A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

  Stalin – and testimonies on this score abound – was the symbol that summed up the Soviet myth. He was able to enjoy all the advantages of the charismatic leader without, given his physical distance from the scene, having to endure the drawbacks. In seeking to understand how a figure who emerged as the head of a bureaucratic machinery managed to focus onto his person so much utopian longing, we might get a glimpse from these words of an elderly anarchist who in his turn had gone over to the Italian Communist Party: ‘Pietro Gori was the ideal, Stalin the reality.’32 In other words, the figure of Stalin represented the idea made flesh, taking on its burdens and sullying his hands, and, in order to preserve them, reducing the supreme principles to didactic formulae or, as one intellectual puts it, to ‘rarefied logic’ breathed ‘with a sense of repose’.33

  People died crying ‘Viva la libertà! Viva Stalin!’ or simply ‘Viva Stalin’.34 And the fascination of the figure of Stalin could extend also to those who were not Communist. A partisan who enlisted in the Cremona Gruppo di Combattimento of the CIL has recounted: ‘In the battle that we were fighting, in which we were taking a heap of blows from the Germans, and were about to flee, the officer had yelled “Avanti, Savoia!” three times and no one budged. A comrade – a republican – stood up and said “Avanti Stalin!” The whole company moved.’35

  The USSR was presented as the one who reaches out a ‘fraternal’ hand to us (in effect, the USSR tried to benefit from its indirect involvement in the occupation regime in Italy) and as ‘the first paladin and most effective guarantor of the loyal application’ to Italy of the resolutions of the Moscow conference.36 On the thorny question of the fate of the Italian prisoners in Russia, Togliatti personally undertook to ensure that they ‘are living well today. The overwhelming majority of them breathe an atmosphere of condemnation of Fascism and are anxiously awaiting the moment when they will be able to be free to take up arms for the liberation of the patria.’37

  The granting of autonomous seats to the Ukraine and Byelorussia in the United Nations, which was being created at the time, was presented as a great conquest of principle, due to the coherent application of the doctrine of Lenin and Stalin to the different nationalities; and the compromising prediction was made that from now on all the Soviet republics would be able to ‘establish their own diplomatic relations with foreign states and levy their own national army, which will however be part of the Red Army’.38

  This article makes explicit and reassuring mention of the Baltic, Karelo-Finnish and Moldavian republics, which were about to be liberated by the Red Army; just as it insists on the ‘independence, liberty, integrity guaranteed by the USSR to Romania’.39 This was actually a difficult line of reasoning, aimed among other things at nipping in the bud any hint of ‘extremism’ which, taking the open and worldwide nature of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics literally (the possibility of acceding to or withdrawing from the Union was provided for by the 1936 Constitution, as it had already been by those of 1918 and 1924), might plead the case for a pure and simple entry into the Union of those peoples who were gradually being liberated from the Nazis and from the padroni. This was an utterly unrealistic hypothesis, but one that must somehow have been circulating if Riccardo Lombardi accused the PCI of seeing European unity only as ‘an expansion of the borders of the USSR’,40 and if in retort to the South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts, who had presented entry into the Commonwealth as the sole path of salvation for the countries of the European West, Avanti! wrote that if that were the case it would be better to join the Soviet Union, which is ‘another “Common Wealth” which for years has been offering all countries the opportunity to enter and participate, with parity of rights and duties’.41

  Equally unfeasible was the not entirely new hypothesis, echoed in Azione Libertaria, of creating the Federation of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Balkans.42 It is well-known how vigorously Stalin condemned the project of this kind put forward by Dimitrov and Tito.

  Predictions about the novelties that, through enlightened Soviet initiative, were to characterise the post-war international order, should be linked to the hope that the victorious outcome of the severe trial of war, and the loyalty to the regime that the people had demonstrated by isolating cases of collaborationism, would inaugurate a process of democratisation in the USSR. Those who cultivated the myth of the USSR as a foreshadowing of the future did not feel the least need to nurture such hopes. But those who would sincerely have liked to see a more ductile and realistic, politically useful and morally acceptable ‘myth’, did in fact put some losing cards on this very prospect. The PSIUP executive did just this in a declaration of 1 May 1944;43 Franco Venturi argued likewise in one of the most acute and carefully pondered attempts at interpreting Soviet Russia to appear during the Resistance;44 and this too is how Eugenio Colorni already thought during his internment in the prison of Ventotene.45 It was, furthermore, a hope that was internationally widespread in vast socialist circles that were not prejudicially anti-Soviet.46

