Showing posts with label Italian Communist Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Italian Communist Party. Show all posts

24 October 2024

Nicola Bombacci - revolutionary

Communist who eventually allied with Mussolini

Nicola Bombacci led the Italian Communist Party
Nicola Bombacci led the
Italian Communist Party
Nicola Bombacci, who was executed with Fascist leader Benito Mussolini after partisans intercepted their attempt to flee Italy in 1945, was born on this day in 1879 in Civitella di Romagna, a small town about 40 minutes by road from the city of Forlì in Emilia-Romagna. 

Although he ended his life as a political ally of the right-wing dictator, Bombacci’s roots were in Marxism. Indeed, he had been a founder-member in 1921 of the Italian Communist Party, alongside among others Antonio Gramsci, the left-wing intellectual who was subsequently arrested by Mussolini and sentenced to 20 years in jail.

He shifted his position during the 1930s, seeing fascism as a form of national socialism that could unify Italy. He embraced Mussolini's Italian Social Republic, the German puppet state in northern Italy created after the Nazis had freed the deposed dictator from house arrest in 1943, believing it to represent a blend of Marxist principles and fascist ideology that could still be a force for good.

Born little more than 20km (12 miles) from Mussolini’s home town of Predappio, Bombacci’s connections with the future dictator can be traced back to his early 20s, when they attended the same teacher training college in Forlimpopoli.

Both became members of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), their political beliefs so closely aligned that both were part of the revolutionary Massimalisti wing on the far left of the party.

Benito Mussolini shared Bombacci's  enthusiasm for left-wing politics
Benito Mussolini shared Bombacci's 
enthusiasm for left-wing politics
Their paths diverged when Mussolini began to lose faith in orthodox socialism, believing that national identity in the shape of culture, tradition, language and race had become as important as removing class divides in the kind of society he sought to create. 

In 1919 - the same year that Bombacci became Secretary of the PSI - Mussolini was hosting a rally in Milan that saw the establishment of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Group), which would evolve into the National Fascist Party two years later.

Bombacci led the PSI with notable success, winning 32.3 per cent of the vote in the 1919 general election, which made them the biggest party by votes and seats. 

However, he resigned his position only a year later, feeling his authority had been compromised when his proposed constitution of the Soviets in Italy was rejected. In the summer of 1920 he was among an Italian delegation that went to Soviet Russia, participating in the Second Congress of the Communist International, and in 1921 opted to join Gramsci and fellow Marxist Amadeo Bordiga in founding the Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I).

As support for Mussolini grew, opponents such as the Socialists and Communists increasingly became the target of violent attacks by Blackshirt thugs, no less so after his Fascist Party were handed power in 1922 following the March on Rome.

Gramsci’s arrest in 1926 followed two years after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, 29-year-old founder and leader of the Unified Socialist Party, who had delivered a speech in parliament accusing Mussolini of winning the 1924 general election by fraud and intimidation.

Antonio Gramsci, Bombacci's fellow communist, was arrested and jailed
Antonio Gramsci, Bombacci's fellow
communist, was arrested and jailed
Yet despite these incidents, Bombacci remained on friendly terms with his former fellow Massimalista, believing that Mussolini shared his own objective of creating a better Italy for working people, even if their methods were at odds.

Expelled from the PCI in 1927 for taking a pro-fascist position, Bombacci responded by becoming openly fascist, although he never officially joined the National Fascist Party.  By the beginning of the 1940s, Bombacci’s position had shifted to the degree that he began publishing pamphlets warning the Italian population on the dangers of Bolshevism and attacking Stalin for betraying socialist values.

Mussolini in turn helped Bombacci by providing financial support for the care of his sick son, Wladimiro, and allowing him to found and edit a new magazine, La Verità, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, promoting views aligned to those of the regime.

Their relationship became stronger still after Mussolini, freed from captivity by Nazi paratroopers after being arrested on the orders of King Victor Emmanuel III 1943, was installed as leader of the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state established on territory controlled by the Germans in northern and central Italy.

Bombacci voluntarily travelled to the republic’s headquarters in Salò, on the shores of Lake Garda, where he became an advisor to Mussolini. He was the author of the economic theory of fascist socialisation, designed to put more power in the hands of workers through the state control of businesses and the means of production. 

The bodies of Bombacci (first left) and the others in Piazzale Loreto
The bodies of Bombacci (first left)
and the others in Piazzale Loreto
In speeches he delivered to Italian workers in Genoa in 1945, he proclaimed that "Stalin will never make socialism; rather Mussolini will."

It was not long, however, before the Allied advance from the south steadily forced the German army into retreat. Sensing that it was only a matter of time before the Italian Social Republic collapsed, Mussolini hatched a plan to escape to Switzerland. 

Along with Mussolini’s mistress, Claretta Petacci, Bombacci and other loyalists, including Achille Starace and Alessandro Pavolini, accompanied the former Duce in a car hoping to reach the Swiss border. They had been on the run for only a day, however, when Mussolini was recognised at a checkpoint set up by Italian partisans at Dongo on the shores of Lake Como and captured.

Two days later, Mussolini and the others were executed. Their bodies were taken to Milan and hung by their feet from a beam above a petrol station in Piazzale Loreto, symbolically chosen as it had been the scene of a massacre of Milanese citizens by Fascist militia a year earlier.

A view from Piazza Principale in Civitella di Romagna
A view from Piazza Principale
in Civitella di Romagna
Travel tip:

Nicola Bombacci was born in Civitella di Romagna, a charming small town in the province of Forlì-Cesena, about 30km (19 miles) southwest of Forlì and 40km (25 miles) southwest of Cesena. It is bisected by the Bidente river in an area of picturesque green hills. It has a well-preserved mediaeval centre with bastion walls as well as an ancient castle.  Civitella di Romagna is known for its annual cherry jam festival and hosts numerous markets throughout the year. The Santuario della Beata Vergine della Suasia, situated at the western end of the town, is a significant religious site dating back to the 18th century.

