A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

52 See IG, BG, 01519.

  53 Such was Al’s response to the comrades unwilling to accept his reproaches: transcript of the ‘Riunione dei rappresentanti di Partito’, the meeting of Party representatives from several Padua factories on 18 March 1945 (IG, Archivio PCI).

  54 A circular addressed to ‘all Party activists’ arriving in Turin on 4 November 1943 lamented the lack of these qualities among ‘inexpert, muddling and confusing … leaders and chiefs’ who had emerged from the shadows after 26 July (ibid.).

  55 Spinelli, Io, Ulisse, p. 101, which speaks of how the Communist Party had through twenty years been able to arouse an ‘inexhaustible capacity for martyrion’ in the ‘humble classes’ for the first time in the history of Italy.

  56 ‘La Disciplina’, in L’Unità, Rome edition, 7 December 1943.

  57 ‘Passare all’ offensiva’ (in the regular ‘Vita di Partito’ section), L’Unità, Northern edition, 21 June 1944.

  58 For example, the letter from the ‘comrades responsible’ to the political commissar of the 5th Zone in the Cuneo area, Pietro, 28 December 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 149–53).

  59 As the inspector-general Pietro (Antonio Roasio) put it, towards the end of 1943, in a communication probably addressed to the PCI leadership (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 202).

  60 Bruzzone and Farina, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 99.

  61 ‘Ancora sulla cospirazione’, L’Unità, Rome edition, 1 December 1943.

  62 Command of the Milan SAP Brigade to commands under its aegis, 1 January 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 183).

  63 Ibid., pp. 569–71.

  64 There are, moreover, testimonies of Communists who requested grace, in the letters of Resistance fighters across Europe condemned to death: see LRE, p. 347 (a Frenchman), p. 424 (a German), and pp. 515–17 (an Italian).

  65 Letter from Luigi Ciol to his family, 14 March 1945 (LRE, p. 548).

  66 ‘La vraie saison des juges’, Les Cahiers politiques, November 1943. Bloch concluded with the statement that ‘the renewed France will be an energetic, solid France’. Bloch was one of Secchia’s favourite writers (from a conversation with the present author).

  67 See ‘Intervista con Ernesto Rossi’, ed. L. Calogero La Malfa, in Quaderni dell’Istituto romano per la storia d’Italia dal fascismo alla Resistenza 1 (1969), p. 109.

  68 Letter from the Upper Italy Secretariat to the provincial and regional committees, n.d. but between late 1944 and early 1945 (INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 12).

  69 Editorial ‘Per un’Italia nuova’ in youth paper Giovani, Rome, 27 May 1944.

  70 ‘Circolare n. 2 riservata ai comitati regionali’, written during Badoglio’s ‘45 days’ (ISRT, Carte Enzo Enriques Agnoletti, envelope 1, folder 2, subfolder Documenti che riguardano l’ideologia e la storia del PdA).

  71 Pamphlet Parole chiare ai comunisti, signed by ‘Eleandro’, who described himself as a professor from a liberal-socialist background.

  72 In Carocci, La Resistenza italiana, p. 187.

  73 ‘Il Partito d’Azione è un partito socialista’, in La Libertà (Tuscany), 27 October 1943.

  74 La guerra di liberazione, pamphlet dated 1943, pp. 3–6.

  75 ‘Norme per gli ispettori’, 25 December 1944. All of these norms were imbued with a strong pedagogical spirit (published under the title ‘La guerra in città’, in Formazioni GL, pp. 257–63).

  76 Letter to Umberto Calosso, sent from New York to London, 22 November 1943 (CSPG, Fondo Calosso, envelope 13).

  77 Inverni (V. Foa), I partiti, p. 56.

  78 See Bocca, La Repubblica di Mussolini, p. 198.

  79 Valiani, Azionisti, pp. 80–1.

  80 G. Agosti and L. Bianco, Un’ amicizia partigiana. Lettere 1943–1945, introduced and edited by G. De Luna, Turin: Albert Meynier, 1990.

  81 See Bianchi, I cattolici, p. 159.

  82 On Olivelli’s ambiguity, here, see Webster, The Cross and the Fasces, p. 210.

  83 ‘Orizzonti economici e Principi’ in Rinascita, 25 March 1944.

  84 ‘Noi e i cattolici’ in L’Azione, 10 November 1943, and ‘Scuola sociale cristiana’, in Rinascita, 25 March 1944. On the Social Christians, see A. Parisella, ed., Gerardo Bruni e i cristiano sociali, Rome: Edizioni del Lavoro, 1984.

  85 See, for example, ‘Parole chiare al cattolico medio’, in Voce Operaia, 15 January 1944.

  86 ‘Parole chiare’, Voce Operaia, 26 October 1943.

