A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

  148 Testimony of Guglielmo Vannozzi, in Portelli, Biografia di una città, pp. 264–5.

  149 ‘Alcuni rilievi sull’organizzazione della 3a divisione’ (Liguria), n.d. (IG, BG, 010473).

  150 See the letter from the Command of the divisions in the Valsesia, Ossola, Cusio, and Verbano areas (Cino and Ciro) to the Delegation for Lombardy, 12 February 1945 (IG, BG, 07907).

  151 Testimony of Nelia Benissone Costa on the assembly held at the Turin Microtecnica plant (Bruzzone and Farina, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 55).

  152 Thus commented Il Partigiano, published by Rome’s Comando Superiore Partigiano (headed by Carlo Andreoni, after his departure from the PSIUP) in the article ‘Vecchi stomaci’, 9 February 1944, which also states, ‘We are not prepared to set any question aside …’).

  153 Thus commented Carnia Libera, 1 March 1945, in the article ‘Noi Garibaldini’, which estimates the Garibaldi formations as accounting for 73 percent of all partisan forces.

  154 Bernardo, Il momento buono, pp. 167, 196.

  1 Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 296.

  2 INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 6, folder 2, subfolder 6.

  3 Testimony of Bruno Vasari, an Action Party member from Trieste born in 1911 (Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 300).

  4 See the ‘circular’ from the Command of the SAP Brigades group for Milan and its province, 1 January 1945. The same conceptions appeared in the subsequent ‘Circular No. 12’ of this same Command, from 30 January (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 181, 311–12).

  5 See, for example, the letter from the political commissar of the Friuli division, Andrea Lima, to the Udine CLN, 31 January 1945 (ibid., pp. 312–19).

  6 From the article ‘Del comunismo’, 15 September 1944, which begins ‘Each country makes its own revolution’.

  7 Their illusions in the American people quickly having collapsed, Aligi Barducci and his friends convinced themselves that ‘only the Russian people, which had made its own revolution, could help the Italian people to do likewise’; thus did M.A. and S. Timparano sketch out the development of a group of young people born under fascism (G. and E. Varlecchi, Potente, p. 75, n. 1).

  8 This reductive interpretation, tied into the polemic against attentismo, appears in Ragionieri, Il partito comunista, p. 402.

  9 A paraphrased version of this old argument was used in the aforementioned ‘open letter’ to the dissidents of Stella Rossa, writing that it was necessary to alleviate ‘the burden that has weighed down on the Red Army for over three years’. The dissidents had, moreover, spoken in their paper of the ‘tortured flesh of the Russian people’ (see Dellavalle, Lotte operaie: Torino, p. 208).

  10 On the repercussions of the dissolution of the Comintern, decreed on 15 May 1943, for PCI cadre, see Ragionieri, Il partito comunista, pp. 310–18.

  11 See the Rome edition of L’Unità, 3 November 1943, whose whole front page was covered with the title ‘On the 26th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the people of the whole world see the dawn of the victory of freedom and of national independence’; see various titles and subtitles of the northern edition of 7 November 1943, and the article ‘Perché è necessario che prenda il potere il CLN’ (‘Why it is necessary for the CLN to take power’) which sought to dispel ‘leftist’ qualms; and the 7 November poster in which the USSR, following an old formulation, was defined as the ‘fatherland of all workers’, in P. Secchia and F. Frassati, Storia della Resistenza, Rome: Riuniti, Rome 1965, vol. I, p. 300. At the same time, L’Unità referred to ‘the victory of the Soviet Union and of its allies’; and the article ‘Con l’URSS per la vittoria e per la libertà!’ (‘With the USSR, for victory and freedom!’) concluded with the statement that ‘the Soviet Union is guiding the United Nations to victory, the liberation of peoples’ (northern edition, 29 September 1943).

  12 See the article ‘La schiacciante vittoria dell’Esercito Rosso (oltre la Vistola)’ in the Emilia-Romagna edition of L’Unità, 30 July 1944, and the 3 July 1944 letter from the Lombardy Delegation of the General Command of the Garibaldi Brigades to the formations of Como province, n.d. (INSMLI, Brigate Garibaldi, envelope 2, folder 1, subfolder 1).

  13 ‘Ottobre rosso’, in La voce della realtà, published by the 19th Eusebio Giambone Brigade, 13 August 1944 (IG, BG, 04741).

  14 Editorial ‘Saluto al popolo sovietico’, 1 March 1945.

  15 ‘L’Unione Sovietica combatte in Germania’, 7 November 1944.

  16 ‘L’ Armata proletaria ha sfondato lo schieramento tedesco sul Nipro e a Melitopol’, Northern edition, 31 October 1943.

