Communism and anti-Communism in early Cold War Italy: Language, symbols and myths 9781526121882

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Communism and anti-​Communism in early Cold War Italy

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Communism and anti-​Communism in early Cold War Italy Language, symbols and myths Andrea Mariuzzo

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Andrea Mariuzzo 2018 The right of Andrea Mariuzzo to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 2187 5 hardback First published 2018 The italian version Divergenze parallele: Comunismo e anticomunismo alle origini del linguaggio politico dell’Italia repubblicana (1945–1953) (ISBN 9788849825169) has been published by Rubbettino Editore. The book has been published with the contribution of Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa. The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Out of House Publishing

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Contents

List of figures List of abbreviations

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Introduction 1 Systems and methods for political communication in post-​war Italy 2 Religious and moral values 3 Freedom and democracy 4 The fatherland, the Italian nation and its role in the world 5 Towards a legitimation of prosperity?

1 11 30 74 132 196

References Index

234 248

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Figures

1 Poster by the Italian Socialist Party for the general elections of 1946. Library of Modern and Contemporary History, Rome. 2 Leaflet by the Civic Committees for the general elections of 1948. Library of Archiginnasio, Bologna. 3 Poster by Christian Democracy for the general elections of 1953. Courtesy of www.manifestipolitici.it, the open access database of the Foundation Gramsci Emilia-​Romagna, Bologna. 4 Poster by the Italian Communist Party for the general elections of 1953. Courtesy of www.manifestipolitici.it, the open access database of the Foundation Gramsci Emilia-​Romagna, Bologna. 5 Poster by the Popular Front for the general elections of 1948. Library of Archiginnasio, Bologna. 6 Poster by the Civic Committee for the general elections of 1953. Courtesy of www.manifestipolitici.it, the open access database of the Foundation Gramsci Emilia-​Romagna, Bologna. 7 Postcard by the local committee of the Partisans of Peace in Bologna, 1949. Courtesy of www.manifestipolitici.it, the open access database of the Foundation Gramsci Emilia-​Romagna, Bologna. 8 Poster by the pro-​government ‘Committee for Peace and Labour’, created in Rome in 1951. Center for Document Collection on Political Parties, University of Macerata. 9 Poster by the Italian Bureau for Tourism advertising the Mostra della Ricostruzione. Library of Modern and Contemporary History, Rome. 10 Poster by Christian Democracy for the general elections of 1953. Courtesy of www.manifestipolitici.it, the open access database of the Foundation Gramsci Emilia-​Romagna, Bologna.

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Abbreviations

AAC

ACS APC API CAA CGIL CLN DC MSI OWI PCI PRI PSI SPES UDI USIS

Archivio dell’Azione Cattolica (Catholic Action Archive), Istituto per la storia dell’Azione cattolica e del movimento cattolico in Italia Paolo VI, Rome Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Central State Archive), Rome Archivio del Partito Comunista Italiano (Archive of the Italian Communist Party), Gramsci Institute, Rome Associazione Pionieri d’Italia (Italian Pioneers Association) Carte Ada Alessandrini (Ada Alessandrini Papers), Lelio and Lisli Basso Foundation, Rome Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (Italian General Confederation of Labour) Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (Committee for National Liberation) Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democratic Party) Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement) United States Office of War Information Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party) Partito Repubblicano Italiano (Italian Republican Party) Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist Party) Studi, Propaganda e Stampa (Research, Propanda and Press Office) Unione Donne Italiane (Union of Italian Women) United States Information Service

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Introduction

Basically there was only one problem, and they were completely agreed about it: to restore the authority of the State … They were ready to make every concession for this, although in different degrees. Colombi talked in a lukewarm fashion of reforms. Tempesti, when it was his turn, wholeheartedly professed a reverence for the religious beliefs of his colleague. The crisis [of government] might prove useful, a good step along the road to normality. It didn’t matter, although it was obvious, that to each this meant something different. The expression was the same and all that really mattered was that it should seem identical.1

In The Watch, Carlo Levi imagined this conversation between two prominent members of the broad anti-​Fascist coalition governing Italy at the end of 1945: the ministers Tempesti (a fictional version of the Communist Emilio Sereni) and Colombi (representing Attilio Piccioni, an influential member of Christian Democracy’s conservative wing). Responding to the resignation of Ferruccio Parri’s government, which Levi saw as an end to the hopes for a profound renewal of Italian society that had inspired the Resistance, two groups at opposite ends of the Italian political spectrum were using the same vocabulary and expressing themselves in the same way. While their ideas were certainly very different, and their goals increasingly so, the words they used in common showed that these political opponents shared an understanding of what was meant by government. Levi was an attentive observer of Italian politics, and when writing these pages in 1950 he must have been aware that within the space of a few years these similarities in linguistic usage had been profoundly affected by changes in the political climate; language had in fact been transformed from a medium of understanding between adversaries into an arena of bitter conflict. One of the most distinctive aspects of Italian political communication during the

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Communism and anti-Communism in Italy

most difficult years of the Cold War can be seen in the parties’ employment of very similar terms and key concepts, with the aim of acquiring a monopoly of their ‘correct’ usage while suggesting that their adversaries were usurpers whose discourse was mistaken and misleading. Both the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and its detractors identified with the adjective ‘democratic’, and proclaimed the need to defend the fundamental guarantees of the Constitution from their opponents. Both sides claimed ownership of the symbols on which the identification of Italians with their fatherland had been established, and each accused the other of acting for foreign powers. Both the Communists and anti-​Communists promoted their programmes as the only way of defending the universally desired peace, which their opponents sought to destroy by leading the world into a new war. The political programmes of both the PCI and the centrist forces in government were presented as the unique means of guaranteeing economic development and achieving wellbeing throughout society, as against the plans of their opponents which would only lead to abject poverty. In the sphere of political language, at least, the affirmation and defence of the traditional Christian spirit was a point of reference not only for those aligned with the Church, but also for representatives of the Marxist Left. It could be argued, in line with Pocock, that the various political forces were simply using the ‘conceptual vocabularies that were available’.2 It should be borne in mind, in particular, that much of the linguistic material of the post-​war period had been developed at a time when anti-​Fascist cooperation seemed to be the potential basis for a new coexistence, before this language was put to work in a situation of national and international bipolar conflict marked by an unforeseen intensity.3 In the wake of centuries of Catholicism embedded in social life, decades of Risorgimento mythology, the horrors of a war that nobody wished to see repeated, and finally the victory of the language of freedom and democracy that followed the downfall of Fascism, any political force seeking legitimacy in Italian society had no choice but to use this same language. It was introduced into opposing channels of communication that had of course been developed within completely different ideological frameworks. This thinking can be further developed with reference to Angelo Ventrone’s formulation, in which neither the Communists nor the anti-​ Communists recognised the right of their ‘enemy within’ to ‘citizenship’, understood as ‘full membership of a community’. Each political party ended up ‘insisting blindly on its role and … presenting itself as the unique vehicle for the genuine interests of the national community, and for proper civic virtues’:  that collection of attitudes which provided the basis for people’s way of life and their involvement in the fortunes of their community.4 However, the ‘civic virtues’ of which each claimed a monopoly, and the frameworks for the contrasting programmes that distinguished them, were presented in a very similar fashion on both sides: both

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Introduction

the advocates of pro-​Soviet Communism and their opponents attempted to address their message to all sections of the public right across Italy, by adopting a political vocabulary and a framework of references that were universally considered to confer legitimacy. With this in mind, it is clearly difficult in the Italian context to apply interpretative models that are based on a rigid distinction between ‘propaganda’, an activity generally carried out by undemocratic regimes or in situations where information is highly controlled, and the ‘communication’ practised in pluralist democracies.5 The battle for the exclusive exercise of fundamental values and symbolic references is the most obvious indication of the ‘climate of competition and war’:  each side wanting ‘to impose their point of view’ without leaving any room for other positions.6 This resulted in the development of systems of communication and distinctive programmes that stood in clear contrast to each other and were in large part mutually impenetrable. However, the promotion of common references assisted the preservation of a fragile democratic experiment, offering Italian politics the solution of ‘consensus democracy’ that was to characterise the subsequent period.7 New avenues for understanding the nature of Italy’s political system in the post-​war period can thus be opened up by analysing the language that was developed around key terms by the political forces facing each other in the battle between Communism and anti-​Communism, and by investigating the processes whereby ‘republican citizenship’ was developed and strengthened. This book offers solutions to some of the interpretative problems in this field, focusing its attention on a period of major conflict in Italian democratic life: this started with the exclusion of the PCI and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) from the government in May 1947, and came to an end with the elections of 7 June 1953. At this latter point both sides were forced to change their approach in the wake of the succession to Stalin, on the international front, and the internal backlash against the ‘legge truffa’ (swindle law), as its opponents termed it: the electoral reform that would have made a winning alliance’s position unassailable in the Chamber of Deputies. After a whole framework of reference points had been removed by the Second World War, Italy entered the most intense phase of its domestic Cold War when the proposals for political and group identification that characterised the subsequent period had been fully developed and disseminated throughout society. This context saw a definitive systematisation of the linguistic and symbolic material that the protagonists of political conflict were to make their own for decades to come. Chapter 1 describes the organisational systems and methods used to develop and disseminate the party messages. It focuses on the most important networks and the material used to create and disseminate language, taking account of the interactions between the written and the spoken word, the constructed image and the photograph, and the outputs of political organisations and ordinary

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Communism and anti-Communism in Italy

non-​party newspapers. Subsequent chapters explore the contrast between the messages formulated by the Communist offices for public communication and by their opposition, revisiting the full range of competing symbolic propositions, or ‘political cultures’ as Serge Berstein called them, whose conflict is the essence of mass society politics.8 When we look at the PCI, there is no mistaking the most consistent feature of its worldview as presented by its Sezione stampa e propaganda (Press and Propaganda Section). At the heart of the Communist movement’s identity was the interpretation of human development as a story of class conflict, based on an uncompromising enmity that was manifested in the struggle launched by the ‘imperialist front’ against the USSR and other countries ruled by Communist parties, according to the formulation that Andrei Zhdanov presented in September 1947 at the founding conference of Cominform in Szklarska Poręba. When it regained its legal status after the fall of Fascism, the PCI immediately demonstrated its allegiance to the value system shared by international Communism. The fundamental criteria of allegiance to or exclusion from ‘civic virtues’, which gave a political entity legitimacy in representing the Italian people, were articulated on the basis of a class-​based and economistic interpretation of political representation and struggle, following the canons of simplification and popularisation that had been used to disseminate Marxist-​Leninist doctrine.9 The differences between ‘forces of democracy’ and ‘Fascist reaction’ were presented in terms of a model in which the enemy of democracy was necessarily the enemy of the proletariat; the definition of ‘peace’ was closely based on Leninist teachings about the inevitability of an outbreak of war in the final crisis of capitalism, to the extent that even rearmament and strategies of aggression could be seen as elements of a peaceful policy if practised by the bloc of states that was depicted as the stalwart opponent of ‘imperialism’. The symbols of Italian unification and national identity were viewed through an interpretative lens that reduced the national community to Italy’s productive ‘sane forze’ (healthy forces), understood as that urban and rural ‘proletariato’ which the Marxist Left claimed only it could represent. The upper middle class and the ‘padronato’ (bosses and landowners), by contrast, were accused of ‘serving foreigners’, because Italy’s enemies were identified on the basis of their complicity with and defence of the interests of the ‘capitalismo maturo’ of the most developed countries. In brief, the PCI leadership, gripped by an inflexible logic that divided society between the two realms of capitalism and socialism, offered an interpretation of the world based on a dualistic distinction between ‘saviours’ and ‘conspirators’. The negative universe that Communist political culture identified appeared to be strongly cohesive and uniform:  a shared hostility towards the socialist renewal of society generated a union of historically ‘reactionary’ cultural forces (the Catholic Church), the great powers of international

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Introduction

imperialism (the United States and its Western allies), and the ruling classes (Italy’s ‘grande borghesia monopolistica’, which in its time had provided the social foundations of Fascism).10 Between 1947 and the mid-​ 1950s, however, while the nature of Italian ‘republican citizenship’ was being developed and consolidated, the largely unchanging class-​ based interpretation of the world was complemented by presentation styles and symbolic language that did in fact change over time. Analysis of the PCI’s public self-​presentation and political communication has generated various findings, but the picture has until now remained incomplete. There has been discussion, for example, of the Communists’ error in allowing themselves to be ‘dragged onto ground that was much more comfortable for the Catholics  … that  … of the direct clash between religious beliefs and myths’, committed in 1948 and not subsequently repeated; their improved ability to use visual languages, abandoning the solemnity of Soviet and Fascist models in favour of a fresher style thanks to a mix of promotional artwork, cartoons and poster presentation; and their adoption after the defeat of April 1948 of a less ‘political’ language, intended to attract those Italians who were less engaged in the ideological debate.11 A deeper and fuller understanding can be achieved by considering how those responsible for Communist publicity and campaigning dealt with the gradual establishment of their distinctive programme as a ‘subculture’: a political culture characterised by active rejection of the dominant society and integration within this.12 During the 1948 campaign, the political forces that had created the Democratic Popular Front presented the voters with a dynamic political programme that was built around the implementation of profound political and social changes. These innovations had to be presented to the voters as consistent with the main points of reference that offered legitimation in the eyes of Italian society, such as the rejection of authoritarianism on behalf of the recaptured democratic freedoms, national identity and even national pride, a guarantee of material wellbeing, and the preservation of a Christian morality and approach. At the same time, however, they appeared to be radical alternatives to the status quo: they were described in words and images that took their inspiration from the societies of Eastern Europe, providing models that offered the realisation not only of socialist ideals, but also of human life in its highest form. The possibility that the PCI might rejoin the government faded away with the results of the first national elections, the government’s survival despite the mass union demonstrations of the next few years, and the success of attempts at land reform, albeit partial. The party quickly adapted its communication to consolidating the role of ‘permanent opposition’ that it had been forced to assume. The issues that the PCI had addressed when developing a programme for the Popular Front became less important in this new situation. During the

