Political Voices: Leah Feldman
​

Leah Feldman (1898-1993) was born in Odessa. Her family moved to Warsaw, and Leah came to London in 1913 and became involved in the anarchist movement. In 1917, encouraged by the February revolution, she moved to Russia, where she attended Kropotkin's funeral. She returned to London in 1928 and resumed activism in the anarchist movement, which she found much diminished. She spent four years in Palestine in the 1930s. She remained active in the anarchist movement in London into her old age.

​I first interviewed Leah in October 1985 while making a radio documentary on Rudolf Rocker. The interview was about ninety minutes - the first half of it is posted on YouTube (above) and audio of the full interview is also posted as an MP3/audio file. A full transcript of this interview is posted at the bottom of this page. The interview covered particularly Leah's memories of the Jewish anarchist movement in the East End of London when she first became involved, the attraction of the Russian Revolution and her time in Soviet Russia, and her disappointment with the decay in the anarchist movement in London when she returned (I remember her attending the centenary event of Freedom in Covent Garden in 1986).

I visited Leah the following year to play her the radio programme I had made - and I interviewed her again on that visit. The audio is posted below - this interview has not been transcribed. It focuses mainly on her memories of the Freedom Group in London and anarchist activity in the UK.

I wrote an obituary of Leah Feldman for the first issue of Anarchist Studies which I have pasted below, along with Donald Rooum's obituary in Freedom and Albert Meltzer's in the Guardian. There's also a good obituary  on the libcom.org site.
​