  17 Letter from the Command of the 1st Zone, signed ‘Curto’, to the inspector Simon, 8 July 1944 (IG, BG, 010046).

  18 Article in the series ‘Domande e risposte’, in the northern edition of 7 November 1944.

  19 Thus, for example, Pietro addressed himself to his ‘dear comrades’ in the Cuneo area on 14 December 1944, exhorting them to read the articles which La nostra lotta was publishing on the USSR and on progressive democracy (IG, BG, 04467). On the connection between Togliatti’s conception of progressive democracy and the Soviet experience of state-building, see F. Sbarberi, I comunisti italiani e lo Stato 1929–1945, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980, especially the fifth chapter.

  20 See the article ‘La Costituzione sovietica’ in L’Unità (Asti), 15 November 1944, La Costituzione sovietica, and the 4th Piedmont Division Command’s request for the text of the Constitution, on 25 February 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 419).

  21 The text of these lectures is held at IZDG, envelope 272b, folder 1/A.

  22 From the aforementioned testimony of Angelo Raffaelli (Contini, Memoria e storia, p. 352).

  23 On 24 February 1944 the Commissariat of the General Command circulated ‘outline political report for political commissars, on the events of the week, no. 3’ with the theme of ‘The 26th anniversary of the Red Army and the military situation (INSMLI, Brigate Garibaldi, envelope 1, folder 4). On 27 February, Rino communicated from the Valli di Lanzo to his ‘dear comrades’: ‘Today we have marked the 26th anniversary of the Red Army amidst an openly patriotic and revolutionary atmosphere’ (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 273).

  24 Testimony of Corrado Polli, born 1921, adding: ‘Russia was, for us, a mirage’. A manager of the factory, the engineer Francesco Brini, commented ‘They claimed already to have become Russians’ (Contini, Memoria e storia, pp. 90–2, 214).

  25 Ibid., p. 82.

  26 See the report on the Picelli detachment, written by ‘Facio’ for the Command of the North Emilia Brigade (IG, BG, Emilia-Romagna, G.IV.2.2).

  27 Thus was signed Luigi Longo’s 10 November 1943 letter to the Turin leadership, held at IG, Archivio PCI and published in Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, pp. 176–7, with the passage cited in the text omitted. However, the error made by a ‘candidate’ intellectual, in speaking of the ‘nationalism’ of Stalin, was instead considered ‘possible to overcome, with the right clarification’ (anonymous document, presumably from late November 1943, with regard to the Marche: IG, Archivio PCI).

  28 The song’s text appears in Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 263 (see also p. 314: ‘Thus we went to fight, thus we lived Stalin’): ‘Brothers, comrades, villages and cities / We’re the partisans of your liberties / Workers and peasants, in struggle we’ll unite / On Stalin’s call we are first to the fight / Workers and peasants destroy the invader / The Fascist stooges and the German destroyer / Now’s the time for battle, Italians arise / See now, Communists, the red flag flies’.

  29 ‘Relazione sulla situazione politica e militare della nostra provincia’, Terni, 1 February 1944; ‘Relazione militare’, n.d., but early 1944, Alv. (Alviano?) (IG, Archivio PCI e BG, 012373).

  30 See Fredo’s report from the Varese, November 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).

  31 ‘Dichiarazioni sulle direttive politiche del MCI’, in Bandiera Rossa, 28 December 1943.

  32 K. Sonetti, ‘La présence du mythe dans un fragment de con
science ouvrière: Pietro Gori et Staline parmi les ouvriers de l’entreprise Ilva à Portoferraio’, in Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, IV Colloque international d’Histoire orale, Aix-en-Provence, 24–26 septembre 1982, Université d’Aix-en-Provence, n.d., pp. 428–34. My thanks to Sonetti for making me aware of this.

  33 Calamandrei, La vita indivisibile, p. 161, under the date of 27 March 1944. This was four days after the Via Rasella attack, of which Calamandrei was one of the protagonists.

  34 One man to shout ‘viva la libertà’ at the firing squad was Luigi Clerici, whose name was then adopted by the Fronte Proletario brigade (see the Bollettino No. 45 of the brigade command, 24 August 1944, in IG, BG, 0626). For the partisans who fell shouting the name of Stalin, see again the report signed by Sandro, 28 January 1944, on the Fratelli Bandiera detachment active in the Biellese, where another partisan – evidently moustachioed – had the nom de guerre ‘Whiskers’, so as not to confuse the sacred with the profane; and ‘Rapporto della compagna Milena sull’attività della formazione partigiana Ugo Stanzioni’, Modena, 8 April 1944 (IG, BG, 05087 e 03001; another part of this latter document is quoted in Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 342).