  87 Note the several sharp observations in A. Del Noce, ‘Genesi e significato della prima sinistra cattolica italiana postfascista’, in Storia contemporanea II (1971), pp. 1035–124.

  88 ‘Religione e comunismo’, in Voce Operaia, 5 January 1944, in which Machiavelli, Galilei, Vico, the men of the Enlightenment, Kant, the romantics, the French revolutionaries, Hegel, and – albeit in different hues – Marx were termed ‘angelic sinners’.

  89 ‘Le fatiche totali di Voce Operaia’, Il Segno, 18 May 1944. The utterly fundamentalist Il Segno – which held that ‘the ultimate goal’ of Christian Democracy should be the Catholicisation of the state – took a position towards that party which we would today call collateralismo (outside sponsorship by an organization that is not itself expressly political). See the editorial ‘Posizioni’, signed ‘Signifer’, from the first issue, 1 March 1944.

  90 ‘A proposito di politica e morale’, signed ‘g’, La Punta, 2 February 1944 (the first issue). The paper, whose motto was ‘I cut and drive forth’, was headed by Giulio Andreotti, Giorgio Tupini and Cesare Dall’Oglio (see Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, p. 134).

  91 ‘Ai giovani’, La Punta 2 February 1944 editorial, signed ‘Grint’.

  92 Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, pp. 542–3.

  93 Letter to the Ravenna Christian Democracy, 15 March 1945 (my italics): Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 487.

  94 Letter to Pippo, 6 July 1944 (IG, BG, 06162).

  95 Transcript of a meeting of commissars and Party organisers attached to the 3rd Lombardy Division, 20 October 1944 (ibid., 01519).

  96 Letter from Andrea Lima to the ‘Communist directorate’ and to the Command of the Friuli battalion, undated (IZDG, envelope 534, folder III/1). Curious evidence of what the Communists would have wished the Christian Democrats to have been like is given by the article ‘Comunismo e democrazia cristiana’, in the 5 September 1944 L’Unità (Liguria edition), which is presented as having been submitted by a group of Christian Democrats. The article is so made-to-measure as to give every impression of having been written by a Communist who is not ashamed to say that the greatest contribution to the liberation struggle came from the Communists and Christian Democracy.

  97 See the short piece devoted to the freedom of religion which Stalin had guaranteed Italy on the basis of the third point of the Moscow Declaration (in the 14 November 1943 Rome edition).

  98 The pamphlet, edited by the diocese’s secretariat for social activism, was printed by the Antoniana printworks in Padua, its imprimatur dated 7 November 1944. See also the Catechismo sul comunismo (Catechism on communism) that the archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Schuster, had published in August 1943 and February 1944, and which Miccoli defines as ‘rozzo centone’ (‘crude travesty’) as well as an obviously political agenda, in Problemi di ricerca, p. 249.

  99 Letter of February 1945, in ibid., p. 261.

  100 Fogar, Le brigate Osoppo-Friuli, p. 292.

  101 Libro storico degli avvenimenti più notevoli avvenuti in questa Parrocchia di Rivalpo (Arta), dated 19 June 1945 (cited in Miccoli, Problemi di ricerca, p. 258).

  102 Libro storico della parrocchia di San Pietro al Natisone, dated 30 December 1946 (cited in ibid., pp. 258–9).

  103 Cited in Tramontin, Contadini e movimento partigiano, p. 308.

  104 Reports by the parish priests of Longarone and San Gregorio nelle Alpi, cited in ibid., pp. 292, 300. On the migration of a large group of Bologna partisans to the Veneto, see E. Antonioni, ‘La Resistenza veneta nel contributo dei garibaldi
ni bolognesi’, in La Resistenza in Emilia-Romagna, Bologna 1970, pp. 126–48, and L. Bergonzini, ‘I bolognesi nel Veneto, nel Modenese e nelle Valli’, in L. Bergonzini and L. Arbizzani, La Resistenza a Bologna, Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna III (1970), pp. 169–265.

  105 Tramontin, Contadini e movimento partigiano, p. 292.

  106 Ibid., p. 291.

  107 Ibid., p. 290.

  108 See the sermon given by the Alpago parish priest on Sunday 6 May 1945 (ibid., p. 318).

  109 See Clero bresciano, May 1944 (cited in Bianchi, I cattolici, p. 181).

  110 ‘L’ educazione nazionale problema del domani’, Il Regime fascista, 19 August 1944, cited in Mazzatosta, Educazione e scuola nella RSI, p. 71. Japan’s ambassador to the RSI was, nonetheless, critical of Italian women, ‘especially those from the bourgeois and uppermost classes’, because of their lack of dedication to caring for their families (‘Rapporto al Mikado’ in Ragionieri, Italia giudicata, p. 802).

