166 Many good examples of this mediating influence appear in Guidetti Serra, Compagne.
167 ‘Serrare le file e vincere ogni difficoltà per la vittoria dell’insurrezione nazionale’, an article filling almost the whole of the 25 November 1944 Northern edition of L’Unità.
168 ‘Rapporto del compagno Do. sull’organizzazione della quale ha assunto la direzione’ (IG, Archivio PCI).
169 ‘Rapporto d’attività del mese di maggio’, sent on 10 June 1944 from the Lombardy Delegation to the General Command (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 23).
170 ‘Storia dell’organizzazione sportivo-militare del Partito Comunista della provincia di Cremona’, compiled by the Command of the SAP Brigade F. Ghinaglia, dated 1 November 1944 (IG, BG, 011242). Varese and Como provided a similar story.
171 ‘Relazione del compagno Bruno al Centro regionale del PCI sulla situazione in Benecija’, 13 September 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, pp. 327–30).
172 ‘Appunti sull’organizzazione di …’, 8 December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
173 ‘These young people’, the document proceeds, ‘love the Communists and want to become Communists’ – ‘Rapporto di Giordano sul lavoro militare nel Biellese’, 19 January 1944 (IG, BG, 05081).
174 ‘Informazioni da Milano’, 15 December 1944 (IG, Archivio PCI; it appears in part in Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, see p. 709).
175 Salvati, Il Psiup Alta Italia, p. 78: ‘The material on trade-unions in the [Basso] archive confirms how far behind the Party was organisationally’.
176 See the ‘Circolare al comitato cittadino e al comitato provinciale’, a letter to the city and provincial committees of the P. (Padua?) federation of the PCI – undated, but from after the Salerno Turn (IG, Archivio PCI).
177 ‘Informazioni dall’Emilia’, 4 October 1944 (IG, BG, Emilia-Romagna, G.IV.2.8.)
178 ‘Relazione della riunione del Comando Brigata Tollot del giorno 27 marzo 1945’, in Bernardo, Il momento buono, p. 228.
179 Letter to the 4th Piedmont Division (IG, BG, 04998).
180 Title of the editorial of La Vérité of 15 September 1943; ‘Sulla guerra’, Prometeo, 1 March 1945.
181 ‘Circolare del PCI sui CLN’, 29 October 1943, from the Rome federation of the PCI (Documenti inediti sulle posizioni del PCI e del PSIUP, p. 103).
182 Canfora, La sentenza, p. 72.
183 Report from Giacomo, Modena, to the Emilia-Romagna insurrectionary triumvirate, 27 March 1945 (IG, Archivio PCI).
184 For example, a 9 March 1944 report by Remo Scappini to his local federal committee speaks of the Genova PCI ‘resembling an old maximalist formation’ (Gibelli and Ilardi, Lotte operaie: Genova, p. 115).
185 For a quick overview of these groups, see A. Peregalli, ‘L’ altra Resistenza. La dissidenza di sinistra durante la RSI’, in Studi bresciani. Quaderni della Fondazione Micheletti, 1986, 1, pp. 31–7.
186 This being the expression used by Spriano, Storia del Partito comunista italiano, vol. V, p. 125.
187 As seen from Rome, ‘The Northern comrades, starting with Longo and Secchia, were not, by any chance, still developing the “leftist” tendencies of not long before?’ (Pajetta, Il ragazzo rosso va alla guerra, p. 105).
188 Inverni (V. Foa), I partiti, p. 79. See also how Ragionieri wrote of sectarianism as ‘a safety-valve of that never-tamed class spirit whose needs could never be satisfied by means of the national-unity policy’ (Il partito comunista, p. 396).
189 A term advanced in the literature by L. Cortesi: see in particular ‘Storia del PCI e miseria del riformismo’, in Belfagor, XXXII, 2, 31 March 1977, esp. from p. 204, and ‘Pietro Secchia da Livorno alla Resistenza’, Belfagor, XLI, 6, 30 November 1986, esp. pp. 436–7.
190 ‘Commento al rapporto organizzativo’, signed ‘Alfredo’, 25 December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI); and Luraghi, Il movimento operaio torinese, pp. 43–4.
191 See the record of the 16–18 December 1944 meetings (IG, Archivio PCI, ‘Direzione. Verbali riunioni 1944’).
192 These words appear in Secchia’s article ‘Il sinistrismo maschera della Gestapo’, p. 17.
193 See the leadership’s instructions ‘to all party-activists’ who reached Turin on 4 November 1943 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 122).
194 ‘De Staline à Vlassov’, La Vérité, 20 July 1943.
