A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

  General Headquarters was compelled to lament that ‘a just but exaggerated concern to explode ‘the myth that the Garibaldi brigades are Communist’ had meant that ‘hardly any of our large units bears the name of Antonio Gramsci’.89 In fact, not many Garibaldi formations bear the name of Antonio Gramsci: eleven, according to the copious ‘Index of Organisms’ of the three volumes of documents of the Brigate Garibaldi nella Resistenza; seven according to that of the Guida archivi della Resistenza. But no more numerous in those indexes are the other great names of the workers’ and Socialist-Communist’ tradition. ‘Carlo Marx’ is coupled with Benedetto Croce in designating two detachments of the 40th Matteotti Garibaldi brigade, operating in Upper Lombardy alongside a Rosselli brigade and a Proletarian Front, which would duly assume the name of the fallen Luigi Clerici (note in this case the perfect equilibrium of the names). Matteotti (the name most frequently used for their formations by the PSIUP and in some cases also by Giustizia e Libertà); Buozzi, Fratelli Rosselli (who obviously figure in the GL formations as well) in effect appear as names with a unitary intent. Only in a few rare cases are the names explicitly Communist: Togliatti, Tito, Stalin (chosen, furthermore, by a group of Cossack deserters who showed up at the Natisone division),90 Serrati, Gastone, Sozzi, Spartaco Lavagnini. Some clearly ideological presences are marked by Spartaco, Stella Rossa,91 and Volante Rossa, by a proletarian brigade formed in September 1943 with Slovene support.92 Edging the border of Risorgimento names (which, as has been duly noted, figure widely in the Garibaldi bands too), are names such as Camicia Rossa and Pisacane; these words uttered by the latter are recalled in the half-title of a Socialist paper: ‘Socialism or slavery: there is no other alternative for our society’.93 The names of the war-dead variously combined with geographical names are by far the most frequent in the Garibaldi bands.

  Compared with the names of the formations, the mastheads of the Garibaldi local papers seem to present a greater number of proletarian and Communist stances.94 Some could have sounded so only to those who had been politically educated along Leninist lines: thus ‘La Scintilla’ (‘The Spark’) and ‘Nuova Scintilla’ (and in France too ‘L’Ètincelle’ appears several times). Other are more explicit: ‘Il Compagno’, ‘Fazzoletto Rosso’ (‘Red Scarf’), ‘La vigilia operaia’ (‘Workers’ Vigil’), ‘Gioventù proletaria’ (‘Workers’ Youth’), ‘Il Proletario’, ‘Savona proletaria’, ‘Rivoluzione proletaria’, ‘Bandiera Rossa’. Others still hark back to an ancient working-class and popular tradition: thus for example ‘La Barricata’, ‘La Fabbrica’ (‘The Factory’), ‘La Forgia’ (‘The Forge’), ‘Il Martello’ (‘The Hammer’), ‘La Squilla’ (‘The Blast’), ‘L’ Aratro e il Martello’ (‘The Plow and Hammer’), ‘L’ Aurora’ (‘Dawn’), ‘Il Lavoro’ (‘Labour’), ‘La Solidarietà’. ‘La Comune’ also appears, just as in France there was ‘La Commune’ (the title – ‘La Commune de Paris’ – chosen likewise by the Journale des marraines de la compaignie des franc-tireurs et partisans, to replace ‘Jean Jaurès’, which preceded it).

  Extremely rare, by contrast, were the noms-de-guerre adopted by (or assigned to) the Garibaldini which had a proletarian and/or Communist ring. It would seem that the tradition of naming one’s children after great figures of the working-class movement was not renewed when one had to choose it for oneself.95 Only sporadic Matteotti’s and Spartaco’s and, should we wish to stress Russian echoes, the odd Ivan, and little else, are on record.

