A Civil War (115 page)
Authors: Claudio Pavone
24
Testimony of Corrado Polli, born 1921, adding: âRussia was, for us, a mirage'. A manager of the factory, the engineer Francesco Brini, commented âThey claimed already to have become Russians' (Contini,
Memoria e storia
, pp. 90â2, 214).
25
Ibid., p. 82.
26
See the report on the Picelli detachment, written by âFacio' 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. 176â7, with the passage cited in the text omitted. However, the error made by a âcandidate' intellectual, in speaking of the ânationalism' of Stalin, was instead considered âpossible 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 cittÃ
, p. 263 (see also p. 314: âThus we went to fight, thus we lived Stalin'): âBrothers, 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
âRelazione sulla situazione politica e militare della nostra provincia', Terni, 1 February 1944; âRelazione 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
âDichiarazioni sulle direttive politiche del MCI', in
Bandiera Rossa
, 28 December 1943.
32
K. Sonetti, âLa présence du mythe dans un fragment de conscience 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, 24â26 septembre 1982
, Université d'Aix-en-Provence, n.d., pp. 428â34. 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 âviva 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 â evidently moustachioed â had the
nom de guerre â
Whiskers', so as not to confuse the sacred with the profane; and âRapporto 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 cittÃ
, p. 314.
36
âRipresa delle relazioni diplomatiche con l'URSS' in
L'UnitÃ
, Rome edition, 23 March 1944, and âLa conferenza di Mosca' in the northern edition, 7 November 1943.
37
Interview with Libero,
L'UnitÃ
, Rome edition, 18 May 1945.
38
See âLa recente riforma della costituzione sovietica. Il riconoscimento della più completa autonomia nazionale ai popoli dell'URSS' in
L'UnitÃ
, Rome edition, 12 February 1944. So, too, did
L'Italia libera
speak of the âgreat reform, daring in conception and prompt in implementation' (âLa 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 (âLe riforme costituzionali in Russia', 4 April 1944).
39
See the commentary in the northern edition of
L'UnitÃ
, 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
âIl discorso di Smuts e il federalismo europeo', in the Rome edition of 30 December 1943.
42
Editorial âConsiderazioni sulla guerra', 15 September 1944. See, on the precedents of this idea, V. C. FiÅ¡era, âCommunisme et intégration supranationale. “La Fédération Balkanique” (1924â32)', in
Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine
XXXIV (Julyâ September 1987), pp. 497â508.
43
âL'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. 142â50.
44
See the pamphlet printed under the pseudonym âLeo Aldi', âSocialismo di oggi e di domani', (
Quaderni dell'Italia Libera
, December 1943, p. 17).
45
See the testimony of Spinelli,
Io, Ulisse
, pp. 316â17. 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 1914â1931
, 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 12
th
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. 75â7.
50
Gorrieri,
La Repubblica di Montefiorino
, p. 373. âThe Russians and Slovenes', an anonymous and dateless âreport by a partisan' on the Apennines near Modena commented, âupheld the necessity of an iron discipline and were rather predisposed to neglecting the educational aspect' (IG,
BG
, 02255).
51
See âRapporto generale sull'attività militare in Romagna (dall'8 settembre 1943 al 15 maggio 1944)', and a 12 March 1944 proposal to constitute âGaribaldi Brigades of Romagna', where, out of a total of 218 men, there were eighteen Soviets â including a company commander â 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 â Cino and Ciro â explained to the âRussian Georgian Garibaldians of the 10
th
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. 453â4).
53
See ârapport 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 4
th
BBO battalion (Briški Beneški Odred), to the effect that he had been authorised by the Soviet mission among the 9
th
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 âMongols' during the January 1945 raid in the Piacenza region described it thusly: âAll the troops were Russians â and add to that the fact that they were workers, intellectuals, peasants â 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. 205â6.
Violence
1. T
HE PROBLEM OF VIOLENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF WAR
Common to the three aspects of the Resistance distinguished in the preceding chapters â the three wars â 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 â 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 War
3
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 â in Italy, particularly, after terrorism â 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 â
la stessa pappa
' (âthe 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 âphilosophers 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 works
4
have shown that it is possible to attempt to do.