They sounded like blasphemies. The left’s gambles, also known as ‘political initiatives’

Togliatti was its first signatory. But he would later describe it as ‘a load of rubbish’, denying ever having had anything to do with it. The Communist Party’s appeal of August 1936, ‘Ai fratelli in camicia nera’, was an initiative. It did not work. It aroused suspicion and ill feeling within the anti-fascist coalition in exile. It was disavowed by almost everyone. But Giorgio Amendola would later write, years on, that, in his view, in this way “a seed was sown that blossomed later”. It was a political initiative. An attempt to get things moving again, to shake things up, to break the deadlock. The aim was to capitalise on dissent within the fascist system, to divide them at a time when they appeared to have won a landslide victory. Eight years later, in 1944, another surprising political initiative by Togliatti, who had just returned to Naples from exile, would have momentous consequences; it would, in fact, lay the foundations of democracy in Italy.

The so-called ‘Salerno turning point’ – the decision to support the government of Marshal of Italy Badoglio – was by no means a foregone conclusion. Indeed, it sounded like blasphemy in the light of everything that had happened over the previous twenty years. The king was still Victor Emmanuel III, branded as ‘the fascist king’, the man who, following the March on Rome, had appointed Mussolini to power. Within the ‘broad coalition’ of the time, the other key figures did not take kindly to Togliatti’s political initiative. They would have preferred to maintain the anti-monarchist precondition, whereby the republic would first have had to be proclaimed, and the Savoy monarchy – complicit with Mussolini and responsible for the disaster of the war – removed from power. Even within the Italian Communist Party (PCI), there were those who turned up their noses at the idea. Those who, on the other hand, wanted to oust the King, settle scores with the remnants of the regime and carry out a revolution, could not understand this ‘compromising’ decision – a government whose absolute priority was anti-fascist unity and the war to drive the Germans out of the country. At best, they accepted it as a temporary expedient. It was pointless to explain to them that the ‘revolution’ they dreamt of was neither here nor there, that it clashed head-on with the reality of the situation and the balance of power. Moreover, everything depended on international decisions still in the making (Yalta took place the following year). And in any case, it was the Allied commanders advancing up the peninsula whilst fighting the Germans who would decide what form of government Italy would have. The Salerno initiative went ahead only because the Leader’s authority was not open to question at the time. And perhaps, as far as the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was concerned, also because it was taken for granted that Stalin in Moscow would agree with Togliatti.

Emilio Sereni, the Communist Minister for Post-War Relief in the subsequent De Gasperi government, is said to have described the Salerno turning point in an essay published in 1972 in Critica marxista – of which he was then editor – as one of the examples “best suited to illustrating the fundamental characteristics and effectiveness of a political initiative”. He urged the Italian Communist Party (PCI) to launch a similar initiative at another time when Italian politics appeared to be at a standstill. A genuine political initiative certainly came the very following year, in 1973, in the form of Berlinguer’s ‘compromesso storico’. It was a time when the sabres of the coup plotters were ‘clanging’ and black and red conspiracies were rife. It was a way of saying that 51 per cent was not enough to avoid ending up like Chile. But it was also a way of saying that no single political force, in a fragmented situation, can claim to represent everyone. It must take others into account. The proposal provoked a fierce backlash, especially on the left, where it was viewed as heretical because it contradicted a decades-old conviction that the Christian Democrats had ruined Italy and its best young people. The initiative was ultimately cut short by the 1978 assassination of Aldo Moro, who was himself moving in the same direction, effectively stalling any progress for many years to come.

The PCI’s 1936 appeal was certainly clumsy. Drafted in Brussels by a small group of exiles from the PCI’s Foreign Centre in Paris, it came at a time when the opposition to fascism was at a loss as to what to do. The Italian war in Africa had just ended. Hitler had seized power in Germany. Stalin ruled with an iron fist in Russia and within the International. It would forever be associated with the name ‘Appeal to the Black-Shirted Comrades’. In reality, it was entitled ‘Appeal for the Salvation of Italy, Reconciliation of the Italian People’. It was addressed to dissident Fascists and to those disillusioned by the promises of early anti-capitalist Fascism, as set out in the 1919 Fascist programme. It was disavowed by Moscow and by Togliatti, who denied having had any knowledge of it until after its publication. It remained a dead letter. The crisis of the regime was an illusion. A ‘Fascist’ opposition to Mussolini was by no means yet taking shape. The economy was not in tatters, as the left had claimed from exile. Ruggiero Grieco, then secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in Paris, who had subsequently taken refuge in Moscow at the outbreak of the war, would take responsibility for the Appeal, paying the price with his removal from all positions of responsibility (he was assigned to produce Italian-language broadcasts from Moscow). This became one of the reasons cited by the Communist International for the dissolution of the entire Central Committee during the crisis between 1937 and 1939. In the meantime, the Spanish Civil War had taken place, with Mussolini’s volunteers fighting alongside the coup leader Francisco Franco.

