54 ‘Due svolte. La nostra organizzazione di fronte ai compiti nuovi’, in La nostra lotta, 1 October 1943, p. 17. On the ‘reproletarianisation’ of the PCI in the period after 8 September, see Ganapini, Lotte operaie: Milano, pp. 154–5. On the social composition of the PCI during the Resistance, see Spriano, Storia del Partito comunista italiano, vol. 5, Chapter 4, ‘I quadri decidono di tutto’.
55 ‘Rapporto del Federale di Venezia’, signed ‘Spino’, 4 February 1945 (IG, Archivio PCI); Brunetti’s report, ‘La situazione politico-militare nella città di Pistoia e le sue province’, 10 February 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 260).
56 Letter ‘Cari compagni’, n.d. but February 1944 (IG, Archivio PCI).
57 ‘Perché i comunisti lottano per l’unità della classe operaia’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 8 October 1944 (in the section ‘Domande e risposte’).
58 According to a 26 November 1943 letter with which Secchia communicated (and expressed his agreement with) Longo’s viewpoint; and another letter, also by Secchia, of 19 November (Longo, I Centri dirigenti del PCI, pp. 157, 130).
59 See his ‘Rapporto d’organizzazione’, La nostra lotta II, 19–20 (25 November 1944), pp. 21–2.
60 ‘Perché dobbianto essere marxisti?’, L’Unità, Ligurian edition, 23 November 1944 (in the section ‘Domande e risposte’).
61 ‘Riunione del PCI tenuta ad assemblea’, 1 April 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 560).
1 See N. Gallerano, L. Ganapini, M. Legnani, eds, L’Italia dei quarantacingue giorni, Chapter 4, ‘Gl: scioperi contro la guerra e la questione sindacale’; and ‘L’ accordo sulle commissioni interne (2 semptembre 1943)’, in V. Foa, Sindacati e lotte operaie, Turin: Loescher, 1975, pp. 43–6.
2 ‘Salutiamo nelle Commissioni Interne una vittoria della iniziativa e della decisione degli operai italiani’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 7 September 1943. See also the previous issues of 4 and 22 August.
3 ‘Volontà ed azione operaia’, L’Italia Libera, 21 August 1943, see also the 5 August issue.
4 For the case of Genoa, see Gibelli, Genova operaia, p. 61. For the position taken against the Badoglian commissions by the Milan ‘Fascio’ squadrists, see Ganapini, Lotte operaie: Milano, p. 161.
5 The first quote is taken from C. Dellavalle, Lotte operaie: Torino, in Operai e contadini, p. 203. Dellavalle refers to the ‘Considerazioni sulla situazione generale del Piemonte con particolare riferimento a Torino, 30 settembre 1943’, held in IG, Archivio PCI and reproduced in Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, pp. 119–23 – though the version of the text published in Secchia’s volume does not include the words cited by Dellavalle. The second quote is taken from ‘Rapporto da Torino’, 6 October 1943, also cited in Dellavalle, Lotte operaie: Torino, p. 203.
6 ‘Rapporto sul lavoro di partito in Bergamo’, 29 December 1943 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, I, pp. 191–2). Even harsher reproaches had been made in a previous report of 16 December (IG, Archivio PCI).
7 For instance, ‘I rappresentanti socialisti e cattolici del comitato sindacale torinese’ (‘The Socialist and Catholic representatives of the Turin union-committee’) called for non-participation in the internal-commission elections (the document, presumably from November 1943, can be found in IG, Archivio PCI).
8 See, among the many analyses drawing such a conclusion, Gibelli and Ilardi, Lotte operaie: Genova, pp. 137–43; and Ganapini, Lotte operaie: Milano, pp. 153–9.
9 Dellavalle, Operai, p. 22. The newspaper quoted is Il Lavoro biellese, 22 March 1944.
10 Nino’s ‘Relazione’, regarding Como province, November 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
11 According to a 19 December 1943 report (IG, Archivio PCI).
12 ‘Rapporto trimestrale agosto-ottobre 1943’ (IG, Archivio PCI).
13 Cri., ‘Cari compagni’, late December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
14 See Collotti, L’amministrazione tedesca, p. 202.
15 Letter of 1 March 1945, cited in Deakin, Brutal Friendship, p. 748.
16 According to the liberal under-secretary, the anomalous votes were given by ‘Greta Garbo, and such like’. As for abstention, according to an explanation of workers’ behaviour widespread in subsequent years, this was so high on account of the fact that ‘two Communist workers stood very close to the ballot boxes in order to watch the voters’ (ISRT, Archivio Medici Tornaquinci, envelope 4, IV, 2, No. 4, Socializzazione).
