A Civil War (4 page)
Authors: Claudio Pavone
Looking back over the last two decades, one is struck by how Pavone's
A Civil War
has influenced the debate over the Resistance, both in the academy and in popular culture. Of course, as British historian Philip Cooke has observed, âPavone's book is a work that has suffered the fate of being more talked about than read. There is a gulf between what is actually in Pavone's book and what is perceived to be in it.'
41
Perhaps the writing and reception of history is paradoxically and unavoidably both public and personal. As Pavone himself acknowledges in a personal âlast observation':
great and exceptional events render problematic that which usually appears obvious. This simultaneously promotes the drive towards clear-cut choices and judgments and the love of ambiguity that allow us to comprehend others when they resonate in us. Those who in their youth were involved in these great events have difficulty transmitting all of this wealth to newer generations. And if one tries to do it with historical research, a silent process, mustered over so many years of memory, insinuates itself in the selection of sources. In this sense, my research has also been of an autobiographical nature.
42
Stanislao G. Pugliese
Hofstra University
April 2013
1
âPavone's study of the struggle between the Resistance and the Fascist Republican regime,
Una guerra civile
, has provided the broad interpretative framework for much recent scholarship.' Alexander De Grand,
American Historical Review
106: 2 (April 2001), p. 677.
2
For Pavone's influence on two generations of Italian historians, see Cesare Bermani, et al.,
La nuova storia contemporanea in Italia: omaggio a Claudio Pavone
, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2001 and Paolo Pezzino and Gabriele Ranzato, eds,
Laboratorio di storia. Studi in onore di Claudio Pavone
, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1994.
3
Une guerre civile: Essai historique sur l'éthique de la Résistance italienne
, ed. Bernard Droz and transl. Jérôme Grossman, Paris: Seuil, 2005. âUn ouvrage fondamental sur l'histoire des années 1940 en Italie', according to Jean Marie Guillon,
Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire
54 (AprilâJune 1997), p. 155; while Fédéric Attal wrote that âest le travail le plus accompli jamais écrit sur la Résistance italienne',
Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire
91 (JulyâSeptember 2006), p. 180.
4
A collective decision was made to edit the late Peter Edward Levy's translation with a light hand. Levy, who taught in Siena, translated Pavone's erudite, Latinate Italian into a complex, intricately rendered English. My thanks to Charles Maier, Mark Mazower, Victoria De Grazia and the late Tony Judt for their unflagging support in publishing this English translation.
5
Proceedings published as Massimo Legnani, Ferruccio Vendramini, eds,
Guerra, guerra di liberazione, guerra civile
, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990.
6
See, for example, Giorgio Pisanò,
Storia della guerra civile in Italia (1943â1945)
, Milan: FPE, 1965; and Indro Montanelli,
L'Italia della guerra civile
, vol. 9 of his monumental 12-volume
Storia d'Italia
, Milan: Corriere della Sera, 2003.
7
See Gianni Oliva,
Primavera 1945: Il sangue della guerra civile
, Milan: Giunti, 2011; or, for a more wide-ranging and contested application, Stanley G. Payne,
Civil War in Europe, 1905â1949
, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
8
âPremessa' in Pavone,
Una guerra civile. Saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza
, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1991, ixâxii.
9
Paris: PUF, 1962.
10
Paris: PUF, 1954.
11
The essay now appears in Claudio Pavone,
Alle origini della repubblica: scritti su fascismo, antifascismo e continuità dello stato
, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995.
12
Ernesto Galli Della Loggia,
La morte della patria. La crisi dell'idea di nazione tra Resistenza, antifascismo e Repubblica
, Rome: Laterza, 1996.
13
Elena Aga Rossi,
A Nation Collapses: The Italian Surrender of September 1943
, transl. Harvey Fergusson II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 134â8.
14
Parts of this Introduction have been adapted from an earlier essay, âA Past That Will Not Pass: Fascism, Anti-Fascism and the Resistance in Italy', in
Fascism, Anti-Fascism and the Resistance in Italy
, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, pp. 1â22.
