Raffaele Schiavina

Raffaele Schiavina (8 April 1894 – 23 November 1987) was an Italian anarchist newspaper editor and writer also known by the pseudonyms Max Sartin, and Bruno. From 1928 to 1970 he edited and wrote for the US-based Italian-language anarchist newspaper L’Adunata dei Refrattari.

Biography Schiavina was born in the village of San Carlo in Ferrara, Italy to Angelo and Albina Lodi. Having finished school, in 1912 he left Italy for the United States, settling in Brockton, Massachusetts. In 1914 he read Peter Kropotkin's Memoirs of a Revolutionist, subscribed to the Galleanista newspaper Cronaca Sovversiva, and soon converted to anarchism and became a close follower and friend of insurrectionary anarchist Luigi Galleani. In 1916 he became an administrator for Cronaca Sovversiva.

In March 1928 he was smuggled into the United States under the pseudonym Max Sartin. The couple took in Clément Duval (1850-1935), the main founder of illegalism – now an elderly man crippled by arthritis who had escaped from French penal servitude. They affectionately called him 'Nonno' (grandpa), leading neighbors to assume he was Raffaele's father. In his final days, not wanting to jeopardize Schiavina's underground status, Duval left their home to stay with another companion who wasn't at risk of deportation, where he died two days later.

Schiavina wrote under various pseudonyms, and regularly used L’Adunata to fiercely criticise fellow anarchist Carlo Tresca, continuing even after Tresca's death. Schiavina died in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1987. Schiavina spent 59 years living under the false identity Max Sartin, fearing that the authorities would identify and deport him.