Quando C'erano i Comunisti
I Cento Anni del PCI tra Cronaca e Storia con una testimonianza di Umberto Terracini by Mario Pendinelli and Marcello Sorgi is the most engaging book that you can find around about the Communist Party.
Lights, shadows, the Italian Communist Party has been maybe the most powerful one of all the rest of european communists parties receiving a lot of money from Moscow.
It is not just a reconstruction of the movement, and then the party, but the story of its main protagonists, starting with Antonio Nino Gramsci and his family; his friendship with Palmiro Toglietti.
Togliatti and Gramsci were closed friends, inseparables; they knew each other when at the university and they loved to stay always together. Years pretty dark the ones of the first portion of 1900s. The First World War, the Spanish Flu that killed 100 million of people in the entire world, one day in 1911 the big thief at the Louvre of Paris: someone stole the Monna Lisa by Leonardo. Who was the responsible?
Impossible to think but investigations at first were conducted in the direction of Guillame Apollinaire seen close to the Gioconda days before and Pablo Picasso.
Years later, someone called Perrugia was trying to sell the Monna Lisa.
In this tumultous contest, Gramsci and Togliatti start to elaborate their theories.
Close to them the arrival of Angelo Tasca one of the protagonists of the events of 1921.
But we are now in 1915 when Italy enters in war; socialists remain neutrals, Mussolini apart.
Salandra was the president of the council and he was pretty criticized by Giolitti because Salandra thought that what would have followed would have been a little and quick war, while the proportion of what became is known to everyone. "He lives in luxurious estates while poor devils are at war" commented, bitterly, Giolitti.
Toglietti that years become volunteer while Gramsci dedicated its time at the journalistic activity although a magazine didn't pay him; L'Avanti paid but not too much for a living so Antonio was constricted at giving private lessons for a living.
In an article called La Città Futura Gramsci critices the populist rethoric.
In 1917 in Russia there is the revolution; the tzar has been killed with all his family and a new order, mostly created with wagons of blood has been created.
Gramsci has a new girlfriend, although when he will afford to Moscow, he will marry a girl of the city having a baby with her.
Pia said, once Gramsci was dead, that he was in grade to communicaty the most brutal facts with great sweetness.
FIAT was the most importat factory in Italy and as remarked Gobetti, Fiat for Italy means the entrance in the future thanks to its modernity.
Born in 1899 thanks to the visionariety of a group of aristocrats and rich bourgeois, will mean for the communist party the liberation of people from the feudal system of peasantry, trying to give them more emancipation and freedom.
These workers had to have a different dignity, much more high, elevated; workers that meant a new order.
In the while what the first world war brought, once finished, was the dissolution of the big empires, more hate between countries, confused ideas at the Conference of Peace, in Paris.
Food, energy, transporation were the main voices that should have been taken in consideration by our country but that were not when our delegation was in Paris.
There wasn't a clear idea of the country and where the country thanks to this war and the pandemic flu wanted to go. 600.000 dead, 500.000 mutilated the numbers of our "victory".
Lenin is following with great interest the italian situation and its industrialization, thinking in 1920 that is arrived the moment for a sort of revolution in our country as well.
Reed, a reporter of the Metropolitan Magazine New York, writes that this one is a little man, not incredibly beauty; he is also pretty sly and with a good intellectual audacity.
Mussolini becomes the editor of L' Avanti but he will leave the socialist party founding a new newsmagazine called "Il Popolo d'Italia" and starting the fascist movement.
On january 21, 1921 a branch of socialists decides to create the italian communist party, with a scission althouth at first at the elections the experience is a real failure.
Fascim starts to become a reality always more eradicated in the territory.
When Gramsci will afford again to Russia, Lenin has had a stroke. It is close to him the moment of giving the power at someone else: Stalin.
Lenin didn't like Stalin at all. He was defined by Lenin as a capricious, rude and unloyal person.
Stalin suffered of smallpox when little and so his skin had still the visible and horrible signs of the devastation of that infective illness.