The waterfront at Salò, these days a pleasant and popular resort among visitors to Lake Garda
The waterfront at Salò, these days a pleasant and
popular resort among visitors to Lake Garda
Travel tip:

For all its regrettable association with such a despised figure as Mussolini, Salò has recovered to become a pleasant resort on the shore of Lake Garda, visited by many tourists each year. Its promenade, the Lungolago Zanardelli, is the longest of any of the lakeside towns and it has a Duomo, the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Annunziata, that was rebuilt in Gothic style in the 15th century. The Museo di Salò commemorates, among other things, the resistance against Fascism. During his time as leader of the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini lived about 18km (11 miles) to the north of Salò in the Villa Feltrinelli at Gargnano, a sumptuous lakeside palazzo which he confiscated from the Feltrinelli family, who had built it at the end of the 19th century as a summer residence. 

Also on this day: 

51: The birth of Roman emperor Domitian

1784: The birth of philanthropist and businessman Sir Moses Montefiore

1913: The birth of baritone Tito Gobbi

1925: The birth of composer Luciano Berio


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27 September 2023

Vittorio Vidali - communist revolutionary

One-time Russian agent ultimately elected Italian deputy and senator

Vittorio Vidali became an agent of the Russian Communist Party
Vittorio Vidali became an agent of
the Russian Communist Party
The revolutionary Vittorio Vidali, who operated as a secret agent of the Russian communists in the United States, Mexico and Spain, was born on this day in 1900 in the coastal town of Muggia, near Trieste.

Known at various times by at least five different names, he was implicated in the murder of a fellow agent and in an attempt to assassinate Leon Trotsky, although in neither case could his involvement be proved. After returning to Italy at the end of World War Two, he served as a deputy and then a senator in the Italian parliament.

Vidali was politically active from an early age, joining the Socialist Youth movement in Trieste at the age of 16. At 20 he was one of the founders of the youth federation of the Italian Communist Party. In the same year - 1921 - he was arrested for his part in rioting at the San Marco shipyards where his father worked.

He became a target for Mussolini’s Blackshirts after organising, with others, an anti-fascist paramilitary group, and fled Italy in 1922, to Germany and then New York, where he met the Italian anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

From New York he travelled to Russia, becoming involved with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and their international wing, known as Comintern, which had agents operating around the world in their attempt to spread the communist doctrine.

Vidali became romantically involved with Tina Modotti, a glamorous former actress
Vidali became romantically involved with
Tina Modotti, a glamorous former actress
Comintern sent Vidali to Mexico on a mission to bring discipline to the Mexican Communist Party. There he is thought to have become infatuated with Tina Modotti, a former model and silent movie actress originally from Udine in Italy, who had been living in San Francisco and moved to Mexico to work as a photographer. She too was a communist activist.

When Modotti’s lover, Julio Antonio Mella , one of the founders of the Communist Party of Cuba, was shot dead at point blank range while walking with her, some witnesses claimed that Vidali was with the couple and even that it was he who carried out the killing. 

He had plausible motives, both personal and political, given his own interest in Modotti and Mella’s association with Trotskyists, to whom the Stalinist Comintern was hostile. Yet, although they questioned and released Modotti, the Mexican authorities charged another man, José Agustín López, a criminal with no political associations, with the murder. The accepted version of events, in Cuban history in any event, is that Mella’s death was ordered by the Cuban president, Gerardo Machado.

Vidali left Mexico for Spain.  Working under the name Carlos Contreras, he teamed up with Enrique Castro Delgado to create the so-called "Fifth Regiment" responsible for the defence of Madrid against Francisco Franco’s Nationalists, and organised the production of a daily newspaper to provide information for those fighting for the Spanish Democratic Republic.  At the same time, in a more sinister side to his activities on behalf of Comintern, he is said to have arranged for a number of pro-Trotsky operatives on the republican side to be eliminated.

He returned to Mexico in 1940, not long before Trotsky was killed. He was suspected of being involved in a failed assassination attempt at Trotsky’s residence in Mexico City. He was also thought to have facilitated the infiltration into Trotsky’s inner circle of the Stalinist operative Ramón Mercader, who entered Trotsky’s study and killed him with an ice axe later in the same year.  

Vidali served for 10 years in the Italian parliament
Vidali served for 10 years in
the Italian parliament
Modotti, who was expelled from Mexico in 1930, rejoined Vidali in Spain and returned with him to Mexico under a false name. She herself died suddenly in 1942, suffering a cardiac arrest while returning home from a social engagement in a taxi. There were rumours that Vidali, despite the intimate nature of their relationship, had her killed simply because she knew too much about his activities in Spain.

By 1947, Vidali was back in his home country, returning to Trieste. After the postwar settlement saw the long-disputed city established as the Free Territory of Trieste, Vidali became one of the most powerful members of the Communist Party there, conducting a purge of Titoists within the organisation following Stalin’s split with the Yugoslav leader. 

After Trieste became part of Italy again in 1954, Vidali had ambitions to serve as a Communist in the Italian Parliament from the area. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1958 and to the Senate in 1963, sitting until 1968.  He died in Trieste at the age of 83.

The harbour at the quaint seaside town of Muggia, the only Istrian town to remain part of Italy
The harbour at the quaint seaside town of Muggia,
the only Istrian town to remain part of Italy
Travel tip:

At the time of Vidali’s birth, the coastal town of Muggia - situated 12km (7 miles) by road from Trieste - belonged to the part of the Austria-Hungary empire known as the Istrian peninsula, which includes a number of beautiful towns and cities such as Pula, Rovinj, Perec and Vrsar. It was partitioned to Italy in the Treaty of Rapallo in 1920 following the First World War. In the Second World War it became a battleground for rival ethnic groups and political groups. It was occupied by Germany but with their withdrawal in 1945  Yugoslav partisans gained the upper hand and Istria was eventually ceded to Yugoslavia. It was divided between Croatia and Slovenia following the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991. Nowadays, Muggia remains the only former Istrian town that is part of Italy. A charmingly quaint fishing port, Muggia’s main attractions are its Duomo, dedicated to the saints John and Paul, the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta and its 14th century castle, which stood abandoned for 200 years but has been restored by the sculptor, Villi Bossi. 

