A Civil War (158 page)

111
Idee ricostruttive della Democrazia cristiana
.

112
‘Politica e religione. Superamento', editorial in
L'Azione dei lavoratori
, 10 February 1944.

113
‘Liberazione della donna', in
Voce Operaia
, 4 December 1944, which expresses a singular faith in the Soviet and revolutionary value of introducing electrical appliances into the home.

114
Progetto di piano di lavoro del Partito d'azione Alta Italia
, p. 12.

115
‘Sì, imperialisti d'Italia!', undated, in the Badoglian paper.

116
Togliatti,
Opere
, vol. IV, 2, pp. 534–7.

117
In late 1946 Umberto Terracini, at a rally in Terni, would characterise divorce as a problem concerning the rich (see
L'Unità
of 3 December, quoted in Portelli,
Biografia di una città
, p. 359).

118
Foa,
La Gerusalemme rimandata
, p. 91.

119
Letter to Moro, signed by Cino and Ciro, 30 January 1945 (IG,
BG
, 07850).

120
‘Parole alla classe media',
L'Italia del popolo
, 22 January 1944.

121
Editorial in
Per un'Italia nuova
, 27 May 1944.

122
Un sabotatore: Giorgio Labò
, with a preface by Lionello Venturi, Milan 1946, p. 9 (the passage is dated
ferragosto
, a holiday on and around 15 August, probably from 1940).

123
‘Appello alle donne italiane', in
Bandiera Rossa
, 26 December 1943.

124
‘Rivendicazione',
La Fiamma
, March 1945.

125
Calamandrei,
La vita indivisibile
, pp. 143–4 (8 March 1944). Recall, here, the scene in Luigi Comencini's film
Tutti a casa
(1960), in which the father (Eduardo De Filippo) advises his son (Alberto Sordi) to present himself to the Fascist authorities.

126
‘Il problema dei giovani', in the Rome edition of 16 March 1944.

127
‘Famiglia e libertà', in
La Voce del Popolo
, 20 October 1944 (probably written by Delfino Insolera).

128
On the use of this category, see E. C. Banfield,
The Moral Basis of a Backward Society
, Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958.

129
‘Dichiarazione fondamentale', by the Italian Labour Party, whose organ was
La Voce del Popolo
(see
Partito italiano del lavoro – ‘Popolo e Libertà'
, p. 18).

130
Letter from a soldier to his brother – also under arms – 29 August 1940 (in Rizzi,
Lo sguardo del potere
, p. 119).

131
As recalled by Italo Calvino in
Tante storie che abbiamo dimenticato
.

132
Pesce,
Senza tregua
, p. 272. However, on another occasion, Pesce told his men: ‘We must behave like a family faced with a fire that is destroying their home' (ibid., pp. 174–5).

133
Here I use the words of O. Prati in ‘Le donne ravennati nell'antifascismo e nella Resistenza', in the volume of the same title published by the Istituto per la storia della resistenza di Ravenna, Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 1977, p. 35.

134
Portelli,
Biografia di una città
, pp. 276–7.

135
‘Think what reaction is, what point it reached, in dividing father from son, brother from brother, in the same family. You didn't trust, I didn't trust my brothers; my father did not trust me.' Testimony of Arnaldo Lippi (ibid., p. 231). He is presumably the same A.L., a former worker, who elsewhere speaks of the family as a place ‘which manages to hold together at once the pressures towards individualism and those towards solidarity' (Portelli,
Assolutamente niente
, p. 137).

136
Testimonies of di Anna Cinanni and of Tersilla Fenoglio Oppedisano, in Bruzzone and Farina, eds,
La Resistenza taciuta
, pp. 100, 159. Fenoglio recalls a partisan who told him: ‘This is like a family, and you are a little sister' (p. 160).

137
Calamandrei,
La vita indivisibile
, p. 140 (6 March 1944).

138
Bruzzone and Farina, eds,
La Resistenza taciuta
, p. 85, n. 1.

139
Repport from the Command of the 1
^st
Gramsci Division to the Command of the Valsesia, Ossola, Cusio, Verbano divisions-group, 12 December 1944. The celebrant was labelled the ‘Rev.mo Cap/no Bruno', playing on the two possible extensions of the abbreviation (i.e. cap/no could represent either
cappellano
, chaplain, or
capitano
, captain). On a political commissar who held wedding ceremonies in the Oltrepò Pavese, see ‘Rapporto informativo e osservazioni per il comitato federale', signed by the inspector Medici, 10 August 1944.

