# Lisa Zorin — My Disillusionment in Russia character guide

> Lisa Zorin in My Disillusionment in Russia by Emma Goldman.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Zorin, Lisa, Subsequently Lisa

**First appearance:** 0007-v-meeting-people

## Snapshot

A young Communist schoolteacher in a remote Russian town who thinks for herself and doubts whether literacy alone can make peasants kinder or more just.

## Who they are

Lisa Zorin is a schoolteacher of about twenty-five, poorly clad but neat, who tells Goldman plainly that provincial authorities outdo Moscow in arbitrariness and that the glowing reports of falling illiteracy are exaggerated. She fights the abuses in her district while clinging to faith in the Revolution, yet she wonders aloud whether so-called education has really made the literate world better or kinder. Her honesty gives Goldman an early, unsettling glimpse of how the new order looks from the provinces rather than from the capital.

## Relationships

### [Unknown Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/characters/unknown_narrator)

_friendship_

Lisa Zorin is a close personal friend and confidante of the narrator, offering emotional support amidst political turmoil.

## In the story

### [I: Deportation to Russia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/chapters/i-deportation-to-russia)

Host and guide for the deportees; provides initial explanations and arrangements.

### [II: Petrograd](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/chapters/ii-petrograd)

Pregnant, lives in poverty with her husband; provides the narrator with early interpretations of the revolution.

### [Preparing for American Deportees](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/chapters/vi-preparing-for-american-deportees)

Informs Goldman of the deportees' arrival and asks her to join the Commission.

### [VII: Rest Homes for Workers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/chapters/vii-rest-homes-for-workers)

Recently a mother, she lacks basic necessities for her baby and refuses to use her political connections for special rations, demonstrating her integrity.

### [VIII: The First of May in Petrograd](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/chapters/viii-the-first-of-may-in-petrograd)

Lisa Zorin suggests the pageant falls flat because the people lived through the actual October Revolution.

### [Industrial Militarization](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/chapters/ix-industrial-militarization)

Lisa Zorin defends the party's policies, claiming workers have more important concerns than rest rooms, and that the Revolution must be defended.

### [XII: Beneath the Surface](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/chapters/xii-beneath-the-surface)

Zorin is exposed for lying about capital punishment and the treatment of anarchists; the narrator confronts her deceptions.

### [XIII: Joining the Museum of the Revolution](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/chapters/xiii-joining-the-museum-of-the-revolution)

The narrator approaches Zorin to be assigned as a nurse, but hears nothing further.

### [Back in Petrograd](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/chapters/xxiv-back-in-petrograd)

Among the 300 Bolsheviks mobilized to work in factories; collapses from the hardship, seen by workers as a ruse.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/characters/lisa_zorin
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/my_disillusionment_in_russia_se/characters