  35 Ferruccio Mauri’s testimony in Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 314.

  36 ‘Ripresa delle relazioni diplomatiche con l’URSS’ in L’Unità, Rome edition, 23 March 1944, and ‘La conferenza di Mosca’ in the northern edition, 7 November 1943.

  37 Interview with Libero, L’Unità, Rome edition, 18 May 1945.

  38 See ‘La recente riforma della costituzione sovietica. Il riconoscimento della più completa autonomia nazionale ai popoli dell’URSS’ in L’Unità, Rome edition, 12 February 1944. So, too, did L’Italia libera speak of the ‘great reform, daring in conception and prompt in implementation’ (‘La riforma costituzionale dell’Unione Sovietica’, Lombard edition, 12 February 1944). Even the royalist Italia nuova praised the reform, mocking the Fascist interpretation according to which it was a mere ruse (‘Le riforme costituzionali in Russia’, 4 April 1944).

  39 See the commentary in the northern edition of L’Unità, 10 April 1944, on Molotov’s statements as Soviet troops entered into Romania.

  40 See the pamphlet Il partito d’azione: cos’ è e cosa vuole (The Action Party: What It Is and What It Wants), December 1943, p. 12.

  41 ‘Il discorso di Smuts e il federalismo europeo’, in the Rome edition of 30 December 1943.

  42 Editorial ‘Considerazioni sulla guerra’, 15 September 1944. See, on the precedents of this idea, V. C. Fišera, ‘Communisme et intégration supranationale. “La Fédération Balkanique” (1924–32)’, in Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine XXXIV (July– September 1987), pp. 497–508.

  43 ‘L’Esecutivo del partito definisce la posizione dei socialisti di fronte al nuovo Governo Badoglio ed ai problemi della unità d’azione e della unità antifascista’, Avanti!, Rome edition, 6 May 1944. The text has been reproduced in S. Neri Serneri, Il partito socialista nella Resistenza, Nistri-Lischi, Pisa 1988, pp. 142–50.

  44 See the pamphlet printed under the pseudonym ‘Leo Aldi’, ‘Socialismo di oggi e di domani’, (Quaderni dell’Italia Libera, December 1943, p. 17).

  45 See the testimony of Spinelli, Io, Ulisse, pp. 316–17. Spinelli adds that he and Ernesto Rossi did not share in Colorni’s optimism.

  46 On the long ascendancy of this type of hope (the Two-and-a-Half International, Guild Socialism, etc.), ripening again during the war, see G. D. H. Cole’s History of Socialist Thought, vol. IV, Communism and Social Democracy 1914–1931, and Vol. 5, Socialism and Fascism.

  47 Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, p. 40.

  48 See Ehrenburg’s testimony cited in Valiani, Il partito d’azione, p. 129. At the 12th International Congress of Historical Sciences held at Vienna in 1965, I asked the Soviet scholars present whether, among the peoples of the USSR, such expectations had really arisen. The response was that only a bourgeois in hock to imperialism could foster the idea that the Soviets had fought for something other than the Soviet system, as it then existed. So they said in public; but then, in private, their delegation leader, Evgeny Boltin, apologised for their having been so aggressive.

  49 Michel, Gli Alleati e la Resistenza in Europa, pp. 75–7.

  50 Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, p. 373. ‘The Russians and Slovenes’, an anonymous and dateless ‘report by a partisan’ on the Apennines near Modena commented, ‘upheld the necessity of an iron discipline and were rather predisposed to neglecting the educational aspect’ (IG, BG, 02255).

  51 See ‘Rapporto generale sull’attività militare in Romagna (dall’8 settembre 1943 al 15 maggio 1944)’, and a 12 March 1944 proposal to constitute ‘Garibaldi Brigades of Romagna’, where, out of a total of 218 men, there were eighteen Soviets – including a company commander – two German deserters, six Czechs (presumably also Wehrmacht deserters), fourteen Slovenes, two Poles and five Englishmen (IG, BG, Emilia-Romagna, G.IV.I.4 and G.IV.2.7).

  52 See the documents cited in the previous note, and the 9 March 1945 letter with which the commander and commissar of the divisions-group for Valsesia, Ossola, Cusio and Verbano – Cino and Ciro – explained to the ‘Russian Georgian Garibaldians of the 10th Rocco Brigade’ that, though understanding their intentions, they did not consent to their request to be organised in a single unit: would fraternisation with their Italian comrades not suffer from such a move, and how would the Georgians be able to extricate themselves in the event of a raid, for want of any knowledge of the Italian language? Not without a certain wryness, Cino and Ciro recalled that the greater part of the Georgians who had wanted to set up their own unit in Val d’Ossola had, in fact, crossed over into Switzerland (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 453–4).

