A Civil War (103 page)

In Perugia too ‘the great and uncontrolled display of red flags' at the moment of the Allied entry into the city was attributed to sectarianism and backwardness; and in Terni an identical phenomenon was bracketed among ‘petit bourgeois excesses'.
¹⁰⁷
An Emilian commissar, describing the worst part of a formation, states: ‘It is, however, the keenest squad when it comes to displaying red stars and other badges.'
¹⁰⁸

In another document the need to proclaim red is coupled with the need to ‘avoid swearing at all costs'.
¹⁰⁹
This makes the opinion expressed by a party envoy about the parading of red in the Republic of Montefiorino all the more thoughtful and respectful. After recalling that nearly all of the young men belonging to the Modena division ‘have joined our party and strongly insist on calling themselves Communists', the author of the report writes:

The party envoy therefore did no more than have the hammer and sickle replaced with the
tricolore
cockade and in any case suggested a shift in the meaning to be attributed to the red shirt, which, he points out, ‘has had its importance in the formation of the units of our country'.
¹¹⁰

It didn't escape the author of this report, nor partisan leaders like Davide and Armando, that there was a risk that insistent Communist pedantry aimed at obtaining not only the application but the interiorisation of the party's unitary
line would wither the very roots of participation in the struggle. This was not just an Italian problem. Djilas, who, heading a delegation of Yugoslav partisans, presented himself at the Kremlin with a red star on his beret, came in for a contemptuous cold dowsing from Stalin: ‘What are you doing with red stars on your beret? Form isn't important, what's important are concrete conquests, and you … want red stars. What use do you think red stars are?' Djilas' reply had been respectful but firm: ‘It is impossible to abolish the red stars because they have already become a tradition and have come to mean something to our fighters.'
¹¹¹

Fear of deviationism and
sinistrimo
led to attitudes that actually preceded specific party choices being taken for possible political lines. Indeed often the reddest, the most zealous in declaring themselves Communists were not even members of the party. One gets closer to the truth by transferring into a very different situation Edward P. Thompson's critical remarks to Keith Thomas, who had resorted to the explanatory categories of ‘inadequacies of popular education' and of ‘popular religious ignorance':

The symbolism of red served to affirm one's individual and group identity before those who used other symbols, like the light blue scarf and the green scarf. Red – and a cross-current Umbrian document complains about the opportunism of those leaders who don't like it
¹¹³
– signified that the struggle taking place was seen as being a radical innovation, while the colours of the Badogliani and of the
autonomi
, green and light blue, indicated a desire for mere restoration. When the Piave brigade was incorporated, against its wishes, into the Nanetti Garibaldi division, the commissar Ugo accused the commander Olivi of wishing to make his men wear ‘instead of the red scarf, which was the symbol of Garibaldi, of his heroism and his sacrifice, the light blue scarf, which was the symbol of a reigning house upon whose legality the people have not yet been
able to pronounce'. Here, the cautious wording of the formula far from attenuating, reinforces the rebuff.
¹¹⁴

In the Modenese Appenines the Communist representatives saw themselves compelled to denounce the fact that while, according to them, the Garibaldini did not wear party badges and sang only patriotic songs, the same could not be said of the Christian Democrats, who had the letters
DC
and a cross embroidered on their
tricolore
scarf.
¹¹⁵

One measure at which the Garibaldini particularly balked at was the adoption of the military salute. True, the appeals to adopt it make use of expressions such as ‘regular army of free Italy', ‘salute formerly in use in the ex-royal army', which are in tune with what I have called ‘the repudiation of the royal army',
¹¹⁶
but it is also true that this was not always the case. In fact, anodyne formulae appear like the ‘traditional salute of the Italian army': thus an enjoinder made in northern Lombardy commits the gaffe of implicitly comparing the salute with the clenched fist and the Fascist salute: ‘No outstretched arm, neither with hand open nor with fist clenched'.
¹¹⁷
And it is still truer that the military salute was a symbol that was very hard to stomach, smacking of the idea of a discipline which one of the above-quoted documents actually, and approvingly, called ‘iron'. Likewise, in another document great satisfaction is expressed at having ‘succeeded in applying the military salute, in imposing ranks'.
¹¹⁸
And the misunderstandings, exchanges of words and convergences with the GL brigades that could occur on this count make singular reading. When a group of
giellisti
from the Pavese Oltrepò turned up at a Garibaldi headquarters asking to be incorporated into the brigade, their reason for doing so was that ‘in the
Giustizia e Libertà
column there is still an old-style militaristic spirit involving the military salute, the
signorsì
(yes, sir), and differential treatment in the mess'.
¹¹⁹

An Actionist from the Modena area complained about seeing ‘too much red and very little
tricolore
', though he acknowledged that ‘the work and speeches of the political commissar and the commander are
Fronte nazionale
in character and content'.
¹²⁰
Among both the Garibaldini and the
giellisti
the not very successful idea was born of adopting factory overalls as a uniform. More soberly in a Garibaldi document – ‘provisionally we recommend overalls, no matter what colour they are'
¹²¹
– more emphatically in a page written by a prestigious GL leader: ‘The overall, the finest and most meaningful uniform, for volunteers fighting a revolutionary war (remember Carlo Rosselli's vibrant words in Spain: only the anonymous genius of revolution could invent this extraordinary but at the same time natural uniform: the overall. The war of the workers' will be waged in the uniform of work).'
¹²²