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early 1950s, the agencies responsible for developing its political communication dealt with the abandonment of Communist aspirations to govern by using simpler and more accessible imagery; the logic and strength of the message’s argument were abandoned in favour of references that would allow the party line to be shared with increasingly broad sections of society, even when this led to a confusion of mutually contradictory driving ideas. With the slowness that typified changes in linguistic register within the Communist world, the model of the Soviet Union and the ‘new democracies’, as the point of reference for the vocabulary used to describe the political action that the Communists intended to carry out in Italy, became the backdrop for an indefinitely postponed revolution; this was for discussion in the latter pages of the party newspaper as an enduring and crucial objective that was not, however, immediately achievable. The innovative potential of ‘progressive democracy’ lost its sense of immediate relevance, and was replaced by a defence of the pillars of ‘formal democracy’, such as the centrality of parliament and the constitutional guarantees of legitimate opposition, against creeping ‘Fascism’ or ‘Christian Democrat totalitarianism’. The claim to fully represent the Italian national idea, which had underwritten reappropriation of the symbol of Garibaldi, was over time translated into an accusation by the government’s opponents of its ‘subservience to foreigners’, especially after Italy’s signature of the North Atlantic Treaty. The fight against ‘imperialist’ war began to be expressed in the symbolic imagery of anti-​militarist and even religious pacifism, ideas that were theoretically alien to a movement that was proud of having taken up arms against ‘bellicismo’ (warmongering) between 1941 and 1945, after the Axis powers had launched their attack on Russia. Similarly, the proposal for social transformation, at first to be realised by means of ‘structural reforms’, came to be expressed in a relentless criticism of capitalism’s transgressions and of societies like the United States that represented its most advanced manifestation. However, an interest in the ‘other America’, and in some of the more interesting aspects of the American path towards modernisation, mean that the full picture has not been given by the recent description of the PCI’s distinguishing position during the Cold War as an ‘anti-​Western political religion … [and] basis for a … separate citizenship’.13 When we set out to analyse Communist political communication, it is clear where our attention should be directed. During the post-​war decades the PCI was a political actor with a strong organisational structure, within which the production of information and publicity was controlled from the centre by a specific Sezione stampa e propaganda; the party’s systems for mobilising the general public have been well known, and their communication output has been clearly identifiable. The party’s message was structured around symbolic and ideological material that had to be interpreted and expressed in specific ways.

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Introduction

By contrast, there are no such certainties when we examine anti-​Communist political communication. To date, research that has addressed the clash between the Communists and their cultural and political adversaries in the immediate post-​war period has done so in a reductive manner, singling out organised Catholicism and the Christian Democrats (DC) as the only significant elements of society that were hostile to the PCI. The unifying and mobilising role of Catholic anti-​Communism has often been overestimated, or at least its pre-​ eminence has too easily been taken for granted; in the transmission of images and ideas, not enough consideration has been given to the political value and success enjoyed by publications such as the ordinary newspapers and more lightweight weekly magazines, which had no formal affiliation to political parties or religious institutions. In short, the phenomenon of hostility towards Communism, even within the narrow field of research on Cold-​War Italy, proves to be far more complex than has been thought. ‘Anti-​Communism’ thus refers not so much to a distinct ideological position as to a more general negative attitude adopted by some very diverse political cultures and intellectual figures, often in dispute with each other. We can identify the common factors within these ‘anti-​Communisms’, starting with their particular target, the political, social and cultural experiment generated by the October Revolution, and the feature whereby a diametrical opposition to Communism and all its aspects –​the ‘enemy’ –​led to the confirmation of identifying traits of their own political ‘family’.14 Above all, this book will show how anti-​Communist publicity and campaigning agencies, at least at the point when the Soviet threat seemed to be particularly real and imminent, formed a genuine network in which politically oriented bodies and organisations both drew on and influenced ideas circulating within other cultural arenas. From 1948 onwards, the powerful Catholic communications network functioned not only as a vehicle for attacks generated by the dogmatic rejection of Communism that the Church had previously developed:  it was also an important disseminator of material produced in non-​religious environments, from André Gide’s Return from the USSR to I Chose Freedom by the Ukrainian refugee Victor Kravchenko, and of references to the ‘productivist’ attitude that the American government wanted Europe to adopt in its reconstruction. Christian Democrat and liberal or conservative publications, for their part, played a key role in disseminating the principal ideas of left-​wing anti-​Communism, which were by no means lacking in harsh criticism of the capitalist production system. Within the diverse spheres of Italian anti-​Communism, these exchanges of material were sometimes underpinned by jointly held convictions and distinguishing references that were positive rather than just negative. The support of the secular press for the Church’s battle against Communism is well known:  this support, notwithstanding dwindling interest, remained firm

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throughout the 1950s. Conversely, Catholic culture had to come to terms with the population’s growing interest in a diluted and seemingly apolitical version of  the affluence of the ‘American dream’. This idea was spread by media channels quite different from those traditionally charged with the construction of political identity, but its success had important consequences, including the distinct weakening of Catholic criticism directed at the ‘individualism’, capitalist ‘materialism’ and Protestant ‘immorality’ of the United States, for the sake of unity against the shared danger of Communism. To summarise, during the mobilisation campaigns of the immediate post-​war period the messages of the anti-​Communists were the vehicle for an amalgamation of symbolic and linguistic references whose focal point was their polar opposition to Communism. The defence of Italy’s religious practices and traditional standards, the spirit of national belonging conceived in opposition to an enemy both external and internal, and a ‘Western’ style of economic development taking its cue from the ‘Americanisation’ of everyday life: these became the reference points in the cultural universe of evolving moderate and conservative opinion. The existence of these shared features of anti-​Communist stances in Italy should not lead us to overestimate their unifying power. Divisions emerged in the area of public communication, where normally cracks and disagreements between political allies were papered over. In 1948, the urgency of the threat and the gravity of the choice facing the electorate had helped to generate an anti-​Communist front, fuelled by the acquisition of fresh information on the Soviet and Eastern European regimes and assisted by the capacity of Catholic organisations to distribute material. The formation of a governing coalition had had the battle against Communism as its unifying feature; when these anti-​ Communist groupings were faced with making positive policy choices, some fundamental cultural differences emerged. Those closest to the Curia and the hardline Church lobby continued to press for a programme built on traditional religious standards, making it difficult for the DC to offer a distinguishing programme that was less tied to militant Catholicism. Concerns about world peace, and particularly about the outbreak of a new ‘hot’ war in Korea, heightened the tensions between those who saw rearmament as a guarantee of security and those who wanted to persist with seeking dialogue with the ‘enemy’. The growing strength of radical right-​wing opposition to the government was accompanied by a distinct hardening of the positions held by newspapers such as Il Tempo in their criticism of its softness towards the Marxist Left. During the 1950s it was these rifts, more than the simple distribution of votes in the 1953 elections, that helped to make the PCI’s political marginalisation impossible. The language that characterised anti-​Communist political cultures during the formative years of mass democracy in Italy was thus very heterogeneous, and like the language of Communism it experienced its most widespread use in Italian society during a period of political tension that has never been

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Introduction

equalled since. In the immediate post-​war period, however, with the consolidation of the political system that emerged after Fascism, both Communists and anti-​Communists developed a repertoire of references that continued to characterise the public discourse of Italian politics up to the crisis of the 1990s and then beyond. Between 1994 and 2008, Silvio Berlusconi addressed moderate and conservative voters with ‘calls to arms’ that evoked the return of the ‘red peril’ even as the PCI was being dissolved: their success can only be understood by recognising the crucial importance of the battle between Communism and anti-​Communism, at the very start of the Italian republic, in determining identities and patterns of electoral behaviour.15 The continuities were destined to survive even the biggest changes to the system and priorities of the political agenda.

Notes 1 C. Levi, The Watch, trans. J. Farrar (London: Cassell, 1952; first published in Italian as L’orologio, Turin: Einaudi, 1950), p. 291. 2 J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 3. 3 On this complex topic, see the ideas developed from a transnational comparative perspective in T. Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Heinemann, 2005). 4 A. Ventrone, La cittadinanza repubblicana:  come cattolici e comunisti hanno costruito la democrazia italiana (1943–​1948) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2nd edn, 2008), pp. 9–​12. 5 On the definition of propaganda developed in the classic studies of mass communication, from the early works by H. D. Lasswell onwards, see T. Glander, Origins of Mass Communication Research during the American Cold War:  Educational Effects and Contemporary Implications (London:  Routledge, 2000), and for its application in the Italian context see G. Mazzoleni, La comunicazione politica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 3rd edn, 2012). A less rigid definition of propaganda as a discourse aimed at persuasion of the masses, more useful in specific political and social contexts such as Italy, has been put forward in G. S. Jowett and V. O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion (London: Sage, 6th edn, 2015). However, it should be acknowledged that in common English parlance the word ‘propaganda’ generally has negative connotations, evoking the intended manipulation of the audience, more so than when it is used within an Italian sentence. In this book, therefore, the Italian edition’s ‘propaganda’ and adjective ‘propagandistico’ have generally been translated as ‘publicity’, ‘communication’, ‘campaigning’, ‘public relations’ or other formulations. The exception relates to official titles, and in particular the ‘Sezioni stampa e propaganda’ of political parties, where the convention of translating these as ‘Press and Propaganda’ sections or offices has been followed. 6 C. Ottaviano, ‘Manifesti politici e dintorni: Persuadere e comunicare in Italia’, in C. Ottaviano and P. Soddu (eds), La politica sui muri: I manifesti politici dell’Italia repubblicana, 1946–​1992 (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 2001), pp. 12–​15. For further discussion, see various essays in A. Baravelli (ed.), Propagande contro: Modelli di comunicazione politica nel XX secolo (Rome: Carocci, 2005).

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7 On the model of ‘consensus democracy’, see the debate between A. Lijphart (Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977) and Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-​Six Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2nd edn, 2012)) and G. Sartori (Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) and Teoria dei partiti e caso italiano (Milan: Sugarco, 1982)). For recent thinking on the particular nature of ‘consensus democracy’ in the Italian republic, see R. Gualtieri (ed.), Il PCI nell’Italia repubblicana (1943–​1991) (Rome: Carocci, 2001), and S. Fabbrini, ‘De Gasperi e la “giuntura critica” del periodo 1948–​1953:  L’Italia dell’immediato dopo-​ guerra tra due modelli di democrazia’, Ricerche di Storia Politica, 11:1 (2008), 53–​64. 8 Berstein described a ‘political culture’ as ‘a comprehensive vision of the world and its evolution … [that] in a simplified form penetrates the mass following of the group that claims to belong to a particular political culture … A  system of representations based on a particular view of the world … which is expressed by means of a coded discourse, symbols and rites’. S. Berstein, ‘L’historien et la culture politique’, Vingtième Siècle, 35:1 (1992), 69–​71. 9 See F. Andreucci, Il marxismo collettivo: socialismo, marxismo e circolazione delle idee dalla Seconda alla Terza Internazionale (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1986), pp. 201–​7. 10 For further thinking on this topic, see the interpretation offered by D. I. Kertzer, Politics and Symbols: The Italian Communist Party and the Fall of Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 11 For discussion of these themes see G. Vecchio, ‘Il conflitto tra cattolici e comunisti: Caratteri ed effetti (1945–​1958)’, in Chiesa e progetto educativo nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra (1945–​1958) (Brescia: La Scuola, 1999), p. 449; E. Novelli, C’era una volta il PCI:  Autobiografia di un partito attraverso le immagini della sua propaganda (Rome:  Editori Riuniti, 2000); M. Dondi, ‘La propaganda politica dal ‘46 alla legge truffa’, in A. Mignemi (ed.), Propaganda politica e mezzi di comunicazione di massa tra fascismo e democrazia (Turin: Abele, 1995), p. 186. 12 See A. Pizzorno, Le radici della politica assoluta e altri saggi (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1993), pp. 121–​3. 13 A. Guiso, ‘L’Europa e l’alleanza atlantica nella politica internazionale del PCI degli anni ‘50 e ‘60’, in P. Craveri and G. Quagliariello (eds), Atlantismo ed europeismo (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), p. 217. 14 R. Pertici, ‘Il vario anticomunismo italiano (1936–​ 1960):  lineamenti di una storia’, in L. Di Nucci and E. Galli della Loggia (eds), Due nazioni:  Legittimazione e delegittimazione nella storia dell’Italia contemporanea (Bologna:  Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 263–​334. 15 For discussion of the continuity of anti-​Communist discourse in Italian politics, see A. Mariuzzo, ‘Continuità e discontinuità del discorso anticomunista nella Seconda Repubblica’, in S. Colarizi, A. Giovagnoli and P. Pombeni (eds), L’Italia contemporanea dagli anni Ottanta a oggi, vol. 3: Istituzioni e politica (Rome: Carocci, 2014), pp. 457–​70.