140
Letter from Alberto Bianco, in the Valle Grana, to Gino Marchese, in the Langhe, 4 January 1945 (
Formazioni GL
, pp. 292–3).

141
Parri (Spartaco),
Otto mesi coi partigiani di Tito
, p. 92.

142
Testimony of Tersilla Fenoglio Oppedisano (Bruzzone and Farina,
La Resistenza taciuta
, p. 152).

143
See, for example, the circular sent by the Command of the Belluno Division to all commanders and commissars, 10 December 1944 (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. III, p. 51).

144
The news of this punishment was reported in their wall-newspaper (Lazagna,
Ponte rotto
, p. 225).

145
Testimony of Albina Caviglione Lusso (Bruzzone and Farina,
La Resistenza taciuta
, p. 65).

146
Paolo Cinanni responded to his Calabrian mother, who reproached him for having cast his sister ‘into the arms of boys', ‘Look, Anna is not a woman … She is a Communist, and she is not viewed as a woman.' Later the mother, too, would become a Communist (ibid., pp. 94, 105).

147
Portelli,
Biografia di una città
, p. 99. Note (ibid., pp. 175–7) the case of the Fascist who had a Communist banished and then ‘took his sister for a ride' for some seventeen years. After the Liberation, the brother clobbered the Fascist seducer, and his sister told him, ‘
Bravo
, my treasure, you did the right thing!'

148
Bruzzone and Farina,
La Resistenza taciuta
, p. 107.

149
See the critiques directed against the papers
Tre Vedette
,
Il Partigiano
and
La Saetta garibaldina
by the commissariat of the Valle di Susa divisions-group. This letter, from 17 December 1944, began by making clear: ‘We are not puritans' (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. III, pp. 102–4).

150
Quazza,
Un diario partigiano
, pp. 174–5 (26 March 1944).

151
See the letter from the Command of the Biella area divisions-group to the Piedmont Delegation, 22 February 1945 (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. III, p. 385).

152
‘Relazione sulla situazione politica e militare della nostra provincia', Terni, 1 February 1944 (IG,
Archivio PCI
).

153
Monthly report by Costa, military organiser responsible for the Marconcini SAP brigade (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol III, p. 293).

154
See ibid., p. 294, n. 2.

155
Bruzzone and Farina, eds,
La Resistenza taciuta
, pp. 38, 52.

156
‘Informazioni da Milano', 22 April 1945, which also reports that in the Pavan works, ‘the men do not back the group for the defence of women, and thus it cannot go forward', and the report by Oreste on the federation for Venice, 7 March 1945 (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. III, pp. 669, 450).

157
Quoted in Dellavalle,
Operai
, p. 205 (letter from 30 March 1945).

158
‘Rapporto sul lavoro di partito', 29 December 1943 (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. I, p. 192).

159
Transcript of the meeting of Party representatives in several Padua factories, 18 March 1945.

160
Letter from the ‘Comando Raggruppamento Brigate 400 Matteotti, 520 Puecher, 550 Rosselli' (Valtellina) addressed to ‘Care compagne' (‘Dear women comrades') (IG,
Archivio PCI
).

161
Artom,
Diari
, pp. 113, 93 (10 December and 28 November 1943).

162
See the articles ‘Le donne e la lotta del popolo italiano' (
L'Unità
, northern edition, 4 June 1944) and ‘Dalla doppia schiavitù alla liberazione femminile' (
La voce della donna. Mensile delle italiane in Svizzera
, of Communist inspiration, December 1944).

163
Testimony of Bruno Zenoni (Portelli,
Biografia di una città
, p. 291).

164
Bruzzone and Farina, eds,
La Resistenza taciuta
, p. 157.

165
Ibid., p. 106. They read texts by Lenin and Clara Zetkin.

166
See ‘Corrispondenza coi lettori',
L'Unità
Rome edition, 6 January 1944, and ‘Verbale di una riunione di partito dei comunisti della 3o divisione Aliotta' (Oltrepò Pavese), 1 April 1945 (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. III, p. 563).

167
‘Dichiarazione fondamentale', by the Italian Labour Party, paragraph 3.

