Dimitry Bahruk

Born: 1897, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Russia (present-day Ukraine)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Ukrainian
Occupation: 
Migration: Immigrated to US c. 1914
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers; Socialist Party of America

Migrated to the United States around 1914 and settled in Detroit, where he joined the Union of Russian Workers in 1916. By 1919 he had relocated to Passaic, New Jersey, and briefly joined the Socialist Party while maintaining URW membership. Arrested in Passaic and deported to Soviet Russia on January 22, 1921.

Sources: INS file 54810/845.

Frederick Baker

Born: 1881, Surrey, England
Nationality: British
Ethnicity: English
Occupation: Laborer; clerk
Migration: Immigrated to US 1916
Affiliation: IWW

Before immigrating, Baker suffered a significant head injury in 1912 that reportedly affected his behavior. Drafted into the British Army in 1915, he received an honorable discharge following a “nervous breakdown.” After immigrating to the United States, he was arrested in Chicago in 1917 for stealing $80 from a neighbor and spent three months in prison. Arrested in October 1918 as an alleged member of the IWW, a charge he denied but is confirmed by other evidence. Immigration authorities deemed him “mentally defective” but not insane. Although he received a pension from the British Post Office, he was nevertheless deported on March 1, 1919 as “likely to become a public charge.”

Sources: INS file 54552/33; Klasen Kampf (New York), April 1919.

Andrei Balash (or Andrew Balucz)

Born: 1886, Vilna region, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: 
Migration: Immigrated to US 1913
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers

Joined the Union of Russian Workers in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1919. Arrested that November in Ansonia, Connecticut, a substantial collection of Russian-language anarchist literature was found in his room. He was deported on the Buford on December 21, 1919.

Sources: INS file 54709/320.

Giovanni Baldazzi

Born: 1883, Imola, Italy
Nationality: Italian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Printer; electrician; labor organizer; editor
Migration: Immigrated to US 1914
Affiliation: IWW; anarchist

Active in Italian anarchist circles by 1903, he wrote for several anarchist papers and advocated the general strike. Repeatedly arrested for labor activism, he shifted in 1906 toward individualist anarchism and spent 1907–1910 moving between England, France, and Italy as a sales representative. Expelled from France in 1912, he again engaged in labor struggles in Italy. In 1914 he collaborated on Utopia, a pro-war, syndicalist-leaning newspaper edited by then-socialist Benito Mussolini.

Migrating to the United States later that year, he joined the IWW, became an organizer for its Bakers’ Union in New York, and contributed to (and later edited) the IWW’s Italian-language newspaper Il Proletario. Arrested in Pennsylvania in 1917 for “pernicious activities” and opposition to conscription, he was a defendant in the 1918 federal IWW trial and received a sentence of ten years and a $30,000 fine. His sentence was commuted in 1922 on condition of deportation on February 21, 1922.

Back in Italy, Baldazzi gravitated to Fascist institutions—working for the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro and later the fascist newspaper La Stirpe—though he never joined the National Fascist Party. 1931–1936 employed as a translator for the Italian National Olympic Committee and the Federazione Internazionale dei Tecnici Agricoli. In 1935, however, he was placed under government surveillance as a suspected antifascist. He began advocating for a liberal-democratic renewal in Europe and petitioned unsuccessfully to emigrate to France in 1936. Died in 1940.

Sources: INS file 54235/39; CPC busta 268; http://www.bfscollezionidigitali.org/entita/12935-baldazzi-giovanni/.

Ivan G. Baldenkov (or Baldenkoff)

Born: 1895, Zvenyhorodka, Russia (present-day Ukraine)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Ukrainian
Occupation: Bookkeeper; salesman; journalist
Migration: Immigrated to US 1912
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers; IWW; Communist Labor Party

Joined the Union of Russian Workers in Newark in 1915; joined the IWW in 1919; and later joined the Syracuse branch of the Communist Labor Party. Active as an IWW organizer and URW literary agent, he was arrested in 1920. While held in the Cortland County jail, he led a hunger strike of Russian radicals demanding expedited deportation. He was deported to Soviet Russia on February 1, 1921.

Sources: INS file 54861/325