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1 Systems and methods for political communication in post-​war Italy

The ‘Press and Propaganda’ sections of the large mass membership parties It has long been thought that during Italy’s immediate post-​war period the systems in place for projecting party identities were rudimentary and amateurish; this was the almost unanimous view of advertising staff from the major Italian companies in 1953, when they were interviewed for a survey published in the newspaper La Notte during the general election campaign. ‘The parties’ campaigns are being run by amateurs’; ‘we advertising agents wish we had the budget that a large party has … the results would be very different’: these were typical of the views expressed by Italy’s leading communication professionals. They were therefore somewhat surprised, ten years later, when the Italian venture of Ernest Dichter, the American marketing expert, met with failure. Founder of the Institute for Motivational Research in New York, Dichter was involved in work on the Christian Democrats’ electoral campaign. Having learnt from public opinion research that after almost twenty years in government the party needed a rejuvenation of its image, he produced a reassuring poster with the title ‘La DC ha vent’anni’ (The DC is twenty), in which the party was represented by a fair-​haired young woman dressed in white. This had to be withdrawn, however, as it took just a few days for it to be totally subverted by Communist activists on night-​time raids: they added a selection of crude jibes, whose import ranged from ‘And she’s already such a whore’ to ‘It’s high time she got screwed’.1 As this incident demonstrates, the degree of effectiveness of seemingly naive publicity activity can only be understood by locating it within its institutional and socio-​cultural context. Political life in post-​Fascist Italy was dominated by the large mass-​membership parties, whose success was based on their comprehensive penetration of society. In political communication as in other party

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activity, the main people involved were thousands of activists who had had no proper relevant training; many of those who constituted the nerve centre for promoting their party’s ‘worldview’ across Italian society were in fact equipped with a very basic formal education, and sometimes with very shaky literacy. These non-​professional publicists were the ‘troops’ best suited to political warfare based on a clear opposition between ideological allegiances, in which political conviction and a sense of belonging were seen as more important than experience and skills in mass communication. Faced with activists who needed at least some basic training for their publicity work, the parties responded by turning to the essentially pedagogical concept of political communication that had been generally held by organised mass movements for most of the twentieth century. On one side, political publicity was viewed as essentially the education of the party’s electoral base and its potential supporters regarding the party’s policies, its current initiatives, and how best to support these and get involved; on the other, the activists’ sense of belonging and loyalty to the cause were particularly strengthened by those moments when they were spreading the party’s message, immersing themselves in its Weltanschauung, and engaging in debate, or even physical confrontation, with their opponents: in brief, by those moments when the militant aspect of political allegiance was most highly celebrated.2 The result in Italy was the existence of robust systems for party communication with a strong social presence, within which officials operated under strict ideological and professional control from party headquarters. The PCI was the first political party whose leaders decided to tackle the issue of a framework for providing publicity and information on a national basis. Between 1944 and 1946, with the restoration of the party’s legal status, its local branches came back into operation and each set up a ‘Sezione stampa e propaganda’ (Press and Propaganda Section). These offices quickly came under the coordination of an operational section of the PCI’s central secretariat:  this produced and distributed posters, leaflets and booklets, provided local branches with the first experimental audiovisual publicity material on film reels and vinyl, and handled distribution of the party’s publications. In early 1946, as the first post-​war national elections approached, the training of publicity officers was incorporated within the section’s responsibilities. The forthcoming discussions on the constitutional referendum and elections to the Constituent Assembly made it urgent for the PCI to be widely viewed in a favourable light in the run-​up to voting. The party’s central office needed to produce support material that was regularly updated on the hottest political issues, in order to give publicity officers the main news and information that would help them to develop public discussion and maintain debate, and to provide them with detailed and accessible instructions on how to make best use of the communication material.

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In February 1946, therefore, the PCI headquarters began to publish Quaderno del Propagandista (Publicist’s Notebook), which it entrusted to an editorial team of young journalists from the Roman offices of L’Unità, led by the twenty-​six-​ year-​old Luciano Barca. Although this monthly publication only supported the activities of the ‘compagni propagandisti’ (publicity comrades) with four issues prior to the June elections, it was a prototype for subsequent initiatives. Activists could subscribe personally, or read it in their local PCI office; in each copy there was an accessible account of the party line on the most hotly debated topics of the electoral campaign, from land reform to works councils, and suggestions on how best to communicate these issues to the electorate. Directives on the use of posters, photographs, and the lists of slogans sent from the centre to each branch in the ‘pacco-​propaganda’ (publicity pack) were all expressed in a simple and restricted vocabulary, often accompanied by illustrative cartoons and images; it was spelt out in detail, step by step, how they should be used. Particular attention was given to occasions when direct control of communication was not possible from the centre: those moments of interaction between the activist and the public that were the most sensitive. For example, the composition of newspaper-​style posters, seen as particularly important because they allowed articles from party publications to be read by voters who had nothing to do with the PCI, was covered in every issue, with advice on how best to alternate text and pictures, and local and national news. Suggestions on political rallies and public speeches were provided in a similarly reiterative manner: the many and varied points included the length of a speech, reference to notes while talking, the use of phraseology for effect, replies to potential criticism that could be memorised, gestures, and the tone of voice to adopt.3 In the final issue of Quaderno del Propagandista, which came out at the end of the big push before election day on 2 June 1946, the editors began to steer the readership towards a longer-​term task: the more general education of the party’s activists and higher echelons in the ideological foundations of Marxism-​ Leninism.4 This was the direction taken by the new series of this publication, which appeared in the autumn; with its revised title Quaderno dell’Attivista (Activist’s Notebook), it was the journal of reference for every educational and organisational aspect of the life of local leaders and activists.5 At the end of 1947, with the general election of 18 April 1948 ahead, it was once again felt that a publication was needed which would exclusively address dissemination of the party’s message, providing expert advice and offering militants an explanation of the party line already formulated as a set speech. The first issue of the fortnightly Propaganda came out on 7 December 1947. Its publication stopped after the elections, but resumed in the summer of 1948 when Gian Carlo Pajetta, an influential party member who had assumed control of the central Sezione Stampa e Propaganda, placed it at the centre of the PCI’s revamped system for

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mass communication. The publication of Propaganda continued uninterrupted until 1962, contributing to the development of those generations of PCI activists and higher ranks who were the backbone of the movement right up to the Berlinguer years. With its themed issues on trade union battles and the campaigns for peace, throughout its existence Propaganda determined the style of the party’s communication with the outside world, letting activists know what they should focus on and giving them the information they needed on revisions to the party line regarding the most burning issues. The communication methods promoted by Propaganda were not substantially different from those put forward in 1946:  much of the activists’ work still focused on the management and distribution of material produced at the centre, which from 1949 onwards was complemented by books and pamphlets produced by Edizioni di Cultura Sociale and other publishing houses funded by the party.6 The new periodical provided extensive coverage of specialist training in the delivery of what was then known as ‘propaganda spicciola’ or ‘propaganda capillare’ (‘basic’ or ‘general’ material), based on preparing activists to expound the party line in appealing and appropriate ways during everyday conversations. This was seen as a very effective general way of reiterating and reinforcing the positions presented in posters, pamphlets and the press; as early as the 1920s and 1930s it had been of particular interest to the publicity offices of those Communist Parties that remained unsuppressed, as well as to some very different organisations such as the Légion française des combattants in Vichy France.7 Bolstered by these experiences in other countries, Communist leaders in liberated Italy set out to train their activists in informal and interpersonal publicity work: from 1948 onwards, after trial runs in Quaderno del Propagandista, activists were offered outline dialogue and lists of answers to frequently asked questions, which were supposed to make it easier to respond to criticism or questioning in conversation. In the summer of 1949, while the campaign against the North Atlantic Treaty was in full flow and not long after Pius XII’s approval of the excommunication of supporters of the Communist Party, these articles were brought together in Il Propagandista, a four-​page booklet-​style publication. This came out at irregular intervals, appearing more often –​sometimes even twice a week –​as circumstances required. In October 1952, when it was re-​launched as Taccuino del propagandista (Publicist’s Notebook) under the editorship of the young Luigi Pintor, another function was added to that of basic publicity manual. As the 1953 elections approached, the campaign for the second legislature, with the added risk from the new electoral law that favoured the centrist government parties, started to heat up. The party needed a means of rapidly updating its publicity that would take on board the constant evolution of debates and initiatives; Taccuino, which could be produced more quickly due to its compact

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format, proved more suitable than Propaganda in this respect, and in the end retained this role until its publication ceased in 1958. The endeavours of the PCI clearly served as a model for the national leadership of Christian Democracy, which in 1945 set up its own press and publicity office, Studi, Propaganda e Stampa (SPES: ‘Research, Propaganda and Press’), which was known from the outset by its acronym. Right from the start its officials were involved in training for activists, and produced numerous circulars and guides for publicists that demonstrated the different ways of using communication material, reproducing the methods that the Communists had also considered.8 The campaign for the national elections of 18 April 1948 brought a new development in the organisational structure of SPES: having initially been managed by representatives of the DC’s internal left wing such as Giuseppe Dossetti and Amintore Fanfani, in late 1947 the office came under the control of Giorgio Tupini, a follower of De Gasperi. In February 1948 Tupini oversaw the launch of a bulletin aimed at training activists, which took its cue from the PCI’s Propaganda. Its title, ‘Traguardo: 18 Aprile’ (Target: 18 April), made clear its nature as an urgent service offered in the heat of the election campaign, just like Propaganda, although its publication resumed in the summer of 1948 and then continued until the end of the 1950s. Traguardo addressed grassroots activists, offering basic and accessible advice and explanatory illustrations on the production of newspaper-​style wall posters, the conduct of debates and conversations, and the use of posters and leaflets, much like the guidance circulating within the PCI; until the 1960s it was the main point of reference for the publicists of the DC, as regards not only the conflict with its right-​and left-​wing opposition but also promotion of the government’s achievements.

Not just SPES: other centres of anti-​Communist campaigning The existence of these omnipresent mass-​membership party organisations, whose activity after the Second World War strongly influenced the way that Italians identified themselves politically, has often channelled research towards an exclusive focus on the central ‘Press and Propaganda’ offices of the PCI and DC, as if they were the only actors in Italy’s systems of political communication. Within the cultural sphere of the Marxist Left, this approach might make sense: the PCI’s national Sezione Stampa e propaganda in fact always retained its central role in the creation and dissemination of the message conveyed by the organisations alongside it, which brought together sympathisers in contexts that were not directly connected to the party.9 Right through the 1950s, these organisations were led either by Communist activists whose training had come from Quaderno dell’Attivista and Propaganda, or by PSI activists who until 1956 found themselves sharing the approach provided by PCI publications, not least

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because of the relatively minimal activity of their own national Sezione Stampa e propaganda. Moreover, all campaigning organisations close to the PCI owed their success primarily to the use they could make of party systems. For example, the Unione donne italiane (Italian Women’s Union), founded in 1944 without any political affiliation but soon dominated by Socialist and Communist activists, relied on PCI funding for its survival and had to turn to the party’s internal channels in order to distribute its publicity and the fortnightly Noi Donne (We Women). A further example is provided by the Italian committee of ‘Partisans for Peace’, the national branch of the international movement financed and supported by the USSR, which had an even greater impact on Italian public opinion in the early 1950s. The movement emerged from a conference held in April 1949 in Paris, where the North Atlantic Treaty had been concluded not long before, and generated major campaigns mobilising opinion against the threat of war and Western rearmament policies. In particular, it staged two important world conferences (in Warsaw at the end of 1950 and in Vienna two years later) and organised two petitions: one to prohibit the use of nuclear weapons, launched at a meeting of the organisation’s committee in Stockholm in March 1950, and another started a year later, when the committee met in Berlin, to promote a meeting for peace and disarmament between the major world powers. These appeals collected between 500 and 600 million supporters worldwide, including more than 16 million Italian signatures; in the West, it was in Italy and France that the Partisans for Peace movement was most vigorous. Yet despite its unmistakable effectiveness, this pacifist movement possessed no independent means of communicating with the public and had to turn to the Communist and Socialist party press, while the posters, leaflets and booklets produced under the Partisans for Peace banner came from the same printing presses used by the PSI and, in particular, the PCI.10 When we turn to the world of Italian circles hostile to Communism, an analysis of the various features that influenced the development of their political languages reveals a more complex picture. Even during the years of greatest political polarisation, the sphere of mass communication included a wide range of bodies that were often not directly controlled by the political parties, but could still have a strong political influence of public opinion.

