A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

  The Commands’ and the parties’ mental reservations and the partisans’ moral and emotional reservations do in fact punctuate the process of unification. An interesting indication of this is the persistence, in several Garibaldi documents, of the leave-taking formula saluti garibaldini (Garibadinian greetings). ‘We can use it with each other, can’t we?’ wrote Fabio, who was responsible for military affairs in the insurrectional triumvirate for Lombardy, to Ciro and Cino on 13 April; and on 15 April Ciro replied: ‘best Garibaldini wishes (despite everything)’. Again, on the same day, Ciro ‘in the name of Cino too’, returned with ‘Italo’ (Luigi Longo) ‘the most cordial Garibaldini wishes (seeing that you still use this adjective which is so dear to us … I’m taking advantage of the fact; and on 20 April Italo in turn insisted: ‘Saluti Garibaldini, mark you, because this isn’t an official letter and no one can cancel Garibaldi from life and history (I’m not exaggerating).’108 It was in this spirit that the Piedmont delegation (and it was certainly not the only one to do so) asked that ‘detailed news about the ex-Garibaldi formations’ continue to be sent. This contact needed to be kept up to ‘keep the bond between you from weakening.’109 ‘Rife discontent’ was reported among the Garibaldini of the Pavese Oltrepò;110 while until 25 January those of the 6th Langhe Salis division had declared their names and emblems to be inalienable, and had warned: ‘Some men, even among the politically more mature, have expressly declared to us that, the day they have to abandon their Stella Tricolore, they would sooner go home.’111

  In the Cuneo GL divisions, preference was shown for stopping unification at the level of the zone and squad commands. On this score the Notiziario (Newsletter) of the 2nd Alpine division appealed to the ‘libertarian’ and ‘rebellious’ spirit of the bands, and the solidarity born in them during twenty months of common struggle. In no mean terms, this paper denounced as ‘undemocratic’ the ‘general approval’ for a unification which smacked of the orders from above that used to come from Rome and now came from ‘the impastatori [pasta-makers] of the partisan movement’.112 Even a GL pamphlet, while supporting unification as a necessary thing to aim for, dotted its ‘i’s many times and warned against the danger that unification might favour last-minute ‘absentees’ and ‘renouncers’ exemplified by the colonels, among others.113 There were those who were prepared to recognise the political opportuneness of unification as the premise for transformation into a regular army, and those who made no disguise of their scepticism as to the fact that it would induce the Allies to go back on their intentions to disarm and disband. Others preannounced a reluctant ‘obbedisco’ (‘I obey’): ‘As for the cautious form with which our Garibaldini are familiar, we have to tell you that their political education and military understanding is such as to give them no difficulty in accepting possible evolution towards centrality.’114 The core of the problem was summed up by a partisan chief as follows: ‘The partisans felt themselves to be combatants in an army of civilians.’115

  The Resistance press played a prominent role in the relationship between the parties and this ‘army of civilians’. It was not just ‘a combat unit … an army rather than an instrument to spread an idea’.116 The aim of the press was to form new cadres and to perform a pedagogic function both for the partisans and for the mass of the population. Who should write, for what end, and for whom, was a frequent subject of discussion. Pietro Secchia took the Rome edition of L’Unità to task for having ‘become more a directional organ of the leaders than an organ for directing and organising the masses … more a bulletin and magazine than a combat newspaper’.117 The objective of ‘activating the masses of the civilian population’ is indicated as being essential in other Communist documents too.118 Conversely, workers’ criticisms appeared denouncing L’Unità for ‘addressing the population a lot, but the workers little and comrades hardly at all’,119 while in a partisan formation, the Belluno division, the main criterion was that the press should serve ‘as a means of educating and orientating party-members because, it was claimed, propaganda among the anonymous crowd should be conducted by individuals, with their example and their words. The best kind of propaganda against the enemy was in military actions.’120 The Turin leaders discussed the limits of editorial intervention. Some believed that corrections could only be made to syntax, while for others this was not enough: ‘Those who are writing are novices, they shouldn’t be over-sensitive … you learn to write by writing.’121 The objective was to have ‘simple and immediate pieces which mirror the daily activities of our units’ and which were ‘the voice of the detachments’, besides being ‘the guides for the commissars’.122

