Vittorio Vidali

Vittorio Vidali (1900–1983), also known as Vittorio Vidale, Enea Sormenti, Jacobo Hurwitz Zender, Carlos Contreras, "Comandante Carlos" was an Italian Communist.

He was born in the small coastal town of Muggia, then part of the county of Istria in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now part of Italy. As a teenager, he joined the socialist movement in the nearby port city of Trieste. Vidali is said to have been, aged only twenty, one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, but was expelled from the country after Benito Mussolini ascended to power in 1922. He is described as a Bolshevik in the file kept on him by the police in Fascist Italy.

After Italy, Vidali relocated to Moscow. While in the Soviet Union, he was officially rebuked for indulging in love affairs (Cacucci, 1999). With the International Red Aid as his cover, Vidali was sent by the Comintern to Mexico to discipline the Mexican Communist Party. His time there brought Vidali's romantic involvement with photographer and communist activist Tina Modotti, who had previously been Diego Rivera's friend.

Vidali’s interest in Modotti is believed to be related to the killing of her then current lover, Cuban communist Julio Antonio Mella, a founder of the Comintern version of the Communist Party of Cuba (Tennant, 1999). Mella had fled Cuba in Gerardo Machado’s time, to join and then leave the Mexican Communist Party.

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