Catholic communication networks In the first place, Christian Democracy, unlike the PCI within the Left, was not the central driving force within the Catholic cultural world: it was just one of many different elements that all shared the teachings of the Church as a point of reference. Throughout the twentieth century, and in particular after the Spanish Civil War, the close-​knit organisational network of Italian parishes

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worked to foster hostility within society towards Communism’s ‘theoretical and moral error’, using recreational facilities, social gatherings and any other means available.11 After the Second World War, which saw the Italian Church acquiring even greater respect as the single point of reference for large sectors of society, the clergy, at least temporarily, put aside the reservations about representative democracy and the Catholic party that had been widely held within its ranks. At the time of the decisive first rounds of voting, most Italian priests saw their pastoral role as including a political aspect: this involved action to support the DC in its battle with Communism, following the approach set out both by the instructions bishops gave to their parish priests and by Church publications such as La Civiltà Cattolica, the main way in which priests kept themselves up to date.12 In addition to the direct involvement of priests in influencing the political orientation of their flock, a key role was played by Azione Cattolica (Catholic Action), which for the Church’s lay members was the most important organisation with the widest membership. Pius XI’s decision to focus on protecting Catholic Action and sacrifice the Partito Popolare, the Catholic mass-​membership party of the pre-​Fascist period, had profoundly affected the nature of Catholic involvement in society during the Fascist era and the post-​war period. By relinquishing any direct involvement in politics organised Catholicism had been able to maintain a strong social presence under Fascism, as Catholic Action was the only mass organisation not controlled by the regime.13 After the war and at least until the end of 1948, Catholic Action was still the organisation of reference in the struggle against the spread of Communism, rather than the newly established Christian Democracy with its still ill-​defined structure. The Church’s central directives, for organised Catholicism just as for the clergy, ruled out any direct involvement in politics. However, the circulars from Catholic Action’s Presidenza generale (central office) emphasised that in the democratic and competitive political system that Italy had given itself after the war, the principal pastoral responsibilities of priests should include nurturing a Christian approach to voting and political activity by the faithful. In this respect, the experience of the ‘missioni religio-​sociali’ between January 1947 and March 1948 proved decisive for the staff of Catholic Action:  these ‘missions’ were a series of meetings between the organisation’s activists and higher ranks and the clergy and lay members of many Italian dioceses, and were aimed at gaining a detailed understanding of people’s spiritual life and social situation by distributing questionnaires and holding public meetings. These initiatives gave Catholic Action’s leadership a much more intimate understanding of a country that had changed a great deal since the Fascist period, due to the war and post-​war unrest. They became fully aware of the wide distribution of material by the Marxist parties, and realised the need to set out, in line with the Church’s teaching, the new cornerstones of political life such as the institutions

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of democracy, the Constitution and democratic engagement.14 In the process of publicising their events, they saw the success that could be achieved with ‘colour posters’, flyers with photographic content, and leaflets ‘in two colours … with illustrations’.15 The leadership of Catholic Action showed that it had learnt from the missions when it needed to organise a more concerted attempt at political persuasion in preparation for the elections of 18 April 1948. The chief protagonist of this new political and organisational venture was the Venetian doctor Luigi Gedda, the president of Catholic Action’s men’s section; known since the 1930s for his extraordinary organisational abilities, Gedda had been trained at the Catholic University of Milan, where many had seen the Church’s increased closeness to Fascism as an opportunity to establish a regime in Italy with a strong Catholic imprint.16 Mistrustful of the Christian Democrats in the immediate post-​war period, Gedda proposed that organised Catholicism should become directly involved in the anti-​Communist electoral battle, and should also try to influence DC policy. At the start of 1948 he presented Catholic Action’s central office with a project he had been considering for some time, which involved the establishment of ‘comitati d’intesa elettorale’ (election planning committees) whose task would be ‘to bring together responsible Catholic forces in order to establish a civic consciousness, aware of the importance of the moment and of the duties incumbent on all Catholics in exercising their vote’.17 The Democratic Popular Front’s unexpected victory in the local elections in Pescara was a spur to the creation of a network of Comitati Civici (Civic Committees), and by the second week of February they were operating at full capacity. These were to become the most well-​known campaigning bodies in the history of the Italian Catholic movement:  in a matter of days an impressive system had been set up, spread across some 18,000 parish bases and tightly controlled by a central Civic Committee, the heart of the movement. Most posters, newspaper-​style wall posters, leaflets and short promotional films were thought up and often produced centrally, then rapidly distributed to the local bases. The main activity in the outlying offices was the distribution of material to the public; the central Committee’s guidance for activists covered even the most practical of problems, such as positioning the posters and the best type of adhesive for making them difficult to remove. These details illustrate how the Civic Committees, like the ‘Press and Propaganda’ sections of the major parties, managed ground-​level staff who had little specific experience in communications. They recruited their activists mainly from the priests and lay members they found in the Catholic Action offices, or in the parish-​level organisations that were in their orbit: from the anti-​ blasphemy committees to those responsible for keeping a check on films and theatrical performances. Moreover, the establishment of the Civic Committees,

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within the sphere of the local institutions of organised Catholicism, had the air of an ‘emergency operation’, as it was termed by Vittorino Veronese, General President of Catholic Action, at the meetings that approved the establishment of the central Civic Committee. While he thought that ‘the interest … that Catholic Action should exercise … over the appropriate standards to be borne in mind in the political arena’ was ‘right and proper’, it was also necessary ‘to avoid mentioning Catholic Action’ during the election campaign; above all, the end of the ‘emergency’ should bring normality back to the life of Catholic organisations, with the dismantling or at least significant scaling down of the campaigning bodies created for the 1948 struggle.18 This was not how things developed. In the end the ideas pursued were those of Gedda, who had wanted to bolster and permanently maintain the pressure that organised Catholicism exerted on the political world. On 30 April 1948, thanks to the intercession of the Roman Curia, Catholic Action’s leadership decided to keep the Civic Committees alive, ‘in readiness … for potential further action’.19 They were then mobilised for the Holy Year of 1950, and for the rounds of local elections that took place in 1951 and 1952. In 1952 Gedda’s appointment as the national president of Catholic Action appeared to be a definitive endorsement of the approach taken by the Civic Committees, and their members were given a formal reception at the Vatican as the campaign began for the elections of June 1953.20 This was in fact the last time that the Civic Committees were so extensively involved, although they continued to exist until the end of the 1960s.

Government agencies for communication The Catholic movement, with its breadth of coverage and deep entrenchment, played a crucial role in the fight against Communism, to the extent that it has often been seen as its only real rival. However, other voices hostile to the PCI could be heard alongside it, and showed that they too could influence the Italian public. The small ‘lay’ parties involved in the government coalition (Liberals, Republicans and Social Democrats) of course played their part in campaigning, but the election results demonstrated that their specific message was only being heard and understood by a restricted audience, to the extent that they were often forced to focus their campaigning on emphasising their existence and underlining what distinguished them from the hegemonic party of the ruling coalition, rather than challenging the opposition parties. After 1948 it was instead the Council of Ministers which intervened, more or less directly, in the arena of political communication. Although the parties in the majority coalition and the government were different institutional entities, the depth of Italy’s political divide ensured that communications from the executive fitted perfectly well within the broader battle with the opposition.

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The Prime Minister’s unit with responsibilities for communications was the Servizio Informazioni (Information Service). This was created in 1947 by civil servants who had had their training in the 1930s with Fascism’s Ministry of Popular Culture, and was then reorganised in 1950–​51 with the introduction of the Centro Documentazione (Documentation Centre). The latter was intended to produce informational material, and allowed the government to communicate directly with the public. One of the unit’s first projects, and certainly its largest, was the organisation of the Mostra della ricostruzione (Reconstruction Exhibition), staged in Rome from May to October 1950 by the Prime Minister’s office and the Ministry of Public Works. Planned for the Holy Year to take advantage of the influx of pilgrims, this was the culmination of a major campaign publicising the government’s efforts in relation to post-​war reconstruction; it brought together the experience of many local exhibitions that had celebrated the Marshall Plan and the attempt to satisfy the public’s appetite for informative events presented as a spectacle, an appetite instilled by the Fascist regime’s initiatives of the 1930s. In May 1953, not long before the June elections, some of the staff from the Prime Minister’s office, working in their personal capacity with DC activists, put on the Mostra dell’Aldilà (Exhibition of Beyond) in the rooms underneath Rome’s Termini Station; informal support with its preparation came from the executive officers of a committee chaired by Giorgio Tupini, previously the General Secretary of SPES and at that point an undersecretary to the prime minister. The purpose of the exhibition was to illustrate living conditions behind the Iron Curtain, using original photographs and everyday objects purchased in Communist countries. However, soon after it opened the Communist and Socialist press launched a vociferous campaign highlighting the spurious nature of the photographs, which had clearly been taken in Rome and pictured some of the capital’s residents. This made the exhibition entirely counterproductive, and had serious repercussions for the careers of Tupini and the other organisers.21

The Americans in Italy The Information Service within the Prime Minister’s office provides an example of an approach to political communication that was somewhat different from the methods of the mass membership parties, which for years after the end of the war were most typical of the Italian context. In contrast to the direct contact between activists and the general public, in either a didactic or informal style, the Information Service used a less direct style of influencing public opinion that came from the involvement of professionals from publishing and documentary cinema. These methods were by no means new to Italy, as the Fascist regime had used them to create its consensus, but their revival in the post-​war

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period was primarily due to the arrival from abroad of public relations methods developed in the United States. If we discount the American initiatives that were tried out during the First World War and terminated shortly afterwards in the isolationist climate after the Wilson presidency, the first overseas office for public relations set up by the Washington government came relatively late: while the major European powers had continued their attempts to influence international public opinion between the wars, the US Office of War Information (OWI) was only created in June 1942. Initially, its purpose was to foster positive attitudes among the populations of German-​occupied countries towards the Allied troops about to land in Europe.22 Although the US government had no staff with expertise in foreign public relations, it could draw on the cutting-​edge expertise in political mass communication of specialists who had studied with Harold Lasswell and were used to working ‘in the field’ on the home front.23 The OWI’s experts also had the opportunity to operate in what they referred to as a conducive ‘psychological environment’, due to the permeation of Western Europe by American mass culture since the beginning of the century: even in Italy, at least until the mid-​1930s, the Fascist regime had not resisted the distribution of American films, music or literature, essentially because their influence did not seem to affect the political sphere.24 The OWI was closed down at the end of the war. In view of the gradual increase in international tension, however, the network of relationships and contacts that had been established in the different European countries was not dismantled; it became a point of reference for subsequent years, when the initiatives of the war were revived for anti-​Soviet purposes. Publicity promoting the United States continued to emerge from the United States Information Service (USIS) offices established in the embassies. Officially, the role of these offices was to look after relations between diplomatic delegations of the American government and the local media; during the Cold War, they principally functioned as focal points for gauging and influencing public opinion in their host countries. Italy, the first European country to be occupied by Anglo-​American forces during the war and an area of tension during the Cold War, provided the ideal testing ground for both these agencies in turn. In the earlier period, after its first involvement in tandem with the advance of Anglo-​American troops, the OWI set up one of its units in Rome during the summer of 1944. In theory this had a press office role, providing information on US military activity; in reality the bulletin compiled by the OWI was the only way to get hold of current news items, and this remained the case until January 1945, when the Italian news agency ANSA came into operation. It also supplied the paper that newspapers needed, which was invaluable for providing information in wartime. In the later period,

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at the time of the Italian election campaign of 1948, the US commitment was once again huge:  some 20  million dollars were poured into these operations. However, the Washington experts were well aware that too direct or conspicuous an involvement in the internal political affairs of a foreign state might prove counterproductive, and therefore largely concerned themselves with indirect activity. USIS staff set about ensuring that suitably extensive coverage was given to the plans for American material assistance, which were underwritten by the US State Department with programmes that had been purposely designed to ensure a continuous flow of aid at least until the elections. They collaborated on celebrations to welcome every hundredth ship that arrived from America, and used their contacts to make sure that the information appearing in newspapers and newsreels was both extensive and prompt.25 Exchanges between US officials in the Rome embassy and the range of American agencies engaged in promoting the United States were responsible for the emergence and good visibility of various pro-​American publicity ventures that did not directly involve the US government, such as the ‘American Friendship Train’ and the ‘Letters to Italy’ sent by Italian-​Americans to their relatives as part of an initiative by the main associations for Italian immigrants in the United States.26 In the years after the 1948 election, USIS staff, working with colleagues who had been posted to Italy by the main American news agencies, used these tried and tested methods to ensure favourable coverage of the Marshall Plan, within one of the most enormous publicity campaigns ever carried out in peacetime.27 At much the same time, the American embassy’s press office made sure that it played its part in influencing Italian public opinion in the period after the crucial elections of April 1948, when political communication had returned to a more normal pitch. Its task was primarily to manage relationships with the most influential foreign opinion-​makers, in order to work with them to steer Italian public opinion towards a positive image of US democracy and the American way of life: Italian publicists, intellectuals and politicians were given material by USIS that they could use in their writing. In Italy, as in much of Western Europe, the USIS office produced a 6,000-​word bulletin on a daily basis and distributed this to over a thousand Italian publishers, accompanied by photographs, unedited news items, biographies of famous figures, and stories about American and international politics that were offered in the form of articles ready for publication.28 There were also the Italian editions of Reader’s Digest, which in 1948 opened an editorial office in Milan, producing pieces which became the model for magazine articles.29 Moreover, there were news items that came through United Press International and the Associated Press, press agencies that were connected to USIS and the State Department offices by a regular exchange of staff, and in general by the frequent contact between government offices and private agencies that was typical of US public relations across the world. For