  It doesn’t matter if the leaflets and articles are written in incorrect Italian; what is important is the concept and substance. This collaboration will, besides, habituate our comrades to thinking and to expressing their ideas, and will therefore help them to become skilled elements for tomorrow’s struggle.123

  The Lombard edition of the (GL) Partigiano Alpino published, for partisan use, an appendix to Alfredo Panzini’s Dizionario moderno, while the newspaper of Mauri’s divisions, Il Risorgimento brought out, a ‘vocabolario del patriota’ (‘patriot’s dictionary’).124 There are fairly frequent complaints about the poor distribution of the press, which seemed to make its production almost a waste of effort.125 True, each copy was generally read by several people; but there were also those who ‘as soon as they had read the paper destroyed it out of fear’.126 Congestion occurred, as in Genoa; attempts at capillary distribution were attempted, with a personal accompanying letter.127 Collective reading appeared to be a method aimed at strengthening the press’s pedagogic functions. The party official responsible was advised to be the first to read and comment on ‘the article out loud; that way those who are interested in the subject draw near and listen and little by little the others in turn draw near; that’s how propaganda works’.128 Less ingenuous than this is another invitation to read and comment, which starts with the statement that ‘the press is not read by the partisans. Like most of the Italian people they don’t read newspapers: they’re not in the habit of doing so. We need to overcome this resistance little by little, get them interested, ask their opinions about the articles, comment on them, etc. If we don’t begin this job it will never be done.’129

  The mural newspaper, which was widely used by the Garibaldi formations, was the most immediate channel for the apprentice to express himself. Incitements to do so smacked of Soviet didacticism: ‘It’s an extremely effective instrument of criticism and self-criticism. It’s very popular in the Soviet Union, as it was in Spain’.130 But there was also the sincere faith ‘that every Garibaldino has something to say, that he knows how to say it, that he is capable of writing it … even when the writer doesn’t have a perfect grasp of spelling’. The person expressing this conviction also showed a great respect for the writer: one needed ‘to correct without ever changing the form’, and possibly discuss the substance.131 The mural newspapers needed to deal with concrete things, even the simplest things: from how the mess kitchen was working to the organisation of guard duties; to enable readers to question the quality of the commanders and commissars; to stimulate emulation of the partisans; to frame the great political problems – even if in some formulations suggested to them, the answer was, as in school essay questions, already implicit.132 Thus, the mural newspapers, and for that matter all the minor partisan press, often swung between public soulseeking, didactic purposes, and the instrument of direct democracy – between the expression of the way one was and the way one ought to be. It was difficult to find the meeting-point between the desire to impart and the desire to acquire knowledge. Referring to a cycle of lessons on the French Revolution, commissar Michele wrote: ‘I’ve been informed that there was a crowd of attenders at the first two lessons, but mass desertion for the third. The way the theme was treated and the theme itself more than ever justify this desertion. I’ve had this course suspended immediately.’133 The ‘combattente bibliotecario’
(‘librarian combatant’) is a figure envisaged in several organisational schemes;134 and after the temporary conquest of the enemy garrisons, one commander wrote, ‘the partisan with a typewriter on his back was a typical sight’.135

  The books circulating among the partisans ranged from the history of the country to that of the working-class movement, from novels preferably with a social background to works of economics, to the canonical Storia del PC (b) (History of the Communist Party). Fascist propaganda books captured from the enemy were also read and discussed.136

  The further they were from the top, the more the press and collateral activities succeeded, to a more or less widespread degree, in not being just channels for transmission of the political line but also the expression of the ideas, feelings and contradictory ideas of the party members. Indicative of this are the differences between the party newspapers and those of the bands. The great flowering of the underground press made it an instrument of aggregation of men and ideas, not only within the parties – and favoured the widening and enrichment of the political meaning of the entire Resistance process.137

  1 See M. Weber, Economy and Society, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, vol. I, p. 31 (original edition: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1922).