The sea-facing Piazza Unita d'Italia is the oldest and most elegant square in Trieste
The sea-facing Piazza Unita d'Italia is the oldest
and most elegant square in Trieste
Travel tip:

The seaport of Trieste, capital of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, officially became part of the Italian Republic in 1954. Trieste had been disputed territory for thousands of years and after it was granted to Italy in 1920, thousands of the resident Slovenians left. The final border with Yugoslavia was settled in 1975 with the Treaty of Osimo. The area today is one of the most prosperous in Italy and Trieste is a lively, cosmopolitan city and a major centre for trade and ship building.  The city has a coffee house culture that dates back to the Hapsburg era.  Caffè Tommaseo, in Piazza Nicolò Tommaseo, near the grand open space of the Piazza Unità d’Italia, is the oldest in the city, dating back to 1830.

Also on this day:

1552: The birth of writer and actor Flaminio Scala

1871: The birth of Nobel Prize winner Grazia Deledda

1966: The birth of musician Jovanotti

1979: The death of actress and writer Gracie Fields

September 27 was the chosen birthday of Cosimo de’ Medici, born in 1389


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14 July 2021

Natalia Ginzburg - writer and politician

Sicilian raised in Turin became one of Italy’s great postwar novelists

Natalia Ginzburg (née Levi) with her husband, the  leading anti-Fascist figure, Leone Ginzburg
Natalia Ginzburg (née Levi) with her husband, the 
leading anti-Fascist figure, Leone Ginzburg
The writer and politician Natalia Ginzburg was born on this day in 1916 in the Sicilian capital, Palermo.

The author of 11 novels and short story collections, as well as numerous essays, Ginzburg came to be regarded as one of Italy’s great postwar writers, alongside Primo Levi, Carlo Levi, Alberto Moravia, Cesare Pavese, Elsa Morante and Giorgio Bassani among others.

Her most famous works include Tutti i nostri ieri - All Our Yesterdays - published in 1952, Lessico famigliare  - Family Sayings -  published in 1963, and La famiglia Manzoni - The Manzoni Family - published in 1983.

She was notable for writing about family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy.

Ginzburg, who was married to a prominent figure in the Italian resistance movement in World War Two, was an active anti-Fascist and a member of the Italian Communist Party in the 1930s.  In later life, she was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as an independent.

Ginzburg became a leading light in postwar Italian literature
Ginzburg became a leading light
in postwar Italian literature
Although born in Palermo, Ginzburg spent her early life in Turin, where her father, Giuseppe Levi, was a professor of neuroanatomy at the University of Turin, presiding over a research laboratory that produced three winners of Nobel Prizes.

The family was well connected in social and intellectual circles in Turin. Her sister, Paola, married a future president of the business machines company, Olivetti, of which one of her brothers, Gino, became Olivetti’s technical director. Of her two other brothers, Mario was a journalist and Alberto a doctor. 

As a Jewish family - although her mother, Lidia, was a gentile - they were heavily involved in the city’s anti-Fascist movement and suffered for it. Natalia’s brothers were frequently arrested and sometimes jailed for their activities. Guiseppe Levi was in time stripped of his position at the university and moved to Belgium.

Natalia’s brothers were members of the anti-Fascist organization Giustizia e Libertà (Justice and Liberty), the leader of which was Leone Ginzburg, a professor of Russian Literature at the University of Turin, with whom she began a relationship. 

Like her father, Leone was dismissed from his university position. He was under constant surveillance from Mussolini’s secret police and eventually stopped visiting the Levi family home, worried that he was putting the family in danger. Nonetheless, he and Natalia continued to see one another and were married in 1938. They had three children, the eldest of whom, Carlo Ginzburg, is now an eminent historian.

A recent edition of one of Ginzburg's most acclaimed works, Family Lexicon
A recent edition of one of Ginzburg's
most acclaimed works, Family Lexicon
Despite her own Jewish roots and her marriage to Ginzburg, Natalia was allowed to bring up her children largely without harassment. For Leone, however, it was a different story. Placed under precautionary arrest every time an important politician or the King, Victor Emmanuel III, visited the city, in 1941 he was sentenced to internal exile in the remote, impoverished village of Pizzoli in Abruzzo.  He and Natalia and their young family lived there until 1943, when he secretly moved to Rome to edit an anti-Fascist underground newspaper.

Mussolini was deposed but it did not mean the Ginzburgs could rest easy. When Nazi Germany invaded the peninsula, Natalia was determined to be reunited with her husband and managed to persuade a German army unit to take her to Rome, claiming she and her children were refugees who had lost their papers.

They found Leone and went into hiding but it was not long before he was arrested. This time their separation was permanent. By the following February, Leone had died aged 34 after suffering a cardiac arrest in the Rome prison of Regina Coeli, having been subjected to brutal interrogation and torture.

At this time, Natalia Ginzburg’s career as a writer was in its infancy, although she was already the author of a novel published under a pseudonym in 1942 at a time when Mussolini’s race laws barred Jewish authors from seeing their work in print.

After the war, she worked at the Turin publishing house of Giulio Einaudi - of which Leone had been a founder - and became acquainted with some of the leading figures of postwar Italian literature, including Carlo Levi, Primo Levi, Pavese and Italo Calvino.  It was Pavese who is said to have given her the most encouragement to write more herself.

Her own output increased after she was married for a second time, in 1950, to Gabriele Baldini, an academic. They lived in Rome and for many years were at the centre of the city’s cultural life, Ginzburg’s novels, short stories, essays and plays attracting much critical acclaim. Having become friends with the director and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini, she even accepted a small part in his 1964 film, The Gospel According to St Matthew, in which he followed the neorealist tradition of using non-professional actors.

