Leah Feldman
1898-1993
Leah Feldman was an Odessa born anarchist garment worker who for most of her life was based in London.
Feldman was active in the anarchist movement for almost 80 years and towards the end of her life she acted as a last living link in the British anarchist movement to the Russian Revolution, the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, and the pre WWI Jewish anarchist movement in the East End of London.
Feldman joined a socialist club when she was 12 but read a pamphlet by anarchist Peter Kropotkin “An Appeal to the Young” prompting her to join an anarchist club.
Like many anarchists, she moved to Russia to take part in the Russian Revolution but was fiercely critical of the Bolshevik government.
In 1928 she found herself briefly stateless and was forced to marry a British ex serviceman to gain British citizenship.
Feldman pushed the anarchist newspaper “FREEDOM” at their press counter for many decades. She was active in campaigns for anarchist dissidents in Francoist Spain, the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, and the anti nuclear marches of the 1960’s.
She was registered blind after a bomb blast during the war and had tried to find relatives in Warsaw but all had perished. She died in London in 1993.