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Italian newspaper editors, the material from these sources, along with communication from their correspondents in Washington, was invaluable, whether they wanted to discuss American affairs or to give their readers news from the USSR; between the end of the war and 1955, only Communist and Socialist newspapers were allowed to send correspondents to Moscow, and thus for ‘bourgeois’ journalists any access to ‘the people’s democracies’ was problematic. Similar methods were applied to influencing public opinion in other spheres. For example, American-​produced music and entertainment output was distributed abroad by radio stations with US state funding, and even the overseas distribution of American films –​the principal element in the Americanisation of daily life in the West –​took place by means of agencies supported by the State Department. Within this close relationship between private agencies and the US government, Washington’s offices for international public relations retained the power to determine what kind of output was most suitable for distribution. Finally, Washington funding supported the activities right across Western Europe of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. This organisation was set up in 1950 thanks to the efforts of intellectuals such as Raymond Aron and Nicola Chiaromonte and former Communists like Ignazio Silone and Arthur Koestler, in order to bring together writers, artists and film-​makers who were hostile to Communism, and to promote their influence on public opinion. Thanks to its investment and the translation and publicity work by its members, there was wide circulation of books presenting the memoirs of former Communists, such as the edited collection The God that Failed, and of novels such as Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and George Orwell’s 1984 (which first appeared in Italian in instalments in Il Mondo, the weekly magazine whose authors included prominent members of the Congress’s Italian branch).30 Meanwhile, writers and journalists who belonged to the Congress received assistance with trips to report from the United States.31

The press The communication activity of the American administration’s offices abroad (centrally coordinated from 1953 by the United States Information Agency), and the activity of agencies and press offices more generally, can only be fully understood by considering their complex relationships with news media that they did not directly control. During the early years of the new Italian republic, in particular, much political communication activity was addressed at influencing the press, which at the time was the main channel for information. Not surprisingly, the polarisation of forces within Italian politics had implications for the world of the press. The newspapers that were actually party organs were of course important in this. While L’Unità was an essential point

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of reference for Communist activists and for reinforcement of their sense of belonging, just as Avanti! had been during the golden years of the Italian Socialist Party, among the newspapers of the other parties only the DC’s Il Popolo was anything more than just an official bulletin.32 Its circulation of less than 50,000 copies was about a tenth of that of the PCI newspaper but it continued to command a certain respect, providing space for the best writers of the Catholic press and offering thoughtful coverage of international politics with support from the busy foreign desk of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, and from the DC’s contacts with the associations for anti-​Communist political refugees. A major contribution to the development of moderate public opinion that was hostile towards Communism was made by the principal daily newspapers, especially from the 1948 election campaign onwards:  this saw ‘a very high degree of involvement of newspapers describing themselves as objective or independent, which came down on the side of the DC’, and in favour of the centrist government.33 In the wake of their emergence from the Fascist era some long-​established newspapers such as Il Messaggero, edited by Mario Missiroli, and Corriere della Sera, edited first by Guglielmo Emanuel and then by Missiroli, had their editorial positions reconfigured within a framework of anti-​Communism, agreement with the approach of centrist governments, and collaboration with the US authorities. Their writers, who included Augusto Guerriero, Panfilo Gentile, Mario Ferrara, Guido Piovene and Mario Vinciguerra, had a liberal or conservative outlook and had had their professional training in the 1930s.34 This category was joined in 1944 by Il Tempo, founded by Renato Angiolillo, which initially addressed the readership made available by the suppression of Il Messaggero. Il Tempo was the product of an encounter between intellectuals with a range of positions, including the former partisan Leonida Rèpaci and Arturo Labriola, but over the years it became increasingly close to the American information services, and drifted to the right of its competitors; alongside an increasingly explicit anti-​Communism it ran campaigns for ‘national reconciliation’ between Fascists and anti-​Fascists, and for investigations into Mussolini’s final days.35 Among the independent daily press, the Roman newspaper Il Paese was almost the only exception to the general anti-​Communist trend. Edited by Tomaso Smith, this was set up at the beginning of 1948 in support of the Popular Front, and received funding from the PCI. However, this was a minor publication which only really found its market in the 1950s with the success of its evening edition. Some very similar dynamics of clear-​cut opposition affected development of the range of weekly popular magazines; after the war this accounted for an increasingly large part of the publishing market, addressing the mass of readers who were not as intellectually sophisticated. From 1945 the needs of this substantial public were met by the arrival on the newsstands of Oggi, a weekly

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published by Rizzoli and edited by Edilio Rusconi, whose background was in Catholic journalism. Oggi presented itself as having only a marginal interest in politics; the editorial approach was that of a weekly lifestyle magazine, focusing on the personal lives of politicians and all branches of the European nobility in the same way that Hollywood stars were normally treated. The reporting on the Italian royal family in exile, the fierce campaign against divorce, and the air of detachment with which both parliamentary affairs and active politics were regarded, however, were all indicative of a desire to control and shape the conservative public, with its traditionalist and generally anti-​Communist tendencies, that had already shown signs of life in the final months of the war. This heterogeneous body of opinion lacked a precise political point of reference until 1948, when it came together around the Christian Democratic Party.36 Epoca, the other major popular weekly magazine, started in a different way. Its publisher, from 1950, was Mondadori, which had had more aid from the United States than any other publishing house so that it could set up its presses once again.37 Epoca’s founding editor was Augusto Guerriero, a journalist from Corriere della Sera who had been writing broader pieces on politics for the liberal and progressive weekly Il Mondo since 1949, but in the end had stopped doing this out of staunch conservatism. When it started, Epoca was respected for its political analysis, presenting pieces by well-​known writers who included some of Corriere’s leading journalists. Over time it retained its distinctly positive attitude towards the international policy of the United States and the ‘free world’, but found other strong points to help consolidate its market. Just as Oggi’s hallmark was its full-​page pictures of major political and social figures, a distinctive feature of Epoca was its extensive photographic supplements, purchased as exclusives from specialist American agencies such as Magnum, Black Star and International Publishing. The PCI’s Press and Propaganda Section was forced to contend with the wide circulation among the general population of this new type of publication, which was clearly conservative and pro-​American. Several Communist periodicals that had been founded to provide an ideological and cultural education to the rank and file thus came to adopt features of the popular magazines, in terms of both content and layout. This can particularly be seen with Vie Nuove, subtitled ‘Settimanale di orientamento e lotta politica’ (Weekly magazine of political struggle and direction), which was founded in 1946 by Luigi Longo, then the PCI’s deputy secretary. From 1947 onwards it made increasingly frequent use of illustrations and photographic features; although Vie Nuove never stopped addressing more sensitive issues such as the high cost of living and poverty in Italy, its approach to politics became much more like that of magazines such as Oggi, offering features, for example, on the family life of party leaders like Umberto Terracini. In its reporting from abroad, from both the United States

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and Eastern Europe, it also tried to convey its political position in a subtler way, publishing articles about traditions and portrayals of everyday life with themes such as holidays and popular entertainment. Well before the spread of magazines, Italians had been passionate consumers of another genre: satire. Satirical publications had flourished in Italy from the late nineteenth century, and even under Fascism the tradition had continued due to the popularity of social satire.38 During the post-​war political battles, cartoons by the best artists, from Benito Jacovitti to Pino Zac, were given a prominent place on the front pages of many newspapers, while publications that were exclusively dedicated to satire had been revived and made a significant contribution to conveying political and ideological messages, using the direct and highly simplified languages of caricature, jokes and cutting comments. A noted contribution to the anti-​Communist struggle came from Giovannino Guareschi’s Candido, which like Oggi was published by Rizzoli. A monarchist and Catholic who was tied to the traditions of his ‘little world’ (made famous as the stamping ground of his fictional priest Don Camillo), Guareschi did not belong to a political party and in fact struggled to find his place: military internment in Germany, from 1943 to 1945, influenced his development of a set of traditional and patriotic values that did not derive from any formal political allegiance, and although he worked closely with SPES in 1948 he had no hesitation in launching a bitter campaign against the government over the electoral legislation of 1953.39 In Guareschi, unfocused conservative public opinion found a scathing and incisive voice, ‘a common language and a series of slogans and caricatures’, which was broadcast by a weekly magazine selling around 800,000 copies.40 At the same time, there was also a revival of satirical traditions on the Left, in a Socialist and anti-​clerical vein. Of the publications that emerged during the period immediately after Italy’s liberation, Don Basilio, in particular, managed to achieve relatively high distribution (selling 300,000 copies) and a more established presence. This was started up in Rome in 1946 by young journalists with socialist and republican sympathies, including Raffaele Maccari and Furio Scarpelli. Once the PSI and PCI had been excluded from the government, Don Basilio made its sympathies for the Left clear, and its cartoons started to be reprinted by the local and national Communist press. Communist officials were never directly involved in editing it, according to information collected by the police, but it did receive funds from the PCI and it was because this money stopped arriving that its publication ceased in 1950.41

Notes 1 For a fuller reconstruction of these events, see A. Mariuzzo, ‘The training and education of propagandists in the “Repubblica dei Partiti”:  internal-​circulation

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periodicals in the PCI and the DC (1946–​58)’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 16 (2011), 84–​106. 2 For further discussion, see G. Fissore, ‘ “Vota anche se piove”: il mondo cattolico negli anni della guerra fredda’, in C. Ottaviano and P. Soddu (eds), La politica sui muri: I manifesti politici dell’Italia repubblicana, 1946/​1992 (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 2000), pp. 27–​43; M. Dondi, ‘L’esercizio del comunismo: Le scuole di partito del Partito Comunista Italiano’, Annali di Storia dell’Educazione e delle Istituzioni Scolastiche, 8 (2001), 57–​100; S. Bellassai, ‘Futura umanità:  Note sulla pedagogia comunista negli anni del dopoguerra’, Annali di Storia dell’Educazione e delle Istiuzioni Scolastiche, 9 (2002), 97–​103 (p. 98). 3 See for example ‘Come si prepara un comizio’, Quaderno del Propagandista, 1 (February 1946), pp. 19–​20, and ‘Il propagandista dalla tribuna’, Quaderno del Propagandista, 2 (March 1946), p. 22. 4 See the articles ‘Compiti attuali’ (pp. 3–​4) and ‘Importanza della teoria’ (pp. 28–​9), Quaderno del Propagandista, 4–​5 (June–​July 1946). 5 See the anthology edited by M. Flores, Il Quaderno dell’Attivista: ideologia, organizzazione e propaganda nel PCI degli anni Cinquanta (Milan: Mazzotta, 1976). 6 See D. Betti, ‘Il partito editore: libri e lettori nella politica culturale del PCI’, Italia Contemporanea, 175 (1989), 53–​74. 7 I. Di Jorio, Tecniche di propaganda politica:  Vichy e la Légion Française des Combattants, 1940–​1944 (Rome: Carocci, 2006). 8 Some of these documents are reproduced in C. Dané (ed.), Parole e immagini della Democrazia cristiana in quarant’anni di manifesti della SPES (Rome: SPES, 1985). 9 The first and still most authoritative research on this is presented by the Carlo Cattaneo Institute in A. Manoukian (ed.), La presenza sociale del PCI e della DC (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1968). 10 On the Partisans of Peace in Italy, see A. Guiso, La colomba e la spada: ‘Lotta per la pace’ e antiamericanismo nella politica del Partito Comunista Italiano (1949–​1954) (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2007). 11 See S. Pivato, Clericalismo e laicismo nella cultura popolare italiana (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990), pp. 121–​206. 12 For a general discussion of the cultural training of Italian clergy, see M. Casella, Clero e politica in Italia (1942–​1948) (Galatina: Congedo, 1999); L. Urettini, ‘Propaganda anticomunista nella stampa cattolica dalla guerra di Spagna alle elezioni del ‘48’, in M. Isnenghi and S. Lanaro (eds), La Democrazia cristiana dal fascismo al 18 aprile: movimento cattolico e Democrazia cristiana nel Veneto, 1945–​1948 (Venice: Marsilio, 1978), pp. 406–​24. 13 For further discussion of Catholic Action in post-​war Italy, see J. Pollard, ‘The Vatican, Italy and the Cold War’, in D. Kirby (ed.), Religion and the Cold War (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 103–​ 17; J. Pollard, Catholicism in Modern Italy: Religion, Society and Politics since 1861 (London: Routledge, 2008). 14 See M. Casella, L’Azione cattolica nell’Italia contemporanea (1919–​1969) (Rome: AVE, 1992), pp. 316–​478. 15 These comments were included in an undated message from Catholic Action’s central office to local activists: AAC, PG VI, box 24. 16 See M. Invernizzi, Luigi Gedda e il movimento cattolico in Italia (Milan: Sugarco, 2012).