  2 Battaglia, Un uomo, pp. 196–7. See also p. 237: ‘Nati come fuorilegge, tendevamo per istinto a ritornare nella legge’ (‘Born as outlaws instinctively we tended to re-enter the law’).

  3 Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan, p. 65, paraphrase of R. Schroers, Der Partisan. Ein Beitrag zur politischen Antropologie, Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1961, and p. 73. For these authors, who are unable to include human liberty among the factors of history, the figure of the partisan without a ‘powerful third party’ is theoretically unthinkable, as distinct from that of the criminal.

  4 The existence of this alternative is acknowledged, with the words quoted in the text, also by Schroers, for whom, however, the problem still remains, for the irregular, that of ‘legitimising oneself with the regular’ (see preceding note).

  5 The protocol was signed by Pajetta and Bonomi on 26 December 1944, at the conclusion of Parri’s mission to the South (see Catalano, Storia del CLNAI, pp. 341–3).

  6 See Guerra di classe, 30 March 1937, cited in M. Oliviari, ‘L’ azione politica di Camillo Berneri nella guerra civile spagnola’, in Critica storica XIX (1982), p. 225.

  7 Fenoglio, Il partigiano Johnny, p. 116. The ‘Blues’ were Enrico Martini’s politically autonomous band.

  8 Bianco, Guerra partigiana, p. 21.

  9 Letter by the Command of the 14th Capriolo division ‘ai compagni responsabili’, 23 January 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 274). The bad relations between Mauri and the Garibaldini are widely documented.

  10 See for example the case of the cobbler Carnera, a courageous and courteous Garibaldino from Spain, to whom the ‘soldati’, after an initially warm welcome, seem to prefer ‘bourgeois’ (‘borghesi’) second lieutenants (Artom, Diari, pp. 85–97).

  11 Agenda no. 1, signed Bolla, 9 October 1944 (IZDG, envelope 272b, folder III/I); Fogar, Le brigate Osoppo-Friuli, p. 301.

  12 ‘Atto di fede’ (‘Act of faith’), undated, in INSMLI, CVL, envelope 90, folder 12.

  13 See Quazza, Un diario partigiano.

  14 Revelli, La guerra dei poveri, pp. 189, 169 (29 March and 7 February 1944).

  15 Gobetti, Diario partigiano, pp. 152–3.

  16 Dante Livio Bianco has written that the keen egalitarianism of the initial stages, though destined to change, ‘represented, in its way, that need for renewal and breaking from the past, which was the soul of the partisan’ (Guerra partigiana, p. 23).

  17 See, on this theme, Leed’s remarks in No Man’s Land, especially on pp. 26–7.

  18 The partisan ‘refuses to be drowned in the uniform level of a single mentality or discipline’. Battaglia, Un uomo, p. 216.

  19 Bianco, Guerra partigiana, p. 35. On p. 144 he would speak of ‘months and months of a new-style naja but still “naja” ’.

  20 Letter by Michele, political commissar of the 1st Gramsci division, to the commissar of the 6th Nello brigade, Atti, 22 November 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 621).

  21 See Lazagna, Ponte rotto, p. 70.

  22 See the letter by Piol of the Command of the 3rd Piedmont division, 12 September, and the one by the ‘compagni responsabili’ of the same division to ‘cari compagni’, 10 October 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, pp. 325–7, 424).

  23 Moscatelli’s letter to Walter, 31 October 1944 (IG, BG, Emilia-Romagna, 06754).

  24 Report by Michele, commissar of the 1st Gramsci division, October 1944 (?) (ibid., 06746).

  25 The style of these documents of the Command of the 11th Torino brigade reveals the author – ‘È mio intendimento’, ‘Insisto’ – as being a regular officer (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 19 and n. 2, under the dates 7 and 10 June 1944).

