Kuliscioff, Anna

(pseudonym of Anna Moiseevna Rozenshtein). Born Dec. 28, 1853 (Jan. 9, 1854), in Simferopol’; died Dec. 29, 1925, in Milan. Russian Narodnik (Populist) revolutionary, later active in the Italian socialist movement.

The daughter of a merchant, Kuliscioff studied in the early 1870’s at the University of Zurich, where she joined the Bakuninist Narodniks (1872). From 1873 to 1877, she participated in two Narodnik groups—the Chaikovskii Circle in Odessa and the Southern Rebels in Kiev—using her husband’s surname, Makarevich.

When the Chigirin plot was uncovered in 1877, Kuliscioff emigrated, settling in Italy in late 1878. There she worked with A. Costa, and both broke their ties with anarchism in the late 1870’s. In the mid-1880’s she gave assistance to the Emancipation of Labor Group, and in 1890 and 1891 she helped F. Turati found the journal Critica sociale, which propagated, if not always consistently, the ideas of scientific socialism. Kuliscioff played an important role in the founding of the Italian Socialist Party (ISP) in 1892 and wielded considerable influence in the party. When intraparty conflict in the ISP flared up early in the 20th century, Kuliscioff joined the party’s right, reformist wing.