  As far as the Soviet Union itself was concerned, Djilas subsequently wrote:

  As I look back, I can say that the conviction spread spontaneously in the USSR that now, after a war that had demonstrated the devotion of the Soviet people to their homeland and to the basic achievements of the revolution, there would be no further reason for the political restrictions and for the ideological monopolies held by little groups of leaders, and especially by a single leader.47

  And note Konstantin Simonov’s description in 1958 of the enormous emotion aroused by the speech made by Stalin on the radio shortly after the start of the German invasion. When one of the listeners, a war casualty, heard Stalin address the people using the words ‘Brothers and sisters! My friends!’, he asked himself: ‘Was it possible that only a tragedy like war could revive those words and that sentiment?… But what Stalin’s speech had left in the souls of everybody was primarily the feverish hope for a change.’48

  It is hard to know whether aspirations of this kind were rife among the Russian partisans fighting in Italy, as Michel has suggested that they were in some way present in the partisans fighting in the occupied territories of Russia.49 It is equally hard to understand, if we go back beyond the apologias made after the event, how much the Russian partisans fighting in Italy contributed to feeding the myth of the USSR. Testimonies conflict. The Christian Democrat Ermanno Gorrieri extols their valorous and disciplined behaviour in the Republic of Montefiorino, criticising, if anything, the sycophancy of the Communist press towards them.50 In the Communist documentary sources, along with the many and obvious positive recognitions, expressions of ‘unitary’ concern appear, kindled by the fact that the Soviets did not intend to remove the hammer and sickle from their caps. But behaviour of this kind could aid the myth, and in any case it showed that sinistrismo was not just a ‘mask of the Gestapo’. Concerns about social extremism appear, because the Soviets ‘are plundering villas and houses of signori only because they are such even if they aren’t Fascists, and of small land-owners’. But this too could, in some cases, feed the myth. Finally, there arose what might be called perplexities concerning public morality (buon costume), because the Soviets got drunk and made ‘unbridled use’ of food, creating problems above all with the peasants.51 Iron discipline and lack of restraint were qualities that seemed to coexist in the Russians and Yugoslavians, arousing both admiration and fear. Again, the Soviets’ wish to go it alone was not appreciated,52 while problems were created by the difficulty in distinguishing escaping prisoners from deserting collaborationists, Cossacks and ‘Mongols’.53

  That the name mongoli was attributed to all, or almost all, Soviet collaborationists, excluding Cossacks, with whom one came into contact indicates how marked was the tendency to saddle that distant and terrifying Asian people with an undeniable fact that might cast a shadow on the myth of Soviet Russia.54 And it could so happen that Germans and Fascists ‘pretended to be Mongols so as to do what they liked without shame. One M
ongol had a southern Italian accent.’55

  1 The article ‘The Irish Flag’ was published in Workers’ Republic of 8 April 1916, and republished in P. Mac Aonghusa and L. Ó Régáin, The Best of Connolly, Cork: Mercier Press, 1967, pp. 195–7 (I thank Paul Ginsborg for giving me this information).

  2 See Christopher Hill, ‘Gerrard Winstanley: 17th Century Communist’, lecture at Kingston University, 24 January 1996.

  3 See Autoritarismo, p. 246; and the arguments of M. Barrès in Scènes et doctrines du nationalisme (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1925, vol. I, p. 105) with regard to the defence of the worker against the foreigner, cited by Marco Diani, ‘Metamorphosis of Nationalism: Durkheim, Barrès and the Dreyfus Affair’, Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 13: 4 (1991) pp. 71–94 (my thanks to Manco Diani for making me aware of this).

  4 Collotti, L’amministrazione tedesca, p. 159 (the episode took place in February 1944).

  5 Letter from the Turin SAP Division Command to the Command of the 1st Sector, 25 January 1945 (IG, BG, 06106); letter from the PCI central commission for agitation and propaganda to the Lazio committee, which had requested advice on what reply to give to a request for clarification made on 12 December 1943 by Carla, Nistro and Leone, as regards the concept of patria. (Documenti inediti sulle posizioni del PCI e del PSIUP, pp. 125–31); ‘La Patria’, Voce Operaia, 28 January 1944.