15
The âHistorians' Debate' in West Germany unfolded in the mid-to-late 1980s over the nature of the Holocaust and its relation with the Soviet gulag system. Originally a dispute between historian Ernst Nolte and philosopher Jürgen Habermas, it evolved into a watershed philosophical and historiographical moment. In English, see Rudolf Augstein et al.,
Forever in the Shadow of Hitler? Original Documents of the Historikerstreit, The Controversy Concerning the Singularity of the Holocaust
, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993 (English-language edition of
âHistorikerstreit': Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistschen Judenvernichtung
, Munich: Piper, 1987); Peter Baldwin,
Hitler, the Holocaust and the Historians Dispute
, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1990; Richard Evans,
In Hitler's Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape the Nazi Past
, New York: Pantheon, 1989;
New German Critique
44 (special issue on the
Historikerstreit
) (SpringâSummer 1988); Ian Kershaw,
The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretations
, London: Arnold, 1989; Charles Maier,
The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust and German National Identity
, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
16
Domenico Settembrini, âThe Divided Left: After Fascism, What?' in Spencer Di Scala, ed.,
Italian Socialism: Between Politics and History
(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), p. 110.
17
Quoted in Giorgio Bocca,
Storia dell'Italia partigiana
, Milan: Mondadori, 1995, p. 416.
18
Ada Gobetti,
Diario partigiano
, Turin: Einaudi, 1956, p. 414.
19
Ferruccio Parri,
Scritti 1915â1975
, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976, p. 179.
20
Alexander De Grand,
The Italian Left in the Twentieth Century
, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989, pp. 68â70.
21
On the charismatic Rosselli, see Stanislao G. Pugliese,
Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
22
For the first biography of Silone in English, see Stanislao G. Pugliese,
Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone
, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009.
23
For an excellent anthology of writings in Italian on the armed Resistance, see Philip Cooke, ed.,
The Italian Resistance: An Anthology
, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.
24
Renata Viganò,
L'Agnese va a morire
, Turin: Einaudi, 1949 â winner of the Premio Viareggio and basis of the 1976 film of the same name directed by Giuliano Montaldi; Ada Gobetti,
Diario partigiano
, Turin: Einaudi, 1949 â there is a forthcoming English translation by JoMarie Alano. See also Rosetta D'Angelo and Barbara Zaczek, eds,
Resisting Bodies: Narratives of Italian Partisan Women
, Chapel Hill, NC: Annali d'Italianistica, 2008; and Jane Slaughter,
Women and the Italian Resistance, 1943â1945
, Denver: Arden Press, 1997.
25
On the persistence of Fascist and neo-Fascist threats to the Italian Republic, see Franco Ferraresi's
Threats to Democracy: The Radical Right in Italy after the War
, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996 (original edition published by Feltrinelli in Milan, 1995).
26
Alessandra Mussolini (born 1962), member of the Italian parliament, still defends her grandfather's political legacy.
27
See Robert Katz,
Death in Rome
, New York: Macmillan, 1967.
28
Guglielmo Petroni, transl. John Shepley,
The World Is a Prison
, Evanston, IL: Marlboro Press, 1999, pp. 74â6.
29
Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli, eds,
Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza italiana: 8 settembre 1943â25 aprile 1945
, Turin: Einaudi, 1994, 3â4, transl. Stanislao G. Pugliese.
30
Ibid., pp. 319â20.
31
See Roy Palmer Domenico,
Italian Fascists on Trial, 1943â1948
, Chappell Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
32
Editor's note: Rosario Romeo,
Il
problema nazionale tra 19° e 20
°
secolo: idee e realtÃ
, Roma: Bulzoni, 1977.
33
Renzo De Felice,
Rosso e nero
, Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1995, pp. 12â25, transl. Stanislao G. Pugliese.
34
Aga Rossi,
A Nation Collapses
, p. 137.