  111 Idee ricostruttive della Democrazia cristiana.

  112 ‘Politica e religione. Superamento’, editorial in L’Azione dei lavoratori, 10 February 1944.

  113 ‘Liberazione della donna’, in Voce Operaia, 4 December 1944, which expresses a singular faith in the Soviet and revolutionary value of introducing electrical appliances into the home.

  114 Progetto di piano di lavoro del Partito d’azione Alta Italia, p. 12.

  115 ‘Sì, imperialisti d’Italia!’, undated, in the Badoglian paper.

  116 Togliatti, Opere, vol. IV, 2, pp. 534–7.

  117 In late 1946 Umberto Terracini, at a rally in Terni, would characterise divorce as a problem concerning the rich (see L’Unità of 3 December, quoted in Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 359).

  118 Foa, La Gerusalemme rimandata, p. 91.

  119 Letter to Moro, signed by Cino and Ciro, 30 January 1945 (IG, BG, 07850).

  120 ‘Parole alla classe media’, L’Italia del popolo, 22 January 1944.

  121 Editorial in Per un’Italia nuova, 27 May 1944.

  122 Un sabotatore: Giorgio Labò, with a preface by Lionello Venturi, Milan 1946, p. 9 (the passage is dated ferragosto, a holiday on and around 15 August, probably from 1940).

  123 ‘Appello alle donne italiane’, in Bandiera Rossa, 26 December 1943.

  124 ‘Rivendicazione’, La Fiamma, March 1945.

  125 Calamandrei, La vita indivisibile, pp. 143–4 (8 March 1944). Recall, here, the scene in Luigi Comencini’s film Tutti a casa (1960), in which the father (Eduardo De Filippo) advises his son (Alberto Sordi) to present himself to the Fascist authorities.

  126 ‘Il problema dei giovani’, in the Rome edition of 16 March 1944.

  127 ‘Famiglia e libertà’, in La Voce del Popolo, 20 October 1944 (probably written by Delfino Insolera).

  128 On the use of this category, see E. C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958.

  129 ‘Dichiarazione fondamentale’, by the Italian Labour Party, whose organ was La Voce del Popolo (see Partito italiano del lavoro – ‘Popolo e Libertà’, p. 18).

  130 Letter from a soldier to his brother – also under arms – 29 August 1940 (in Rizzi, Lo sguardo del potere, p. 119).

  131 As recalled by Italo Calvino in Tante storie che abbiamo dimenticato.

  132 Pesce, Senza tregua, p. 272. However, on another occasion, Pesce told his men: ‘We must behave like a family faced with a fire that is destroying their home’ (ibid., pp. 174–5).

  133 Here I use the words of O. Prati in ‘Le donne ravennati nell’antifascismo e nella Resistenza’, in the volume of the same title published by the Istituto per la storia della resistenza di Ravenna, Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 1977, p. 35.

  134 Portelli, Biografia di una città, pp. 276–7.

  135 ‘Think what reaction is, what point it reached, in dividing father from son, brother from brother, in the same family. You didn’t trust, I didn’t trust my brothers; my father did not trust me.’ Testimony of Arnaldo Lippi (ibid., p. 231). He is presumably the same A.L., a former worker, who elsewhere speaks of the family as a place ‘which manages to hold together at once the pressures towards individualism and those towards solidarity’ (Portelli, Assolutamente niente, p. 137).

  136 Testimonies of di Anna Cinanni and of Tersilla Fenoglio Oppedisano, in Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, pp. 100, 159. Fenoglio recalls a partisan who told him: ‘This is like a family, and you are a little sister’ (p. 160).

  137 Calamandrei, La vita indivisibile, p. 140 (6 March 1944).

  138 Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 85, n. 1.

  139 Repport from the Command of the 1st Gramsci Division to the Command of the Valsesia, Ossola, Cusio, Verbano divisions-group, 12 December 1944. The celebrant was labelled the ‘Rev.mo Cap/no Bruno’, playing on the two possible extensions of the abbreviation (i.e. cap/no could represent either cappellano, chaplain, or capitano, captain). On a political commissar who held wedding ceremonies in the Oltrepò Pavese, see ‘Rapporto informativo e osservazioni per il comitato federale’, signed by the inspector Medici, 10 August 1944.

  140 Letter from Alberto Bianco, in the Valle Grana, to Gino Marchese, in the Langhe, 4 January 1945 (Formazioni GL, pp. 292–3).

  141 Parri (Spartaco), Otto mesi coi partigiani di Tito, p. 92.

  142 Testimony of Tersilla Fenoglio Oppedisano (Bruzzone and Farina, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 152).