  6 ‘La classe operaia e la questione nazionale’, L’Unità, Rome edition, 3 November 1943.

  7 ‘Circolare riservata ai comitati locali’, 31 October 1943, published with the title ‘La politica del Partito d’Azione nei primi mesi della lotta armata’, in Formazioni GL, pp. 48–53: p. 49.

  8 ‘Relazione attacco al … Val d’Ossola dal 12 al 24 giugno 1944’ (IG, BG, 08648); Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, p. 451. The condemned man could also take solace in religion.

  9 N.d., unsigned, in MRB, Raccolta Adversi. The leaflet was printed on the eve of the rice-workers’ 12 June 1944 strike (see L. Arbizzani, ‘Manifesti, opuscoli, fogli volanti’, in L. Bergonzini, La Resistenza a Bologna. Testimonianze e documenti, Istituto per la storia di Bologna, vol. IV, Bologna, 1975, p. 187). See also the first issue (n.d.) of La Mondariso. Organo delle mondine bolognesi.

  10 La Lotta, 30 June 1944, cited in Casali, Il movimento di liberazione a Ravenna, vol. I, p. 61.

  11 Le Réveil des métallos. Organe de défense des métallos de la région rouennaise, 1 September 1941.

  12 The letter, which appeared in the Imola La Comune of April 1944, was cited in M. Legnani, ‘Aspetti economici delle campagne settentrionali e motivi di politica agraria nei programmi dei partiti antifascisti (1942–45)’, in Il Movimento di liberazione in Italia 78 (January–March 1965), pp. 21–2.

  13 Testimony of Rosanna Rolando, later forgotten by the Republic and the Communist Party itself, Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, pp. 30–1.

  14 Cited in Briguglio, Clero e contadini, p. 337.

  15 See Pajetta, Il ragazzo rosso va alla guerra, p. 42.

  16 Text of the ‘political hour’ on ‘social classes’ held by the 1st Osoppo Brigade Command, Le classi sociali, in IZDG, envelope 272b, file. I/A.

  17 ‘Si tu veux la paix, main tendui aux ouvriers Allemands et Italiens’, La Vérité, 30 July 1943 (editorial).

  18 The expression is from V. Foa, La Gerusalemme rimandata. Domande di oggi agli inglesi del primo Novecento, Turin: Rosenberg e Sellier, 1985, p. 201.

  19 See La giovane vita di Dante Di Nanni raccontata da un suo compagno di lotta, undated, without page numbers.

  20 See Flamigni and Marzocchi, Resistenza in Romagna, pp. 137, 165–6, 178. The quote is from p. 165, while on p. 172 one of the accusations against Libero’s partisans is that of having established a ‘Dipartimento del Corniolo’ in the image of the Cisalpine Republic. The document to which it refers is a ‘Rapporto generale’ by the Commander of the 8th Romagna Brigade, Pietro Mauri, on military activity in Romagna up to 15 May 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, pp. 411–21).

  21 Interview with Angelo Raffaelli, born in 1902, a Communist, in G. Contini, Memoria e storia. Le Officine Galileo nel racconto degli operai, dei tecnici, dei manager, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1985, pp. 359, 351–5.

  22 Remo Righetti, in Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 146.

  23 On this, see the calmly worded yet sharp exposition of the issue, stressing the full value of the Livorno split, in the 26 October 1943 L’Unità Rome edition’s commentary on the pact for unity in action with the Socialists.

  24 La Vérité, 30 July 1943.

  25 ‘La Federazione di Ancona alla Direzione centrale del Partito: relazione politica’, n.d., but early December 1943 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, pp. 147–8).

  26 See ‘La nostra guerra’, Avanti!, Rome edition, 26 September 1943.

  27 ‘L’ ora che incalza’, Avanti!, Rome edition, 20 May 1944.

  28 See ‘Norme nell’attuale situazione politico-militare’, probably produced by the Command of C Division, 25 December 1944 (Formazioni GL, p. 259).