  ‘Il rosso’ is, on the contrary, widespread in the symbolism of the scarves, shirts, stars, hammers and sickles, clenched fist salutes and in the songs. Even the RSI recruits seem to have marched off singing L’Internazionale and Bandiera Rossa.96 This abundance of red is attested to above all by the frequency with which the Communist directives repressed it throughout the twenty-month span of the struggle. If in some cases satisfaction is expressed that red has been replaced by the tricolore,97 very often the insistence on reiterating requests, even ‘in modo duro’ (‘sternly’),98 that this be done reveals refractoriness about meeting those requests. ‘Let’s get the red stars removed immediately’, reads a document relating to the Valtellina; and in one about the Parma area: ‘No badge apart from the fine tricolored cockade is to be allowed. Likewise for songs, which must not be party-songs, but only national in character.’99

  A report on Umbria, shortly after the liberation of that region, bitterly recorded that the movement had ‘a rowdy character based on verbal extremism, closed fists and Bandiera Rossa’.100 In Valle d’Aosta the Garibaldini, solely ‘for love of unity’, agreed to wear the tricolore armband and the ‘red and black shield, the colour of the valley’.101 On the eve of the liberation of Ravenna, the commander Bülow urged his men not only to adopt the tricolore and the military salute but ‘not to sing the Internazionale nor other political songs. Learn Il Piave and the Garibaldi hymns’102

  Reports came from the Langhe of ‘red scarves, red stars, hammers and sickles, chants, clenched fist salutes, talk about revolution and against priests’.103 From the province of Como, by now on the eve of Liberation, that is to say when the formal unification of the formations had occurred, scarves and red stars and clenched fists were still being denounced as marks of sectarianism and ‘lack of capacity’; and, around about the same time, the delegation for Lombardy warned the group command of the Valsesia, Ossola, Cusio, and Verbano divisions against ‘indulging in closed fists and red flags, symbols among your men of limited education … The good Communists will be the first to understand that it is not in the interest of their party to make divisive gestures and manifestations.’104

  A month after the Liberation (but we are on the eastern border) a report by Nilo (Francesco Pesce), commander of the Nanetti division, was still denouncing sectarian manifestations by comrades, starting with the customary red scarf.105

  Probably the most vivid description of the sporting of red has been left by ‘Vanni’ (Giovanni Padoan), political commissar of the Natisone division:

  The red scarf they wore around their necks was enormous, it wasn’t a scarf, but a shawl that descended from the neck down to the waist and beyond. On their beret they had a red star whose points extended from one rim to another and gave the unpleasant impression that a squid was enveloping the head of the person wearing it. But not only the beret, the whole uniform was literally strewn with red flags. They were everywhere, applied with extreme lavishness: on their breasts, on their jackets, on their sleeves and even on their trousers. Machine-guns and rifles were full of stars of every dimension, some of them tastefully engraved.106

  In Perugia too ‘the great and uncontrolled display of red flags’ at the moment of the Allied entry into the city was attributed to sectarianism and backwardness; and in Terni an identical phenomenon was bracketed among ‘petit bourgeois excesses’.107 An Emilian commissar, describing the worst part of a formation, states: ‘It is, however, the keenest squad when it comes to displaying red stars and other badges.’108

  In another document the need to proclaim red is coupled with the need to ‘avoid swearing at all costs’.109 This makes the opinion expressed by a party envoy about the parading of red in the Republic of Montefiorino all the more thoughtful and respectful. After recalling that nearly all of the young men belonging to the Modena division ‘have joined our party and strongly insist on calling themselves Communists’, the author of the report writes:

  Hundreds of these youths are wearing the red shirt with the hammer and sickle and those who don’t have it fervently wish to wear it; these youths are among those most fired with the fighting spirit and the spirit of sacrifice with a marked class spirit as well. Both Davide [the commissar] and Armando [the commander] insist (rightly) that if one were to take their red shirt away from these youths, with it one would be taking away the fighting spirit with which they are animated.

  The party envoy therefore did no more than have the hammer and sickle replaced with the tricolore cockade and in any case suggested a shif
t in the meaning to be attributed to the red shirt, which, he points out, ‘has had its importance in the formation of the units of our country’.110

  It didn’t escape the author of this report, nor partisan leaders like Davide and Armando, that there was a risk that insistent Communist pedantry aimed at obtaining not only the application but the interiorisation of the party’s unitary line would wither the very roots of participation in the struggle. This was not just an Italian problem. Djilas, who, heading a delegation of Yugoslav partisans, presented himself at the Kremlin with a red star on his beret, came in for a contemptuous cold dowsing from Stalin: ‘What are you doing with red stars on your beret? Form isn’t important, what’s important are concrete conquests, and you … want red stars. What use do you think red stars are?’ Djilas’ reply had been respectful but firm: ‘It is impossible to abolish the red stars because they have already become a tradition and have come to mean something to our fighters.’111