Then he also suffered of an illness that caused a permament damage at the articulations of one of his the arms: and his parents were not of great example.
These two totalitarian regimes created in the XX cwentury, the communism and the fascism were much more than a simple assolutism.
Why? Because they were like long shadows in grade of capturing the attention of people under all aspects. George Mosse wrote: "It's the public life pervading private life; it's the public, prevailing on the private..."
All the people against these ideologies must be killed.
In this sense, please read The Eight Life for Brilka, because it will give you the sense of what it meant to live in Tblisi Georgia, during that years. Again a long saga that will explain you why these ideologies were so disgusting; they were in grade of killing the souls of people.
Stalin was crazy; of a lucid craziness. People were scared of him.
Stalin was horrible and killed million of people because activist politicians, because against the regime, because, simply, he thought that that people had to die because enemies.
Sure, he thought that "dictatorial methods brought a lot of profits for people."
But...Stalin has been a degeneration, or Lenin had started the process that would have brought at all this sufferance?
With Lenin the country became a communism dictatorship (with masses of peasants demonstrating because they didn't want to lose their lands and their houses.)
These years as also remarked with strength Solzenicyn there is fear. The country leaves in fear from decades, and people are scared. A little gesture can cost the existence or freedom, wrote the beloved writer that experienced gulag and every sorta of sufferance.
The communist Party born in Russia on dec 30 1922 will end its experience dec 26th 1991 creating a subordination of many countries and people also pretty diversified. It was a great empire. During the second world war, the russian empire, one of the winners of the second world war conflict will impose in the countries close to it, its model.
It was a great joy the departure of Stalin on march 5 1953 although, apparently 80 million of people were mourning and in an ingenuous country where just less people knew the truth L'Unità wrote that Stalin was "the man who had fought for the progress and liberation of the humanity."
Three years later, tired of covering the massacres organized by Stalin, the new leader Chruscev, said without too many other words and compliments that Stalin had committed horrible crimes.
It will be during the years of Chrusev that Solzenicyn will publish his first books. The statesman reported a man, Stalin who didn't hesistate at killing who had also a little different idea from him.
He suffered of several disturbs of personality, thinking that everyone was a traitor.
Who didn't want to obey was sent in a gulag dying for the sufferances experienced.
These secrets informations will be soon releaed in the New York Times and people will be shocked by what they read. During these years Russia launches the Sputnik beginning a long competition with the USA for the discovery of space.
John Kenneth Gallbraith from Harvard noticed also that the end of the private property had caused another big problem: people didn't cultivate anymore grain as they did before, and cows of peasants were not kept well and milk not much.
There was also a big discussion, let's use that expression, between, Kennedy and the same Chruscev (with which Kennedy had establised a special phone line for speaking with him) that brought high tension; Cuba the reason of the problem; anyway problems were sorted out successfully well.
Chruscev loses the power thanks to a golpe, although apparently for a story of old age; the new leader becomes Breznev, ukrainian.
With him, Russia will know a long period of stagnation; Breznev petrified his world.
Togliatti became the leader of the italian communist party in the while. It's the time of the Resistance and Togliatti, returned from Russia, searches all the anti-fascists, monarchs included. Togliatti will be one of the most influential founders of the Italian Republic, and the communist party will become the leader of the Resistance born in Sept 8 1943.
While partisans fought for the freedom of the country, Vassalli found an incredible system for setting free at Regina Coeli Sandro Pertini and Saragat that were waiting to be killed.
Although Palmiro Togliatti was married, he fell in love with Nilde Iotti, her lover and companion per decades. Nilde didn't have children because she could not marry Togliatti. In Italy divorce was not yet a law, but she admitted in an interview released at Oriana Fallaci that after all what it is important is to be parents and she was a good parent for Marisa.
They also lived in a hidden place per years, very cold in the winter, and absolutely devastatingly warm in the Rome's summers.
At the end Togliatti lost the patience: he wanted to go to live in a different place and with more dignity.