Ginzburg won some of Italy’s most prestigious literary awards, including the Strega Prize for Lessico famigliare and the Bagutta Prize for La famiglia Manzoni.  

She and Baldini had two children, although both were born with severe disabilities and the first died after only a year. Baldini himself died young, in 1969 at the age of only 49.

Ginzburg was never far from active politics. Like so many anti-Fascists from the wartime period, she was at times a member of the Italian Communist Party, although when she was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1983 it was as an independent.

Her literary output began to slow down in the 1980s. She died in Rome in 1991 at the age of 75.

Piazza San Carlo in Turin, looking towards the churches of Santa Cristina and San Carlo
Piazza San Carlo in Turin, looking towards the
churches of Santa Cristina and San Carlo
Travel tip:

The original offices of the Einaudi publishing company in Turin were in Via dell'Arcivescovado, a few steps from the beautiful Piazza San Carlo, one of the city's main squares. A stunning example of 16th and 17th century Baroque design, the large piazza is notable for the twin churches of Santa Cristina and San Carlo at the southwest entrance to the square and for the monument to Emanuele Filiberto, a 16th century Duke of Savoy, in the centre. Spectacularly lit up in the evening, the square is home to two of Turin's most famous coffee houses, the Café San Carlo and Café Torino, as well as the Confetteria Stratta, renowned for the exquisite pastries it offers. 

Piazza Municipio is the main square of the  Abruzzo village of Pizzoli
Piazza Municipio is the main square of the 
Abruzzo village of Pizzoli
Travel tip:

Pizzoli was an impoverished village in is a remote, mountainous part of central Italy some 135km (84 miles) northeast of Rome at the time the Ginzburg family were exiled there in 1941. Nowadays it is a well-kept, lively small town popular with visitors to the area as a starting point for trekking holidays in the mountains of the Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga National Park. Situated 15km (9 miles) northwest of the city of L'Aquila, Pizzoli is typical of the region in that it has the feel of a different time when life was less frantic. Its local quisine features pork and mutton in abundance, with thin skewers of salted, flame-grilled mutton called Arrosticini among its specialities.

Also on this day:

1602: The birth of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, ruler of France

1614: The death of Saint Camillus de Lellis, a reformed gambler who devoted himself to caring for the sick

1902: The collapse of the bell tower of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice

1948: The shooting in Rome of Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti 


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10 April 2021

Nilde Iotti – politician

'The best President of the Republic that Italy never had'

Iotti was the first woman to be elected president of the Chamber of Deputies
Iotti was the first woman to be elected
president of the Chamber of Deputies
Leonilde Iotti, who was later known as Nilde Iotti and became Italy’s most important and respected female politician, was born on this day in 1920 in Reggio Emilia.

She was both the first female president of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament and the longest serving, occupying the position from 1979 to 1992. 

One of the 75 politicians who drafted the Italian Constitution, she was a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and its successor, the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) for all of her political career.

Iotti's father, Egidio, was a socialist trade unionist but he died when she was a teenager. Thanks to a scholarship, she was able to attend the Catholic University of Milan. She graduated in 1942 and joined the National Fascist Party, which she was obliged to do in order to become a teacher.

At the same time, she was an underground member of the PCI and during World War II she was an active member of the Resistance movement setting up and leading women’s defence groups.

After the war, Iotti was elected to the Constituent Assembly and was one of the 75 members who drafted the Constitution in 1946.

It was at this time that she started her relationship with the PCI leader, Palmiro Togliatti, who was 27 years older than her. They stayed together until his death in 1964.

Iotti with Palmiro Togliatti, with whom she shared her life for many years, pictured in Russia
Iotti with Palmiro Togliatti, with whom she shared
her life for many years, pictured in Russia
To begin with their relationship was kept secret but, after an attempt on his life in 1948, it became public knowledge. Togliatti was shot three times near Palazzo Montecitorio, the seat of the Italian Chamber of Deputies in Rome. He was seriously wounded and for several days it was not certain that he would survive. He eventually recovered and was able to continue as head of the party until his death.

The Italian people and members of the PCI were opposed to their relationship because Togliatti was married with a son, but the couple remained committed to each other and eventually adopted a child together, Marisa Malagoli, the daughter of a worker killed during a demonstration.

In 1948 Iotti became a member of the Chamber of Deputies and in June 1979 she was elected president, in which position she was also Speaker of the House, gaining re-election in 1983 and 1987 for an unbroken tenure of 13 years.

In 1956 she became a member of the central committee of the PCI and became an integral part of the party leadership. She focused her activity on the relevance of the female role in the workplace and on civil rights. She was particularly involved in the campaign for the 1974 divorce referendum.

Iotti (right) with Marisa Maligola, the orphan she and Togliatti adopted as a daughter
Iotti (right) with Marisa Maligola, the orphan she
and Togliatti adopted as a daughter 
In 1991 she supported the transformation of the PCI to the PDS and became a leading member of the renamed party. She was elected to the Chamber of Deputies again in the 1992, 1994 and 1996 elections.

Her name was mentioned in connection with the role of President of the Republic but she was never chosen. She has been widely spoken of as the best President of the Republic that Italy never had.

When Iotti retired in November 1999 due to ill health she had served continuously in the Italian parliament for 53 years.

Nilde Iotti died in Rome in December 1999. Before her state funeral, an all-women guard of honour stood by her coffin in the hall of the Chamber of Deputies where she had spent so much of her life. She was buried in the Cimitero del Verano, next to her lover, Togliatti, which had been her last wish.

