Wednesday, August 29, 2018

This Month's Quotation: Angelica Balabanoff (1939)

The Front Page quote from the August 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard
   “I am proud to have lived and worked with artisans of a new social order. Many of them are now dead or defeated—in exile or in their own countries. But a new generation will take their place — to build more wisely and more successfully on the foundations we have laid.”
Angelica Balabanoff
This Month’s Quotation
The passage quoted on the front cover is from "My Life as a Rebel" (page 349). Angelica Balabanoff was associated with Mussolini in his pre-Fascist days, on the journal Avanti. After the Bolshevist seizure of power she was given important posts in Russia but resigned owing to disagreement with the Bolshevist attitude on democracy and other questions. Her whole life has been spent in working-class movements.

1 comment:

Imposs1904 said...

Starting in January 1939, and continuing on until December 1941, every issue of the Socialist Standard carried a quotation on its front cover.

More often than not the quoted person was someone famous in their respective field and it's interesting to note the range of individuals selected for inclusion in this exclusive and rarefied company. IYou know I'm joking, right?)

As mentioned above the practice was discontinued in 1942, and my guess it was when wartime paper rationing kicked in and the Editorial Committee for the Standard realised that they no longer had the luxury of being able to have a standalone front cover. It was now the case that every inch of the magazine had to have (socialist) text crammed into it.

A shame, really, because the inclusion of these quotes month-on-month gave a wee window into the SPGB that hitherto was unavailable. This is all the more true for the reader and/or transcriber 75 plus years on.