  Fear of deviationism and sinistrimo led to attitudes that actually preceded specific party choices being taken for possible political lines. Indeed often the reddest, the most zealous in declaring themselves Communists were not even members of the party. One gets closer to the truth by transferring into a very different situation Edward P. Thompson’s critical remarks to Keith Thomas, who had resorted to the explanatory categories of ‘inadequacies of popular education’ and of ‘popular religious ignorance’:

  Possibly so: but is it also a glimpse into that process of translating doctrine into a more meaningful, an altogether more relevant [red!] symbolism – of accepting from the church [the Party!] only so much doctrine as can be assimilated to the life experience of the poor … ‘Ignorance’ is far too blunt an analytic tool, for ignorance may indicate evasion, or translation, irony in the face of the church’s homilies, or very often, active intellectual resistance to its doctrines.112

  The symbolism of red served to affirm one’s individual and group identity before those who used other symbols, like the light blue scarf and the green scarf. Red – and a cross-current Umbrian document complains about the opportunism of those leaders who don’t like it113 – signified that the struggle taking place was seen as being a radical innovation, while the colours of the Badogliani and of the autonomi, green and light blue, indicated a desire for mere restoration. When the Piave brigade was incorporated, against its wishes, into the Nanetti Garibaldi division, the commissar Ugo accused the commander Olivi of wishing to make his men wear ‘instead of the red scarf, which was the symbol of Garibaldi, of his heroism and his sacrifice, the light blue scarf, which was the symbol of a reigning house upon whose legality the people have not yet been able to pronounce’. Here, the cautious wording of the formula far from attenuating, reinforces the rebuff.114

  In the Modenese Appenines the Communist representatives saw themselves compelled to denounce the fact that while, according to them, the Garibaldini did not wear party badges and sang only patriotic songs, the same could not be said of the Christian Democrats, who had the letters DC and a cross embroidered on their tricolore scarf.115

  One measure at which the Garibaldini particularly balked at was the adoption of the military salute. True, the appeals to adopt it make use of expressions such as ‘regular army of free Italy’, ‘salute formerly in use in the ex-royal army’, which are in tune with what I have called ‘the repudiation of the royal army’,116 but it is also true that this was not always the case. In fact, anodyne formulae appear like the ‘traditional salute of the Italian army’: thus an enjoinder made in northern Lombardy commits the gaffe of implicitly comparing the salute with the clenched fist and the Fascist salute: ‘No outstretched arm, neither with hand open nor with fist clenched’.117 And it is still truer that the military salute was a symbol that was very hard to stomach, smacking of the idea of a discipline which one of the above-quoted documents actually, and approvingly, called ‘iron’. Likewise, in another document great satisfaction is expressed at having ‘succeeded in applying the military salute, in imposing ranks’.118 And the misunderstandings, exchanges of words and convergences with the GL brigades that could occur on this count make singular reading. When a group of giellisti from the Pavese Oltrepò turned up at a Garibaldi headquarters asking to be incorporated into the brigade, their reason for doing so was that ‘in the Giustizia e Libertà column there is still an old-style militaristic spirit involving the military salute, the signorsì (yes, sir), and differential treatment in the mess’.119

  An Actionist from the Modena area complained about seeing ‘too much red and very little tricolore’, though he acknowledged that ‘the work and speeches of the political commissar and the commander are Fronte nazionale in character and content’.120 Among both the Garibaldini and the giellisti the not very successful idea was born of adopting factory overalls as a uniform. More soberly in a Garibaldi document – ‘provisionally we recommend overalls, no matter what colour they are’121 – more emphatically in a page written by a prestigious GL leader: ‘The overall, the finest and most meaningful uniform, for volunteers fighting a revolutionary war (remember Carlo Rosselli’s vibrant words in Spain: only the anonymous genius of revolution could invent this extraordinary but at the same time natural uniform: the overall. The war of the workers’ will be waged in the uniform of work).’122

