Word: balabanoff
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...LIFE As A REBEL-Angelica Balabanoff-Harper...
Thirty-four years ago, an ardent young Russian girl named Angelica Balabanoff spoke at a Socialist meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was no new experience for her. She had left her comfortable, stuffy, middle-class home at 17; studied at Brussels, Berlin, Rome; joined the Italian Socialist Party; edited a women's paper. As a speaker she had been cheered by radicals and chased by reactionaries until she lost all self-consciousness on the platform. But during her speech at Lausanne, she was distracted by the most wretched-looking human being who had ever appeared in her audiences...
Although Angelica Balabanoff tells many a damaging story about famed revolutionists, harshly criticizes the Soviet Union, her book gives no comfort to conservatives. At Lenin's insistence she became first secretary of the Third International. But intrigues, double-dealing - principally by Zinoviev - and unscrupulous measures taken to discredit opponents soon disillusioned her. No hero-worshiper, she considers Lenin chiefly responsible for the weaknesses of the modern revolutionary movement, says she often remonstrated with him about ruthless Bolshevik tactics. Closing one eye, he would stare at her "with an expression which was more sad than sardonic" and ask, "Comrade Angelica...
...attitude toward him. Her version of Bolshevik history is that Lenin employed Zinoviev to split the labor movement of other countries by all manner of intrigue, that such methods became habitual, were employed by Trotsky as much as by Stalin, led to recent Russian trials. Although Angelica Balabanoff has not lost her faith in Socialism, believes that "the international labor movement can be built again," her disappointments make a melancholy record...