A Civil War (102 page)

The PCI made every effort to keep the ‘great family of the Proletarian Avant-garde' under control.
⁷⁰
But this was made difficult both by the formal denial of the political and class character of the brigades themselves, and by the need to appeal to the fighting spirit of the young. This spirit, as we shall see immediately, found in the very colour red the symbol of its
identity and a safeguard against being reabsorbed into the merely military and patriotic war.

It has been written of the French Communists that ‘politically they put national fronts etc. into their programs', but ‘militarily they organise their own troops who don't fuse with the others even if they cooperate with them' and even if they remain essentially faithful to the unitary policy.
⁷¹
In Italy this problem was to be at least formally solved with the unification of the formations sanctioned in the last months of the struggle; but the whole span of the twenty months is shot through with incitements to reinforce the party presence in the Garibaldi formations. In the ‘Directives for the constitution and functioning of the party nucleus within the partisan formations', issued on 1 March 1944, there is the enjoinder to ‘do your job with tact and ability', avoiding useless outward manifestations of discord and friction with non-Communists. Should the commander and commissar, who in any case maintain their functions, be party members – the instructions go on to say – they, together with the person in charge of the nucleus, are to ‘form a triangle', jointly answerable to the party for the progress of the unit. The commander and the commissar, again if they are party members, may be denounced to the superior authorities who shall take opportune measures, including dismissal; but in cases of urgency, the party members in charge may act also on their own initiative.
⁷²
It was the dwindling of the historic figure of the political commissar, who after unification was to be called ‘commissario di guerra' (‘war commissar'), which led to the emergence of the ‘responsabile del nucleo di partito' (‘person in charge of the party nucleus').

The tact and ability, the ‘necessary watchfulness' (as one command interprets it),
⁷³
required by the instructions could become so blurred as to render the life of the party in the formations almost clandestine,
⁷⁴
or ‘rigorously secret and illegal', as one command recommends, out of excessive zeal and conspiratorial viscosity, but also from the need to camouflage themselves in the presence of the Allied missions.
⁷⁵
The political commissar of the Natisone division candidly
wrote in his memoirs: ‘From the start I made it a point of honour to succeed in winning over to Communism all the partisans and above all the commanders and commissars of various ranks';
⁷⁶
and the commander of the Nanetti division would recall the ‘responsabile di partito' as being

In this scenario, the militia of the Garibaldi brigades was seen as an instrument of recruitment and preparation of the ‘
quadri
for the immediate future'.
⁷⁸
From the partisans, in fact, ‘
quadri
and popular chiefs must spring who will facilitate things for us immensely in tomorrow's work of ordering the nation on new bases'.
⁷⁹

For this end, it was indispensable to overcome reticence about opening the party's doors to the Garibaldini, replacing a party candidature with a partisan one (infiltrating oneself also among the GL partisans), judging the aspirants only ‘as Garibaldini because they're young and we can't ask more of them'.
⁸⁰
The party nucleus of the 8
^th
Asti division was to reproach the commanders for having done too little to introduce into ‘the family of the party' its many sympathisers; and the delegation of the brigades for Veneto levelled a similar rebuke at the ‘Party comrades' of the Nanetti division.
⁸¹
In a long article commenting
on the conference of the insurrectional triumvirates held at the beginning of November 1944,
L'Unità
calculated the partisan Communists as being at least fifteen thousand, and sympathisers some tens of thousands, ‘on whom our party can count as much as it can on our comrades'. Contemporaneous with this satisfaction there was however the firm enjoinder to ‘rid the formations of a party character'.
⁸²

It is easy to see how hard it was to get the other parties to agree on this last point, and not only because of the composition of the General Command (Luigi Longo and Pietro Secchia) and the numerical ratio between Garibaldini and Communists, but because the latter generally held the positions of command, exclusively or almost so.
⁸³
Dante Livio Bianco recalls: ‘Then (and, for that matter, subsequently), more than
garibaldini
, they were generally called Communists'.
⁸⁴
Here Bianco is referring particularly to the Valle Varaita and January 1944; and in fact a few months later a Garibaldi document relating to the same area complained that an Action Party article had spoken of ‘Communist bands', but then had to recognise that, for their part, the Garibaldini ‘considered the other Badogliani … in the pejorative sense',
⁸⁵
an accusation that the
giellisti
(members of GL) certainly did not deserve.

The Communist Party's denials about its close connection with the Garibaldi brigades were therefore not very credible. But this does not make them any less interesting for the language they use and the reality they reveal, both when they turn outward, and, still more so, when they assume the guise of appeals and rebukes addressed to the brigades themselves. The language is defensive and often considers the label ‘Communist' given to the brigades an unjust accusation, a speculation, a calumny on the part of their adversaries, an attempt to
depreciate and belittle the formations, to deprive them of the sympathy they enjoy among the populations.
⁸⁶
But to whom did one of these documents assign the task of removing every last bit of party varnish from the Garibaldi brigades? To the party nucleus of the brigades.
⁸⁷
And if they were then taken literally, there was the outraged protest that at a meeting to set up the Ligurian unified command, the Socialist and Actionist representatives ‘went so far as to question whether the Garibaldi brigades are truly representative of us, because in them there are elements of every political tendency; but in concrete terms they have been unable to produce any specific facts'.
⁸⁸

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 40
^th
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: