Antifascism and Anti-Totalitarianism the Italian Debate

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2008 43: 555Journal of Contemporary HistoryStfanie Prezioso

Antifascism and Anti-totalitarianism: The Italian Debate

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Stfanie Prezioso

Antifascism and Anti-totalitarianism:The Italian Debate

For more than ten years now, the Italian media have been using negatively con-noted terms such as crisis, loss of values, or even end of a paradigm whenaddressing the question of antifascism generally. This would seem to reflect

the changing political and cultural circumstances of the postwar era, thesuccessive passing away of some of its most prominent historical figures andlastly, from the beginning of the 1990s, the near-total collapse of the entireItalian political system.1 The discredit cast on the Republic born out of theResistance has in fact contaminated the way Italian society has ended uptreat[ing] its past (in both senses of the word).2 In short, members of certainpolitical currents have been questioning the very foundations of the antifascistcommitment in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, with the obvious intent of deflat-ing the legitimizing and identity-boosting function antifascism had acquired in

the postwar Italian governments.What Emilio Gentile once called the process of retroactive defascistizationof fascism that he saw working its way through Italys general public opinionduring the postwar era may also have contributed to the change in the mean-ing of antifascism as an important political and cultural referent during thatperiod.3 The dissemination of such a pseudo-culture of rehabilitation haslargely been the work of the media. In Italy, as Bruno Bongiovanni has recentlyargued, it is the media that have established the agenda of the politico-historiographical debate.4 Fascism appears therein as a rather benign Italian-

style form of authoritarianism in no way comparable to the brutality of theGerman National Socialist regime.5

The very impressive revival that the notion of totalitarianism has enjoyed inthe Italian media has produced a number of disturbing simplifications regard-ing the communist experience, reduced to having a supposed nature as theCommunist phenomenon, but also regarding antifascism itself, which has

Journal of Contemporary HistoryCopyright 2008 SAGEPublications, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,Singapore and Washington DC, Vol 43(4), 555572. ISSN 00220094.DOI: 10.1177/0022009408095415

1 N. Tranfaglia, Un passato scomodo. Fascismo e postfascismo (Bari 1996), 42ff.2 F. Hartog and G. Lenclud, Rgimes dhistoricit, in A. Dutu and N. Dodille (eds), LEtat deslieux en sciences sociales (Paris 1993), 26.3 E. Gentile, Fascismo. Storia e interpretazione (Roma, Bari 2002); also see F. Focardi, La guer-ra della memoria. La Resistenza nel dibattito politico italiano dal 1945 a oggi (Bari and Rome2005).

4 B. Bongiovanni, Revisionismo storia e antistoria di una parola, Passato e Presente 60(SeptemberDecember 2004), 27.

5 G. Quazza, Un 25 aprile mussoliniano, Il manifesto, 30 April 1985; also see F. Focardi,

Guerra della memoria, op. cit., 60.


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been identified purely and simply with the Comintern version of communism,itself defined as strictly criminal.6 Those who have been calling for reconcilia-tion seem to be drawn to move beyond a strict opposition of fascism and

antifascism, the better to promote the new antithesis of totalitarianism anddemocracy. Their intention has not been simply to distinguish between anti-fascism and democracy, but to promote the idea that, since antifascism hasbeen blind to democracys other enemies, meaning in fact the communistthreat, it could not and cannot embody what a genuine republican dem-ocracy7 ought to be.

It thus is actually around the anti-totalitarian definition of antifascism thatdiscussions have been the liveliest, on both the historiographical and the politi-cal levels. And this debate is all the more violent since, as some Italian

historians came to stress towards the end of the 1980s, antifascist culture didindeed suffer from a failure of courage to confront the taboos of its owntradition and, in particular, to analyse the relationship that a profoundlydemocratic antifascism did maintain with the USSR of Stalin, thus reducing itto a more general analysis of the relationship that organized antifascism ingeneral maintained with the Soviet regime.8

One cannot help noticing that such criticisms do avoid considering theimplications of a commitment to either one of the opposing camps, in terms ofsocio-political imaginary, ethics, objectives, or world vision.9 But above all,

these analyses deny antifascism one of its main defining characteristics, namelythat of providing democracy with a plus, according to Marco Revellis excel-lent formula.10

The attacks which have been directed during the past few years against thePartito dAzione, the true heir to the battles of the old Giustizia e Libertmovement, do represent particularly well this revisionist drift.11 For it is notso much the party itself, which was relatively short-lived in Italian history anddid in fact disappear from the political landscape in 1947, that is the true targetof these attacks; it is rather actionism itself, as a value-system based upon

antifascism and incarnated first and foremost in the movement founded byCarlo Rosselli.Indeed, in terms of founding values, antifascism as a homogeneous political

culture had two distinct roots: on the one hand, a detailed study of the causes

556 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 43 No 4

6 B. Groppo, Fascismes, antifascismes, communismes, in M. Dreyfus et al. (eds), Le Sicle descommunismes (Paris 2000).7 R. de Felice, Corriere della sera, 8 January 1988.8 On this, see Stphane Courtois introduction to the co-authored The Black Book ofCommunism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (London and Cambridge, MA, 1999); Ernesto Gallidella Loggia, La morte della patria. La crisi dellidea di nazione tra Resistenza, antifascismo eRepubblica (Bari 1996); and Renzo de Felice, Rosso e Nero (Milano 1995).

9 S. Luzzatto, La crisi dellantifascismo (Torino 2004), 38ff.

10 M. Revelli, Le idee, in G. de Luna and M. Revelli, Fascismo/Antifascismo. Le idee, le iden-tit (Firenze 1995).

11 C. Novelli, Il Partito dAzione e gli Italiani. Moralit, politica e cittadinanza nella storiarepubblicana (Milano 2000).


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of democratic failure, and on the other, the ambition of establishing a genuinedemocracy on the grounds of the political, cultural, social and economicresponses thus achieved. Such a democracy is to be understood as a form of

unfettered democracy able to respond directly to the Italian peoples economicand political, as well as moral and ethical needs. It is thus important not to seeantifascism as a simple negative positioning against a specific phenomenon fascism situated in a self-contained period (Benedetto Croces famousparenthesis). Such a convenient reading is what has enabled the recognitionof a supposedly gentle democratic transition and simultaneously confirmedthe retrospective weakening of the vague programmes for radical transforma-tion which were advocated by parties like the Partito dAzione.12 It is impor-tant, rather, to consider antifascism as in a constant development.

To try to give a proper answer to the supposed crisis of antifascism oftoday presupposes, I think, reflecting upon the very different ways in which theantifascist struggle has been characterized,13 and this in turn means revisitingthe very foundations on which this struggle was based. A study of theGiustizia e Libert (GL) movement is particularly relevant here, for threemain reasons. To begin with, this movement presented itself as a politicalorganization that was literally constructed to fight fascism. In that respect, GLrepresents for us a privileged entre in attempting to grasp some of the varia-tions such a distinct militancy underwent. Secondly, and subsequently, GL

undoubtedly renewed the analytical reflections on Mussolinis regime of thevarious antifascist groups in exile. The movement did produce a rich anddiversified analysis of the fascist phenomenon, and the pointed pen of CarloRosselli, the centre and leader of the movement, did have a very greatinfluence. His feature articles were meant to give a sense of direction to the dis-cussions within the GL group. In addition, the members of GL all shared thesame goal, which was to find a global and exhaustive interpretation offascism, after considering every possible interpretative model.14 The Italiancommunist Giorgio Amendola would remark, some thirty years after the

events, that:

One begins to see an authentic analysis of fascism appear within the non-Communist anti-

fascist emigration with the arrival of Rosselli and the forming of Giustizia e Libert. The

Communists then replied, but in reality this was the beginning of a polemical confrontation

between the Communists and Giustizia e Libert.15

Prezioso:Antifascism and Anti-totalitarianism 557

12 In connection with this, see G. de Luna, Storia del Partito dazione (19421947) (Roma1997).

13 N. Gallerano, Critica e Crisi del paradigma antifascista, Problemi del Socialismo 7 (1986).14 S. Fedele, Analisi del fascismo nei Quaderni di Giustizia e Libert (19321935), NuovaAntologia (OctoberDecember 1991). On Carlo Rosselli, see A. Garosci, Vita di Carlo Rosselli, 2vols (Firenze 1973[1st edn 1945]); N. Tranfaglia, Carlo Rosselli dallinterventismo a Giustizia eLibert (Bari 1968); Stanislao G. Pugliese, Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile(Cambridge, MA, 1999).

15 G. Amendola, Intervista sullantifascismo a cura di Piero Melograni (2nd edn, Bari 1994), 69.


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And finally, GL was the only antifascist group that was a genuine competitorto the Italian Communist Party (PCI) during the 1930s, both on the level ofclandestine struggle and as a centralized organization of antifascism in exile. In

the mid-1930s after the dissolution in May 1934 of the ConcentrazionedAzione Antifascista and, a few weeks later, the pact of unity between theItalian Socialist and Communist Parties GL indeed embodied a potentialalternative to Cominternian antifascism. Thus, among the political responsesto Mussolinis regime we find this revolutionary and proletarian move-ments16 analysis of the Soviet situation and the Third International at the time.

GL arose, within the political configuration of antifascism in exile at theend of the 1920s, as a reaction to the obvious deficiencies of lay and non-communist organized antifascism.17 The movements creation constituted an

acknowledgement that traditional political organizations had clearly demon-strated their inability to cope with the postwar crisis and to struggle effectivelyagainst fascism. At the very beginning of 1926, Il Quarto Stato, the magazineof the future GL leader Carlo Rosselli and the socialist Pietro Nenni, hadalready pointed out the deficiencies of the Italian antifascist movements andparties.18 Their political stance during this period of agony for all oppositionpolitical movements could not have been more pertinent. Indeed, during theyears that preceded the definitive outlawing of the antifascist organizations,antifascist militancy was midway between classic militancy and a new kind of

specifically antifascist militancy. The Italian historian Ernesto Ragionieri hasseen in this situation the simultaneous presence of the new and the old. 19 Inhis view, the opposition political parties were incapable of adapting theirstruggle to the new political configuration of postwar Italy, as embodied in thefascist movement. Such a discrepancy came either from a radical misapprehen-sion of the fascist movement, or a restricted conception of the phenomenon. Inshort, the incapacity of the opposition political parties to respond to thefascist phenomenon was rooted in their organizational structure (dependingupon their respective political and social bases), and subsequently inspired the

concessions they were ready to make to their political programmes in order tostruggle more effectively on a new terrain.Although during the period 19204 political regroupings still defined them-

selves within the framework of perennial political rivalry, it became clear


16 C. Rosselli, Siamo un movimento proletario, Giustizia e Libert, 26 October 1934, repro-duced in C. Rosselli, Scritti dellesilio, vol. 2, Dallo scioglimento della Concentrazione antifascistaalla guerra di Spagna (Torino 1992), 51. (Future citations of Scritti dellesilio, a two-volume work,will indicate volume and quoted page(s) only. For full details of volume 1 please see note 17.)

17 On the creation of GL: A. Garosci, Vita, op. cit.; E. Lussu, Giustizia e Libert dallemi-grazione al Partito dazione, in Valdo Spini (ed.), Nel nome dei Rosselli. Quaderni del CircoloRosselli 1 (1991), 12743; and C. Casucci, Introduzione, in C. Rosselli, Scritti dellesilio, vol. 1,

Giustizia e Libert e la Concentrazione antifascista (Torino 1988).

18 On this see E. Santarelli, Pietro Nenni (Torino 1988), 97ff; and N. Tranfaglia, Carlo Rosselli,op. cit., 288ff.

19 E. Ragionieri, La storia politica e sociale, in Storia dItalia Einaudi: DallUnit ad oggi, vol.IV, tome III (Torino 1976), 215562.


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to the more perspicacious among their leaders, after the assassination ofMatteotti and the experience of the Aventine, that the antifascist strugglewould be very long and very hard; such was notably the case of Pietro Nenni,

Carlo Rosselli and the Republican Fernando Schiavetti.20 Not only did theyanalyse fascism in simple ministerial terms21 (namely as an accentuation of theauthoritarian features of the Italian political system); they had the clear con-viction that the fascist regime also embodied a new kind of politics. And thisconviction implied, in the realm of action, the constitution of an offensive andexclusively antifascist regrouping. Following such an analysis was an aware-ness that the posture of purely negative denunciation of fascism had shown itsweak points. The new regrouping must therefore not only encourage the train-ing of new revolutionary cadres, but also build the foundation of a post-fascist

Italy. As the southern Italian historian Gaetano Salvemini maintained, thestruggle was not worth the trouble if it meant merely a return to the Italy ofGiolitti and Facta.22

As it happened, most of the leaders of antifascism had been forced into exileand could conceive of neither the need nor the urgency of organizing such aformation. Thus the creation in 1927 in Paris of the Concentrazione dazioneantifascista did not resolve the tension existing between the doctrinal supple-ness thought to be necessary for thwarting fascism and the rigidity indis-pensable for reorganizing the parties in exile. Following its creation, GL

presented itself as a socialist, republican and liberal unit of action, and thusan organization for which the crucial goal of the antifascist struggle had totake precedence over the autonomy and doctrinal independence of the politicalparties themselves. GLs first call to its members was, furthermore, to file awaytheir party membership cards, whose raison dtre had been voided by the veryexistence of a political regime that had done away with the framework ofclassic political rivalry.23 Thus GL intended to impose and embody the unifiedorganization of all antifascists for whom the essential premise lies in the revo-lutionary conquest of freedom, and concluded: In division, defeat; in unity,

victory.

24

As a movement founded upon the combined Mazzinian imperatives ofthought and action, GL defined itself first of all as a revolutionary move-ment which aimed at overthrowing fascism by insurrectional means.25 This


20 On Nenni, see Lettera ai compagni (14 November 1925), published in Avanti! 12 December1925; it is quoted in part by N. Tranfaglia, Carlo Rosselli, op. cit., 281ff. On Schiavetti, see S.Prezioso, Itinerario di un figlio del 1914. Fernando Schiavetti dalla trincea allantifascismo(Manduria, Bari and Roma 2004).

21 This was notably the reading of fascism proposed by the republican daily paper La VoceRepubblicana during this period: cf. S. Prezioso, Itinerario, op. cit., 267ff.22 Cited by N. Tranfaglia, Carlo Rosselli, op. cit., 192. Also see C. Rosselli, Opposizionedattacco, Giustizia e Libert, 4 October 1935 (vol. 2, 232).

23 Non vinceremo in un giorno ma vinceremo, Giustizia e Libert 1 (November 1929) (vol. 1,1012).

24 Il nostro movimento e i partiti, Giustizia e Libert 10 (September 1930) (vol. 1, 15).

25 Agli operai, Giustizia e Libert 24 (March 1931) (vol. 1, 26).


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posture required pursuing the struggle in Italy, whatever the cost might be:Today, there are too many people in Italy, Rosselli wrote to GaetanoSalvemini on 29 September 1925,

who are only waiting for the first hint of persecution to withdraw or to escape from the

enemys fire . . . I think that emigrating is a grave error as long as a tiny possibility of work-

ing in Italy remains . . . The basic work, material as well as spiritual, must be done in Italy.26

For Rosselli, the tiny possibility of acting in the peninsula came to an end in1927; two years later he escaped from the island of Lipari along with EmilioLussu, the leader of the Partito Sardo dAzione, and Fausto Nitti. But with thecreation of GL, the chief object of pursuing the struggle in Italy was reaffirmed.GL cells were set up, mainly in the north of Italy and in the intellectual milieus;participating in them were men like Nicola Chiaromonte, Carlo Levi, LeoneGinzburg, Aldo Garosci, Umberto Calosso, Ernesto Rossi, Riccardo Bauer,Vincenzo Calace, Nello Traquandi and Mario Andreis.

Starting in the early 1930s, after the arrest of the main GL leaders active inthe north of the peninsula and the de facto dissolution of the movements cells,GL began to reflect on the meaning of the struggle. For Rosselli, the time hadnow come to propose a discussion of the problems of the Italian revolution.27

This became the chief purpose of the Quaderni di Giustizia e Libert, foundedin 1932.28 Benefiting from this pause, GL would then put forward both its

analysis of fascism and its alternative political proposition. The definition ofantifascism underwent a series of transformations, even if the basic criterionremained the same, namely that of affirming a position of constructive anti-fascism that includes and goes beyond the fascist experience and the experi-ences of the post-Great War period.29

For Rosselli and most of the movements members, the fascist phenomenonwas, in the first place, a revelation of the evils intrinsic to the construction of aunified Italy: Fascism, Rosselli would argue in the first issue of the Quadernidi Giustizia e Libert in January 1932, plunges its roots into the Italian sub-

soil; it expresses the deep-seated vices, latent weaknesses, and miseries of theentire nation.30 To reiterate the analysis of the historian Santi Fedele, Rossellismovement can be said to invite us to an interpretation of fascism founded onthe link existing between the history of Italy and fascism, and between thelatter and the character of the Italians.31 Thus Rosselli added to the defects ofthe construction of a united Italy a factor of a moral kind borrowed from PieroGobetti: [F]ascism is the autobiography of a people that renounces politicalstruggle, makes a fetish of unanimism, flees heresy, and dreams of the triumph


26 Tranfaglia, Carlo Rosselli, op. cit., 205.

27 C. Rosselli, Risposta a Giorgio Amendola (vol. 1, 59).

28 On this, C. Casucci, Introduzione, op. cit., xvi ff.


30 Ibid., 63.

31 S. Fedele, Analisi del fascismo, op. cit., 201.


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of the easy option, the triumph of enthusiasm.32 This is without a doubt oneof the most important points made by this fringe of antifascism. As the Italianhistorian Enzo Collotti has remarked, it is precisely the historiographical

currents which were both intellectually and culturally closest to the GL move-ment that have produced studies that allow us to move beyond the vision offascism as a decisive break with liberal Italy and propose a reading in terms ofcontinuity.33

Rosselli also introduced a fundamental aspect for understanding the causesof Mussolinis rise to power, namely the war; it was the war which accustomedpeople to violence, the worship of force, the taste for adventure and whichaccentuated the authoritarian tendencies within the Italian state.34 Rosselliinscribed fascism, therefore, within the generic framework of movements aris-

ing from the first world war and imbued with a specific culture of war, and ofa reactionary state of mind in revolt against traditional Italian political institu-tions resulting from the valorization of the experience of war.35 Finally, forRosselli there could be no doubt that the fascist movement had been used bythe bourgeoisie as a counter-revolutionary tool in the general crisis followingthe Great War. The overall interpretation which the GL leader tended to sug-gest, then, was that the study of fascism could not be limited to a reading basedupon the degeneration of the capitalist order;36 in other words, it could not besaid merely that fascism is at once class reaction and moral crisis.37 And

Rosselli concluded: He who denies the second aspect only fights fascism halfway.38

As for the regime established by Mussolini, the GL leader insisted on twoaspects in particular during the 1930s. First, in his view the fascist regime wasnot a pure and simple accentuation of the authoritarian features of the Italianpolitical system; it was a reactionary mass regime.39 For Rosselli, not onlycould it not stand aloof from the masses, as traditional kinds of reaction do,but it dragooned them:


32 Cited in C. Rosselli, Risposta a Giorgio Amendola (vol. 1, 63). Also see P. Gobetti, Elogiodella ghigliottina, La Rivoluzione liberale 1 (23 November 1922); now in P. Gobetti, LaRivoluzione liberale. Saggio sulla lotta politica in Italia (Torino 1995), 164ff.33 E. Collotti, Lo Stato totalitario, in G. Quazza et al., Storiografia e fascismo (Milano 1985),25.

34 C. Rosselli, Contro lo Stato, Giustizia e Libert (3 August 1934) (vol. 2, 44).35 On this issue, see E. Gentile, Storia del Partito fascista, 19191922. Movimento e milizia(Bari 1989).

36 C. Rosselli, Realt di oggi e prospettive di domani. III. La lotta dellopposizione, Giustizia eLibert, 17 January 1936 (vol. 2, 285).37 C. Rosselli, Il Programma dellopposizione comunista (trotzkista), Quaderni di Giustizia eLibert (September 1932) (vol. 1, 145). Also see C. Rosselli, Filippo Turati e il socialismo ital-iano, Quaderni di Giustizia e Libert (June 1932) (vol. 1, 120ff.).

38 C. Rosselli, Il Programma dellopposizione comunista (trotzkista) (vol. 1, 145).

39 [C. Rosselli], La situazione italiana e i compiti del nostro movimento, Quaderni di Giustiziae Libert 5 (December 1932); cited in S. Fedele, Analisi del fascismo, op. cit., 2223. On thisdefinition of the fascist regime, also see the analyses developed by Palmiro Togliatti during a series

of lectures given in 1935 and reproduced in P. Togliatti, Lezioni sul fascismo (Roma 1970).


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Mussolini is not the senile old general . . . without experience of social life and of crowd

pyschology . . . He knows that any police or squadriste terror is incapable of containing massfervour; his constant concern is to keep the temperature down, open the safety valves, and

prevent and suffocate opportunities for agitation.40

In the pages of the GL magazine, Nicola Chiaromonte would go one better:the effort and the effective political impulse of modern tyrannies is to createmasses, obedient agglomerations that one can manoeuvre as one sees fit.41

Thus, in the context of the fascist regime, the masses are no more than thatfraction of society which is the most active and best organized politically: Wehave reverted from the mass in the political sense, noted Rosselli, to the massin the numerical and amorphous sense.42 This mass is brutal, ignorant, femi-nine, at the mercy of the one who makes the most noise, has the most money,and exudes strength and success, producing fascism as its most perfect politi-cal incarnation.43 This mass does not only submit, then, to the fascist yoke:The current dictatorial State has overturned all human relations, wrote theGL leader in September 1934,

strengthened all privileges, replaced freedom by factious law, equality by the discipline of

barrack-room and caste. Spontaneous and creative association has been replaced by a forced,

glacial, impersonal, invasive, tyrannical and inhuman kind of association that destroys social

life in its entirety . . . In the modern dictatorial State . . . there is no more place for man. The

State has taken hold of man in his entirety . . . The State enters everywhere; it is not enough

for it to repress. It requires its subjects to act according to an activism that is at once freneticand submissive.44

Rosselli keenly perceived anticipating, in part, the theses developed someyears later by Hannah Arendt45 the novelty of the fascist regime, whichmixed political violence and ideological dragooning and which sought totaldomination. In order to account for this basic novelty, the GL leader utilizedthe notions of totalitarianism or of a totalitarian State. These terms werenevertheless essentially associated with the difficulty of the combat to be

waged: The technique of the fascist government, he noted in January 1936,

involves, through terror, the active subservience of citizens forced to participate in a series of

State organizations which oblige them to act, give, applaud . . . The fascist State does not let

itself be attacked from within. The attack can only come from without, en bloc, through a

negation that must always be total.46


40 [C. Rosselli], La situazione italiana e i compiti del nostro movimento.41 Sincero [Nicola Chiaromonte], Ufficio stampa, Quaderni di Giustizia e Libert 9(November 1935); cited in S. Fedele, Analisi del fascismo, op. cit., 225.

42 C. Rosselli, GL e le masse, Giustizia e Libert, 20 July 1934 (vol. 2, 25).43 C. Rosselli, La Lezione della Sarre, Giustizia e Libert, 18 January 1935 (vol. 2, 967).

44 C. Rosselli, Contro lo Stato (vol. 2, 42). On this, again see S. Fedele, Analisi del fascismo,op. cit., 227ff.

45 H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York 1951). For Arendt, however, Italianfascism did not enter into the category of totalitarian regimes.

46 C. Rosselli, Realt di oggi e prospettive di domani. III. La lotta dellopposizione (vol. 2, 286).


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These words are not, therefore, envisaged as analytical categories but insteadas weapons of combat.

The second aspect that Rosselli insisted on was the necessarily dynamic

character of the regime, which constantly sought to correspond to the myth ofitself it invented. This theme is particularly present in his writings of the mid-1930s, when it was becoming ever clearer that war [was] on the way back.47

By definition, fascism, he wrote in September 1935, following the outbreak ofthe Italo-Ethiopian conflict, cannot call a halt, cannot normalize itself . . . Thelifeline of each kind of fascism corresponds to that of maximum effort.48 Forthe GL leader, nothing was more deleterious to fascism than a period ofstability. Once the war within was won, the regime would be forced, out of aparamount need for conservation, to export the conflict and, as Rosselli

posited, engage in A totalitarian war, then, like fascism, in which the regimecommits itself one hundred per cent, directly involving the entire population.49

But being resolutely destructive, fascism was also potentially self-destructive:The creator of fascism could, and probably will, become its gravedigger. In alldynamic phenomena there is a critical point beyond which all the forces thatwere acting in a particular direction begin to act in the opposite one.50 Rosselliremained convinced that fascism would follow its irrational logic to its logi-cal conclusion, involving the launching of a total war which would inevitablylead to its own destruction.

This general interpretation of Italian fascism is of considerable importancein comparing the relative value given to the notions of fascism and totalitari-anism, the two terms serving the GL leader as synonyms throughout the 1930s.Rosselli wavered between reading fascism in terms of singularity (revealing theevils intrinsic to the building of a unified Italy) and explaining it in terms of ageneric category (suited to accounting for Italian fascism and GermanNational Socialism).51 In actual fact, while he did not draw attention to anyfundamental difference in the structure of power, specific techniques andforms of domination deployed by the two fascist regimes in Europe, he did

insist on differences of degree in both the level of violence used and the degreeof ideological dragooning.Taking over the position held by Nicola Chiaromonte, Rosselli from the first

underlined the total adherence in Germany to National Socialism, while inItaly the State is fascist, the people not.52 Over and above the constant wish to


47 C. Rosselli, La guerra che torna, Quaderni di Giustizia e Libert 9 (November 1933) (vol.1, 2509).

48 C. Rosselli, Tre passi avanti e nessun passo indietro (prospettive e compiti dellantifascismorivoluzionario), Giustizia e Libert, 13 September 1935 (vol. 2, 208).49 C. Rosselli, Realt di oggi e prospettive di domani. II. Il fascismo in guerra, Giustizia eLibert, 10 January 1936 (vol. 2, 2789).

50 C. Rosselli, Tre passi avanti (vol. 2, 2089).

51 On this, see C. Rosselli, La lezione della Sarre (vol. 2, 97).

52 C. Rosselli, La situazione in Italia (Appunti sullopposizione), Giustizia e Libert, 5February 1937 (vol. 2, 464): emphasis in original. For Nicola Chiaromonte, Sur le fascisme,

Europe 160 (15 April 1936).


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dissociate the Italian people from the responsibilities of a regime of usurpa-tion, Rosselli also tended to paint the image of a nation made up of slaves tobread and ignorance, of apathetic, sceptic, spineless people.53 Seen from such

an angle, adherence to the regime is said to be the result of laziness, of a refusalto struggle, of moral, political and cultural immaturity, in short of a lack ofcharacter; this analysis was shared by Emilio Lussu, Carlo Levi and manyothers.54

This limit to the totalitarian ambitions of Italian fascism must not, however,be attributed solely to the character of the Italians, but also to the fact that, incontrast to Italian fascism, Nazism has a principle, a politics, a visible objec-tive and therefore a formidable political and warlike potential.55 On thewhole, according to Rosselli, with the rise of National Socialism in Germany

fascism had finally become a fully historical phenomenon. He observed in June1933:

In order to wake Europe up, an authentic barbarian was needed, a sincere barbarian who,

having read neither Nietzsche, nor Renan, nor Machiavelli, nor Sorel, and never having plot-

ted with his own adversaries, would be in a position to take the principles of fascism seriously

and to apply them down to their very last consequences. Mussolini doesnt have enough of

what it takes to carry out this plan. Hes a pseudo-barbarian, a comediante . . . In short, withHitler fascism becomes something serious.56

He concluded from this that Italian fascism was a political phenomenon mark-ing the transition between the form of democracy that was born of the GreatWar and the new National Socialist regime: [The National Socialist revolu-tion] begins where fascism had only arrived at with difficulty.57 InscribingItalian fascism within such a continuum, Rosselli managed to resolve, at leastin part, the additional problem of having to characterize the regime set in placeby Mussolini, which, if one may use the words of historian Enzo Collotti,might indeed be seen as an unprecedented symbiosis between old and newinstitutions.58

During the course of the 1930s Rosselli and his movement presented aninnovative analysis of fascism which embraced the different readings first pro-posed by the varied configuration of lay antifascism, made up mostly of social-ists, communists and republicans. With Hitlers rise to power the analyticalperspective was refined in order to grasp the implications that the exporting ofwhat had hitherto been thought of as a uniquely Italian phenomenon mighthave for the rest of Europe. However, the drawing up of such a conceptual


53 C. Rosselli, Salto nel 1935, Giustizia e Libert, 28 December 1934 (vol. 2, 82).54 Tirreno [E. Lussu], Errico Malatesta, Quaderni di Giustizia e Libert 5 (December 1932);[Carlo Levi], Seconda lettera dallItalia, Quaderni di Giustizia e Libert 2 (March 1932). Also seeS. Fedele, Analisi del fascismo, op. cit., 2037.

55 C. Rosselli, Europeismo o fascismo (vol. 2, 164).

56 C. Rosselli, Italia e Europa, Quaderni di Giustizia e Libert 7 (June 1933) (vol. 1, 208).

57 Ibid.

58 E. Collotti, Stato totalitario, op. cit., 32.


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framework could be useful from the point of view of GL only in helping todefine the character of the antifascist struggle. It was a matter of determiningwhy antifascists and, in this particular instance, the GL members themselves

fought, and of conceiving a range of collective action adequate to the goal pur-sued. It was from this angle that the GL members were to become interested inboth the Communist Party and the Soviet regime.

In Rossellis writings of the time totalitarianism appears as a synonym forfascism. The Soviet regime would thus seem to be excluded from the com-parative framework. But the contiguities between the fascist regime(s) and theStalinist one are not, for all that, absent from the different analyses producedby GL. GLs interest in this question depended, however, on the ruthlessstruggle that pitted the non-communist lay antifascism against the Third

International and the PCI. Rosselli certainly did give some thought to SovietRussia, but he lingered only briefly over the regime set up by Stalin. As AldoGarosci pointed out, The problem of Russia is different on account of itsposition, because it is more intimately linked to politics; at certain moments itarises as a problem of international politics, at others as part of the myth ofCommunism, which isproper to the Italian masses. 59

Rosselli was very sensitive to this particular characteristic of the Soviet case,and he never missed the opportunity clearly to distinguish the BolshevikRevolution from the regime set up by Stalin. He wrote in March 1932:

Our standpoint on the Russian Revolution is complex . . . We cannot adhere to it without

substantial reservations . . . However, prior to . . . any dictatorial act of atrocity, there was

the revolution that destroyed autocracy, that gave the land to the peasants. That revolution

we love and defend. Revolution is not Stalins dictatorship, that much is clear. But if we were

to choose between the capitalist world, such as it has been revealed to us by the war and the

crisis, and the Bolshevik world, we would have to opt, not without anguish, for the second.60

Two years later, on the occasion of the anniversary of the October Revolution,Rosselli would return to this argument. The October Revolution is defined as

an event that opens a new era in the history of humanity; however, heclaimed, in the best of cases, in Russia one is still far, very far, fromSocialism.61 The forced collectivizations which turn the peasants back toslavery62 the silenced opposition and the total domination of the party overthe whole of Soviet society were some of the elements Rosselli pointed to in hisexamination of the Stalinist regime. The GL leader refused to wear blinkers; inthe name of the ideals that guided the antifascist struggle, he disputed the pureand simple exaltation of that political alternative: Revolutionaries cannot . . .compromise on principles and close their eyes to the evils that exist.63


59 A. Garosci, Vita, op. cit., 325, emphasis in original.

60 C. Rosselli, Note sulla Russia, Quaderni di Giustizia e Libert (March 1932) (vol. 1, 79).

61 C. Rosselli, 7 novembre, Giustizia e Libert, 9 November 1934 (vol. 2, 638).

62 C. Rosselli, Note sulla Russia (vol. 1, 81).

63 Ibid.


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Read and approved by Rosselli, the speech that Gaetano Salvemini delivereda few months later to the International Congress of Writers partly reworked allof these elements. The southern Italian historian was, however, much clearer in

his condemnation: I wouldnt feel I had the right to protest against theGestapo and the fascist OVRA if I endeavored to forget that a Soviet politicalpolice exists, he maintained, to the boos of a number of participants.64

Salvemini then put forward criteria for a potential comparison between thefascist regimes and the Stalinist one:

Im sorry I shocked a number of peoples convictions . . . one has to have lived through the

experience of a totalitarian State, not among its rulers but among those who were crushed,

one has to know the moral degradation to which the totalitarian State reduces not only the

intellectual classes but the working classes as well, to realize the hatred and contempt that

any totalitarian State, any dictatorship, arouses in my mind. 65

During his period of antifascist activism, Gaetano Salvemini accentuated hispositioning as a strong opponent of Soviet communism, which he came todefine, along with Italian fascism, as a form of totalitarian dictatorship.66

In June 1936 Rosselli would for his part maintain that No internal dangerjustifies this senseless repression. Are we fighting fascism? How do we stop itwith so many concentration camps behind us?67 For the GL leader what wasimportant was to reaffirm the values of antifascism, and it was indeed in the

name of those values that he condemned the Stalinist regime. But he nonethe-less remained convinced that if the USSR could not be an ideal, it was stilluseful as a myth: the fall of the Soviet regime would be a real tragedy . . . itsexperience is decisive for any revolutionary movement.68 It was on the basis ofthis principle that he would later oppose Salvemini when the latter, togetherwith Max Ascoli and Lionello Venturi, would denounce the communistdanger. Salvemini held that communism had to be fought with the sameenergy as fascism; he thus indissolubly linked the struggle for democracy in itstraditional western version with the fight against fascism. In other words, it

was not only necessary but essential for the southern historian that westerndemocrats and liberals both join a fight which aimed, first and foremost in hiseyes, at the regaining of fundamental liberties and the setting up of a provi-sional government.

As for Rosselli, he distanced himself meanwhile ever more radically from hisformer mentor. During that period, indeed, it became all the clearer, according


64 G. Salvemini, Pour la libert de lesprit, Les Humbles, cahiers 7 (July 1935). On the con-gress, see Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Betti (ed.), Il Pericolo che ci raduna. Congresso internazionale degliscrittori per la difesa della cultura, Parigi 1935 (Milano 1986); also see S. Teroni and W. Klein(eds), Pour la dfense de la culture. Les textes du Congrs international des crivains, Paris, juin1935 (Dijon 2005).

65 G. Salvemini, Pour la libert, op. cit., 249.

66 On Salvemini, see Massimo L. Salvadori, Gaetano Salvemini (Torino 1963); and G.Salvemini, Memorie di un fuoruscito (Milano 1960).

67 C. Rosselli, Stampa amica e nemica, Giustizia e Libert, 12 June 1936 (vol. 2, 67).

68 Ibid.


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to him, that antifascism, made of force and passion, could neither conform tonor take inspiration from those pseudo-democratic regimes which passivelylet fascism come to power in both Italy and Germany. Looked at from such an

angle, the antifascist struggle needed to aim at promoting a revolutionary out-come in all of Europe, something Rosselli actually chose to state plainly inDecember 1935: To those who invoke the Western democratic governments,we reply: Revolution.69 And a few months later, replying to Salveminis initia-tive, he went on:

It is true that the Communist danger creates fear abroad. But is it really our role to reassure

people . . . ? If we were to address ourselves to international public opinion, we would explain

that the real problem in Italy and of Italy is not that of avoiding a revolution but that of suc-

ceeding to make one which lays down the premises of a truly free social and political life. 70

The position defended by Rosselli involved not only drawing a clear distinc-tion between the October Revolution indispensable as a starting point forany revolution in Europe71 and the Stalinist regime, but also separating theItalian Communist Party from the Third International. Since the Cominternowed its allegiance to a dogmatic and sectarian USSR, it could not, accordingto him, understand the problems of the Italian revolution, because it did notunderstand what makes Italy, from the economic, political and cultural pointof view, incomparable to any other national reality.72 If, according to the GL

leader, the USSR was a useful myth in the antifascist struggle, the PCI was anindispensable ally in the success of that struggle. And he would never ceaserepeating it in both the social-fascist popular fronts periods, regardless of theendless conflicts he might have had with the Communist Party. Thus, in itsMarch 1931 call for the unity of all the forces of antifascism, GL explicitlyincluded the Italian communists.73 Another reason for the attention the GLmovement and its leader paid to the PCI was the presence of communist cellson Italian soil; for Rosselli, the PCI remained the only party which had man-aged to preserve a clandestine organization within Italy and therefore the only

political organization with links to the actual struggle within that country.74The GL leader attempted throughout the 1930s to urge the PCI to reflect uponthe future beyond the struggle; the criticisms he addressed to that party makesense only as part of that hoped-for dialogue with the communists.

Rosselli began by attacking the PCIs inclination to proclaim itself the onlylegitimate representative of the antifascist struggle, defined in terms of the class


69 C. Rosselli, Rivincita di Baraba , Giustizia e Libert, 13 December 1935 (vol. 2, 249).Emphasis in the original.

70 C. Rosselli, A proposito di una lettera sul pericolo comunista in Italia, Giustizia e Libert,7 February 1936 (vol. 2, 2957).


72 Ibid. Also see C. Rosselli, La lezione della Sarre (vol. 2, 947).

73 Agli operai (vol. 1, 28).

74 On this, see, among others, A. Agosti, Togliatti (Torino 1996), 1545. Also G. Amendola,

Intervista, op. cit.


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struggle.75 For Rosselli, the communist reading of the fascist phenomenon wasfar too restrictive. As we have already seen, fascism was, to be sure, accordingto him, a form of class reaction, but it also had the dimension of a moral

crisis. In denying that second aspect, the communists refused to grasp both thenovelty of fascism and the deep roots this phenomenon actually struck in con-temporary Italy. According to Rosselli, during the social-fascist period, whilethe Communist Party was not wrong about its target, it was in fact wrongabout its potential adjuvant (the proletariat). Or, to be more precise, as fascismwas for the GL leader a reactionary mass regime, only active minorities which do not necessarily belong to the working class, while including a fringeof the intellectual and humanistic middle classes as well as the peasant world might have been in a position to understand the antifascist message.76 It was

from the same standpoint that Rosselli criticized the so-called popular frontpolicy. It was useless, within the framework of a regime that combined bothterror and ideological dragooning, to appeal to the forming of a wide anti-fascist front. Such contact euphoria could not suit the goals being pursued byItalian antifascism, as it was not in the position of defending its democraticinstitutions, as in France, but had to create the conditions of a new politicaldeal.77 The Communist Party got all the more tangled up in its mobilization ofa range of collective action that did not correspond to the needs of the strugglewhen it launched its appeal For the salvation of Italy, the reconciliation of the