Some argue that it was that crushing defeat which prompted Togliatti to ‘under no circumstances do as they did in Spain’, inspiring the Salerno Turn. It was a deliberate choice. Not everyone agreed. The party came to the brink of a split with Giustizia e Libertà and the Action Party. There was grumbling even from within his own party. He kept them at bay with his authority – an authority that also stemmed from his status as Stalin’s favourite. The whole business of ‘Togliatti’s duplicity’ is nonsense. Duplicity certainly existed, and it was within the party. For Togliatti, however, the choice of the democratic path was decisive and irreversible. In 1953, at the time of the ‘fraudulent’ electoral law, Secchia wanted to build barricades. Togliatti, with his usual irony, replied: ‘Well done, and then what do we do? Start a civil war?’ A great deal has been written about the 1936 appeal to the ‘Fascist comrades’. Among the extensive array of books, articles, studies and documentation on the subject, the volume that Bruno Grieco, Ruggero’s son, dedicated to him in 2004 for Marsilio, Un partito non stalinista. PCI 1936: “Appello ai fratelli in camicia nera”, is particularly noteworthy. At the time of the events, Bruno was just a young boy. The book is rich in moving family memories, which give a sense of what life was like in hiding during that era. It is well-documented, drawing on material found in the archives in Moscow and those of the PCI, including the various drafts of the ill-fated ‘appeal’ and the discussions that preceded it. If there is a flaw, it lies in an excessive animosity towards Togliatti, in an evident attempt to defend his father’s reputation. The PCI leadership of those days was a den of vipers, beside which today’s PD pales into insignificance. So too was the entire communist movement. Stalin showed no mercy to those who strayed. He eliminated more communist leadership groups than Hitler ever did.

Another striking document is the exchange of letters between Giorgio Amendola, by then ill and nearing the end of his life, and Alfonso Leonetti, one of the founders of the Pcd’I who was later expelled as a ‘Trotskyist’ and ‘Bordigist’. It was published in the January 1977 issue of Belfagor, under the title ‘La svolta del 1930 e il problema dello stalinismo’. The ‘turn’ in question concerns the alignment with the disastrous position of denouncing ‘social fascism’ – the disastrous equating of social democracy with fascism imposed by Moscow. It took the Nazis’ seizure of power in Germany for the party to change tack and pursue a policy of a united popular and anti-fascist front. This was then interrupted once again by the even more disastrous Pact between Stalin and Hitler. The correspondence between Amendola – the principled Communist leader who, whilst in hiding in Paris, had been Grieco’s secretary – and Leonetti, the man expelled in disgrace, is affectionate and respectful. This was certainly not the case in the 1930s, when the clash between ‘brothers at daggers drawn’ was bloody (even in the literal sense), with a penchant for low blows. The wounds left behind deep-seated hatred. Each of the two remains firm in his own position. Amendola cannot forgive the ‘Trotskyists’ for their ‘desertion’ in the war against Nazism in the name of denouncing Stalin’s misdeeds. Leonetti retorts stubbornly, blow for blow. He corrects him obstinately, point by point. At a certain point, both of them hold back (it would be wrong to say they give in), admitting to ‘weariness’. Such discussions wear even the toughest down.

Incidentally, we learn that, amidst the fierce debates of the 1930s, Togliatti was at one point even accused by opponents of the ‘turn’ of having embezzled party funds. The issue centres on two ‘envelopes of money’ lost by Rita Montagnana, ‘the party’s wife’, according to the intriguing title of the study by Aldo Agosti and Marina Cassi on La vita di Rita Montagnana Togliatti, recently published by Laterza. From Leonetti we learn that it was not he who attacked Togliatti; on the contrary, it was he who proposed settling ‘the case of the dollars [reportedly 500, a substantial sum at the time] that ended up in the stove in Basel [in the clandestine flat where the Togliattis lived] at the hands of little Aldo [the couple’s disabled son]’ with a general amnesty. Another envelope, containing Swiss francs, was reportedly lost by Togliatti on the Paris metro. These anecdotes are both poignant and, in a sense, laughable; yet they are also deeply distressing for what they reveal about the ‘political struggle’ during those turbulent times. The stakes were high: for far less, one could end up in prison in the West, in the gulag, or with a bullet to the back of the head in Russia. Those were times of fiery passions, clashing personalities, indelible grudges, dirty tricks, denunciations and betrayals. Slanderous accusations flew thick and fast. Amendola says that, decades later, Togliatti regarded those ruthless struggles within the party leadership as ‘purely political’. Not because he was the sort not to hold a grudge. But because constantly dredging up the same old issues was politically damaging. “This was in keeping with the line he consistently followed after the Liberation: not to reopen the wounds of the past and to wipe the slate clean,” he wrote to Leonetti. “He never wanted to look back and reopen dangerous wounds. Nor did he ever wish to reopen the painful chapter written by the leadership when it took the decision, in December–January 1930–’31, to vote in favour of Stalin’s request that he remain in Moscow. We knew we were voting against him. But upon his return to Italy [in 1944, towards the end of the war], Togliatti no longer wished to revisit that discussion.”

