DAVID BRODER
Abstract
This study is a social history of communists in wartime Rome. It examines
a decisive change in Italian communist politics, as the Partito Comunista
Italiano (PCI) rose from a hounded fraternity of prisoners and exiles to a
party of government. Joining with other Resistance forces in the Comitato
di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN), this ‘new party’ recast itself as a mass,
patriotic force, committed to building a new democracy. This study
explains how such a party came into being. It argues that a PCI machine
could establish itself only by subduing other strands of communist
thought and organistion that had emerged independently of exiled Party
leaders. This was particularly true in Rome, where dissident communists
created the largest single Resistance formation, the Movimento Comunista
d’Italia (MCd’I). This movement was the product of the underground that
survived across the Mussolini period, expressing a ‘subversive’ politics
that took on a popular following through the disintegration of the Fascist
regime. Standing outside the CLN alliance and the postwar democratic
governments, it reflected the maximalism and eclecticism of a communist
milieu that had persisted on the margins of Fascist society. In the
Occupation period this dissident movement galvanised a social revolt in
the borgate slums, which would also trouble the new authorities even after
the Allies’ arrival. Studying the political writing of these dissidents, their
autodidact Marxism and the social conditions in which it emerged, this
study reconstructs a far-reaching battle to redefine communist politics.
Highlighting the erasure of the dissidents’ history in mainstream narration
of the Resistance, it argues that the repressed radicalism of this period
represented a lasting danger to the postwar PCI and the new Republic.
Table of contents
Preface
Chapter One
What remembrance forgets
1.1 Myths and martyrs
1.2 The PCI’s partisan legends
1.3 From underground to dissent
Chapter Two
‘You just wait till Stalin gets here…’
2.1. The writing on the wall
2.2. The long journey through Fascism
2.3. Scintilla
2.4. The British ‘bulldog’ spurned
2.5. ‘From the clandestine grouplet to mass work’
2.6. From Mussolini to Stalin
Chapter Three
Out of clandestinity – and back again
3.1. 19 July 1943: The war comes home
3.2. The overthrow of Mussolini
3.3. The PCI in Rome after 25 July
3.4. The foundation of the MCd’I
3.5. The united front
3.6. 8 September: the chaotic collapse
3.7. Toward a single communist movement?
Chapter Four
The borgate rise
4.1. A ‘Red Belt’
4.2. Motors to Resistance
4.3. The MCd’I in Rome and beyond
4.4. The ‘Banda Rossi’
4.5. Political directives
4.6. 7 November
Chapter Five
The Allies’ approach
5.1. Insurrectionary plans
5.2. Military contacts and POWs
5.3. Allied anti-communism
5.4. The CLN crisis
5.5. The ‘Committee of Public Safety’
Chapter Six
The forces of repression
6.1. The arsenal of repression
6.2. Raids and deportations
6.3. Via Rasella and the Fosse Ardeatine
6.4. A retreat
Chapter Seven
A Soviet foreign-policy move
7.1. The turn before Salerno
7.2. Togliatti’s return
7.3. A narrative of betrayal
7.4. Tito’s alternative
7.5. Doppiezza and Soviet foreign policy
Chapter Eight
The missing insurrection
8.1. A peaceful takeover
8.2 The moment of liberation
8.2. Open organisation
8.4. The ‘Red Army’
8.5. From Resistance to insurrection
Chapter Nine
The constitutional arch
9.1. The anger of crowds
9.2. Holdout partisans
9.3. Criminalisation
9.4. Unity projects
9.5. L’Idea Comunista
9.6. A Cold War Republic
Chapter Ten
The ‘Red Resistance’ and its myths
10.1. The ora X of insurrection
10.2. The new anti-fascism
10.3. The Years of Lead
10.4. The passing of an illusion
Preface
This study is a social history of communists in wartime Rome. It centres on the
period between the Wehrmacht invasion on 8 September 1943 and the Allies’
arrival in the capital on 4 June 1944. These nine months were a decisive turning
point in the development of Italian communism, as the Partito Comunista Italiano
(PCI), rose from a hounded fraternity of prisoners and exiles to a party of
government. The partito nuovo created through the Resistance was quite unlike
the Communist Party that had succumbed to Fascism two decades earlier.