Italian people. Rosselli rambled on:

No matter how much you may try to explain [to the communists] that what is peculiar to the

totalitarian State is the prevention of mass struggle of any kind . . . that after so many set-

backs, it is absurd to hope for the masses to wake up by themselves without being encouraged

by the example of audacious minorities . . . Its all in vain. And since mass struggle is only

(theoretically) possible within the fascist organizations, the next thing you know is that the

Communists have abruptly turned into reformist fascists. One then reads homilies on ones

fascist brothers, on ones black-shirted brothers.78

With the advent of the popular front policy the Communist Party had thusbecome, for Rosselli, at best a moderate and reformist party, at worst a con-servative and conformist organization.79

The GL leader also criticized the dogmatism and sectarianism of theCommunist Party, which he likened to a Church out of which one could not


75 Agli operai (vol. 1, 31).76 See, among others, C. Rosselli, GL e le masse (vol. 2, 258).77 C. Rosselli, Fronte popolare e Stato totalitario, Giustizia e Libert, 26 June 1936 (vol. 2,3804). On the idea of euphoria of contact, see C. Rosselli, Per lunificazione del proletariato

italiano. III. Il Partito comunista, Giustizia e Libert, 9 April 1937 (vol. 2, 488), and the reply thir-ty years after the events by G. Amendola, Intervista, op. cit., 1023.

78 C. Rosselli, Matrimonio fascista-antifascista, Giustizia e Libert, 20 December 1935 (vol. 2,254255). On the appeal, see, among others, A. Agosti, Togliatti, op. cit., 202ff.

79 C. Rosselli, La libert non un mezzo tattico n un obbiettivo provvisorio, Giustizia eLibert, 14 December 1934 (vol. 2, 7881). Also see C. Rosselli, Europeismo e fascismo (vol. 2,16571).


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come unscathed.80 In the end, his attacks focused on the extreme centralization,the strictness of the criteria for party membership, the hierarchical and com-partmentalized mode of organization of an institution which expected from its

activists nothing short of self-sacrifice in the name of the communist project;they focused, in short, on an activist culture Rosselli qualified as being dicta-torial:

Communism serves the proletariat by reducing it into a flock of sheep, by imposing a

Jesuitical form of discipline upon it, by wresting all autonomy from it, all freedom of criticism

and judgement, by deluding it with the perpetual exaltation of its virtues in order to submit

it all the more easily tomorrow to the dictatorship of a partys bureaucracy. 81

Still, Rosselli considered that this party, more than any other communist

organization, was capable of recognizing the vital reasons for the battle, andthis despite its submission to the USSR.82 It would, however, take the experi-ence of the Spanish Civil War for Rosselli to accept the communist appeals fora union of forces, something he had been considering since 1934 as conserva-tive and conformist. In 1937, in an article entitled For the Unification of theItalian Proletariat, Rosselli insisted on the need to beat another path.83 Hiscriticisms of the Communist Party were then balanced by the power of attrac-tion of a party that was undoubtedly the most important organization of theItalian proletariat, which benefited from the myth of the USSR and from

the radicalization antifascism itself underwent as a result of the outbreak ofthe Spanish Civil War.84 Rosselli at that time called for the creation of a newpolitical organization, namely the United Party of the proletariat, built aroundthe PCI and GL as its backbone: An original political formation capable ofleading against the totalitarian colossus a struggle at once practical, politicaland cultural.85

Within GL, however, there were strong differences regarding the role andfunction of the Communist Party in the coming antifascist revolution, as wellas regarding the Soviet regime. Rosselli was the one to constantly opt for a dia-

logue with the PCI, convinced as he was that it was impossible to carry on thefight without it. In his analysis, he did not purely and simply reduce the PCI tothe Third International and hence, from his point of view, to the regime set upby Stalin; he attempted, rather, to constantly draw attention to the role thisparty could and must play in the antifascist battle. Other GL members, such as


80 C. Rosselli, Il Programma dellopposizione comunista (trozkista) (vol. 1, 142).81 C. Rosselli, Risposta a Giorgio Amendola (vol. 1, 65). On the idea of Communist culture,see J. Vigreux and S. Wolikow, Introduction, in Vigreux and Wolikow (eds), Cultures commu-nistes au 20e sicle. Entre guerre et modernit(Paris 2003).82 C. Rosselli, Risposta a Giorgio Amendola (vol. 1, 5665).

83 C. Rosselli, Per lunificazione del proletariato italiano. V. Giustizia e Libert (vol. 2, 535).

84 C. Rosselli, Per lunificazione politica del proletariato. III. Il Partito comunista (vol. 2,48590); on this question, see also S. Prezioso, Aujourdhui en Espagne, demain en Italie. Lanti-

fascisme italien et la prise darme rvolutionnaire, Vingtime sicle 93 (JanuaryMarch 2007).

85 C. Rosselli, Per lunificazione politica del proletariato. V. Giustizia e Libert (vol. 2, 536).


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Garosci, Salvemini, Tarchiani and Rossi, to name but a few, tended to refuseall contact with the PCI. Rossellis death in 1937 put an end, once and for all,to the rapprochement he had hoped for.

GL was probably the movement that best embodied antifascism and whatwas both specific and universal about it: GL might be described as the firsttotally antifascist European movement, wrote Rosselli in 1937, because itsees in fascism the central issue, the dreadfulnovelty of our times, and becauseits position derives . . . from a desire for liberation which emanates fromfascism itself and the concrete fighting experience.86 Seen from such an angle,the antifascist struggle was conceived as a total battle, because it pitted oneagainst the other two radically antagonistic worldviews: To overthrow agovernment is not the point, wrote Carlo Rosselli. The point is to overthrow

a regime and found a new civilization.87 And it would take a revolutionaryprocess to achieve such a goal, which could only be carried out by the work-ing and peasant classes and by the intellectuals who share their ideals and des-tiny.88 Because fascism was both class reaction and moral crisis all rolled intoone, the struggle had to be thought of only in terms of anticapitalism, a con-crete and historical anticapitalism the justification for which is not so much tobe sought in terms of some abstract and theoretical scheme but rather in theworkers moral and material suffering.89 What had to be done, according toRosselli, was to abandon the class-struggle, not because class-struggle does

not exist, but rather because fascism is a phenomenon which is not restrictedto class.90 The antifascist battle, however, could be fought only by a minorityof workers, peasants and intellectuals ready to fight for a revolution whichwill transform property and production relations in the name of liberty andjustice.91