17 ‘La coscienza proletaria rigetta le truffe della “socializzazione” fascista’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 9 April 1945.
18 Report of 20 June 1944 in Deakin, Storia della Repubblica di Salò, pp. 664–5.
19 This being the title of a section of Dellavalle’s essay ‘Lotte Operaie: Torino’, p. 15. A comparable concept can be found in G. De Luna, Lotte operaie e Resistenza, in ‘Rivista di storia contemporanea’, 1974, pp. 517–18
20 Letter to the Breda leadership committee, November 27, 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
21 The title of an article in the 12 February 1944, Rome edition.
22 Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 164.
23 IG, Archivio PCI.
24 ‘Rapporto sulla situazione delle fabbriche’, section ‘Le commissioni interne tedesco-repubblicane’, 23 December 1943, signed ‘Rosa’ (IG, Archivio PCI).
25 ‘Rapporto al Centro del Partito’, signed ‘Banfi’, 16 December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
26 Anonymous report, late 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
27 Undated (December 1943?) anonymous report (IG, Archivio PCI).
28 ‘Informazioni da Milano’, 15 December 1944 (IG, Archivio PCI).
29 As referred to by a PCI report of 14 April 1945, concerning Arcioni (IG, Archivio PCI). On the Communists’ reproaches against the Socialists for having collaborated with the internal commissions for banking staff in Sesto San Giovanni and Varese, see Salvati, Il Psiup Alta Italia, p. 87.
30 Record of the ‘Riunione dei rappresentanti di Partito’ (‘Meeting of Party representatives’), in a Padua workshop, 18 March 1945 (IG, Archivio PCI; reproduced in part in Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 490–4). For a severe denunciation of those who offered themselves up for the game played by the ‘union bureaucrats in the pay of the Germans’, see ‘Commissioni interne e comitati segreti di fabbrica’, Il Lavoratore. Giornale di politica proletaria, 1 November 1943 (see above for details of the group in charge of this paper).
31 ‘Ispezione alla Federazione di Verona’, 27 January 1945 (IG, Archivio PCI).
32 ‘La classe operaia riorganizza i suoi quadri per la lotta contro l’oppressore. Lo scioglimento dell’unione dei sindacati e delle Commissioni interne. La costituzione di un Comitato operaio clandestino’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 29 September.
33 ‘Direttive di carattere generale riservate ai soli compagni’, Bollettino di partito, 1 October 1943.
34 The ‘Direttive’ was a document of significant importance, and was reproduced in R. Luraghi, Il movimento operaio torinese durante la Resistenza, Turin: Einaudi, 1958, pp. 311–15. However, Luraghi attributes it to the Turin organisation of the PCI (see Dellavalle, Operai, p. 90).
35 ‘Attualità dell’azione operaia’, L’Italia Libera, Rome edition, 30 October 1943.
36 On Turin, see Luraghi, Il movimento operaio torinese, chapter ‘Dallo sciopero di marzo ai comitati d’agitazione’. As regards Venice, in a 4 February 1945 report signed ‘Spino’, we read that there were committees ‘in a number of factories, but they have not carried out any activity for some time’ (‘Rapporto del Federale’, IG, Archivio PCI).
37 Inverni (V. Foa), I partiti, p. 50.
38 ‘Rapporto sulla lotta nelle fabbriche torinesi’, signed ‘Giovanni’, n.d. (IG, Archivio PCI).
39 The paper had no issue number, but was dated 4 May 1942. It featured expressions of both the old Socialism – ‘divided we are a rabble, together we are powerful’ – and the old Bolshevism: indeed, Bolshevism had substituted ‘the heroic conception of life’ for the ‘utilitarian’ one
and ‘true, practical idealism’ for ‘philosophical materialism’.
40 Undated letter. The reply approved the idea of collaborating in accordance ‘with the orders of the CLN’ (INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 6, folder 2, subfolder 4). In December 1944 appeared the first issue of Comunista libertario. Giornale della Federazione comunista libertaria italiana, which claimed the adherence of those disappointed with the ‘supposedly revolutionary parties’. As regards the Bordigists, see ‘Sui consigli operai’, Prometeo, April 1945. See also the articles ‘L’unità nei consigli’ and ‘Idee sui consigli. Classe e partito’ in Rivoluzione, No. 2 (February 1945).
41 Foa, La Gerusalemme rimandata, p. 269. For Basso’s position, see Bandiera Rossa. Organo del Partito proletario rivoluzionario, whose 9 June 1944 final issue published a set of ‘Theses’; see also Salvati, Il Psiup Alta Italia, p. 65.