Joining with other Resistance forces in the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN),
Palmiro Togliatti’s party cast itself as a mass, patriotic force, committed to
building a new democracy. So, too, was the PCI’s social profile radically altered,
as young Italians without past communist affiliation now flooded into its ranks.
This study focuses on the other side of the partito nuovo’s formation: the communists
who rejected Togliatti’s approach. For the PCI’s party machine to take form, its
cadres had to impose their leadership over a series of communist movements that
had emerged outside of their control. This was particularly true in the Italian capital,
where dissident communists created the largest single Resistance formation. Their
Movimento Comunista d’Italia (MCd’I) was the product of the underground that
survived across the Fascist period. Standing outside of the CLN alliance, it expressed
the maximalism and eclecticism of a subversive milieu that had long been detached
from Party leaders. In the Occupation period and after it galvanised an unruly social
revolt in the borgate slums, a proletarian rebellion that clashed with the PCI’s politics
of ‘national unity’.
Central to our research is the autodidact Marxism that flowered within this milieu,
expressed in papers and pamphlets, bulletins and handwritten polemics. A militant
minority used this worker-writing to endow its activity with a grand historic mission
and a global perspective, even despite its long isolation from the international Left.
This thinking drew on earlier Italian communist politics as well as a subculture that
had evolved across the Fascist period. As this study shows, these militants’ texts
often bore the mark of the conditions of repression in which they were produced. Yet
this autodidacticism also stood in defiance of the political illiteracy that Fascism had
sought to create. It embodied workers’ and artisans’ attempt to free themselves from\
the condition of those consigned only to follow leaders and execute commands.
These Roman militants’ pursuit of a class-war and revolutionary agenda set them
in sometimes sharp opposition to other anti-fascists. In the Occupation period the
demands of self-preservation compelled a degree of cooperation among all
clandestine militants, whether resisting Nazi raids or sheltering the endangered.
Yet in rejecting the idea of a common national interest, the dissident-communists
strongly opposed both the CLN alliance and the democratic governments that
followed.1 After Liberation they like other dissident partisans continued to build
their armed bands, waging expropriations and blackmail, occupying public
buildings and even extorting Allied supplies. As Nazi-Fascist2 tyranny gave way
to a new government of ‘national unity’, this intransigence drew these militants
into open conflict with the new authorities.
The Roman dissident movement did not create any lasting political force.
Paralysed by Nazi repression and criminalised under the Allies, it represented a
Resistance that did not shape the new Republic. Yet even in defeat, its militants
left an enduring legacy. The repression of partisan radicalism and a botched
defascistisation process left behind bitter weeds of disappointed hope;
‘unfinished business’ that repeatedly returned to the centre of Italian public life.
Making their own turn to the underground, new generations of armed militants
continued to destabilise the Republic into the 1970s. A study of this history thus
sheds light on the tensions at the origin of the postwar PCI and the Republic
itself. It highlights the subversive culture that developed across the Fascist era
and then re-emerged in the war period and beyond.
Each chapter of our study focuses on this fight to shape the Italian communist
movement as it emerged from two decades of repression:
Chapter One frames this study historically, explaining the blinkers that both
official Resistance remembrance and PCI self-mythology have placed on existing
1 ‘Antifascismo’, Disposizioni Rivoluzionarie, 5, 30.4.1944.
2 Nazifascismo, the common Italian term for the overlapping rule of Benito Mussolini’s
Fascist régime (the formally independent Repubblica Sociale Italiano, widely called the Salò
Republic in reference to its de facto capital) and Adolf Hitler’s control of the country,
occupied by Nazi Germany from 8 September 1943 onward.
understandings of wartime communism. It outlines a research perspective
focused on worker-militants’ own strategies for transforming Italian society, and
not just the decisions of professional politicians. It emphasises the generational
divide between the traditions inherited from earlier working-class radicalism,
and the new model of Party organisation forged in the interwar Comintern.
