Russian Paris in the second half of the 1870s and the “case” of Anna Kuliscioff

The article reconstructs the history of the participation of the Russian diaspora in Paris in the fate of Anna Kuliscioff (Anna Moiseevna Rosenstein, married Makarevich), a member of Russian populist movement, who later became one of the key figures of the Italian Socialist Party. Now her name is worthily immortalized in the memorial space of Italy: in 1992 the Anna Kuliscioff Foundation was established in Milan, in 2025 the 100th anniversary of the death of the “Russian Italian woman” will be widely celebrated. The available works are mostly dedicated to the Italian pages of Anna Kuliscioff’s biography. Her activities outside Italy, her interaction with Russian revolutionaries, scientists, cultural figures need further study. Her short stay in Paris - 1877-1878 with interruptions - was marked for Anna by intensive contacts with Russian, French, and Italian socialists, arrest, release, and expulsion. It was in Paris that the surname “Kuliscioff” was officially documented for the first time. Based on the analysis of unpublished materials of the office work of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire, memoirs of contemporaries, personal correspondence, the participation of representatives of Russian Paris in Kuliscioff’s fate was reconstructed. Comparative, reconstructive, biographical methods made it possible to build a chronology of the events of the Parisian period of Kuliscioff’s life, to identify cause-and-effect relationships. The article describes Paris in the second half of the 1870s as a space of communication for the Russian diaspora. The circumstances of Kuliscioff’s first appearance in the French capital in May 1877 and her interaction with Pyotr Lavrov are given. It is shown that her second visit in the autumn of 1877 was associated with the propaganda of socialist ideas among French workers, the organization of sections of the anarchist International in France. The arrest in March 1878 aroused the sympathy of the Russian diaspora in Paris. Thanks to the help of Pyotr Lavrov, Ivan Turgenev, Nikolay Orlov, Grigorii Vyrubov, and Pavel Yablochkov, Kuliscioff was released from prison, her extradition to the Russian government was prevented, and she was given an opportunity to attend Andrea Costa’s trial. The expulsion from France in early May 1878 marked the end of the Parisian period of Kuliscioff’s life. The “case” of Anna Kuliscioff makes it possible to trace the mechanism of solidarity actions, the moral principles of the representatives of the Russian diaspora of Paris, their attitude towards the figures of the Russian revolutionary movement.