Born: 9 January 1857, Russia
Died: 27 December 1925
Country most active: Italy
Also known as: Anja/Anya Moiseevna Kulisciova
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
Anna Kuliscioff, a Russian-Jewish-Italian revolutionary known for her activism and political beliefs, was born Anna Moiseevna Rozenshtein in Crimea in 1857.
In 1871, she pursued further studies at the Zürich Polytechnic in Switzerland, including medicine, engineering, and philosophy.
She worked for progressive groups in Russia, initially in Odesa and later in Kyiv, where she aligned herself with revolutionaries associated with the Land and Freedom party, which engaged in terrorist acts against the tsarist authorities.
In 1877, Anna Kuliscioff left Russia and moved to Paris, where she joined a small anarchist group influenced by Mikhail Bakunin, advocating for the abolition of the state. After being expelled from France, she settled in Italy and became the editor of Critica Sociale, a significant socialist publication, in 1891. Anna Kuliscioff was an ardent advocate for women’s suffrage and was tried and imprisoned multiple times for her activism. She played a crucial role in establishing the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), leading a reformist faction that opposed both communism and the irredentist views of Benito Mussolini.
Despite facing gender-based discrimination in her career, she also made significant contributions to the field of medicine, particularly in the study of epidemiology. She was among the first women to graduate in medicine in Italy, initially focusing on epidemiology and puerperal fevers and then specializing as a gynecologist. Known as the ‘doctor of the poor’ in Milan, she integrated her medical work with her political activism.
In 1912, she was disappointed when the opportunity to grant women the right to vote in Italy was rejected despite her efforts to advocate for universal suffrage.
She passed away in 1925, and her funeral procession in central Milan turned into a declaration of war when fascists disrupted the procession.