The memory of Spain also influenced the Communist leaders, but in the reverse direction, for their rigid stance over the salute and other aspects of military discipline was undoubtedly influenced by the memory of how hard and bloody it had been settling accounts with the libertarian character of the anarchist militias. And possibly there was the memory too of the error committed in 1921 of not backing the ‘Arditi del popolo', opposing them with the formation of party squads. This tendency was manifested initially in Romagna and again in summer 1944 in Piedmont.
¹²³

The ambiguity of the red shirt was utilised, oscillating between a sort of philological homage to the hero of the two worlds and a proletarian updating of it. This dual meaning of red is evident in a letter of Moscatelli's: ‘Let the Garibaldini consider it as they like; for our part we are proud to wear the red scarf, and to fittingly wear this symbol of our great Hero and of the purest patriotic expression of the Italian Risorgimento.'
¹²⁴

With still greater transparency the commissar of the 2
^nd
Cascione division operating in Liguria had written: ‘For the time being, the red of our shirts and of our flags has a Garibaldi, not Communist, tone.' ‘But where are these flags in the divisions?', had been the irritated retort of Simon, the commander of the 1
^st
zone of Liguria; and as for that ‘for the time being', he had warned: ‘This phrase seems intended to still the impatience and fears of certain sectarian Communists and to calm them with the promise that the shape of things today will change tomorrow. What are the non-Communist Garibaldini to think of this? That the present shape of things is nothing but deception.'
¹²⁵

In another document, also aimed probably at ‘calming' the impetuous, it is the
tricolore
star that is explicitly identified with the Garibaldi star.
¹²⁶
The General Command of the brigades itself undertook to demonstrate that ‘the red scarf, with its fine tricolored points, is the symbol and badge of the Garibaldino and not of Communism or Socialism'.
¹²⁷
At the Bracco pass:

The search for stratagems stimulated imagination: the adoption of the
tricolore
star, offset by the ‘Garibaldi red scarf and toggle with a medallion of Garibaldi';
¹²⁹
the affixing of a tricolore armband to the red shirt;
¹³⁰
the tricolore against a red background, like the one which was consigned by the provincial CLN to the Nanetti division, ‘but soon the flag was forgotten by the partisans as a useless object'.
¹³¹
As for the salute, a form of compromise was the introduction
of the military one ‘if at the moment they make it they have their service cap, and the clenched fist salute if they don't' – which was the utmost case of innovation in continuity, given that in the Royal Army of the regime the bare-headed salute had been the Fascist one.
¹³²

It is hard to say what the symbol of red was reckoned to contain, beyond a vague aspiration for radicalism, an assertion of identity and (though this be may be found only in the older partisans and in the most acculturated) the desire that the ‘temporary defeat of the proletariat in 1919' be redeemed.
¹³³
When the partisans, managed, as they did in the free zones, to exercise power, the important decisions were taken along the general lines of national and unitary action,
¹³⁴
whether or not they were convinced that this was the only manner, in those circumstances, of paving the way for the revolution or, as was said at a party meeting, of ‘preparing the men and the ground for the accomplishment of our social and economic plan'.
¹³⁵
Moreover, more radical measures and proposals were not lacking. In the Fucino area it was the Communist party itself, in the person of a leader of the stature of ‘Palmieri' (Giorgio Amendola), who urged his reticent Avezzano comrades to give pride of place to the watchword ‘Torlonia must be seized' and, what's more, arrested, with the proviso, however, that this ‘in no way means a socialist, but a democratic, revolution'.
¹³⁶
But while Amendola dogmatically based his assertion on the fact that Torlonia was a case of fusion between a semi-feudal structure and monopolistic capital, a circular issued by General Headquarters recalled that the Garibaldi brigades ‘do not carry out expropriations against anyone who is not pro-Nazi'.
¹³⁷
Thus the political commissar Renato, who ‘wanted to socialise the oil companies of the zone, dispossessing the capitalists', was said to be valorous, but incompetent.
¹³⁸

In the Pavese Oltrepò Actionists and Christian Democrats were alarmed at the fact that ‘wherever the brigades stayed for some time there was a rapid re-flowering of democratic institutions, a series of anti-capitalistic measures,
[which] while uniting the multitude of poor peasants and artisans to us made the rest of the country hostile to us'.
¹³⁹

In this document satisfaction is mitigated by concern. In others there is only concern: for example about the ‘socialisation of the rural funds' which was to occur in the zone of the Mingo division.
¹⁴⁰
The controversial Romagnolo partisan Libero, whom we have already encountered, promoted ‘agrarian reform and sharing out 75 percent of the harvest', with the corollary that the owners' part of the Fascists' holdings should be used to assist the partisans.
¹⁴¹
One command urged the taxing of the well-to-do, above all the Fascists and war profiteers; some councils formed in liberated areas abolished the ‘purely and typically Fascist taxes'.
¹⁴²
And so on.