The political party lived the love with Iotti with severity, judging not too positively their leader; a leader seen like a god, before the meeting with Iotti.
Nilde Iotti will demonstrate to everyone, in particular after the departure of Palmiro Togliatti, that was a strong lady, and a great dirigent of the communist party. At long she has been the President of the Chamber of Deputy from 1979 to 1992.
Renato Guttuso, sicilian and great painter has been a beloved esponent of the italian communist party. Partisan, he will become a senator in the legislation 1976-1979. When Togliatti died, Renato Guttuso, after a period of silence will impress in the canvas all his sentiments.
Not just politicians in that painting: there is Luchino Visconti, close to Salvatore Quasimodo, Elio Vittorini like also Giangiacomo Feltrinelli disappeared in a tragic terrorist attack.
This painting, Il Funerale di Togliatti will be shown in many italian places, before to find its place at Bologna, the city Guttuso wanted, because the heart of the italian communism.
In the while in the party there is ferment. What kind of new political party for this society, very different from the one seen by Gramsci? The economy is going on very well, maybe it's better, the idea of some esponents, of building a new party with the socialists; a riformist one. Other ones think that a refoundation of the left is indispensible.
Longo, at that time leader of the PCI will want as vice-secretary Enrico Berlinguer.
Born in Sardinia, and precisely at Sassari, in jail for armed insurrection and much more, his father will sort out the problem.
The father will speak with Togliatti, because his son doesn't want to go to Rome and Togliatti will help him. Enrico will start to work to Rome in the juvenile section of the party.
Enrico was a closed boy, someone who didn't like to let show to others his feelings, but one day some friends of him tell that they organized a dinner where he was with them, and was happy, and cheerful as all the rest of them. She knows a girl Letizia Laurenti, and he falls in love. He will marry her and they will have four children: Bianca, Laura, Maria Stella and Marco.
Berlinguer is different from Gramsci and Togliatti. His world is not the world of the founders of the communist party. He hasn't never known Lenin, Stalin. He is much much more free than his predecessors were.
Plus, of course he didn't suffer what his predecessors suffered. Yes, he went to jail for a bit, but his father, an influential man, helped him without hesitations.
Berlinguer has been the communist leader more loved by italians.
Berlinguer when secretary would have wanted to create an historic compromise with the Democrazia Cristiana. The person with which he was more in contact with was Aldo Moro, someone opened and interested at walking close to Berlinguer and the ideas he wanted to share with him.
Divorce becomes law but the history of this special moment is influenced by the destiny of Aldo Moro. Once kidnapped, and later killed by the Brigate Rosse this era will be forever gone and the confrontation between these two parties ended.
Berlinguer, close to the experiment with Aldo Moro, thinks also that the legacy of Russia is too heavy; maybe it's better to search for another ideal of socialism.
During a meeting in Russia, Breznev will try to let understand to the various foreign leaders that they can't do what they want.
Berlinguer doesn't have the same opinion of Breznev and he doesn't want to listen the words of the russian leader.
It's a speech absolutely revolutionary and judged with ice by the russian establishment; the day after the piece ends in the New York Times, remarking the independent line of Italy.
In an interview with Giampaolo Pansa, Berlinguer remarked the independence that he wanted to create looking at western countries and NATO more than at Moscow.
As said before the Brigate Rosse were a degeneration of the communist party and for this reason Berlinguer will fight them with strength.
They are complicated years with Berlinguer under many ways "lost" because Aldo Moro is dead; a precious person was not anymore close to him.
Berlinguer died abruptly; he became sick during a speech because of a stroke, remaining the most beloved secretary of the italian communist party.
Alessandro Natta was the successor of Berlinguer, he had ideas filo-russian; Achille Occhetto would have later ended the experience of the communist party, creating scissions with the more nostalgic branch of followers; years later the party abandoned also Botteghe Oscure, their headquarter.
A book informative, beautiful: the perfect reading for everyone curious to discover much more our past history.
Highly recommended.
I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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