Chapter Two examines the culture of the Roman communist underground in the
early phases of the Second World War. It highlights the culture clash between the
intellectual fellow-travellers drawn into the orbit of Togliatti’s party during the
Popular Front era, and the proletarian underground that had survived across
Fascism. This chapter highlights the effects of the Fascist experience on this
clandestine milieu, including the spread of a millenarian cult of Stalin, outside of
and in tendency opposed to the PCI’s new strategy.
The clashes among the Roman communists become more sharply defined in
Chapter Three, which spans the 45 Days between the palace coup against
Mussolini and the German invasion. The liberalisation period following Marshal
Badoglio’s appointment allowed the formation of the political movements that
would go on to shape the Resistance. This chapter explains how the PCI’s
‘national unity’ policy hardened it against the dissident MCd’I.
The German invasion marked the beginning of a harsh Occupation regime, and
Chapter Four turns our focus to the social conditions in which armed bands now
emerged. Exploring the differences between the slum proletariat in Rome’s
peripheral borgate and the industrial working class of the North, we explain how
their respective forms of mobilisation related to communists’ differing
conceptions of ‘class struggle’. This focus on the particular forms of social revolt
on Rome’s periphery allows us to explain the relative strength of the dissident
communists in these areas compared to all other Resistance forces.
Chapter Five takes on a more international dimension, with the Anglo-Americans’
January 1944 arrival at Anzio, 35 miles south of the capital. For many anti-fascists
these landings offered hope that Liberation was close at hand. This chapter explains
how this prospect drove tensions within the anti-fascist coalition, as the parties
advanced their rival visions of the next government. This is also informed
These Roman militants’ pursuit of a class-war and revolutionary agenda set them
in sometimes sharp opposition to other anti-fascists. In the Occupation period the
demands of self-preservation compelled a degree of cooperation among all
clandestine militants, whether resisting Nazi raids or sheltering the endangered.
Yet in rejecting the idea of a common national interest, the dissident-communists
strongly opposed both the CLN alliance and the democratic governments that
followed.1 After Liberation they like other dissident partisans continued to build
their armed bands, waging expropriations and blackmail, occupying public
buildings and even extorting Allied supplies. As Nazi-Fascist2 tyranny gave way
to a new government of ‘national unity’, this intransigence drew these militants
into open conflict with the new authorities.
The Roman dissident movement did not create any lasting political force.
Paralysed by Nazi repression and criminalised under the Allies, it represented a
Resistance that did not shape the new Republic. Yet even in defeat, its militants
left an enduring legacy. The repression of partisan radicalism and a botched
defascistisation process left behind bitter weeds of disappointed hope;
‘unfinished business’ that repeatedly returned to the centre of Italian public life.
Making their own turn to the underground, new generations of armed militants
continued to destabilise the Republic into the 1970s. A study of this history thus
sheds light on the tensions at the origin of the postwar PCI and the Republic
itself. It highlights the subversive culture that developed across the Fascist era
and then re-emerged in the war period and beyond.
Each chapter of our study focuses on this fight to shape the Italian communist
movement as it emerged from two decades of repression:
Chapter One frames this study historically, explaining the blinkers that both
official Resistance remembrance and PCI self-mythology have placed on existing
1 ‘Antifascismo’, Disposizioni Rivoluzionarie, 5, 30.4.1944.
2 Nazifascismo, the common Italian term for the overlapping rule of Benito Mussolini’s
Fascist régime (the formally independent Repubblica Sociale Italiano, widely called the Salò
Republic in reference to its de facto capital) and Adolf Hitler’s control of the country,
occupied by Nazi Germany from 8 September 1943 onward.
understandings of wartime communism. It outlines a research perspective
focused on worker-militants’ own strategies for transforming Italian society, and
not just the decisions of professional politicians. It emphasises the generational
divide between the traditions inherited from earlier working-class radicalism,
and the new model of Party organisation forged in the interwar Comintern.
