A Democratic Bolshevik: Ilona Duczynska Polanyi (1897–1978)

Abstract

Wars, revolutions and continuing conflicts shaped European history in the first half of the twentieth century. Within this context, the article explores the life of Ilona Duczynska Polanyi, an Austro-Hungarian-Canadian socialist, engineer and later historian, and the process of her self-construction as a lifelong revolutionary within her autobiographical texts and ego documents. These sources allow a closer examination of women’s dissident and resistent activities, ranging from anti-war strikes during the First World War, through engagement with the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 to partici- pation in resistance to the Austro-fascist corporate state (Ständestaat) in the 1930s. Furthermore, Duczynska’s theoretical and historical writings from the early 1920s to the 1970s rpresent a rare female voice in the contemporary debates on questions of political violence.