GL thus fought for a new society that would be radically different not onlyfrom the fascisms and the Stalinist regime, but also from pre-fascist Italy andthe European democracies as they appeared in the 1930s. For Rosselli, one firsthad to get rid of the centralizing and despotic state: A full, unfettered and

absolute democracy, he wrote in 1936, able to fully eliminate authoritarian-ism, is plain Utopia . . . What is important is to see that the organization of thestate be based on federative and autonomous principles.92 These two princi-ples may thus be understood as the exact counterparts, on the level of the orga-nization of the state, of the freedom and autonomy enjoyed by each memberof society. What Rosselli wished to see was the creation of a democratic andfederalist Republic founded upon liberty and social justice. He also imagined asocial revolution, inextricably tied to such a process, whose contours remained


86 Ibid., 530, emphasis in original.87 C. Rosselli, Fronte verso lItalia, Giustizia e Libert, 18 May 1934 (vol. 2, 5).

88 C. Rosselli, Realt di oggi e prospettive di domani (vol. 2, 291).

89 C. Rosselli, Fronte verso lItalia, Giustizia e Libert, 18 May 1934 (vol. 2, 5).

90 C. Rosselli, Classismo e antifascismo , Giustizia e Libert, 25 January 1935 (vol. 2, 100).

91 Ibid.

92 C. Rosselli, Tesi sullo Stato e il partito, Giustizia e Libert, 6 June 1936 (vol. 2, 291).


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fairly blurred. The resolution of the agrarian question would be soughtthrough a fair distribution of land: there would be no collectivization and nosocialization. With regard to the question of industrial reform, Rosselli may be

seen as remaining close to positions held by Salvemini, as he advocated nation-alizing a number of vital industries, but maintaining small businesses, which inthemselves constituted a vital economic structure in contemporary Italy.93

The passage from the fascist regime to the new society he dreamed of couldthus only be made through revolution a creative revolution, to be sure which should at once reach the most important goals assigned to it: theRepublic, agrarian reform, industrial reform.94

In the end, this inevitable revolution must originate in the fascist countriesand be exported throughout Europe, in order to make an antifascist Europe,

a Europe of the peoples: To create Europe . . . in the name of a new human-ism, that is the essential ide-force of the Italian revolution.95 The programmeof this antifascism can be summed up in the watchwords freedom and social-ism: A guaranteed freedom, but an effective freedom for the vast majority.And a socialism which does not deify the State, a non-bureaucratic and non-military Socialism.96

Examining the anti-totalitarian characterization of the antifascist strugglemeans, in my opinion, questioning the antifascist configuration from the view-point of a political movement rooted in its time, led by men who were, as

Leonardo Rapone emphasizes,

immersed, like the actors of any historical experience, in tensions and contradictions and

whose decisive contribution to the construction of Italian democracy was certainly the final

achievement, but which cannot, for all that, be seen as the horizon that embraced and gave

meaning to each aspect of their previous action.97

This is why I have been interested in this article in examining the positions heldby Giustizia e Libert and by its leader. First of all, antifascism represented forthem the porro unum necessarium of political conflict.98 As their orientation

involved both a necessary initial understanding of the phenomenon againstwhich the antifascists structured themselves and an uncertainty or contingentfluctuation of their own goals, one is forced to define the time span duringwhich this specific activism existed.99 Moreover, Rosselli himself inscribed this


93 C. Rosselli, Socialismo e socializzazione, Giustizia e Libert, 8 February 1935 (vol. 2,110114).

94 C. Rosselli, Chiarimenti al programma, Quaderni di Giustizia e Libert (January 1932)(vol. 1, 36).

95 C. Rosselli, LAzione antifascista internazionale (vol. 1, 246); C. Rosselli, La guerra chetorna (vol. 1, 2509); and C. Rosselli, Europeismo o fascismo (vol. 2, 16571).

96 C. Rosselli, Che cosa vogliamo (vol. 2, 2434).

97 L. Rapone, Antifascismo e storia dItalia, in: E. Collotti (ed.), Fascismo e antifascismo.Rimozioni, revisioni, negazioni (Bari 2000), 223.

98 C. Casucci, Introduction, op.cit., xiv.

99 B. Groppo, Fascismes, antifascismes, op. cit., 500ff.


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struggle in historical time, without making GL either a simple variant or aby-product of Soviet communism.100 Rosselli nevertheless did try to count onthe Italian Communist Party. And it is true that, whether underground or in

the Resistance, the Italian Communist Party, sometimes despite itself, did, toquote the analysis of Marco Revelli, provide the impetus for profoundly socialemancipatory tendencies that were only partly filtered by the party.101

To sum up, the values which were conveyed by lay and non-communistantifascism in the 1920s and 1930s and then during the war of resistance, andwere finally drafted within the framework of the Italian Constitution, origi-nally constituted a radical alternative to the fascist and Stalinist regimes. It wasthen the business of political struggle to implement the values and worldviewsthat were associated with antifascism and, during the course of the battle,

influenced communist and non-communist activists alike.102 Thought of byRosselli as something in constant becoming, this type of antifascism and thevalues associated with it did come back to life in sudden bursts in Italiansociety. As Carlo Rosselli maintained in April 1934: We can become theobject of all kinds of accusations except that of being ruled by a preoccupationwith immediate success. We work for eternity!103

Stfanie Prezioso

is Professor of History in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciencesat the University of Lausanne. Her work deals mainly with the

generation of 1914; the question of political exile; and the problemsrelating to the appropriation of historical memory (public use of

history). She is the author in particular of Itinerario di un figlio del1914. Fernando Schiavetti dalla trincea allantifascismo (Bari 2004);

Exprience de guerre et militantisme rpublicain en Italie(19141926), European Review of History/Revue europenne

dhistoire 13(1) (March 2006) 14161; Aujourdhui en Espagne,

demain en Italie: lexil antifasciste italien et la prise darmesrvolutionnaire, Vingtime Sicle 93 (JanuaryMarch 2007), 7992.


100 E. Traverso, Le totalitarisme. Jalons pour lhistoire dun dbat, in E. Traverso (ed.), LeTotalitarisme. Le 20e sicle en dbat(Paris 2001), 81845.

101 M. Revelli, Le idee, op. cit., 26.

102 E. Collotti and L. Klinkhammer, Il fascismo e lItalia in guerra: una conversazione fra storiae storiografia (Rome 1996).

103 Carlo Rosselli a sua madre, Paris 4 aprile 1934, in Z. Ciuffoletti (ed.), I Rosselli: epistolariofamiliare di Carlo, Nello, Amelia Rosselli 19141937(Milan 1997), 568.

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Antifascism and Anti-Totalitarianism the Italian Debate