  26 See the resentful letter sent on 15 February 1945 by the delegation for Lombardy to ‘compagno Italo’ (ibid., vol. III, p. 364). For the ‘valanga burocratica’ (‘bureaucratic avalanche’) which at a certain moment descended on the Command of the Lunense division, see Battaglia, Un uomo, pp. 193ff. For the ‘sea of duplicated and typewritten papers’ that reached the formations, see also Mila, Bilancio della guerra partigiana, p. 417.

  27 Unaddressed letter by the Command of the 40th Matteotti brigade (1st Lombardy division) of 14 August 1944 (IG, BG, 0592).

  28 Rome edition, 30 December 1943, article entitled ‘Organizzare la Guerra partigiana’. On ‘La formazione dei nuovi quadri’ (‘The training of new leaders’), see the record of occurrences clearly delineated by Poma and Perona, La Resistenza nel Biellese, pp. 207–12.

  29 See Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, p. 390.

  30 Quazza, Resistenza e storia d’Italia, pp. 241–52.

  31 For example, on p. 51 of Guerra partigiana.

  32 The statute, of September 1944, is in Le formazioni GL, p. 171.

  33 Medical second lieutenant Dario Diena, ‘Relazione sulla situazione e sugli avvenimenti partigiani nella Valle d’Aosta come li ho visti io alla fine di agosto al 28 ottobre 1944’ (INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 4, folder I, subfolder I).

  34 Revelli, La guerra dei poveri, p. 392 (25 January 1945).

  35 ‘Rapporto del distaccamento Calcagno’ of the Cascione division, 24 February 1944 (IG, BG, 09941).

  36 Lazagna, Ponte rotto, p. 31.

  37 Open letter by Filippo, commander of the Nanetti division, to Olivi, commander of the Piave brigade, 29 August 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 285). In the minutes of the discussion to which the letter refers there are the following words: ‘The ranks that the men bore in the old army are not valid in the partisan formations … here ranks and responsibilities are given according to the abilities and partisan determination’ (ibid., p. 287).

  38 See G. and E. Varlecchi, Potente, p. 83; the report conserved in ISRT, CVL, Comando militare toscano, envelope 5, folder 7; the ‘Relazione sull’attività clandestine e operativa svolta dei patrioti toscani nel periodo 8 settembre 1943–7 settembre 1944’, compiled by Major Achille Mazzi: here one reads that ‘the chiefs were elected by the gregari (passive yes-men) – a secret and tacit pact linked them’ (ibid.).

  39 See Giovana, Storia di una formazione partigiana, p. 76.

  40 Agenda item no. 1 of the Command of the Lombardy Garibaldi division, 8 October 1944 (IG, BG, 01186).

  41 ‘Relazione sulla situazione della brigata Calvi Cadore dai primi di ottobre al suo scioglimento’, dated Milan, 24 November 1944 (ibid., 012).

  42 Memorandum of 4 September 1944 (INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 10, folder I, subfolder I).

  43 Weber, Economy and Society, vol. I, p. 241.

  44 J.-J. Langendorf, Elogio funebre del generale August-Wilhelm von Lignitz, Milan: Adelphi, 1980, p. 60.

  45 Weber, Economy and Society, vol. I, p. 240.

  46 Report by Major Healy
of the 8th Army on the partisans of the Ravenna area, 23 January 1945 (in Casali, Il movimento di liberazione a Ravenna, vol. II, p. 332)

  47 Report on the 13 Martiri di Lovere (Bergamasco) brigade, 2 August 1944 (IG, BG, 1055).

  48 Quazza, Un diario partigiano, p. 191 (16 July 1944).

  49 See Battaglia, Un uomo, pp. 189–90. In the Lunense division, of which Battaglia was commissar, free election of the chiefs was practised (ibid., p. 130). For the fascination of the chief, see the testimony of Tersilla Fenoglio Oppedisano, who associates it with esprit de corps (Bruzzone and Farina, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 154).

  50 Letter of the delegation for Lombardy to the Brescia federation of the PCI, 18 September 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 353).

  51 Andrea’s report to ‘cari compagni’ (Parmense), 14 March 1944 (IG, BG, Emilia-Romagna, G.IV.2.2).