Angelica Balabanoff

Angelica Balabanoff (also Balabanov or Balabanova; ; 4 August 1878 In 1930 the PSI split over the issue of whether or not to merge with the reformist socialists who had been expelled from the party eight years previously; as a maximalist, Balabanoff dissented from the leadership's desire for "fusion" and formed a new political grouping, the Italian Socialist Party (Maximalist) (Partito Socialista Italiano Massimalista; PSIm), which she led for the next six years.

She later moved to Paris, then New York City before the outbreak of the Second World War. When the war ended, she returned to Italy and rejoined the PSI for a brief period, before once again breaking with it to follow Giuseppe Saragat into the new anti-communist Italian Socialist Workers' Party (Partito Socialista dei Lavoratori Italiani; PSLI), which in 1951 merged with the United Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Unitario; PSU) to become the Italian Democratic Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano; PSDI). Edmund Wilson, the noted American man of letters, considered her to be an accomplished poet in five languages (Russian, German, French, Italian, and English) and in 1943 wrote a very favorable article about her poetry in The Nation.

Legacy Balabanoff is a major character in the 1993 RAI Italian language production Il Giovane Mussolini, portrayed by Susanne Lothar.

Balabanoff is memorialized in Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party.

A street in the urban area of Colli Aniene in Rome has been named after her.

Works

Il vostro Dovere in tempo di Elezioni: Alle Proletarie (Your Duty in Time of Elections: to the Proletarian Women). Lugano: Cooperativa Tipografica Sociale, 1904. Neskol'ko slov ob agitatsii: Pis'mo-lektsiia (A Few Words on Agitation: Correspondence Lecture). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo, 1920. Ot rabstva k svobode: Obiazannosti i prava kommunistov v pervoi trudovoi respublike (From Slavery to Freedom: Duties and Rights of Communists in the First Laborers' Republic). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo, 1920 / Milano, Avanti!, 1921. Svetloi pamiati Iakova Mikhailovicha Sverdlova. (To the Blessed Memory of Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo, 1920. Iz lichnykh vospominanii Tsimmerval'dtsa (from the Personal Reminiscences of the Zimmerwaldists). Leningrad-Moscow: Izdatel'stvo "Kniga," 1925. Erziehung der Massen zum Marxismus: Psychologisch-pädagogische Betrachtungen (Educating the Masses to Marxism: Psychological-Pedagogical Considerations). Berlin: Laub, 1927. Erinnerungen und Erlebnisse, Berlin, E. Laubsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1927. Marx und Engels als Freidenker in ihren Schriften (Marx and Engels as Free-Thinkers in their Writings). Berlin: Der Freidenker, 1930. Wesen und Werdegang des italienischen Faschismus, Wien, Hess & Co., 1931. Memorie, Milano-Parigi, Avanti!, 1931. Sozialismus als Weltanschauung (Socialism as a Worldview). Berlin: Dt. Freidenkerverband, c. 1932. Caduti per noi, caduti per voi (Fallen for Us, Fallen for You). New York: Edizione "La Fiaccola," c. 1935. My Life as a Rebel. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1938. Traitor: Benito Mussolini and his "Conquest" of Power. New York: G. Popolizio, c. 1942 / (Il traditore Mussolini) Roma-Milano, Avanti!, 1945. Tears. New York, E. Laub / Chicago: Jay Bass, 1943. Ricordi di una socialista, Roma, De Luigi, 1946. Impressions of Lenin. Isotta Cesari, trans. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1964 (Lenin visto da vicino, Roma, Opere nuove, 1959). La mia vita di rivoluzionaria, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1979.