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17 This quotation is from the minutes of a central office meeting on 26 January 1948. See M. Casella, 18 aprile 1948:  La mobilitazione delle organizzazioni cattoliche (Galatina: Congedo, 1992), p. 115. 18 Records of the meetings are conserved in AAC, PG VI, box 6, folder 1. 19 See the records in AAC, PG VI, box 3, folder 1. On the broad political and religious context of this choice, and on the political and religious pressure groups that supported Gedda’s position in Rome, see A. Riccardi, Il ‘partito romano’ nel secondo dopoguerra (1945–​1954) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1983). 20 L’Osservatore Romano (15 April 1953). 21 For further information on the Italian government’s communication offices in this period, see the research by M. A. Frabotta, especially ‘Government propaganda:  official newsreels and documentaries in the 1950s’, in L. Cheles and L. Sponza (eds), The Art of Persuasion: Political Communication in Italy from 1945 to the 1990s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 49–​61. 22 On the OWI, see A. M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda:  The Office of War Information, 1942–​1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978). 23 For further discussion of these activities, see C. Simpson, Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945–​ 1960 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1994), and B. Gary, The Nervous Liberals: Propaganda Anxieties from World War I to the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 24 See. V. De Grazia, The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 25 J. M. Miller, ‘Taking off the gloves: the United States and the Italian elections of 1948’, Diplomatic History, 7 (1983), 35–​56. 26 On these specific initiatives, see W. L. Wall, ‘America’s “best propagandists”: Italian Americans and the 1948  “Letters to Italy” campaign’, in C. G. Appy (ed.), Cold War Constructions:  The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945–​1956 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), pp. 89–​109. 27 See D. W. Ellwood, Rebuilding Europe: Western Europe, America and Postwar Reconstruction (London: Longman, 1992). 28 On USIS activities in post-​war Italy, see S. Tobia, Advertising America:  The United States Information Service in Italy (1945–​1956) (Milan: LED, 2008). 29 D. Forgacs and S. Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), pp. 121–​2. 30 R. Crossman (ed.), The God that Failed (New  York:  Harper, 1949; published in Italian as Testimonianze sul comunismo: il dio che è fallito, Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1950); A. Koestler, Darkness at Noon (London:  Cape, 1940; published in Italian as Buio a mezzogiorno, Milan:  Arnoldo Mondadori, 1946); G. Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-​Four (London:  Secker & Warburg, 1949; published in Italian as 1984, Milan: Mondadori, 1950). 31 For a general description of the activities of the Italian branch of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and for full references to the main international studies on this, see D. Muraca, ‘L’Associazione italiana per la libertà della cultura: il “caso italiano” e il Congress for Cultural Freedom’, Storiografia, 11 (2007), 139–​60. 32 For discussion of the role of party publications in the construction of Socialist and Communist identities in Italy, see M. Ridolfi, ‘L’Avanti!’, in M. Isnenghi (ed.),

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I luoghi della memoria:  simboli e miti dell’Italia unita (Rome–​Bari:  Laterza, 1996), pp. 317–​28. 33 P. Murialdi, ‘Dalla liberazione al centrosinistra’, in V. Castronovo and N. Tranfaglia (eds), Storia della stampa italiana, vol. 5: La stampa italiana dalla Resistenza agli anni Settanta (Rome–​Bari: Laterza, 1980), pp. 171–​308 (p. 232). 34 For further discussion of the impact on high-​profile journalism of Italy’s transformation from one-​party regime under Fascism to pluralist democracy, see M. Isnenghi, ‘Il grande opinionista da Albertini a Bocca’, in S. Soldani and G. Turi (eds), Fare gli italiani: scuola e cultura nell’Italia contemporanea, vol. 2: Una società di massa (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1993), pp. 251–​85 (pp. 273–​6). 35 See R. Faenza and M. Fini, Gli americani in Italia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976), pp. 57–​8 and 106. 36 On the role of popular magazines in the shaping of Italian political attitudes, see C. Baldassini, L’ombra di Mussolini: l’Italia moderata e la memoria del fascismo (1945–​1960) (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2008). 37 On this close cooperation, which resulted in Mondadori acquiring the copyright for the Italian editions of Walt Disney’s comics, see D. W. Ellwood and R. Kroes (eds), Hollywood in Europe: Experiences of a Cultural Hegemony (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1994). 38 A. Chiesa, La satira politica in Italia (Rome–​Bari: Laterza, 1990). 39 On Guareschi’s life, career and thinking, see A. R. Perry, The Don Camillo Stories of Giovannino Guareschi: A Humorist Portrays the Sacred (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 40 G. Falabrino, I comunisti mangiano i bambini:  La storia dello slogan politico (Milan: Vallardi, 1994), p. 129. 41 Information collected on the magazine and its editorial board by the Italian police can be found in ACS, MI, Gab., Fasc. Permanenti –​Stampa Partiti, box 140, folder 74/​d, and ACS, DGPS, P 1944–​1986, box 70, folder g/​47.

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2 Religious and moral values

The image of Communism in Catholic doctrine In a country where the word ‘cristiano’ (Christian) has often been used as a synonym for ‘human being’ as opposed to ‘bestia’ (animal), Catholicism’s depiction of the Communists as ‘atei’ and ‘senza Dio’ (atheists and godless) helped to sharpen the contrast between ideological positions that extended beyond the sphere of formal politics. However, both historians and the contemporary observers of the battle between Catholicism and Communism have too often simply stated that Catholic culture threw itself into fighting Communism in a trial of strength, and have neglected the development of interpretative frameworks that aid our understanding. This approach has resulted from the way that exploration has focused on a small number of especially dramatic events, such as the campaign for the elections of 18 April 1948.1 In reality, the path taken within the Catholic Church, from its generally negative attitude towards Socialism in the late nineteenth century to its assessment of the regime that emerged from the October Revolution, developed by means of a complex and nuanced process of reflection; the mobilisation of its forces for the 1948 elections needs to be analysed within this longer-​term perspective, taking into account aims and objectives that were of greater significance than the outcome of one single election.

Communism as applied atheism The origins of the anti-​Communism that was typical of Catholic discourse in the twentieth century can be located in the Church’s concerned reaction to the spread of socialism in the previous period. However, it was not until the early 1930s, with Communism’s increased prestige in the West thanks to

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the phase of ‘popular fronts’, and with the formation of ‘atheist’ and ‘pro-​ Bolshevik’ regimes in Mexico and Spain, that it began to seem to the Church hierarchy that Communism presented a real alternative belief system, making converts everywhere and challenging Catholicism in its heartland. The battle, therefore, needed to be based on a condemnation of its doctrinal and theoretical foundations.2 This period saw the Church engaged in a process of reflection and debate that was crucial to the construction of an interpretation of Communism based on the development of Catholic doctrine. The outcome, in 1937, was the papal encyclical Divini Redemptoris, a resounding doctrinal condemnation of Communism. Its text, signed by Pius XI, was the culmination of efforts to collate comprehensive information and commentary on manifestations of Communism across the world; the research was mainly undertaken by members of the Jesuit order during the latter half of the 1930s, and much of this is still little known. A central role was played by the periodical Lettres de Rome sur l’Athéisme Moderne: this was published from 1935 to 1939 by Father Joseph H. Ledit, working with a small editorial group, and had the support of the Church leadership. Ledit was also chairman of the Special Secretariat on atheism, set up by Wlodimir Ledóchowski, head of the Jesuits. Information on Communist activity in every corner of the globe, from the USSR to Europe’s colonies, arrived at the Pontifical Oriental Institute, where Ledit taught; it was then redistributed to publications all over the Catholic world in the form of articles and many leaflets written by either Ledit himself or his collaborators, using the periodical.3 This commitment in the 1930s to portraying the phenomenon of Communism resulted in an inversion of the Marxist vision, to put it very briefly. In this vision, theory was developed from the careful analysis of society and the relationships of production, and the approach to religion was determined by its nature as a ‘superstructure’. For the Catholics, the theoretical basis of Marxism was its atheistic materialism, applied to every aspect of social life. This position was the grounds for the Church’s almost metaphysical confrontation with Communism: the clash between them could not be limited to the arena of political orientation, because if Catholicism was the expression of truth in the world then Communism was the fullest expression of the error that came from abandoning God. Convictions as to the absolute ‘otherness’ of Communism to Catholicism’s spirituality were still seen as valid immediately after the war ended, and were forcefully reiterated. In December 1946, Pius XII himself clearly laid out the terms of the confrontation, reminding the faithful that the world was dividing in a very clear fashion. His phrase ‘[e]‌ither with Christ or against Christ’ became a mantra that was repeated on every possible occasion, especially after Pius

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returned to it in his Christmas radio broadcast the following year, emphasising its importance with biblical references: The Church, always full of charity towards the soul of those led astray, yet faithful to the word of its divine founder who said: ‘whoever is not with me is against me’ (Matthew 12:30), cannot do other than declare the error and tear away the mask of those ‘forgers of lies’ (Job 13:4), who present themselves as wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15).4

These papal statements were the culmination of a broad process of resuming Catholic denunciations of Communist materialism. During this period, the USSR was in alliance with the Western powers, and in Italy the party closest to the Catholic movement shared the responsibilities of government with the PCI. It was therefore significant that at this time the Catholic circles closest to the Roman Curia generated various publications whose aim was to endorse the undiminished validity of the Church’s theological and metaphysical condemnation of Communism. In 1947, for example, Federico Alessandrini, a prominent writer within organised Catholicism and editor of Catholic Action’s newspaper Il Quotidiano, published an edition of some of his writings from 1943 that included the full Italian text of Divini Redemptoris as an appendix. Alessandrini explicitly restated Communism’s nature as an alternative ‘anti-​religion’, saying that ‘for a Catholic, to join the Communist Party was to commit … an act of apostasy’.5 The most widely read and reproduced articles were those written for La Civiltà Cattolica by Father Riccardo Lombardi, who at that point was not yet well known. The first of these pieces, ‘Una mano tesa minacciosa’ (A dangerous outstretched hand), appeared on 5 May 1945 when the war on European soil was still to end; it discussed the ideological foundations that lay beneath the political action of the Italian Communist Party, and introduced the topics that Lombardi went on to address in a series of further articles between December 1945 and the end of 1946. He expounded and discussed the relationship between Marxist theory and the political practice of international Communism, highlighting how the latter, with its extreme consequences, was the full-​blown realisation in a social context of thinking based on historical materialism. Shortly after the last article came out, Lombardi’s writings for La Civiltà Cattolica were published in a single volume that was reprinted numerous times during the 1950s; until the Second Vatican Council, it continued to be a point of reference for the theological and political training of priests, and for the way it set out the Church’s pastoral message regarding the ‘error’ of Communism.6 The initiatives launched by the Catholic world in the late 1940s, in the most intensive anti-​Communist campaign in Italian history, can all be properly understood when placed in the context of this longer-​term assessment, which by 1948 appeared to be very well established. The central passage of a pastoral letter

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issued ten days before election day in April 1948 is illustrative of the appeals for the ‘Christian vote’ made by many Italian bishops prior to the local elections of 1946 and 1947 and the general election of 1948: There is a moral obligation to vote only for the lists and candidates who inspire complete confidence that they will adequately respect the laws of God, the Church and humanity. In order that the faithful will know how to act … the bishops … remind them that doctrines that are materialist, and consequently atheist, as well as the methods that support and sustain Communism, cannot be reconciled with Christian faith and practice.7

The stark contraposition of ‘the laws of God, the Church and humanity’ and ‘materialist doctrines’ made the exercise of influence over Catholic voters not just legitimate but a responsibility, in order to warn them of a moral and doctrinaire option that was diametrically opposed to Christian truth. The early months of 1948 saw many manifestations of religious devotion:  with the election on the horizon, these played their part in supporting the theme. While the Madonna Pellegrina (Pilgrim Madonna) was being transported through Italy, one of La Civiltà Cattolica’s writers, Father Domenico Mondrone, published an article on the interpretation of this devotional event in the context of contemporary Italian society; he highlighted ‘Mary’s special and maternal closeness’ to the Italian people, shown ‘in the simple and constant recourse to her, in the affection for her countless shrines, in the devout, if rowdy, display of her festivals’.8 Mondrone saw sincere religious faith and the purest devotion as the best safeguards against the temptation to experiment with Communism, a phenomenon that was bluntly portrayed as a satanic challenge to the religious devotion of Christianity: The war that [Communism] is waging on the international stage –​under economic, social and political pretexts –​is primarily a religious war … Satan well understands that he will never be able to assert this dominion where there are enlightened and honest consciences. He therefore needs to avail himself of subjects who have been completely abased by untruth … To achieve this, he only has to remove society from the light of Christ … and from the arms of the Church … In a country where the Madonna still finds so many hearts that let themselves be touched by her maternal smile; she will not allow God’s enemies to prevail.9

Above all, the portrayal of the Catholic war on Communism as a war on applied atheism provided the cornerstone for criticism of every possible aberration of the social and political system behind the Iron Curtain, which could all be presented as the direct outcome of the application of materialism to every aspect of life. Once again, first Ledit and then Lombardi formulated a framework of fundamental reference points in this regard. The former, in

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collaboration with Friedrich Muckermann, argued that the murderous violence unleashed with the trials of the 1930s had its cultural derivation in the absolute lack of respect for people when they were only seen as material beings.10 These ideas were then taken up by Lombardi in 1946 in order to explain the main aspects of Russia’s social project: contempt for the sacred nature of the human being, beloved by God and possessing an immortal soul, was the basis for legitimation of the class struggle, the means by which the Communist parties intended to fulfil their projects. This struggle was interpreted by Christians as homicidal violence, ‘to be intensified by sowing hatred, hindering any effort that … might bring the classes … to come together in friendship’.11 The consequences of the materialist concept of humanity could also be seen, Lombardi argued, in the outcomes of collectivisation, which was supposed to be the perfect way of organising a society that merely consisted of producers and consumers, the agents of economic life. ‘They have not freed themselves from capitalism, they have just changed their master’, he wrote; ‘all citizens’ were ‘true slaves of the community’, subject to a ‘ruthless disciplinary rigour’ that was at odds with the inherent needs of every person for freedom and spiritual growth, those same needs that meant that human life could never be reduced to the economic dimension.12 The contributions that prepared the ground for Catholic Action’s mobilisation in 1948 took their cue from this thinking. Igino Giordani, a Christian Democrat parliamentary deputy and journalist close to Catholic Action, described the political aberration of the Popular Front’s programme in terms of an essentially theological rift, in which the differences in political approach between the representatives of the Catholic world and the Communist Party could be completely understood: The theological disagreement between them and us lies here. It is here, in their cult of hatred, which provides the foundation for murder, and in their thirst for a fratricidal struggle, in which the Gospel is destroyed and the revenge of Satan takes place … At the heights of this dogmatic concept, holding sway over this spiritless universe, it is not the Lord of peace and charity that rises up, but the image of discord and extermination of brothers from another class. It is not our reform programmes that divide us … nor the economy … but our conceptions of the universe and our relationships with humanity.13

The danger of the PCI was represented as the threat of invasion by atheistic barbarism. Alongside this, posters produced by the Civic Commitees revived images like those of the prisoner fleeing between barbed-​wire fences and the soldier levelling his rifle at women and children, thus disseminating an image of the Soviet regime as a ruthless dictatorship and its economic system as unsuited to meeting humanity’s needs.14 In a similar vein, in 1948 Catholic Action took

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on an important role in the distribution of memoirs by anti-​Soviet refugees, translated into Italian by the Longanesi publishing house.