Chapter Two examines the culture of the Roman communist underground in the
early phases of the Second World War. It highlights the culture clash between the
intellectual fellow-travellers drawn into the orbit of Togliatti’s party during the
Popular Front era, and the proletarian underground that had survived across
Fascism. This chapter highlights the effects of the Fascist experience on this
clandestine milieu, including the spread of a millenarian cult of Stalin, outside of
and in tendency opposed to the PCI’s new strategy.
The clashes among the Roman communists become more sharply defined in
Chapter Three, which spans the 45 Days between the palace coup against
Mussolini and the German invasion. The liberalisation period following Marshal
Badoglio’s appointment allowed the formation of the political movements that
would go on to shape the Resistance. This chapter explains how the PCI’s
‘national unity’ policy hardened it against the dissident MCd’I.
The German invasion marked the beginning of a harsh Occupation regime, and
Chapter Four turns our focus to the social conditions in which armed bands now
emerged. Exploring the differences between the slum proletariat in Rome’s
peripheral borgate and the industrial working class of the North, we explain how
their respective forms of mobilisation related to communists’ differing
conceptions of ‘class struggle’. This focus on the particular forms of social revolt
on Rome’s periphery allows us to explain the relative strength of the dissident
communists in these areas compared to all other Resistance forces.
Chapter Five takes on a more international dimension, with the Anglo-Americans’
January 1944 arrival at Anzio, 35 miles south of the capital. For many anti-fascists
these landings offered hope that Liberation was close at hand. This chapter explains
how this prospect drove tensions within the anti-fascist coalition, as the parties
advanced their rival visions of the next government. This is also informed
by a study of the Allies’ efforts to impose order on the democratisation process in
the ‘laboratory’ of the liberated South.
Chapter Six focuses on the effect of repression on the Roman Resistance,
focusing on the counter-insurgency that struck in February-March 1944 as the
Allies’ march toward the city was halted. In particular, it highlights the contested
place of terrorist tactics in communist strategy, and the increased opposition to
their use in the face of devastating Nazi reprisals. It argues that this wave of
repression succeeded in demobilising the Roman Resistance.
Chapter Seven revolves around Togliatti’s ‘Salerno Turn’, as he led his party and
its allies into government. It argues that the Turn embodied the overlapping of
the PCI’s new democratic approach with its ongoing Soviet inspiration, allowing
the Party to unite widely varying political sensibilities. It highlights how
communists both within and outside the Party sought to reconcile Moscow’s
diplomatic moves with their understanding of their own strategic possibilities.
The controversy over the ‘Salerno Turn’ again poses the question of what
potential communists really had to transform an Italy liberated thanks to AngloAmerican invasion, and Chapter Eight explains why Rome did not see a popular
insurrection upon the Allies’ arrival. It explains that the weakness of Resistance
movements in the capital was compounded by the new institutional deal and the
Allies’ own efforts to prevent social unrest.
Chapter Nine proceeds into the post-Liberation period, with the disarming of the
partisans and the formation of Ivanoe Bonomi’s Allied-backed ‘government of
national unity’. It highlights the tensions between the CLN parties in
government, the state machine inherited from Fascism, and the armed bands
continuing to operate on the Roman city periphery. This allows us to see how a
new Republic built itself on the pacification of social unrest.
Finally, the concluding Chapter Ten explores the echoes of the so-called ‘Red
Resistance’ in the culture of the postwar Italian Left. Tracing the continual
remergence of militant anti-fascism and the politics of insurrection, it points to
the disappointed hopes of the Resistance period that continued to fuel political
violence. It thus presents repressed partisan radicalism as an enduring factor for
instability in Togliatti’s new party, as in the new Republic.
This study begins, however, by examining the role of Resistance commemoration
in Italian public life
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