  29 M. Agulhon, ‘Les communistes et la libération de la France’ (paper to the ‘Colloque international “La libération de la France” ’, 28–31 October 1974), cited in Quazza, Resistenza e storia d’Italia, p. 188.

  30 Letter of 10 November 1943 from the ‘Secretariat of the Communist Party’ to the Turin organisation, which criticises the inadequate link that No. 8 of Il Grido di Spartaco drew between economic demands and the struggle against the Germans and fascists. The letter was written by Longo (Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, p. 177).

  31 Progetto di piano di lavoro del Partito d’azione, INSMLI, Carte Damiani (envelope I, folder 7).

  32 ‘La via giusta’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 24 December 1943.

  33 ‘Giù la maschera agli affamatori del popolo’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 31 October 1943.

  34 L’Unità, Northern edition, 29 September 1943.

  35 ‘Via dalle file del CLN I capitalisti – i traditori’ (‘Kick the capitalists-traitors out of the CLN’) Il Combattente, 1 January 1944. Again, this combination of the two terms might have more than one interpretation: did it mean expelling all of the capitalists as well as all of the traitors, or only those capitalists who were also traitors? Or, perhaps, that capitalists could not but be traitors?

  36 ‘Non c’ è tempo da perdere’, editorial of L’Unità, Northern edition, 10 January 1944.

  37 Togliatti, Opere, vol. V, p. 76. See the article in L’Unità, Northern edition, 20 February 1944, ‘I grandi capitalisti vendono le nostre macchine ai tedeschi’.

  38 See ‘Informazioni da Torino’ by Alfredo, official responsible for the Piedmont insurrectionary triumvirate, of 13 December 1944, Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 67) and ‘Scioperi e dimostrazioni di popolo in tutta l’Italia occupata’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 10 December 1944.

  39 L’Unità, Rome edition, 23 March 1944.

  40 Atti CLNAI, p. 111.

  41 93. Organe des héritiers de la Révolution française, July 1942, p. 3, which even invokes ‘the ancient land of Gaul’. The first issue of the paper, published in St Étienne in May 1942, bore these words by Joseph Barthélemy as an epigraph: ‘Liberty is still spelled in French letters.’

  42 La Riscossa italiana, June 1944.

  43 ‘Sestri Ponente – Dalla San Giorgio’, L’Unità, Ligurian edition, 5 September 1944.

  44 INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 2, subfolder 10.

  45 Ibid.

  46 The document is published, undated, as an appendix to Bravo, La Repubblica partigiana dell’Alto Monferrato, p. 234.

  47 The text of the warning is in ISRT, Archivio Medici Tornaquinci, envelope 4, IV, 1, No. 7. The CLN recalled its own decree No. 11 of 4 February 1944.

  48 Atti CLNAI, pp. 121, 107–8. On the PCI’s insistent work to involve the CLNAI in the March 1944 strike by means of the aforementioned appeal, see Ganapini, Lotte operaie: Milano, p. 182 (and also the elaboration of this essay in Un
a città, la guerra).

  49 INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 5, file 2. On the economic commission, see the record of the 5 February 1945 CLNAI meeting in Atti CLNAI, pp. 243–7.

  50 October 1943 letter, in Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, pp. 173–5. In a subsequent letter of 10 November, Secchia recognised the improvements made in No. 4 of La Fabbrica, but again criticised an appeal devoted more to inciting the ‘patriotism of the industrialists’ than the ‘workers’ spirit of struggle’, and considering the title of the article ‘Gli operai non temono la fama’ (‘The workers are not afraid of hunger’) to be ‘absolutely wretched’. (pp. 177–8).

  51 The proposal fell, having been backed by the Communists alone (testimony of Vittorio Foa to the author, September 1986). According to the ISTAT index, 50,000 lire in 1944 corresponded to 3,850,000 as of 1990.

  52 Letter to the Turin organisation, 10 November 1943, in Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, p. 176.

  53 ‘Direttive per l’atteggiamento da prendersi nei confronti dei fascisti e dei capitalisti’, 21 September 1943 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 109). Gibelli and Ilardi have a rather reductive interpretation of this document, insofar as they believe it speaks to the PCI’s foreignness to the shop floor, as expressed in their Lotte operaie: Genova, pp. 120–1.