195 See the letter from the Lombardy Delegation to the Command of the 1st Valsesia Division, 9 August 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 231); the letter from M. N. of the 1st Division to the Secretariat of the Milan Federal Committee of the PCI (IG, BG, 06199); and the letter from M. ‘on behalf of the Secretariat of the Federal Committee’, 10 August (‘Caro Michele’, IG, BG, 08729).
196 See Giovanni’s report of 2 December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
197 See ‘Relazione sulla insurrezione armata e conseguente liberazione della città di Massa e Carrara’, sent from the local federation to the PCI leadership in Rome on 24 April 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 687–92). A vigorous call to armed struggle was published in Azione libertaria of 15 September 1944, such that the masses would not be ‘shapeless and docile’ upon the arrival of the Allies.
198 See the testimony of Nelia Benissone Costa, in Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 34.
199 Peregalli, L’altra Resistenza, p. 33.
200 This judgment on Stella Rossa was made in Osvaldo Negarville’s report of 12 January 1944, cited in Dellavalle, Lotte operaie: Torino, p. 230.
201 ‘Riunione dei rappresentanti di Partito’ (‘Meeting of Party representatives’), in a Padua workshop, 18 March 1945 (IG, Archivio PCI; reproduced in part in Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 490–4).
202 Report by Colombi on Stella Rossa, No. 20, August 1944 (cited in Ragionieri, Il partito comunista, p. 395).
203 Report by Giovanni, 8 December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
204 A shadow was cast over the absorption of Stella Rossa into the PCI by the mysterious death of one of the group’s leaders, Temistocle Vaccarella, in Milan in May 1944 (see, among others, Anonimo Romagnolo, 1943–45, pp. 328–35). On Stella Rossa, see Luraghi, Il movimento operaio torinese, pp. 202ff and 241ff.
205 Letter of 6 December 1943 in Longo, I centri dirigenti del PCI, p. 172.
206 See the criticisms made by the commissar of the 1st Gramsci Division, Michele, in a letter to the commissar of the 118th Servadei Brigade, Aldo Tuto, of 3 March 1945, and Moscatelli’s severe reprimand of Fagno on 6 March (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 434 and n. 2).
207 ‘Il congresso di Bari’, Il Lavoratore, 3 March 1944 (cited in Peregalli, L’altra Resistenza, p. 34). On the Venegoni group, see Ganapini, Una città, la guerra, p. 67.
208 The article ‘Borghesia e fascismo’ was criticised in a letter ‘From the Party’s inspector’ ‘To the 3rd Division comrades’, 8 November 1944 (IG, BG, 01589).
209 See the Bandiera Rossa articles ‘Orizzonte rivoluzionario’ (22 October 1943); ‘Perché collaborare?’ and ‘Chiarificazione’ (5 October 1943); ‘L’ ora presente e noi’ (29 October 1943); ‘L’URSS e le realizzazioni comuniste’ (7 November 1943); and ‘La funzione dell’URSS nel conflitto mondiale’ (5 December 1943).
210 See ‘Riassunto di un intervento del compagno Giulio nel federale di Roma’, 27 November 1943 (Archivio PCI).
211 See ‘Equivoco da chiarire?’, Bandiera Rossa, 22 October 1943, responding to an article with a similar title (but without the question-mark) in L’Unità of 10 October. L’Unità’s reply, ‘Punto e basta’, on 26 October, was haughty rather than violent in tone.
212 ‘La via maestra’, Bandiera Rossa, 7 November 1943.
213 See the Bandiera Rossa article ‘Noi sovversivi!’, 22 October 1943, and ‘Necessità e base di un accordo’, 5 January 1944, which dealt with the need to work with the anarchists, who had first awoken ‘the clouded minds of the Italian proletariat’.
214 See S. Corvisieri, Bandiera rossa nella Resistenza romana, Rome: Samo
nà e Savelli, 1968, p. 8. On p. 67 he also reports that the MCd’I had 2,098 recognised combatants in Rome (as against the PCI’s 2,336).
215 The MCd’I was militarily active in Zagarolo, Palestrina, Olevano, and Anagni: see the PCI reports ‘Caratteristiche generali della zona’ and ‘Relazione politica 5a zona Prenestina’, March 1944 (IG, Archivio PCI). On the guerrilla struggle in the Prenestini mountain area, see V. Tedesco, Il contributo di Roma e della provincia nella lotta di liberazione, Cassino-Roma: Amministrazione provinciale di Roma, n.d., pp. 320–4 and 482–8.
216 Avanti! of 22 August 1943, which gives news of the foundation of the PSIUP: ‘Capitalism … is rapidly marching towards its own ruin, in Italy in particular as well as everywhere else’.