The Basilica di San Prospero overlooks an elegant square in Reggio Emilia
The Basilica di San Prospero overlooks
an elegant square in Reggio Emilia
Travel tip:

Reggio Emilia, where Nilde Iotti was born, is an ancient walled city in the region of Emilia-Romagna, 28km (17 miles) southeast of Parma and 32km (20 miles) northwest of Modena. It is the birthplace of the poet, Ludovico Ariosto, and there is a statue of him in the centre of the city and you can see the villa the poet was born in near the municipal building. You can also see a villa outside the town, Il Mauriziano, where Ariosto spent time while he was governing the city on behalf of the Dukes of Ferrara.  Raggio Emilia is believed to have given Italy its tricolore national flag. There are historical records that suggest that a short-lived 18th century republic, the Repubblica Cispadana, had a flag of red, white and green that was decreed in Reggio Emilia in 1797. Notable buildings in the city include the Basilica della Ghiara and the 10th century Basilica di San Prospero, which overlooks the elegant Piazza of the same name.

The Palazzo Montecitorio has housed the Italian Chamber of Deputies since 1918
The Palazzo Montecitorio has housed the Italian
Chamber of Deputies since 1918
Travel tip:

Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome is the seat of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Italian Parliament. The building was originally designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for Ludovico Ludovisi, the nephew of Pope Gregory XV. Following Italian unification, the palace was chosen as the seat of the Chamber of Deputies in 1871 but the building proved inadequate for their needs, with poor acoustics and a tendency to become overheated in summer and inhospitably cold in winter. After extensive renovations had been carried out, with many Stile Liberty touches introduced by the architect Ernesto Basile, the chamber returned to the palace in 1918.

Also on this day:

1598: The death of philosopher Jacopo Mazzoni

1762: The birth of physicist Giovanni Aldini

1886: The death of physician and politician Agostino Bertani

1892: An Italian airship completes the first flight over the North Pole

1991: The Moby Prince disaster

(Basilica di San Prospero picture by Paola da Reggio via Wikimedia Commons)


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1 May 2020

Ignazio Silone – politician and author

Socialist leader became famous for anti-Fascist novels


Ignazio Silone was a founding member of the Italian Communist Party in 1921
Ignazio Silone was a founding member of
the Italian Communist Party in 1921
Writer and political leader Ignazio Silone was born Secondino Tranquilli on this day in 1900 in Pescina dei Marsi in the region of Abruzzo.

Tranquilli became famous under the pseudonym, Ignazio Silone, during World War II for his powerful anti-Fascist novels and he was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature ten times.

Silone’s father, Paolo Tranquilli, died when he was 11 and he lost his mother, Marianna, and other members of his family four years later in the Avezzano earthquake of 1915.

Two years afterwards he joined the Young Socialist group of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), eventually becoming their leader and editor of their newspaper Avanguardia.

He was a founding member of the breakaway Italian Communist Party (PCI) party in 1921 and became one of its covert leaders during the Fascist regime, editing their newspaper in Trieste, Il Lavoratore.

His brother, Romolo Tranquilli, was arrested in 1928 for being a member of the PCI and died in prison in 1931 as a result of the severe beatings he had received from the Fascist police.

Silone went to live in Switzerland in 1930 where he declared his opposition to Joseph Stalin and was expelled from the PCI.

Silone's Abruzzo Trilogy won him acclaim as a novelist
Silone's Abruzzo Trilogy won
him acclaim as a novelist
He suffered from tuberculosis and clinical depression and spent nearly a year in Swiss clinics. While recovering, he began writing his first novel, Fontamara, under the pseudonym of Ignazio Silone, which was published in German in 1933.

After the English edition was published by Penguin Books in 1934, the Spanish Civil War and the events leading up to World War II increased the attention on the novel, which was about the exploitation of peasants in a southern Italian village and how they were brutally suppressed while they tried to obtain their rights. It became an international sensation and was published in 14 languages.

Silone’s later novels, Pane e vino (Bread and wine) and Il seme sotto la neve (The seed beneath the snow) portrayed socialist heroes who tried to help the peasants by sharing their sufferings in a Christian spirit.

The US army printed versions of Fontamara and Pane e vino and distributed them to the Italians during the liberation of Italy after 1943. Together with Il seme sotto la neve, they formed the Abruzzo Trilogy.

During World War II, Silone was the leader of a clandestine socialist organisation operating from Switzerland supporting resistance groups in German-occupied northern Italy. He also became an Office of Strategic Services agent.

A poster advertising the film made of Silone's book, Fontamara
A poster advertising the film made
of Silone's book, Fontamara
Silone returned to Italy in 1944 and was elected as a PSI member of the Italian parliament two years later.

In 1969 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, an award for writers who deal with the theme of individual freedom and society. In 1971 he received the Prix Mondial Cino del Duca, which recognises authors whose work sends out a message of modern humanism.

Silone wrote ten novels and six essays as well as plays and poetry. A film based on his novel, Fontamara, starring Michele Placido, was released in 1977.

Married to Irish journalist Darina Laracy, Silone died in Geneva in Switzerland in 1978.

In the 1990s, documents emerged that seemed to show Silone had acted as an informant for the Fascist police between 1919 and 1930, causing scholars and biographers to re-evaluate the writer’s political stands and literary work. It was believed he broke away from the police because of the torture they inflicted on his brother.


A plaque marks the birthplace of Ignazio Silone in the Abruzzo town of Pescina dei Marsi
A plaque marks the birthplace of Ignazio Silone in
the Abruzzo town of Pescina dei Marsi
Travel tip:

Pescina dei Marsi, where the writer Ignazio Silone was born, is in the province of L’Aquila in the region of Abruzzo in central Italy. Pescina was badly damaged in the earthquake of Avezzano in 1915 in which Silone’s mother was killed. There were 5,000 victims in Pescina out of a population of 6,000. The oldest part of the town, which was built in the 14th century, was almost destroyed, with only the bell tower of the old church of San Berardo and a few other buildings surviving.

The tomb of Ignazio Silone sits under the bell tower of San Berardo in Pescina dei Marsi
The tomb of Ignazio Silone sits under the bell tower of
San Berardo in Pescina dei Marsi
Travel tip:

Ignazio Silone used the old part of Pescina dei Marsi as the setting for his novel Fontamara. Today, visitors can go to the partially restored old town where Silone’s tomb lies below the medieval bell tower of San Berardo.  His birthplace, one of the few houses to survive the earthquake, is now a museum dedicated to the writer and has some of his manuscripts and original letters.