168
Note the remarks to this effect by Luisa Passerini, in De Grazia and Passerini,
Alle origini della cultura di massa
, p. 22.

169
See Prati,
Le donne ravennati nell'antifascismo e nella Resistenza
, pp. 33–4. See also Guidetti Serra,
Compagne
.

170
Bernardo,
Il momento buono
, p. 150.

171
Testimony of the woman worker Margherita Bergesio Coccalotto (Bravo and Jalla,
La vita offesa
, p. 341).

172
Cicchetti,
Il campo giusto
, p. 228.

173
La guerra di liberazione
, p. 15.

174
‘Disprezzo ed odio ai tedeschi', in the 26 January 1945 edition.

175
‘Relazione sugli avvenimenti di Montegrazia del 13–14 dicembre 1943' (Imperia) (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. I, p. 169).

176
Bruzzone and Farina,
La Resistenza taciuta
, p. 25.

177
An episode of this kind, which took place in Rome's Grande Italia café on 11 May 1943, is discussed in Di Giovanni, laureate thesis, on the basis of a
questura
report held in the Archivio Centrale dello Stato.

178
Gobetti,
Diario partigiano
, p. 251 (8 December 1944).

179
Intervention by Giovanni De Luna in a debate on ‘Ethics and Politics' at Turin's Centro Gobetti, 28 April 1980. De Luna referred to an oral testimony collected during the seminar on ‘Women and Politics' held at the Turin Facoltà di Magistero (teaching faculty) in 1979–80.

180
Quazza,
Un diario partigiano
, pp. 212 and 239 (26 September 1944 and 31 March 1945).

181
See Tramontin,
Contadini e movimento partigiano
, p. 303.

182
In the article, ‘Isolare il nemico'.

183
Northern edition, 29 April 1945.

184
Transcript of the 21 March 1945 meeting (IG,
BG
, 01933)

185
Letter from the commissar of the 1
^st
Gramsci Division to the commissar of the Volante Loss Brigade, Santino, 20 January 1945, and associated notes (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. III, pp. 254–7).

186
Order of the day no. 2 of the Command of the 90
^th
Elio Zampiero brigade, 25 February 1945 (IG,
BG
, 01023).

187
Extract of a letter from the office of the political commissar of the unified command (Sesia Division – Ossola Division), sent to the commissar of the Volante Loss Brigade, undated but from winter 1944–45 (IG,
BG
, 06560).

188
Letter from ‘C.F.' (federal committee?) to the Spartaco Lavagnini Detachment, undated (IG,
BG
, 011659).

189
See Lazagna,
Ponte rotto
, p. 225. Here referring to a formation operating in the Ligurian Appennines, the author of these words perhaps had in mind the lyrics of a popular song, according to which ‘there is no melancholy among the Genovese'. Whoever ‘arrived among the partisans, however tired and sad', was lifted up again ‘in the soul and in the heart' (‘I nuovi e i vecchi compagni. Mie impressioni', report by Ramis on the Nino Franchi Detachment, 5 November 1944: INSMLI,
CLNAI
, envelope 8, folder 2, subfolder 12).

190
Battaglia,
Un uomo
, pp. 218–19, 227, 231.

191
Ibid., p. 35.

192
Gobetti,
Diario partigiano
, pp. 93–100 (March 1944). He had the same impression in Val Chisone the following June (p. 140). However, after the Nazi-Fascists reoccupied, he could read ‘a stunned, disoriented sadness' on the faces of the valley's inhabitants (p. 104).

193
Gorrieri,
La Repubblica di Montefiorino
, pp. 370–4.

194
Portelli,
Biografia di una città
, pp. 273–6. See, too, the section ‘Esodo', pp. 253–8, in Portelli's
Assolutamente niente
.

1
M. Bloch, ‘Apologie pour l'histoire ou métier d'historien',
Cahiers des Annales
, Paris, 1949, and P. Abrams, ‘Rites of passage: The Conflict of Generations in Industrial Society', in
Journal of Contemporary History
5: I (1970), pp. 175–90 – the whole issue is devoted to ‘Generations in Conflict'. In its elaboration of the historical–sociological concept of ‘generation', K. Mannheim's ‘The Problem of Generations' (in
Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge
, New York: Oxford University Press, 1952) remains of fundamental significance.