217 After the fusion of the MUP (Movimento di unità proletaria) with the PSI and the subsequent formation of the PSIUP (6 August 1943), in October Basso left the Party, founding the Fronte proletario rivoluzionario in Milan. Its paper was called Bandiera Rossa. On this whole series of events, see Salvati, Il Psiup Alta Italia, pp. 61–88. See also the documents on the CLN by the left wing of the PSIUP from September to October 1943, reproduced in Documenti inediti sulle posizioni del PCI e del PSIUP, pp. 93–8.
218 This is how Salvati, Il Psiup Alto Italia, p. 63, summarises the stance of Basso and the group of which he was leader.
1 See the appeals aimed at women in the ‘Stampa non periodica’ section of ‘Gruppi di difesa della donna’, in Saggio bibliografico, nos. 3023–145. Compare this to ‘Esame della corrispondenza censurata al 30 giugno 1944’, in ACS, SPD, CR, RSI, envelope 9, folder 3.
2 E. P. Thompson writes in his ‘Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present 50 (1971), pp. 76–136 that the ‘market-place was as much an arena of class war as the factory and mine became in the industrial revolution’ (p. 120).
3 See, for all this, ‘I Comitati di Liberazione Nazionale nella lotta contro il freddo, la fame e il terrore fascista’, La nostra lotta, III/1 (1 January 1945), pp. 2–5. The Northern edition of L’Unità published, within some of its issues (for example, those of 10 and 30 January 1945), a Bollettino della lotta del popolo italiano contro il freddo, la fame e il terrore.
4 Ellwood, Italy 1943–1945, p.113, which cites an article from the 11 September 1944, New York Times by Ann McCormick.
5 ‘Tutti uniti per la difesa del nostro pane’, La Voce operaia, 16 December 1943.
6 ‘Battaglie sindacali’, in the 8 November 1943 edition.
7 Northern edition, 25 November 1943.
8 See the 29 September 1943 edition.
9 Calamandrei, La vita indivisibile, p. 145 (9 March 1944).
10 L’Unità, Rome edition, 24 November, 7 and 24 December 1943, 30 March and 18 May 1944.
11 T. Lombardo, ‘Il mercato nero a Roma’, in Gallerano, ed., L’altro dopoguerra, pp. 181–90, and F. Anania, ‘Linee di ricerca sui partiti di massa a Roma dopo la liberazione’, in M. I. Macioti, ed., Oralità e vissuto: l’uso delle storie di vita nelle science sociali, Naples: Liguori, 1986, pp. 150–9. Anania makes reference to Edoardo D’Onofri’s review, ‘Le borgate di Roma e il romanzo di Pasolini’ (on Pasolini’s novel Una vita violenta), published in the second 1960 issue of Rinascita.
12 Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 40.
13 IG, Archivio PCI.
14 P. Togliatti, ‘Il PCI e l’autonomia’, in Cronache meridionali, IV, 7–8, July–August 1957, p. 428.
15 ‘Istruzioni del Comando della divisione SAP Torino alle brigate SAP della provincia’, 10 November 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, pp. 557–61).
16 Special edition in leaflet form, 25 November 1944 (for the Milan strikes).
17 De Luna, Lotte operaie e Resistenza, p. 512.
18 Letter from Pordenone, transcribed in the ‘Esame della corrispondenza censurata al 30 giugno 1944’ (ACS, SPD, CR, RSI, envelope 9, folder 3).
19 Artom, Diari, p. 85 (under the date 23 November 1943). Artom placed his hopes in the arrival of a veteran officer of the International Brigades in Spain; but he was then forced to recognise that not even Carnera – the nom de guerre of the officer concerned – would be able to get the men to obey him (p. 97).
20 Vineis (Pietro Secchia) to the Valli di Lanzo military committee, 21 December 1943 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 177).
21 This was the plan of the ‘4th Zone Ruggeri Brigade’ with regard to Polvareto and Solarolo in Cremona province, from 26 March 1945 (IG, Archivio PCI).
22 Bernardo, Il momento buono, pp. 71, 57.
23 See Bravo, La Repubblica partigiana dell’Alto Monferrato, pp. 232–3.
24 The first two quotes are from a report by Falco, ‘I nuovi e vecchi compagni. Mie impressioni’, of the Nino Franchi detachment of the 58th Garibaldi Brigade, 5 November 1944 (INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 2, subfolder 12); the third from Chiodi, Banditi, p. 33 (12 August 1944).
25 Le Père Duchesne, September 1942. Robespierre’s words were attributed to his speech on universal suffrage given to the National Assembly on 22 October 1789. However, they do not appear on the pages dedicated to this speech (pp. 130–3) in Œuvres de Maximilien Robespierre, VI, Discours, I, 1789–90, ed. by M. Bouloiseau, G. Lefebvre and A. Soboul, Paris: PUF, 1950.
26 L’Unità, Northern edition, 10 January 1945: ‘A 24 anni dalla fondazione del PCI. Il PC forza essenziale della Rinascita’.