  The memory of Spain also influenced the Communist leaders, but in the reverse direction, for their rigid stance over the salute and other aspects of military discipline was undoubtedly influenced by the memory of how hard and bloody it had been settling accounts with the libertarian character of the anarchist militias. And possibly there was the memory too of the error committed in 1921 of not backing the ‘Arditi del popolo’, opposing them with the formation of party squads. This tendency was manifested initially in Romagna and again in summer 1944 in Piedmont.123

  The ambiguity of the red shirt was utilised, oscillating between a sort of philological homage to the hero of the two worlds and a proletarian updating of it. This dual meaning of red is evident in a letter of Moscatelli’s: ‘Let the Garibaldini consider it as they like; for our part we are proud to wear the red scarf, and to fittingly wear this symbol of our great Hero and of the purest patriotic expression of the Italian Risorgimento.’124

  With still greater transparency the commissar of the 2nd Cascione division operating in Liguria had written: ‘For the time being, the red of our shirts and of our flags has a Garibaldi, not Communist, tone.’ ‘But where are these flags in the divisions?’, had been the irritated retort of Simon, the commander of the 1st zone of Liguria; and as for that ‘for the time being’, he had warned: ‘This phrase seems intended to still the impatience and fears of certain sectarian Communists and to calm them with the promise that the shape of things today will change tomorrow. What are the non-Communist Garibaldini to think of this? That the present shape of things is nothing but deception.’125

  In another document, also aimed probably at ‘calming’ the impetuous, it is the tricolore star that is explicitly identified with the Garibaldi star.126 The General Command of the brigades itself undertook to demonstrate that ‘the red scarf, with its fine tricolored points, is the symbol and badge of the Garibaldino and not of Communism or Socialism’.127 At the Bracco pass:

  the red flag has been replaced by a fine tricolore which in the place of the Savoy shield bears the red star … The men of the formation wear large red stars on their breasts, and on their berets; an order abolishing them would be extremely ill-advised. The obstacle has been overcome by proposing, and the proposal has been accepted by the Command, to attach to the beret a tricolore cockade to which the red star will be attached … There is also the proposal to wear a red scarf around one’s neck, but we hope to obtain a tricolore scarf with a small red star at the corners.128

  The search for stratagems stimulated imagination: the adoption of the tricolore star, offset by the ‘Garibaldi red scarf and toggle with a medallion of Garibaldi’;129 the affixing of a tricolore armband
to the red shirt;130 the tricolore against a red background, like the one which was consigned by the provincial CLN to the Nanetti division, ‘but soon the flag was forgotten by the partisans as a useless object’.131 As for the salute, a form of compromise was the introduction of the military one ‘if at the moment they make it they have their service cap, and the clenched fist salute if they don’t’ – which was the utmost case of innovation in continuity, given that in the Royal Army of the regime the bare-headed salute had been the Fascist one.132

  It is hard to say what the symbol of red was reckoned to contain, beyond a vague aspiration for radicalism, an assertion of identity and (though this be may be found only in the older partisans and in the most acculturated) the desire that the ‘temporary defeat of the proletariat in 1919’ be redeemed.133 When the partisans, managed, as they did in the free zones, to exercise power, the important decisions were taken along the general lines of national and unitary action,134 whether or not they were convinced that this was the only manner, in those circumstances, of paving the way for the revolution or, as was said at a party meeting, of ‘preparing the men and the ground for the accomplishment of our social and economic plan’.135 Moreover, more radical measures and proposals were not lacking. In the Fucino area it was the Communist party itself, in the person of a leader of the stature of ‘Palmieri’ (Giorgio Amendola), who urged his reticent Avezzano comrades to give pride of place to the watchword ‘Torlonia must be seized’ and, what’s more, arrested, with the proviso, however, that this ‘in no way means a socialist, but a democratic, revolution’.136 But while Amendola dogmatically based his assertion on the fact that Torlonia was a case of fusion between a semi-feudal structure and monopolistic capital, a circular issued by General Headquarters recalled that the Garibaldi brigades ‘do not carry out expropriations against anyone who is not pro-Nazi’.137 Thus the political commissar Renato, who ‘wanted to socialise the oil companies of the zone, dispossessing the capitalists’, was said to be valorous, but incompetent.138