Also on this day:

1908: The birth of author Giovanni Guareschi 

1927: The birth of actress and jazz singer Laura Betti

1947: The Porto della Ginestra Massacre

1957: The birth of film director Uberto Pasolini


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8 April 2019

Renzo De Felice - historian

Renzo De Felice was accused of trying to generate sympathy for Fascism
Renzo De Felice was accused of trying
to generate sympathy for Fascism

Mussolini biographer whose views on fascism aroused anger


The controversial historian Renzo De Felice, best known for his 6,000-page four-volume biography of Benito Mussolini, was born on this day in 1929 in Rieti, the northernmost city in Lazio.

Although De Felice was Jewish and his other major work described in detail the persecution of Jews in Italy under Mussolini’s rule, he sparked considerable anger by arguing that the postwar world view of Fascism should be revised to recognise that the ideology in itself was not inherently evil.

De Felice contended that fascism as a political movement in Italy was not the same as Fascism as a regime, arguing that the former was a revolutionary middle-class ideology that had its roots in the progressive thinking of the Age of Enlightenment.

He argued that the ideology was effectively hijacked by Mussolini to provide the superstructure for his dictatorship and personal ambition and that fascism itself, as distinct from Mussolini’s interpretation, was a valid political concept, not just something to be demonized and dismissed in simplistic terms.

Renzo De Felice spent more than 30 years writing a 6,000-page biography of Mussolini
Renzo De Felice spent more than 30 years writing a
6,000-page biography of Mussolini
It was an argument that was respected by many intellectuals, even some who were staunchly anti-Fascist, but when De Felice’s magnum opus, which took him more than 30 years to write, seemed to challenge the established postwar view of Fascism as a criminal regime imposed by Mussolini and his squads of Black Shirts, there was considerable anger.

Critics of De Felice, a professor at the Sapienza University of Rome, interpreted his favourable assessment of some of social and economic reforms introduced by Mussolini, and his argument that he was largely a popular leader until the outbreak of the Second World War, as an attempt to rehabilitate fascism. Some accused him of being an apologist for the self-styled Duce.

Denis Mack Smith, an Oxford historian and the author of several histories of Italy, denounced De Felice for minimizing the uglier side of Fascism, such as Mussolini's personal responsibility for killing political opponents and leading Italy to ruin in his unwavering support for Hitler, while Nicola Tranfaglia, a professor of history at the University of Turin, argued that De Felice overstated Il Duce's popular support, pointing out that while Mussolini enjoyed a measure of popularity with ordinary Italians, he would not risk free elections.

From Italy’s political Left came complaints that De Felice was too sympathetic to Italian Fascism, even that he supported it. A few months before he died, two incendiary devices were thrown at his house in Rome, although no one claimed responsibility for the attack.

De Felice (right) with his publisher, Vito Laterza
De Felice (right) with his publisher, Vito Laterza
However, Italy’s intellectual Communist leader Giorgio Amendola defended De Felice, rejecting many of the criticisms and even endorsing some of De Felice's ideas, agreeing with his assessment that the movement had a revolutionary aspect in its infancy and that Mussolini's Fascism did attract support among the population.

De Felice himself was a former member of the Italian Communist Party, which he had joined as a student.  He left after the party declared its support for the Soviet repression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and joined the Italian Socialist Party.

He died in Rome in 1996 at the age of 67, having been ill for several years. In accordance with his wishes, he was given a small, private funeral, devoid of ceremony.

When news of his death emerged, there were tributes from many political figures, including the President of the Republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, while many newspapers described him as one of the greatest Italian historians of the 20th century.

Beyond Italy, his death brought praise for De Felice for his independent spirit, his intellectual courage and the thoroughness of his research.

The Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, with the Fontana dei Delfini, is the central square of Rieti
The Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, with the Fontana dei Delfini,
is the central square of Rieti
Travel tip:

Situated about 80km (50 miles) northeast of Rome, the city of Rieti sits in the far northeastern corner of the Lazio region, near the borders with Abruzzo, Le Marche and Umbria. The ancient capital of the area once known as Sabina, Rieti has a population of around 47,000 people and is a popular destination for visitors from Rome, who enjoy the peaceful nature of the city and the surrounding area. Although it was once the site of a Roman city on the Via Salaria - the “salt road” linking Rome with the Adriatic coast - only a few remains are visible, although the remnants of a third-century bridge are a point of interest. At the heart of the present city is Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, with the Fontana dei Delfini at the centre. The nearby 13th century Palazzo Comunale houses the Civic Museum, which houses artifacts from the 9th BC through to the Roman era, along with paintings from the 14th century onwards. Some famous architects worked in the city, including Carlo Maderno, who designed the Renaissance-style Palazzo Vecchiarelli in the late 16th century.

Bucatini all'Amatriciana originates from Amatrice, a town not from from Rieti famed for its food
Bucatini all'Amatriciana originates from Amatrice, a town
not from from Rieti famed for its food
Travel tip:

Rieti is known for its hill cuisine, with hearty stews and meat dishes and handmade pasta dishes. Potatoes, mushrooms, truffles, and wild berries grow in the area and figure into the regional cuisine, as does homemade Pecorino cheese and sausages. The nearby town of Amatrice, which suffered considerable damage in an earthquake in 2016, is home to the famed pasta dish Spaghetti all'Amatriciana. The Rieti area has its own DOC wines, too - Colli della Sabina, in white and red varieties.

Also on this day:

1492: The death of Renaissance ruler Lorenzo the Magnificent

1848: The death of composer Gaetano Donizetti

1868: The birth of equestrian pioneer Federico Caprilli



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24 February 2019

Bettino Craxi - prime minister

The Socialist who broke the grip of the Christian Democrats


Bettino Craxi was the first socialist prime  minister of Italy in the modern era
Bettino Craxi was the first socialist prime
 minister of Italy in the modern era
Bettino Craxi, the politician who in 1983 became the first member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) to be appointed prime minister, was born on this day in 1934 in Milan. 