Anti-​Communism and militant Catholicism The openness towards criticism from lay sources of Communism’s worst features made a definite contribution to the memorable success of the communications campaign organised for 18 April. By using language that was not explicitly religious, at a point when the mainstream secular press had not shown any readiness to counter the Popular Front’s attack, militant Catholicism emerged as the most credible point of reference for all those social groupings that were opposed to Communism, and its central offices for communication were awarded a certain degree of recognition even by sectors of Italian society that were usually less influenced by Church teaching. Despite the approval earned by the Church in lay anti-​Communist circles, it was actually the specifically religious significance of the 1948 campaign that lay at the root of the favourable comment in Il Quotidiano on the potential shared aims of the Vatican and Washington, based on the battle against Communism: The Catholic Church has not been approaching the Western bloc; rather, the powerful state at the centre of a new political constellation is approaching the Church, expressing its intention to base its action on Christian principles and the civilisation that derives from these.15

The very successful mobilisation of Catholic forces for election campaigns was not in fact seen as an end in itself: to quote from one of the most perceptive analyses of Catholicism’s presence in Italian society, ‘the Catholic world … was roused into exercising its strength and influence … by the fact that its goal of creating an order based on Christianity found itself up against political forces and ideologies that were condemned by the Church’, and it saw ‘the battle against Communism’ as ‘the defensive moment … of the establishment of a Christian order’.16 As had been the case when Catholic anti-​Communism was undergoing its theoretical development in the 1930s, in the early post-​war years the urgent need to stem the spread of Communism in Italy, and around the world, was soon linked to the need to relaunch the faith and values of Catholic Christianity: the only moral force which would not crumble when faced with atheism’s elevation into a system, because of its divine inspiration. This perspective meant that the period following the success of the anti-​Communist campaigns of 1948, a success demonstrated by election results that gave the Catholic party a dominant position, was seen in Catholic Action circles as being the ideal moment to energetically pursue every avenue that might bring Italian society back towards a life inspired by the pastoral teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

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Organised Catholicism’s main initiative to encourage the dissemination of Christian teaching as the only appropriate guidance for social behaviour, by campaigning against Communism, took place during the Holy Year of 1950: a time when the Church was celebrating its renewed confidence in the face of every alternative doctrine. Throughout the year, Catholic organisations worked on the Crociata del grande ritorno (Crusade of the Great Return), conceived and directed by Luigi Gedda.17 According to the programme issued by the central office of Catholic Action, the early part of the year was to be dedicated to a revival of the anti-​Communist campaign, with some suitable updating of the schemes developed two years earlier. After Easter, however, it was anticipated that greater clarity would need to be given to the meaning of the ‘great return’ they were working on; in essence, this referred to the return of all people to God, and rejection of Communism was supposed to open the door to people’s abandonment of their errors and thus their return to the bosom of the Church: a community that always remained open to those who had felt the need to convert. The publicity material produced for this campaign not only dealt with Communism, portrayed as the complete opposite of Catholicism, but also solicited the conversion of anyone who had been involved with a doctrine that shared, to whatever extent, the anti-​Christian ‘errors’ of the Communists. Judging from the documents produced in local offices, offers of forgiveness and acceptance were also supposed to be addressed to groups and individuals with links to the Freemasons and the cultural circles of ‘liberi pensatori’ (freethinkers), and to families that had been avoiding the traditional baptism of their children:  in the vision that Catholic culture had promoted over time, essentially these people had also been attracted by the materialism that lay at the heart of Communist doctrine, and their return to the Church should be included in any attempt to defeat Bolshevik atheism. Two years later, the same networks for communication and for building support were put to use in a further attempt at the ‘re-​Christianisation’ of Italian society by means of an ideological battle with the Communist world. The local elections were not normally supposed to arouse ideological passions to the same extent, but this initiative developed because it centred on a symbolic element that was of crucial importance to the unique role of Catholic teaching in instructing all humanity in the truth: Rome. Recognition of the Eternal City’s sacred nature was a recurring point of reference for the Catholic world, and it was particularly used to justify the pressure that was exerted to ensure that Rome’s election results were compatible with its status as the beating heart of Christian civilisation.18 In the local elections of November 1947, with the real possibility of success for the Popular Front, any result except a victory by ‘candidates who offered

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the necessary guarantees of a council conforming to our [Catholic] moral and material requirements’ had seemed to be not just unacceptable but inconceivable, to the extent that a leading article in Il Quotidiano placed weighty emphasis on the significance of the vote by reminding Romans that on this ‘depended the safety of the religious, civil and political freedoms of all citizens’.19 Ideas and symbolic references that related to Rome and its global role were given an appropriate semantic order in early 1952, prior to the next round of local elections. In the interpretation of Gedda and the representatives of the Roman clergy who were particularly involved, and against the backdrop of ‘operazione Sturzo’, the failed attempt to create an anti-​Communist front that would have incorporated all political entities on the right,20 the broader issues stood out: a pastoral approach that addressed ‘the absence of a “secular” assessment of the world’, and the need for society’s renewal to take place on a fundamentally religious and ‘prophetic’ level.21 Addressing the faithful in February 1952, shortly before the start of the election campaign, the Pope stressed that the inhabitants of the capital of the Christian world needed to become the instigators of a re-​awakening that would serve as an example for the rest of the Catholic world: We give ourselves to the difficult role of being … heralds of a better world, desired by God, whose banner we wish to entrust first to you, beloved children of Rome, closest to Us and most particularly entrusted to Our care … Let this Eternal City, on which every age has left the mark of glorious achievements that have then become a legacy for its people, receive from this century, from the people who live here today, the halo of promoter of a shared salvation at a time when opposing forces fight for the world.22

The interpreter of the cultural framework within which Catholic-​ inspired institutions and social forces operated in 1952 was, once again, Father Lombardi. His contributions played a central part, as previously, in locating the battle with the Communist enemy in Rome within a broader programme for social renewal, which was supposed to take its cue from the city. His objective, clearly supported by the Curia, was to channel the broad commitment to Catholicism towards the specific aim of opposing the Communists in the local elections, in a new ‘Crociata per un mondo migliore’ (Crusade for a Better World).23 In La Civiltà Cattolica, Lombardi emphasised that without the example of a re-​awakened Christian conscience in Rome the world would sink into the ‘general disaster’ of ‘social disorder’, whose origins were ‘rooted in the personal disorder of consciences’ that had abandoned the road indicated by the Church’s teaching for ‘the barbaric collectivist form’ of social life.24 Lombardi reiterated this idea, in the appropriate tone for direct mobilisation of the vote, in a pamphlet distributed by Il Quotidiano only a few days before the election:

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Today the world is divided into two groups: the Communist peoples, or those under the tyranny of Communism, and countries without that tyranny. In the alliance of free countries, Rome is currently one of the great capitals, and we might even say that it is the true ideological capital of the Western world … [More than New York and London] Rome, as a city that gives spiritual guidance, a city that offers an ideology to humanity, is undoubtedly the principal capital of the West … Today, the dilemma of the world is this: Rome or Moscow, meaning God or no God, Jesus or Satan. Now, within this global configuration, it would be a defeat for the entire free world if its spiritual capital had to witness the success of the godless.25

The emphasis on Rome’s role in a potentially profound revival of the world’s spiritual life was given ample space in the election campaign’s visual material. Among the posters produced by the Civic Committees in 1952, the one that reached an even wider audience due to its reproduction in many newspapers presented a pictorial representation of the history of Rome across the ages. Using images that ranged from Trajan’s Column to the colonnade in St Peter’s Square, it purported to show how God had intended the city to be a ‘teacher of peoples’ and ‘the see of Peter and his throne of truth’. The culmination of this historical development was the Pope photographed in the bombed city, a reminder that ‘God had saved [Rome] thanks to his Vicar’ so that it could continue to perform the role of ‘capital city of the world’. Given the nature of the electoral campaign, it was implicit that a defeat for the Communists was the only result that could guarantee Rome an administration consonant with its historical role.

The qualified victory of anti-​Communism Having established the cultural framework within which Italian Catholicism’s main forms of anti-​Communist mobilisation operated in the early post-​war period, we can begin to assess their overall effectiveness. The identification of Communism with materialism and anti-​religion undoubtedly had a degree of success, as in the imaginary of many Italians Communism was perceived first and foremost as an atheist and anti-​Christian movement rather than a revolutionary one. The proliferation of supposedly miraculous incidents involving pictures and statues of the Virgin Mary from 1948 into the early 1950s could be seen as an early measure of the success of the campaign to raise Christian consciousness; these phenomena provided an indication that the Communist threat was seen in broad segments of society as a threat to beliefs rather than to the institutions of government. Another sign of Catholic success in formulating a campaign of political communication against Communism may have been the adoption in other spheres of features of the religious style of anti-​C ommunist

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discourse. One example in constant use during the campaign for the election of 18 April 1948 can be seen in the writing of Father Mondrone, who had looked back four centuries when discussing how close to Italy the threat of the new infidel destroyer had come with the potential success of the Popular Front: Islam’s repeated attempts in previous centuries, which were thwarted once and for all in the waters of Lepanto with a victory that was unanimously attributed to the intercession of Mary, are renewed today with the aggression of Soviet Communism.26

The terms ‘nuova Lepanto’ and ‘crociata’ (‘new Lepanto’ and ‘crusade’), in reference to the battle of 18 April, permeated the vocabulary of circles close to the Church. In 1956, with the canonisation of Innocent XI, the pope whose rule had seen the Turks defeated under the walls of Vienna in 1683 and the beginning of their withdrawal, Pius XII endorsed a full recognition of the ‘interpretation of the Communist phenomenon employing criteria similar to those used for Arab or Turkish Islam’ on both linguistic and symbolic levels, periodically alluding to ‘a mobilisation of the Christian world observing the logic of the “holy war” ’.27 It is sigificant that in 1950 in Il Mondo, a periodical that was certainly not close to the Church, Wilhelm Röpke presented his readers with the analysis of Communism published the year before by Jules Monnerot, and energetically took up the comparison developed within Catholicism whereby Communism was an ‘atheist Islam, sending out a seductive message to all the oppressed, unsatisfied, and power-​hungry’.28 Other newspaper articles reflected the influence of Catholic argument in very diverse contexts, as can be seen in observations in Corriere della Sera by an expert in naval policy explaining the campaign for expansion of the fleet: In a distant October, in 1571, near the Curzolari Islands, in waters neighbouring our own, the largest naval battle of the oar-​powered era was fought: Lepanto … Those from the West managed to put aside their own particular concerns in favour of the more general interest, which was to defend the values of Christianity … This comparison seems to us to be a very effective warning in our current situation.29

However, if the negative aspect of the criticism of atheist Communism found an audience, this was primarily due to the polarisation of the conflict and the general sense of emergency. Plans for mobilisation to put Italian society and politics firmly back on the path to the Kingdom of Christ, as indicated by the Church, were unsuccessful; the very fact that the Catholic world had engaged in this illustrated its difficulties in grasping the phenomenon of secularisation which was by then characteristic of the cultural development of the West.