  143 See, for example, the circular sent by the Command of the Belluno Division to all commanders and commissars, 10 December 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 51).

  144 The news of this punishment was reported in their wall-newspaper (Lazagna, Ponte rotto, p. 225).

  145 Testimony of Albina Caviglione Lusso (Bruzzone and Farina, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 65).

  146 Paolo Cinanni responded to his Calabrian mother, who reproached him for having cast his sister ‘into the arms of boys’, ‘Look, Anna is not a woman … She is a Communist, and she is not viewed as a woman.’ Later the mother, too, would become a Communist (ibid., pp. 94, 105).

  147 Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 99. Note (ibid., pp. 175–7) the case of the Fascist who had a Communist banished and then ‘took his sister for a ride’ for some seventeen years. After the Liberation, the brother clobbered the Fascist seducer, and his sister told him, ‘Bravo, my treasure, you did the right thing!’

  148 Bruzzone and Farina, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 107.

  149 See the critiques directed against the papers Tre Vedette, Il Partigiano and La Saetta garibaldina by the commissariat of the Valle di Susa divisions-group. This letter, from 17 December 1944, began by making clear: ‘We are not puritans’ (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 102–4).

  150 Quazza, Un diario partigiano, pp. 174–5 (26 March 1944).

  151 See the letter from the Command of the Biella area divisions-group to the Piedmont Delegation, 22 February 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 385).

  152 ‘Relazione sulla situazione politica e militare della nostra provincia’, Terni, 1 February 1944 (IG, Archivio PCI).

  153 Monthly report by Costa, military organiser responsible for the Marconcini SAP brigade (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol III, p. 293).

  154 See ibid., p. 294, n. 2.

  155 Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, pp. 38, 52.

  156 ‘Informazioni da Milano’, 22 April 1945, which also reports that in the Pavan works, ‘the men do not back the group for the defence of women, and thus it cannot go forward’, and the report by Oreste on the federation for Venice, 7 March 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 669, 450).

  157 Quoted in Dellavalle, Operai, p. 205 (letter from 30 March 1945).

  158 ‘Rapporto sul lavoro di partito’, 29 December 1943 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 192).

  159 Transcript of the meeting of Party representatives in several Padua factories, 18 March 1945.

  160 Letter from the ‘Comando Raggruppamento Brigate 4
00 Matteotti, 520 Puecher, 550 Rosselli’ (Valtellina) addressed to ‘Care compagne’ (‘Dear women comrades’) (IG, Archivio PCI).

  161 Artom, Diari, pp. 113, 93 (10 December and 28 November 1943).

  162 See the articles ‘Le donne e la lotta del popolo italiano’ (L’Unità, northern edition, 4 June 1944) and ‘Dalla doppia schiavitù alla liberazione femminile’ (La voce della donna. Mensile delle italiane in Svizzera, of Communist inspiration, December 1944).

  163 Testimony of Bruno Zenoni (Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 291).

  164 Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 157.

  165 Ibid., p. 106. They read texts by Lenin and Clara Zetkin.

  166 See ‘Corrispondenza coi lettori’, L’Unità Rome edition, 6 January 1944, and ‘Verbale di una riunione di partito dei comunisti della 3o divisione Aliotta’ (Oltrepò Pavese), 1 April 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 563).

  167 ‘Dichiarazione fondamentale’, by the Italian Labour Party, paragraph 3.

  168 Note the remarks to this effect by Luisa Passerini, in De Grazia and Passerini, Alle origini della cultura di massa, p. 22.

  169 See Prati, Le donne ravennati nell’antifascismo e nella Resistenza, pp. 33–4. See also Guidetti Serra, Compagne.

  170 Bernardo, Il momento buono, p. 150.

  171 Testimony of the woman worker Margherita Bergesio Coccalotto (Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 341).

  172 Cicchetti, Il campo giusto, p. 228.

  173 La guerra di liberazione, p. 15.

  174 ‘Disprezzo ed odio ai tedeschi’, in the 26 January 1945 edition.

  175 ‘Relazione sugli avvenimenti di Montegrazia del 13–14 dicembre 1943’ (Imperia) (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 169).

  176 Bruzzone and Farina, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 25.

  177 An episode of this kind, which took place in Rome’s Grande Italia café on 11 May 1943, is discussed in Di Giovanni, laureate thesis, on the basis of a questura report held in the Archivio Centrale dello Stato.

  178 Gobetti, Diario partigiano, p. 251 (8 December 1944).

  179 Intervention by Giovanni De Luna in a debate on ‘Ethics and Politics’ at Turin’s Centro Gobetti, 28 April 1980. De Luna referred to an oral testimony collected during the seminar on ‘Women and Politics’ held at the Turin Facoltà di Magistero (teaching faculty) in 1979–80.