He was not the first socialist to hold the office - Ivanoe Bonomi had been prime minister for six months in 1920 on an Italian Reformist Socialist Party ticket and succeeded Marshal Pietro Badoglio as leader of the war-torn nation’s post-Mussolini government in 1944. However, Craxi broke the hold of the Christian Democrats, who had been in power continuously since the first postwar elections in 1946.

Craxi was a moderniser who moved his party away from traditional forms of socialism in a way that was replicated elsewhere in Europe, such as in Britain under the New Labour prime minister Tony Blair. Craxi replaced the party’s hammer-and-sickle symbol with a red carnation.

His reputation was ultimately wrecked by a corruption scandal, but during his tenure as prime minister, Italy became the fifth largest industrial nation and gained entry into the G7 Group.

His fiscal policies saw him clash with the powerful trade unions over the abolition of the wage-price escalator under which workers’ wages rose automatically in line with inflation, scoring a major victory when a referendum on the issue called by the Italian Communist Party went in his favour.  However, as a result of Craxi’s overall spending policies, Italy’s national debt overtook its gross domestic product.

Craxi with the US president Ronald Reagan, with whom he clashed over the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship
Craxi with the US president Ronald Reagan, with whom he
clashed over the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship
Craxi demonstrated his strength again in a dispute with the United States following the hijacking off the Egyptian coast of the Achille Lauro cruise ship by members of the Palestine Liberation Army in 1983, during which an American citizen, Leon Klinghoffer, was killed. President Ronald Reagan wanted the four perpetrators to be extradited to the US but Italy wished to preserve its good diplomatic relations with the Arab world and avoid becoming a terrorist target, so Craxi refused, insisting that the hijackers should come under Italian jurisdiction. His firmness earned him a standing ovation in the Italian Senate, even from his Communist opponents.

Craxi, who formed a new coalition in 1986 after his 1983 government collapsed, resigned in early 1987. In 1993, following the mani puliti investigations, multiple charges of political corruption against him forced Craxi to quit as party leader.

He did not deny that he had solicited funding for the Socialist Party illegally but claimed that all the political parties did the same and that the PSI were being targeted for political reasons. Craxi fled to exile in Tunisia later that year, just before being convicted, and never returned. He died there in 2000.

Craxi opposed the mooted 'historic compromise'  with Enrico Berlinguer's Communists
Craxi opposed the 'historic compromise' with
 the Communists of Enrico Berlinguer (above)
Craxi - who was christened Benedetto - owed his political beliefs to his father, Vittorio, an anti-Fascist lawyer from Sicily, who became vice-prefect for Milan and then prefect for Como and stood in the 1948 national elections for the Popular Democratic Front, a political alliance between Socialists and Communists. Bettino campaigned for his father and later joined the Italian Socialist Party at the age of 17.

After being elected a town councillor in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano - his mother’s birthplace - in 1956, he became a member of the PSI’s central committee in 1957, won a seat on the city council of Milan in 1960 and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1968.

In 1970 he was appointed the party’s deputy secretary. He was a strong supporter of the centre-left coalition between the Christian Democrats of Aldo Moro and Amintore Fanfani, the PSI, then led by Pietro Nenni, the Social Democrats the Republicans.

He was elevated to general secretary in 1976 following a poor election performance by PSI candidates and set about uniting the party’s squabbling factions, committed it to moderate social and economic policies, and tried to dissociate it from the much larger Italian Communist Party.

Craxi always opposed the mooted 'historic compromise' favoured by Moro and the Communist leader, Enrico Berlinguer, on the basis that a political alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Communists would marginalise the Socialists, yet when Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades in 1978, amid demands for the release of so-called political prisoners, Craxi was the only political leader to declare himself open to a "humanitarian solution" that would allow Moro to be freed.

Under Craxi’s leadership the Socialists were members in five of Italy’s six coalition governments from 1980 to 1983 before the 1983 elections gave him the opportunity to form a coalition government with the Christian Democrats and several small, moderate parties.

His tenure as prime minister lasted three years and seven months, the third longest in the republican era. Silvio Berlusconi, with whom he enjoyed a close friendship despite their political differences, is the only prime minister to enjoy longer unbroken spells in office.

The Castello di Sant'Angelo Lodigiano is now a museum set up in honour of the Bolognini family
The Castello di Sant'Angelo Lodigiano is now a museum
set up in honour of the Bolognini family
Travel tip:

The town of Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, where Bettino Craxi served as a councillor in the 1950s, is situated about 40km (25 miles) southeast of Milan, close to the city of Lodi in Lombardy. It is best known for the castle that was built there in the 13th century, standing guard over the river Lambro in a strategically favourable position for the control of river traffic to Milan. The castle was turned into a summer residence by Regina della Scala, wife of Bernabò Visconti. In 1452, with the passage of the power of the Duchy of Milan from the Visconti to the Sforza, the fiefdom and the castle were donated, by Francesco Sforza, to Michele Matteo Bolognini, who received the title of Count. It remained the property of the Bolognini family and became known as the Castello Bolognini until 1933, when the widow of the last descendant - Count Gian Giacomo Morando Bolognini -  created the Fondazione Morando Bolognini for agricultural research and turned the castle into a museum.

Hotels in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano by Booking.com


Lodi's beautiful main square, the Piazza della Vittoria. looking towards the 12th century cathedral
Lodi's beautiful main square, the Piazza della Vittoria.
looking towards the 12th century cathedral
Travel tip:

The city of Lodi sits on the right bank of the River Adda. The main square, Piazza della Vittoria, has been listed by the Touring Club of Italy as among the most beautiful squares in Italy with its porticoes on all four sides. Its cathedral, the Basilica Cattedrale della Vergine Assunta, was founded on August 3, 1158, the day on which Lodi was refounded after its destruction by Milanese troops in 1111. The façade, built in Romanesque style with the exception of the large Gothic entrance portico supported by small columns with lion sculptures at the base, was completed in 1284.