Perhaps Amendola is exaggerating a little here. Togliatti was neither ‘good’ nor a ‘do-gooder’. He was always extremely tough, even contemptuous towards dissidents. Like everyone else, he had his likes and dislikes. He did not forget insults or underhand tactics – neither from his opponents nor, even less so, from his comrades. But he prevented disputes, quarrels and animosities from dragging on or becoming entrenched. Political considerations took precedence over all others. It is well known that he did not even take issue with the snub from his comrades – all of them, not just Secchia – when, without consulting him, in 1950, at the darkest hour of the Cold War, they voted to accept Stalin’s request that the leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) go to Prague to head the Cominform. He was furious, as Nilde Jotti would later reveal. He took great care not to obey, and that was the end of the matter. He offered Stalin a flurry of justifications. But he did not break with him. Otherwise, he would have lost the party. The fact remains that he had absolutely no intention of returning to Moscow under Stalin. He had chosen Italy – the democracy for which he had worked so hard – rather than the Soviet Union, the country which, for him and many others, was the beacon of communism. Out of conviction? Out of necessity? Sereni, far more doctrinaire than Togliatti, spoke not of ‘real socialism’ but even of ‘realised socialism’. A veritable blasphemy, in the light of what followed. I recall a conversation on the stairs of the building in Botteghe Oscure with Gerardo Chiaromonte, who was highly critical of an article by Sereni entitled ‘The October Revolution and Italy’. ‘It flies in the face of everything we’ve been saying,’ he objected. Namely, that the October Revolution had ‘run out of momentum’. With Chiaromonte – who, many years later, became my editor at *L’Unità* – we would discuss this every time I returned from China. I’d tell him that communism over there was rubbish. “My son, but if you go on like that, you’ll end up on your own,” he would reply. Even Berlinguer never completely broke with Moscow, not even after they’d tried to get rid of him. He, however, could not afford to “end up on his own”.

Amendola was a totus politicus. Just as Togliatti had been. Like Togliatti, no nuance escaped him – neither regarding his own political forces nor, above all, those of other political groups. Incidentally, the series of lectures that Togliatti had delivered at the International Leninist School in Moscow between January and April 1935 (coincidentally, the year before the infamous appeal to the Blackshirts) was formidable. They focused on the birth and development of the Fascist regime, but also on non-Communist anti-Fascist political forces. A course on the adversaries. The title under which it was published following its painstaking rediscovery. Amendola, too, was a force to be reckoned with in political battle. He was aided by his deep, hoarse voice and his commanding presence. He came across better than anyone else on television. He did not mince his words, even when he found himself at odds with Togliatti or, later, with Berlinguer. He was not ‘soft’ on sectarian comrades. He knew how to show respect and engage in dialogue – first and foremost with the leaders of other parties – and to command their respect. He was a born politician. A statesman by vocation, even before being a party man. Had he not died prematurely, he might have been the first Communist at the Quirinale, rather than Giorgio Napolitano. However, he did not succeed – and probably could never have succeeded – in becoming secretary of the Italian Communist Party.

In his correspondence with Leonetti, Amendola even denies ever having been a faction leader. “For me personally, your experience [in the 1930s] was a salutary one. I truly realised then, not least from your own sad experiences, that factionalism was ‘black parliamentarism’, the ‘black market’ that corrupts everything. I have made many mistakes in my life as a communist activist, but I have managed to get by because my comrades have always appreciated the fact that not only have I never tried to organise a faction, but I have always discouraged – and ultimately quashed – attempts to make me the spokesperson for a faction. I realised that within the party (and indeed outside it) one must know how to wage battles alone, without being held back by compromising alliances.’ He also added that ‘one must know when to step aside’. Preaching in the wilderness: the prevailing practice is to do exactly the opposite. Another lesson that fell on deaf ears: the idea that politics is not about how one appears. Nor is it what one says. It is what one does, insists Amendola. “A politician […] is judged not by what he has written but by what he has done, and often there is little correspondence between words and deeds, if not outright contradiction.” One must look, he insists, not at the clash of ideologies, but at the true terms of the political struggle, not at how they are presented.

It has been a long time since the weary world of Italian politics has seen any ‘political initiatives’ worthy of the name from the left (or, for that matter, from the other side). New ideas, ripples in the pond, that might help us move beyond the paralysis. The ‘broad coalition’ could have been one such initiative. It did not work. Schlein’s proposal to Meloni – to set aside election propaganda for a moment and discuss energy together – struck me as a tentative step that resembled a political initiative. It was met with derision. Just as, in its day, the appeal to the ‘fascist brothers’ was. But if they are flowers, sooner or later they will bloom…