42 Valiani, Il partito d’azione, p. 135. Among the pamphlets he wrote during the Resistance, as described in the text, see Antonio Gramsci. Le origini del movimento rivoluzionario e antifascista del proletariato italiano (signed ‘Federico’, one of the ‘Quaderni dell’Italia Libera’ published by the Milan Province Federation of the Action Party). For a more general view, see, De Luna, Storia del Partito d’Azione, Chapter 4, ‘La questione operaia: le tesi consiliari fra liberalismo e pianificazione’.
43 Inverni (V. Foa), I partiti, pp. 62, 71.
44 See Uberti (F. Momigliano), ‘Le commissioni di fabbrica. Lineamenti politici’, Quaderni del Partito d’Azione, December 1943, No. 6).
45 INSMLI, Carte Damiani, envelope 1, folder 7.
46 Piedmont edition, June 1944 (declaration following the formation of the first Bonomi government).
47 Record of the 4 July 1944 meeting (ISRT, Carte Francesco Berti, envelope 1, folder 1).
48 See ‘Informazioni da Milano’, April 14, 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 620).
49 Record of the ‘Riunione dei rappresentanti di Partito’ (‘Meeting of Party representatives’), in a Padua workshop, 18 March 1945 (IG, Archivio PCI; reproduced in part in Le Brigate Garibaldi, III, pp. 490–4).
50 ‘Comitati di agitazione e Comitati di liberazione nazionale d’officina’, La nostra lotta, vol. II, 12 July 1944, pp. 10–13 (later reproduced under the title ‘Gli organi di combattimento degli operai nelle fabbriche’, in Longo, Sulla via dell’insurrezione nazionale, pp. 196–203). The same ideas were developed in the article ‘Comitati di agitazione e CLN di fabbrica’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 10 July 1944. At the bottom of the La nostra lotta article, the editors announced that there would be a wider take on the subject in the next edition, but this did not in fact appear in any of the following issues.
51 See Atti CLNAI, pp. 129–30.
52 Undated circular ‘Ai segretari provinciali della Lombardia’, in Salvati, Il Psiup Alta Italia, p. 68. Salvati notes, however, that the PSIUP was not present at the agitation committees’ conference of 21 January 1944 (p. 80).
53 See Gibelli, Genova operaia, pp. 167–74, 237–48 (the document cited here is on p. 242).
54 Records of the CTLN meetings of 27–28 July 1944 (ISRT, Carte Francesco Berti, envelope 1, folder 1).
55 ‘Informazioni da Milano’, 18 April 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 650).
56 The letter, signed ‘G. Morpurgo Tagliabue’, is in the AS Varese, CLN, envelope 10.
1 Letter of 26 November 1943, in Longo, I Centri dirigenti del PCI, pp. 156–7.
2 Circular on ‘The struggle against cold, hunger and Nazi-Fascist terror’, 30 November 1944, cited in Gibelli, Genova operaia, p. 261.
3 The leaflet, n.d., signed ‘Comitato d’azione romagnolo’, was published twice over in Casali, Il movimento di liberazione a Ravenna, vol. I, pp. 16, 57; in the second case it is erroneously ascribed to the March 1943 strikes.
4 Letter of 13 November 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
5 Dellavalle, Operai, p. 42.
6 ‘Basta con la guerra, vogliamo la pace’, cited in Flamigni and Marzocchi, Resistenza in Romagna, pp. 269–70.
7 ‘Direttive per l’agitazione economica in corso’, Milan, 13 December 1943, with criticisms of a leaflet put out in Turin (IG, Archivio PCI).
8 Avanti!, Rome edition, 30 December 1943.
9 See the first issue, 9 April 1944, with the subtitle ‘Christian voice of Italian labour’ and the claim that the paper ‘is associated with the tradition of Il Domani Sociale, organ of the Confederazione italiana dei lavoratori’.
10 See, for example, the letter from ‘Nada’ (Franco Venturi) of 22 December 1944, ‘Carissimi’, concerning the strike ‘over economic issues’ sparked in Galbiate and ‘across the whole vast sphere of small and medium-sized businesses, where wages are particularly low and where we have sunk strong roots’ (INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 12, sub folder 4).
11 ‘Note sugli scioperi di Torino’, Il Grido di Spartaco, 6 December 1943, written by ‘Luca’ (Giancarlo Pajetta) (IG, Archivio PCI).
12 ‘Lotta di massa contro la riduzione dei salari’, L’Italia Libera, Northern edition, 8 January 1945.
13 Voci d’Officina, supplement No. 2.
14 Letter ‘Cari compagni’, 19 September 1944 (IZDG, envelope 272b, folder V/1).
15 ‘Avanti fino alla vittoria!’, editorial of L’Unità, Northern edition, 16 December 1943.
