Andrea Costa

For the Italian footballer, see Andrea Costa (footballer).

Andrea Costa (29 November 1851 – 19 January 1910)^[1] was an Italian politician,^[2] among the founders of socialism in Italy, and the first socialist deputy in Italian history. He was also initiated on September 25, 1883 to the Masonic Lodge "Rienzi" in Rome and progressively become 32nd-degree Mason^[3] and adjunctive Great Master of the Grande Oriente of Italy.^[4][5]

Andrea Costa
Member of Chamber of Deputies
In office 22 November 1882 – 19 January 1910
Constituency	Ravenna
Personal details
Born	(1851-11-29)29 November 1851 Imola, Papal States
Died	19 January 1910(1910-01-19) (aged 58) Imola, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Political party	PSRI (1882–1893) PSI (1893–1910)
Occupation	Politician

Costa was arrested in the failed Bakuninist 1874 Bologna insurrection as its main Italian organizer.^[6] Costa left the country and was arrested in France. He continued to agitate in Romagna.^[7] In a letter, "To My Friends and to My Adversaries", he defended himself against charges of reformism or anti-revolutionarism but effectively broke from his anarchist past.^[8] The Russian socialist Anna Kulischov, who had met Costa in Paris in 1876 and was another former Bakuninist, is believed to have spurred his transition from anarchism to socialism.^[9]

Costa founded the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Romagna in 1881 with a small regional following.^[10] Costa became the first Italian socialist elected to the Italian Parliament the next year. In 1892, he called the Genoa Congress, which established the Italian Workers' Party, which was later renamed as the Italian Socialist Party.^[9]

He was later a politician and mayor of Imola and died there in 1910.^[11]

His close friend and masonic brother Giovanni Pascoli wrote the funeral inscription dedicated to him,^[4] whom he knew together with Alceste Faggioli when he was a university student.^[12][13]

The parents of Benito Mussolini gave him the middle name "Andrea" in Costa's honour, alongside fellow Italian socialist Amilcare Cipriani.^[14]

References

1. "Andrea Costa". 2006-05-09. Archived from the original on 2006-05-09. Retrieved 2023-04-14.
2. "COSTA, Andrea".
3. G. Gamberini (Great Master of GOI) (1975). Mille volti di massoni. Rome: Erasmo. p. 175. LCCN 75535930. OCLC 3028931. Collana del Grande Oriente d'Italia, op. 3
4. "The epitaph of Andrea Coosta (written by Giovanni Pascoli)". loggiagiordanobruno.com (in Italian). Retrieved Sep 23, 2018.
5. V. Gnocchini (Sep 1, 2005). L'Italia dei Liberi Muratori. Milan, Rome: Mimesis-Erasmo. pp. 85–86. ISBN 9788884833624.
6. Drake, Richard (2009). "Carlo Cafiero". Apostles and Agitators: Italy's Marxist Revolutionary Tradition. Harvard University Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-674-03432-7.
7. Clark, Martin (6 June 2014). Modern Italy, 1871 to the Present. ISBN 9781317866039.
8. Pernicone, Nunzio (14 July 2014). Italian Anarchism, 1864-1892. ISBN 9781400863501.
9. Gramsci, Antonio (11 January 2011). Prison Notebooks Volume 2. ISBN 9780231105934.
10. Steenson, Gary P. (15 June 1991). After Marx, Before Lenin: Marxism and Socialist Working-Class Parties in Europe, 1884-1914. ISBN 9780822976738.
11. Lane, A. T. (1995). Biographical Dictionary of European Labor Leaders. ISBN 9780313264566.
12. "Biography of Andrea Costa". cronologia.leonardo.it (in Italian). Archived from the original on September 28, 2017. Retrieved Sep 23, 2018.
13. R. Boschetti. "Giovanni Pascoli: portrait of a young socialist poet". storiain.net (in Italian). Archived from the original on May 21, 2018. Retrieved Sep 23, 2018.
14. Bosworth, R. J. B. (2010). Mussolini (New ed.). London: Bloomsbury Acad. pp. 35–37. ISBN 978-0-340-98173-3.

Further reading

• Pernicone, Nunzio (1993). Italian Anarchism, 1864–1892. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-05692-0. OCLC 27267053.

Sources

• Centenario della morte di Andrea Costa – Biography
• Edward Bernstein: My Years of Exile (Chap. 2) at www.marxists.org