Biographical Archive of the Workers' Movement

Contributed by Massimo Repetto

The Biographical Archive of the Workers' Movement (www.abmo.it), established with the aim of providing historians, scholars, and political activists with information regarding not only the known leaders but also the thousands of minor, often unknown, figures who contributed to the overall history of the Italian working class, has been a reality for many years. By continuing to collaborate fruitfully with the "Sergio Motosi" Institute for the Study of the International Workers' Movement and the Institute for Studies on Capitalism (www.isc-studyofcapitalism.org), also in Genoa, the ABMO has been able over time,to advance its historical and prosopographical analysis of the various political currents of the workers' movement. This analysis is now available in the numerous volumes of the series "Individual and Collective Biographies of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Workers' Movement," published by Edizioni Pantarei (www.edizionipantarei.com); a study that over time has expanded to the international labor movement and is now also opening up to the analysis of all other oppressed social classes throughout the various socio-economic formations that have occurred throughout history and preceded the current capitalist era. 

In addition to working with the aforementioned institutes, ABMO has for many years enjoyed a relationship of fraternal collaboration with all the Italian and international institutions that are members of the International Association of Labour History Institutions (www.ialhi.org; https://socialhistoryportal.org) and the Internationale Marx-Engels-Stiftung (https://mega.bbaw.de), which is committed to the creation of the "Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe." As regards the Digital Biographical Archive itself, ABMO has long made use of the police records owned and kindly made available by the various Provincial State Archives and in particular by the Central State Archives (https://acs.cultura.gov.it).

Please note that the more than 3,400 biographies of Italian and international workers' movement figures available on our website include extensive supporting material for each figure, including photos of the individual, archival materials relating to them, and their literary works. If you're interested, we could make them available on the joint website of the project we've joined.