movement, in particular the recent imprisonment of Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings, convicted of the Preparedness Day bombings of 1916. Goldman and Berkman entrusted Louise Berger, (according to Goldman, one of "our closest and most dependable friends") with a copy of the manifesto to take with her on her journey to Russia. Berger sailed from New York in August 1917 bound for Russia, along with journalist John Reed and several other prominent radicals. On the voyage out she met another returnee, Senya Fleshin, and became his lover.
Back in Russia, Berger and Fleshin rejoined other anarchists participating in the revolution. She eventually parted with Fleshin and traveled to Odessa, where she reportedly carried out “bank expropriations” as an armed robber (naletchiki) during the chaos of the Revolution. According to one source, she fell ill and died during the typhus epidemic that swept Russia in 1920 and 1921. Another source claims that she was liquidated along with other anarchists by Bolshevik Cheka or Red Army security forces during the Trotskyist campaign against 'anarcho-bandits' and other dissident movements.
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