(Picture credits: Castle Sant’Angelo Lodigiano by Paperkat; Piazza della Vittoria, Lodi by Gabriele Zuffetti; via Wikmedia Commons)


1 February 2019

Teresa Mattei - partisan and politician

Former Communist who led Italian Women’s Union


Teresa Mattei was expelled from school for speaking out against Fascist laws
Teresa Mattei was expelled from school
for speaking out against Fascist laws
The politician and former partisan Teresa Mattei, who was the youngest member of the Constituent Assembly that formed Italy’s post-War government and later became a director of the Unione Donne Italiane (Italian Women’s Union), was born on this day in 1921 in Genoa.

After being expelled from the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1957, Mattei became a leading advocate of the rights of children as well as women and later campaigned for the prosecution of war criminals.

As a prominent executive of the UDI she was influential in the adoption of mimosa as the symbol of International Women’s Day, which takes place on March 8 each year, arguing that because the flower proliferated in the countryside it represented a more accessible alternative to violets and orchids.

The daughter of a lawyer who was prominent in the anti-Fascist Partito d’Azione (Action Party), Mattei herself was a active member of the Italian Resistance during the Second World War, using the nom de guerre "Partigiana Chicchi".

She was part of a group in 1944 that plotted and carried out the execution of Giovanni Gentile, the philosopher who had become the main intellectual spokesman for Fascism and who had part-written Benito Mussolini’s Doctrine of Fascism in 1932.

Teresa Mattei with her first husband, the partisan leader Bruno Sanguinetti
Teresa Mattei with her first husband, the
partisan leader Bruno Sanguinetti 
Mattei grew up in Milan and Varese and went to school steeped in antipathy towards Fascism, with the consequence that in 1938 at the age of 17 she was handed a blanket exclusion from all Italian schools because of her outspoken opposition to Mussolini’s anti-Jewish race laws and their  promulgation in the classroom.

Nonetheless, having moved with her family to Tuscany in 1933, she was accepted as a student at the University of Florence, where she graduated in philosophy before joining the partisans. She joined the Communist Party in 1942 and met her future husband, Bruno Sanguinetti, a resistance fighter of Jewish origin who was a commander of the Communist Youth Front and the major instigator of the plot to murder Gentile, a professor at the university.

Gentile was ambushed and shot dead as he left the prefecture in Florence, after which Sanguinetti proclaimed the assassination as vengeance for the death of Mattei’s brother, Gianfranco, a chemist and bombmaker for the partisans, who had hanged himself in prison rather than risk betraying his comrades under torture.

After the war had ended, Mattei was elected in the PCI lists to the Constituent Assembly for Florence and Pistoia. At 25 the youngest person to be elected in the organisation, she was a signatory to Article Three of the constitution of the new Italian Republic, declaring all citizens regardless of sex, race, language, religion, political opinions, personal and social conditions to have the right to equal social dignity and be equal before the law.

Prime minister Alcide de Gasperi addresses the Consituent Assembly in 1946. Mattei is in the third row, just behind him
Prime minister Alcide de Gasperi addresses the Consituent
Assembly in 1946. Mattei is in the third row, just behind him
Mattei married Sanguinetti in Budapest in 1948 and they had two children, Gianfranco and Antonella. However, Sanguinetti died suddenly in the early 1950s. She was married for a second time to Iacopo Muzio, a PCI official, with whom she had two more children, Gabriele and Rocco.

In the meantime, she was expelled from the PCI for her opposition to the Stalinist policies adopted under the leadership of Palmiro Togliatti

Thereafter, she devoted her energies for more than 50 years to various campaigns for women’s and children’s rights, as well as, in 1996, organising a petition demanding a new trial for Erich Priebke, a former Nazi officer responsible for a massacre of more than 300 Jews and others in Rome in 1944 and for murdering dozens of Italian Resistance members detained in the city’s prisons. Priebke was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.

Having returned in later life to live in Tuscany, Mattei died in 2013 at the age of 92 in Usigliano, a village about 35km (22 miles) southeast of Pisa.

Florence University has several sites in the centre of the city, including this one, the Palazzo San Marco
Florence University has several sites in the centre of the city,
including this one, the Palazzo San Marco
Travel tip:

The University of Florence, which has 12 schools, swells the population of the city by some 60,000 students each year. Its Law, Economics and Political Science faculties are in the Novoli district, while those Medicine and Surgery, Pharmacology and certain scientific and engineering departments are in the Careggi district, close to the city’s main hospital. Among the alumni are the former President of Italy Alessandro Pertini, two popes - Nicholas V and Pius II - the poet Dante Alighieri and two prime ministers, Lamberto Dini and Matteo Renzi.


The Palazzo Pretoria in Pontedera
The Palazzo Pretoria in Pontedera
Travel tip:

Usigliano is a fairly remote village in Tuscany, with a couple of villas offering agriturismo-type accommodation and very few amenities. The nearest muncipality of any substantial size is Pontedera, the town at the confluence of the Arno and Era rivers notable for housing the headquarters of the Piaggio motorcycle and scooter company, the Castellani wine company and the Amadei chocolate factory. Pontedera was the seat of several historical battles, including a Florentine victory over the Milanese army of Barnabò Visconti in 1639 and a pyrrhic victory in the Republic of Siena’s struggle to retain its independence from Florence, two months before a decisive defeat at the Battle of Marciano.

Pontedera hotels from TripAdvisor.co.uk

More reading:

Giovanni Gentile, intellectual advocate of Fascism

Teresa Noce - partisan and activist who became an elected Deputy

Palmiro Togliatti, the Communist leader who survived an assassination attempt

Also on this day:

1690: The birth of virtuoso violinist Francesco Maria Veracini

1891: The birth of engineer Corradino D'Ascanio, inventor of the Vespa scooter

1922: The birth of opera singer Renata Tebaldi

(Picture credits: University building and Pontedera palazzo by Sailko via Creative Commons)


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