  53 See ‘rapport di un partigiano’, IG, BG, 02255, and the 22 November 1944 communication from commissar Franco of the Pisacane battalion of the Natisone division to the Command of the 4th BBO battalion (Briški Beneški Odred), to the effect that he had been authorised by the Soviet mission among the 9th Corps to try to secure the desertion of the Cossacks occupying Carnia desert (IZDG, envelope 221, folder III/3).

  54 A Communist leader who was for some days a prisoner of the ‘Mongols’ during the January 1945 raid in the Piacenza region described it thusly: ‘All the troops were Russians – and add to that the fact that they were workers, intellectuals, peasants – who justified their subservience to the Germans by invoking the fact that they had been continually beaten up in prison, and not given anything to eat’ (Report by Giglioli, 20 January, in IG, BG, Emilia-Romagna, G.IV.2.6).

  55 Lazagna, Ponte rotto, pp. 205–6.

  CHAPTER 7

  Violence

  1. THE PROBLEM OF VIOLENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF WAR

  Common to the three aspects of the Resistance distinguished in the preceding chapters – the three wars – is the exercise of violence. Resistance violence lends itself, therefore, to a synthetic discourse that, though it will be impossible to avoid returning to some of the themes that have already come to light, nevertheless gives us the opportunity to get them into clearer focus. Bloody violence lies at the centre of this discourse; but around the problems that it poses can be grouped several of the arguments that have come to be part of the historiographical tradition of the Resistance.

  I shall not attempt a quantitative, and inaccurate, reconstruction of the acts of violence committed by the two warring parties. If we remember that in the Second World War around 50 million human lives in all were lost, the number of Italians killed between September 1943 and April 1945 is relatively small: 44,720 partisans who fell fighting and 9,980 killed in reprisals, to whom should be added 21,168 partisans and 412 civilians mutilated and disabled.1 The total toll after the Armistice was 187,522 fallen (120,060 of whom were civilians) and 210,149 missing (122,668 of whom were civilians). Between 10 June 1940 and 8 September 1943 the Italian armed forces had had 92,767 fallen (to whom 25,499 civilians should be added), while the
missing had been 106,228. Altogether, then, Italian losses in the Second World War (dead and missing, soldiers and civilians, men and women) came to 444,523. Other countries had far bloodier experiences: in the Soviet Union, 20 million dead, 7 million of whom were civilians (altogether, 10 percent of the population); Yugoslavia, 1,690,000; Poland, 6 million (22 percent of the population – the highest percentage in the world, due to the almost total elimination of 3.5 million Jews). Germany suffered about 5 million human losses, Japan 1.8 million.2 The enormity of the violence unleashed in the First World War3 might therefore seem to have revisited Italy, during the Second World War and the German occupation, in a relatively modest measure.

  The question, however, cannot be circumscribed in quantitative terms, not only because the number of victims is in any case high and the reaction it arouses instantly transcends the materiality of a mere numerical count, but because in doing so one would run the risk of sidestepping the fundamental historical and moral problems posed by the killing of other men and women, and by the recognition or denial of its lawfulness. Today, with so much violence going on in the world, the dichotomy is clearly recognisable – in Italy, particularly, after terrorism – between the total and meta-historical rejection of violence, especially bloody violence, and reference instead to the historical situation as founder, or denier, of the lawfulness of killing, or indeed the duty to kill, other men. The historian, and the contemporary historian most acutely, feels that espousal of the first position means stepping beyond the bounds of the discourse which, given his profession, he is called upon to conduct, and consequently reducing all wars, all revolutions, all massacres, all executions to the same level: in a word, to consider everything ‘la stessa pappa’ (‘the same pap’) (as a central European friend of mine, Irene Nunberg, a Jew, one of the few members of her family to survive extermination, has put it). On the other hand, the second position leaves one deeply troubled by virtue of the authorisation it grants the ‘philosophers of history’, whose perilousness, when they speak in the name of the powers that be, our century’s events have amply demonstrated. And yet the historian cannot duck the task of placing in the flux of time and contextualising in the situation in which he sees them occurring the manifestations of violence that he encounters in the course of his research. In doing so he should not forget that there exists a problem of life and death that it is not his task to resolve. All the historian can do is illustrate the forms in which this problem has manifested itself through the centuries, as Ariès’s and Vovelle’s by now classic works4 have shown that it is possible to attempt to do.