10 Facts About Arthur Benni

Arthur William Benni was a Polish-born English citizen, known in Russia as a journalist, Hertzen associate, Socialist activist and women liberation commune-founder.

Arthur Benni served a three months prison sentence as part of the "32 Process", was deported from the country and died in 1867 in Rome hospital, after having been injured, as a member of the Giuseppe Garibaldi's squad.

Up until then ignorant of the native ways, Arthur Benni was instantly appalled by them.

Arthur Benni became friends with some Russian soldiers, learned from them of primal ways of collective ownership and principles of mutual responsibility which existed in their country and, having formed in his mind his own, an idealistic concept of Russia, decided that was the land where his Socialist ideas could be put into practice.

Full of idealistic aspirations, Arthur Benni received the English passport and volunteered to go to Russia to investigate the revolutionary situation there and distribute Hertzen's Kolokols latest issue he were to smuggle there.

Arthur Benni became seriously ill as a result of spending two sleepless nights in the open air on the banks of Neva embankment after a woman, thrown out of her home by husband, came to his flat and settled in his bedroom.

One of the workers there was Maria Kopteva, a girl from a respectable Moscow family, and Arthur Benni fell in love with her.

In March 1862 Arthur Benni participated in the publication of the two issues of illegal Russkaya Pravda newspaper.

Pastor Hermann Arthur Benni sent in the money to pay his brother's debts, but by the time they came in, Arthur Benni has been considered already a political prisoner.

In October 1865 Arthur Benni was deported to Prussia and settled in Switzerland.