Angelica Balabanoff and the Competing Visions of Left Internationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Revolutionary Socialism to Social Democratic Anti‐Communism

Abstract This article examines evolving visions and practices of internationalism through the case of Angelica Balabanoff, a Russian‐born socialist activist. Drawing on her writings and personal archives as well as police reports, the article focuses on Balabanoff's transnational activism within the socialist and communist Internationals, Italian socialism and the European antifascist movement. In particular, it examines her role as a leader of a revolutionary wing of the Italian socialist party in exile in France after the rise of fascism. It also seeks to assess her involvement during the interwar period in a transnational movement that rejected both the Labour and Socialist International and the Communist International, promoting instead an alternative socialist internationalism. Examining Balabanoff's correspondence with Leo Trotsky, this article also sheds light on the ideological and strategic conflicts between competing models of workers’ internationalism: left socialism and the Fourth International. Finally, it traces Balabanoff's shift towards anti‐communism and the implications of this evolution for her internationalist commitments.