35
Nicola Tranfaglia,
Un passato scomodo. Fascismo e postfascismo
, Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1996.
36
Roberto Battaglia,
The Story of the Italian Resistance
, trans. P. D. Cummings, London: Odhams Press, 1957, p. 281.
37
Alexander Stille,
New York Times
, 28 September 2002.
38
âIl fatto delle leggi razziali è stata la peggiore colpa di un leader, Mussolini, che per tanti altri versi invece aveva fatto bene â¦Â certamente il governo di allora per timore che la potenza tedesca vincesse preferì essere alleato alla Germania di Hitler piuttosto che opporvisi.'
La Repubblica
, 27 January 2013, p. 1. âThe fact of the Racial Laws was the worst mistake of a leader, Mussolini, who, for so many other reasons, was good for Italy â¦Â certainly the government of the time, fearful that German power would win, preferred to ally itself with Hitler's Germany rather than oppose it.'
39
See Borden W. Painter, Jr,
Mussolini's Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City
, New York: Palgrave, 2005, p. 160.
40
Claudio Pavone email message to Stanislao G. Pugliese, 28 March 2013.
41
Philip Cooke,
The Legacy of the Italian Resistance
, New York: Palgrave, 2011, p. 160.
42
Pavone, âPremessa', pp. xiâxii.
Many years ago, Ferruccio Parri proposed to me that I write a book using, as a model, two works that sometime before had been published in France:
Les courants de pensée de la Résistance
by Henri Michel and, by the same Michel and Boris Mirkine-Guetzévitch,
Les idées politiques et sociales de la Résistance
. When I began my research I was, at first and above all, attracted to the institutional theme, though it was indeed through the drafting of the essay on
La continuità dello Stato
when I became convinced of the difficulty, in an essay on the Italian Resistance, of separating political, social, and institutional ideas and programmes.
Above all, many of the ideas that circulated during the Resistance were developed earlier, or, if developed at that time, were later on elaborated a great deal and organised in a climate of rapid political change. This not only made the identification of the sources difficult, but also indicated the necessity of analysing the behaviour of the protagonists to understand the ideas that inspired them, even if those ideas were formulated without clarity or coherence. Thus, the objective of my research shifted from programmes to the protagonists themselves â their moral convictions, the cultural structures around the protagonists themselves, their feelings, and the doubts and passions elicited by that brief and intense sequence of events. On what grounds did people base their actions, when institutions â within the frame of which they had been accustomed to operate â vacillated or vanished, to then reassemble themselves and demand new and different loyalties? To this question, years of terrorism added yet another question, illustrated with particular dramatic force: if, how, and why is violence justified when it must be carried out without a clear, institutional legitimacy? In other words: when the state is no longer capable of exercising its monopoly of violence with any certainty? The question appeared particularly difficult to those who refused an answer that denied politics and history. And it was in fact at that moment, during a series of seminars on the relationship between politics and morality initiated by Norberto Bobbio at the Centro studi Piero Gobetti in Turin, that the presentation I made constituted the first nucleus of this book.
The word that seemed to me to best summarise what appeared to become the object of my research was â
moralitÃ
'. Not âmorals', a term that, on the one hand was confined to the individual conscience, while on the other risked sliding into the rhetoric of the Resistance. Not â
mentalitÃ
', a word that in a short
time has acquired multiple meanings and generated controversies which I did not intend to get caught up in. When my book was already finished, I found confirmation of my choices in a letter from Giorgio Agosti to Dante Livio Bianco in their recently published correspondence: âYour correspondence has the interests and the character of an eighteenth-century epistolary exchange â full, as it is, of “
moralitÃ
” and of perspicacious “notations.” '
1
MoralitÃ
is a word particularly suited to define the territory on which politics and ethics meet and clash, relying on history as a possible common measure. It was necessary, whenever possible, to immerse oneself in the historical context when dealing with matters that first appeared to be political but which were in reality great moral problems and, reciprocally, to show how these same historical events necessarily influenced those problems.