16 L’Unità, ‘second extraordinary’ Northern edition, 18 December 1943.
17 ‘Rapporto sugli scioperi’, Milan, 13 December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
18 Letter of 16 December 1943 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 168).
19 IG, Archivio PCI. See also ‘Note informative sull’agitazione degli operai torinesi’, 27 November 1943, signed ‘Alfio’ (IG, Archivio PCI) and, on these, Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 168, n. 1. Collotti notes the nuances of Milanese workers’ attitude towards the Germans in his L’amministrazione tedesca, p. 195.
20 ‘Dalle fabbriche’, n.d., signed ‘L’attesista’ (IG, Archivio PCI).
21 ‘Rapporto sull’Arsenale di Piacenza’, attached to the ‘Rapporto al Centro del Partito’ by ‘Banfi’, northern Emilia, 16 December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI). This latter report (republished, without the attached piece, in Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, pp. 230–3), gives a very negative take on the Party’s situation in Piacenza.
22 ‘The hopeless manoeuvres of the traitor Mussolini. The meaning of the increase in wages and taxes’, L’Unità, Rome edition, 1 December 1943. In reality, as is clear from this article itself, it was not an increase in taxation but rather of the minimum level from which private property was taxable.
23 See Deakin, Brutal Friendship, pp. 675; Legnani, Potere, società ed economia, pp. 16–17. Among the people deported from Piedmont to Germany, some 36 percent of survivors were workers and engineers, 15 percent peasants, 10 percent artisans and apprentices, and 9 percent small shop owners and traders – see Bravo and Jalla, eds, La vita offesa, p. 55. See also p. 120, where one survivor says that the working-class presence was more like 90 percent.
24 ‘Gli operai militanti in lotta per gli anticipi’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 7 September 1944.
25 ‘Le nostre rivendicazioni’, L’Edilizia, Turin, 22 December 1944. Dellavalle (‘Lotte operaie. Torino’, pp. 238–41) notes that the Germans often turned a blind eye to the presence in the protected industries of workers from the age-groups that had been called to arms, whom management claimed to be indispensable.
26 See, on this, Dellavalle’s ‘Lotte operaie: Torino’, p. 224; Ganapini, ‘Lotte operaie: Milano’, p. 173; De Luna, Lotte operaie e Resistenza, passim. The ‘Adorno contract’ decreed on 29 March 1945 provided for almost full wage-equality between men and women: clearly an attempt to make use of Resistance conditions to make a mark on the situation after Liberation (Dellavalle, Operai, pp. 268–71).
27 As we often read in L’Unità. Four hundred people were deported from Turin after the March 1944 strikes, according to Fascist sources; 132 of them came from Fiat alo
ne, according to the research of Ernesto Bolognesi (himself a deported worker): see ANED, Gli scioperi del marzo 1944, pp. 38, 65–8. According to another estimate, after the March 1944 strikes, the proportion of workers, anti-Fascists and partisans in Piedmont who were arrested amounted to over 60 percent: see Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 55.
28 Letter from the ‘Comitato della Federazione comunista di Trieste’ to the Commander of the Trieste Battalion (which was, among other things, invited to adopt the name ‘Garibaldi Trieste’), late December 1943 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 180).
29 See ‘Lo sciopero in regime di occupazione’, L’Unità, Rome edition, 15 December 1943, and the letter from Rome to Milan of 13 December (in Longo, I Centri dirigenti del PCI, p. 258).
30 L’Unità, Rome edition, 13 and 20 April 1944.
31 Record of the ‘Riunione dei rappresentanti di Partito’ (‘Meeting of Party representatives), in a Padua workshop, 18 March 1945 (IG, Archivio PCI; reproduced in part in Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 490–4).
32 ‘Informazioni da Milano’, 14 and 18 April 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 621, 648–50)
33 See, on this, Operai e contadini.
34 The situation is summarised thusly by C. Dellavalle, in ANED, Gli scioperi del marzo 1944, p. 30.
35 ‘Lotte parziali ed insurrezione nazionale’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 20 March 1944.
36 ‘Sciopero politico’ (‘Political strike’ was the headline of the 7 March 1944 Lombard edition of L’Italia Libera).
37 ‘Rapporto sulla situazione operaia a Torino’, written by the Action Party’s trade-union committee, presumably dating from January 1944 (kept in the archive of Giorgio Agosti and cited in De Luna, Lotte operaie e Resistenza, p. 522).
38 Voci d’Officina, No. 2, March 1944 (cited in De Luna, Lotte operaie e Resistenza, p. 526).
39 De Luna, Lotte operaie e Resistenza, p. 527. As regards the Bordigists, see the article ‘In margine agli scioperi. Un esperimento e il suo bilancio’, Prometeo, 1 April 1944.
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