Francesco Misiano

Francesco Misiano (26 June 1884 – 16 August 1936) was an Italian communist politician and film producer.

Early life Francesco Misiano was born on 26 June 1884 in Ardore, Italy. In the early years of the twentieth century he moved to Naples due to his work as an employee of the State Railways. There he joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in 1907, and three years later he was initiated into Freemasonry in the "Giovanni Bovio" lodge. He abandoned freemasonry in 1914, the day after the Ancona congress of the PSI, which he chose as his political direction.

Misiano was transferred to Turin, where he became a manager of the railway workers' union. A convinced anti-interventionist and anti-militarist, he was arrested for taking part in the anti-war demonstration of 17 May 1915. After serving five months in prison, in March 1916 he was called up and assigned to Cuneo. since in Naples, while achieving 3,570 preferences, the PCI did not reach the quorum necessary for a seat.

The hostility to Misiano was not confined to squadristi. On 20 December 1921 the Chamber of Deputies voted by majority to revoke his electoral mandate, thereby spelling him from the chamber. The official reason was that he had been "convicted of political crimes committed in German territory after the conclusion of the armistice", which cannot be judged "in the same way as that of our ex-prisoners of war", and on the fact that, once he had returned from Germany with a German passport stamped on 1 December, Misiano had presented himself only on 7 December 1919 to the Italian authorities to regularize his position and take advantage of the amnesty for deserters.

During the early part of the Great Purge, Misiano fell into disgrace and was accused of "Trotskyist political deviations". Struck down by a serious illness, Misiano died in Moscow on 16 August 1936 at the age of 52.