27 A. Malraux, The Conquerors, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 85, 109, on Garine and Hong (original version: Les conquérants, Paris: B. Grasset, 1928).
28 Battaglia, Un uomo, p. 37. The destruction of the municipal archives is not to be confused with what happened to the Fascist archives immediately after 25 July 1943 on account of the popular ferment (on this, see Missori, Gerarchie e statuti del PNF, p. 89).
29 As Battaglia himself notes in his Storia della Resistenza, p. 240
30 See ‘Note sull’azione svolta a Nizza Monferrato il 10 luglio 1944’, composed by the Command of the Asti Brigade, 11 July 1944 (IG, BG, 05772). The Ligurian edition of L’Unità repeatedly published news in this spirit.
31 Report by the Ugo Muccini Brigade, n.d. (IG, Archivio PCI).
32 Report on the ‘Gruppo Salvatore’, written by Salvatore Auria, n.d. but late 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
33 Bollettino No. 49, 28 August 1944, by the Command of the 52nd Fronte Proletario Brigade (IG, BG, 0652).
34 See Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, p. 119. Similar behaviour was reported in Teramano, Montieri in Tuscany and in the Belluno region: see Ponziani Teramo 1943–1944, pp. 157–70; ‘Scontri di partigiani’, a list of actions by the Spartaco Lavagnini detachment (IG, BG, 011670); and Tramontin, Contadini e movimento partigiano, p. 296, on the array of parish reports and diaries.
35 Leaflet ‘Il grano a tutti i cittadini’, seemingly from July 1944, signed ‘Il Comitato di unità sindacale’ (republished in in Arbizzani, Manifesti, opuscoli, fogli volanti, p. 245).
36 Appeal of 10 June 1944 to farmers and peasants (see Catalano, Storia del CLNAI, p. 189). The Fascist regime had initiated a ‘battle for wheat’ to make the country self-sufficient and not require imports.
37 Undated leaflet, signed by the Ferrara PCI federation (ISRR, A. VIII, f. 1). See also the chapter ‘La battaglia del grano’ in Flamigni and Marzocchi, Resistenza in Romagna, and L. Arbizzani, Azione operaia, contadina, di massa, Bari: De Donato, 1976, Chapter 1.1.
38 See ‘Le Paysan Patriote. Organe des Comités paysans du Midi et du Sud-Ouest’, editorial of the 30 August 1943 Notre pain quotidien.
39 Like, for example, the Modena and province edition of L’Unità, in its 4 November 1944 special edition, which, reporting on the destruction of conscription and taxation records in Soliera, attributed this action to ‘the hatred against the Nazi-Fascist oppressor’.
40 See Dario’s 22 May 1944 report on the Capelli formation (in the Apennines near Parma). Federici was a longstanding militant, who, arrested in around 1934, had to defend hi
mself from the charge of having asked for a pardon, which he now claimed to have been merely an act of clemency (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, pp. 428–9).
41 The inspector attached to the Aliotta division, Albero, to the insurrectionary triumvirate for Lombardy, 24 February 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 416).
42 See ‘Rapporto’, given by ‘Sala Walter’ to the Modena PCI federation, 6 October 1944 (IG, Archivio PCI).
43 These falsifications did, however, make it rather easier to issue ‘a serious warning to all those ragbag so-called “left” groups, whose political irresponsibility … serves Hitlerite propaganda and ultimately assumes the objective role of provocation’: see the box ‘Manifestini provocatori’, L’Unità, Rome edition, 15 March 1944.
44 See the letters from ‘the Communist leaders of the Modena formations’ to the Modena PCI federation, 2 December 1944, and that of 15 December from the insurrectionary triumvirate to the federation (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 20, 91). As an example of the over-the-top Fascist falsifications, we might cite the leaflet distributed in the name of the Florence PCI, which expressed the desire to ‘destroy the family and traditional culture and exterminate intellectuals, idealists and priests’ (see ‘L’ultima arma dei fascisti’ in L’Unità, Tuscany edition, 12 July 1944). The fact that the Fascists did print leaflets and attribute them to anti-fascists is clear from the report by the minister of labour, Spinelli, to Mussolini on 1 March 1945: in this case, it was a matter of propaganda in favour of socialisation (see Deakin, Brutal Friendship, p. 748–9).
45 See the letter from the insurrectionary triumvirate to the federation of 15 December 1944, cited in the previous note, as well as that from the Modena federal committee to the triumvirate, from 4 January 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 194–201). On the fate of the Modena division, later returning to PCI control, see Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino (the comments on Davide appear on p. 283).
46 ‘Appello all’operaio’, leaflet held in the ISRT, Raccolta volantini, DC Firenze (clandestini 1943–1944).
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