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The initiatives of the ‘Crusade of the Great Return’ of 1950 were marked by a failure that seemed obvious even to contemporary observers.30 Publicity for the campaign to ‘re-​ Christianise’ Italy generated little enthusiasm; the whole ‘Crusade’ was seen by the public as essentially a repetition of the strong condemnations of Communism that had already been made between 1948 and the excommunication of Communist supporters in July 1949, with the addition of a few features that did not fundamentally alter a familiar position. Two years later, when the hardline Church lobby was working on making Rome the launching pad for a new phase of renewal based on the moral and social leadership of the Catholic hierarchy, the tone used to announce the ‘Crusade for a Better World’ illustrated the depth of concern: the great hopes generated by victory in 1948 had been replaced by fears about the Church’s increasing difficulty in achieving a thorough understanding of its teaching, which was the only authentic alternative to the errors of materialism. The Pope presented his entreaty of February 1952 as an antidote to the ‘widespread lethargy’ that ‘had held many back from undertaking the return to Jesus Christ, to the Church, and to the Christian way of life … [which is] the decisive remedy for the absolute crisis convulsing the world’: At the root of today’s ills and their disastrous consequences … are … lethargy of spirit, weakness of will, and coldness of hearts. People infected by such a plague, almost in justification, try to surround themselves with the old darkness and seek an alibi in both new and old errors.31

It took the unfavourable results of the general election of 1953 for the world of political Catholicism to start admitting to doubts and second thoughts. The approach of absolute opposition to atheistic Communism had been effective at the point of the rift, but the belief that its success derived from Italian society’s rediscovery of its Christian faith had proved to be an illusion. Above all, this approach was no help in the situation in which, after the successes of the Marxist Left in the battle for peace and the campaign against the ‘legge truffa’, ideological distinctions were taking on different features.

The ‘Church of Silence’ and the Italian public The development of Catholic anti-​Communist discourse, which was generally apparent right across the campaigns by Catholic networks of communication in the period either side of 1950, was particularly evident in the theme that undoubtedly received the greatest and most enduring attention in Catholic reporting and commentary: the persecution of Church dignitaries and Catholic worshippers in Communist countries. This theme was by no means new to the anti-​Soviet polemics of international Catholicism:  in the first years after the Russian

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Revolution, Catholics had already made particularly insistent accusations about the repressive approach of the Bolshevik government. In 1945, following the Red Army’s occupation of countries where the Catholic presence was much stronger and better established than in Russia, attempts by the new governments to eradicate the network of parishes, dioceses and Catholic organisations that answered to the Roman Church, potentially to replace them with more malleable locally based organisations, became a topical theme. Beginning with the trial of the Archbishop of Zagreb Aloysius Stepinac in 1946, the Italian Catholic press devoted enormous energies to news coverage of instances of persecution by the new pro-​Soviet regimes in Eastern Europe, with the different publications all working together. The latest news was reported by L’Osservatore Romano, thanks to its contacts from its central role in international Catholic journalism, and stories were then promptly repeated by Il Popolo, Il Quotidiano and local papers. The less frequently issued La Civiltà Cattolica, which had been created in order to publish longer and more reflective pieces, was by contrast the vehicle whereby the Jesuit writers, whether Italian or from the new Communist states, could offer their comprehensive interpretation and analysis of developments in specific countries. As 18 April 1948 approached, news material relating to both new and old anti-​Catholic repression was substantially reworked, and with increasing consistency was analysed in the same interpretative key: by referring to the phenomenon of arrests and persecution of priests and worshippers, the clash between the extremes of Catholicism and Communist error, whose portrayal had been developed in philosophical and theological terms, was given a broader historical context. In brief, the ‘applied materialism’ of Communism was not only dangerous to Catholics on the moral front, but was also proving to be directly destructive: it could literally burst into the lives of churches and their congregations, abandoning the field of theory to become a new persecutor of historical significance. So that the Communist threat could be properly represented, this present-​day enemy was given its own place in the gallery of threats that the Church of Rome had faced across two millennia. In the heated atmosphere of the election campaign, adding to the parallel with the fight against Islam discussed earlier, the comparisons went beyond the specific; the chronological span was broadened to take in the entire history of the Christian message, and Communism was identified as the quintessence of every enemy who had tried, unsuccessfully, to bring down Christ and his Church. In his Christmas radio message of 1947, Pius XII had suggested that the Communist threat should be considered not just in the immediate context, but as an episode in the perpetual battle between Good and Evil in which the Church had been engaged throughout the history of Christian salvation: the  ‘titanic struggle between two opposing spirits that have been fighting for the world’. In

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Communism, the ‘falseness’ that the people of God had had to contend with since the very beginning was ‘built into a system’: Just as Herod, anxious to have the child of Bethlehem killed, concealed his purpose behind the mask of devotion … so now his modern imitators do everything they can to hide their real plans from the populations, turning these into unsuspecting tools for their aims. But once they have achieved power, and the moment they feel they have a firm grip of the reins, they gradually remove the veil and move on from the oppression of human dignity and liberty towards the suppression of all benevolent and independent religious activity.32

In an article in La Civiltà Cattolica the following March, commenting on the electoral campaign, Father Salvatore Lener drew on the Pope’s vision of the battle in order to present the current contest as an episode of the eternal Christian mission to promote civilisation over tyranny, which historically, by its nature, had always moved towards the elimination of truth and civilisation: For two thousand years the Church … just as happened to its divine founder … has suffered persecution, dispossession, struggle and martyrdom, without taking one single step away from the path indicated by Christ. As a result … modern society still knows only one civilisation, the Christian. Only the Church is constantly able to resist the tyranny of a class, a people, or an individual.33

The period after the election saw a temporary drop in the intensity of Catholic campaigning against Communism, but subsequently, in response to increasingly strong attacks on Catholic hierarchies and organisations in Iron Curtain countries, there were renewed outcries in the Catholic press over persecution. When in January 1949 the news arrived from Budapest of the arrest and subsequent conviction of the primate of Hungary József Mindszenty, one of the prelates most hostile to the new regimes springing up in Eastern Europe, the newspapers regularly made a direct comparison between the fate of the Hungarian cardinal and the persecution suffered by the Christian faithful in previous centuries. A leading article in Il Popolo by its editor Rodolfo Arata was typical of this trend: The prison gate has closed behind the venerable pastor, but the tyrants should be under no illusion: beneath the coat of the imprisoned man, the purple of cardinals will burn more brightly than ever, as a symbol and celebration of the Christian sacrifice of every era.34

At the beginning of the 1950s, the theme of the denial of an acceptable pastoral life to the Catholic Churches of Central and Eastern Europe also became the subject of declarations by the Pope. In his Christmas radio message of 1950, concluding the Holy Year, Pius XII devoted particular attention to those believers who had been unable to visit Rome as pilgrims:

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To all those followers of Christ who unjustly wear visible or invisible chains … we send our heartfelt, grateful and paternal greetings. Let these reach all the way to them, crossing the walls of their prisons, the barbed wire of their forced labour and concentration camps, over there, in those distant regions, impenetrable to the gaze of free humanity, over which a veil of silence has been spread.35

This was the first formal occasion when the expression ‘Chiesa del Silenzio’ (Church of Silence) could be read between the lines, but within a few months this had become the Catholic world’s most common way of referring to the Churches behind the Iron Curtain. In 1951, the printed versions of the new Christmas radio message gave ‘La Chiesa del Silenzio’ as the heading to an entire section on this issue. The following year, Pius XII delivered addresses to the various Church communities behind the Iron Curtain. Typical of these was the declaration in his apostolic letter to the Catholics of Romania: In the annals of your fatherland there are already shining examples of Christian faith, steadfastness and determination … You are in some ways the children of these martyrs … While through the centuries, due to the most difficult circumstances, it was sometimes made almost impossible for your people to be in touch with this Apostolic See, the Catholic faith among you was nonetheless never extinguished … Today it is your turn, venerable brothers and beloved children, to heed this same voice and follow these examples.36

At the end of the year Pius XII dedicated an encyclical, Orientales Ecclesias, to all the oppressed communities. Having observed that ‘the Eastern Churches’ had been ‘soaked in the blood of martyrs in the most ancient times’, he made the link between his own concerns and those of earlier popes: Ever since the dawn of Christianity they not only surrounded your ancestors with particular affection, but would also customarily offer their help, if circumstances permitted, every time they saw them besieged by heresy or suffering from fear and persecution by their enemies.

However, the central point of the encyclical came when the Pope addressed the faithful who were forced to endure Communist repression with the words of Christ that had traditionally been interpreted as foretelling the great persecutions of the Roman era: Our Divine Redeemer himself said: … ‘If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also’ (John 15: 20); ‘Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven’ (Matthew 5: 11–​12). There is therefore no reason to be surprised when in our time, and perhaps more than in past centuries, the Church of Jesus Christ, and in particular its clergy, is attacked with persecution, lying, slander and every kind of affliction.37

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Thus in both documents the persecution that had marked the existence of God’s people was described in general terms irrespective of historical context, and then applied to the situation of those national Churches to which the encyclical was dedicated. Subsequently, linguistic references to the value of martyrdom were located within a clear framework in the media for communication: this happened in the first few weeks of 1953, when organised Catholicism was engaged in the major campaign to alert the public to the position of the Eastern Churches, prior to the declaration on 25 January of a ‘Giornata pro Chiesa del silenzio’ (Church of Silence Day) in response to the exhortations of Orientales Ecclesias. Catholic Action, with Luigi Gedda as its new president, had been working hard at encouraging prayer and reflection for this occasion.38 In descriptions of religious life behind the Iron Curtain in its newspaper, there started to be regular references to the importance of ‘martiri’ and the period of mythical secret Christian worship in the ‘catacombe’. On 18 January this culminated in dedication of the entire culture page to a feature on the ‘Acta Martirum’ (Acts of the Martyrs) during the reign of Diocletian, alongside a list of clerics who had been victims of Soviet oppression, surrounded by photographs of the Roman catacombs and described by the subheading ‘attuale oggi come ieri’ (‘as real today as yesterday’). When 25 January arrived, other Catholic publications followed the example of Il Quotidiano’s editors and devoted as much space as possible to the struggle for survival of the Chiesa del silenzio. During this period not only La Civiltà Cattolica but also Studium, the journal of the ‘Movimento Laureati’ (Catholic Action’s intellectual wing) which covered these themes far less often, published many articles on the religious situation in the different Iron Curtain countries, with a commentary that generally reflected the semantic parallel between ancient and modern persecutions. In a leading article for Il Popolo, Giordani placed the difficulties faced by Catholicism in Eastern Europe firmly within the perspective of the fight against evil through which Christianity was fulfilling its history of salvation, extolling the value of martyrdom by commemorating the sacrifice of Christ himself: From the first martyr, Jesus Christ, to the most recent victim, Mindszenty, political power has masked its coercion with various rationales, which can, however, be reduced to essentially one: fear of humanity’s spiritual freedom … In past times, tyrants devised heresies in order to gain political omnipotence and evade every moral limitation … Today, they resort to atheism, the final heresy, skilful idolatry, and violent schism.39

After the celebrations of 25 January 1953, an event occurred that confirmed how well the linguistic mechanisms of identification between past and present persecution had taken hold on Catholic communication. In October, after the archbishop Stefan Wyszy ński had been arrested in Poland, Il Popolo’s editors

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declared that ‘in his situation, there is a repetition of the persecution that the tyrant state used to pursue against the Catholic Church, centuries ago, through an indefatigable logic’.40 The battle against Communism was interpreted as an opportunity for the Catholic Church to assert its true position as humanity’s unique and universal guide towards salvation, consistent with the traditionalist cultural framework that had developed as a reaction to the upheavals of the French Revolution and its aftermath. In the reflections on the suppression of religion in Russia and Eastern Europe, this also found significant expression in the way that information was presented. When describing the direct conflict between the Catholic Churches and the Communist regimes, the writers for La Civiltà Cattolica made expressive choices that underlined their belief that Catholicism was the only religious doctrine that conveyed the truth and the only viable opposition to the supreme error, as Gustavo Guizzardi argued: At the level of the message, there is a loss … of all those distinctions that in linguistic terms we might explore and qualify:  ‘religion’ is always simultaneously ‘the Catholic Church’; ‘salvation’ is ‘involvement in the sacraments’; the ‘defence of the Christian faith’ and ‘observation of divine law’ are ‘safeguarding the laws of the Church’; the ‘eternal salvation of souls’ is the ‘Church’s right to its self-​defence’; the ‘fight against principles’ is at the same time the fight against ‘those who oppose the Church’; the ‘doctrine of the Gospel’ is ‘Catholic religious, moral and social doctrine’.41

These linguistic developments took on additional importance in Catholicism’s conflict with the other religious denominations within Christianity, whose weak opposition to Communist materialism was severely criticised. As early as the late 1920s, when the Russian Orthodox Church was making its first attempts to regain some room for manoeuvre in exchange for its complete submission to the regime, Catholic intellectuals engaged in the struggle against Communism had seen their own Church as the only genuine and effective opposition to the spread of atheistic materialism.42 After the Second World War, articles in La Civiltà Cattolica regularly returned to this theme; its writers failed to conceal a degree of contempt for the communities that ‘traditionally’, ever since the disputes between the papacy and the Byzantine Empire, had demonstrated ‘docility’ towards the state, showing the ‘need to look to the civil power for support’ and thus arriving at the statement ‘that there was no religious persecution in Soviet Russia’, as Metropolitan Sergius had said in an interview.43 The treatment of religious persecution in Iron Curtain countries also provides the ideal arena for measuring the impact of the discourse developed within Catholic circles on the wider Italian public. From the beginning of the April 1948 election campaign, Corriere della Sera and Il Messaggero often

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published articles on religious repression in Eastern Europe, while Father Lombardi himself was actively involved as a leader writer for Il Tempo. This interest from the ordinary press was maintained after the election and reached a peak at the beginning of 1949, when the events of the arrest and trial of Cardinal Mindszenty were on the front pages of the secular press for weeks. In their treatment of this case all the newspapers appropriated the vocabulary that Catholic publicists had been developing, which referred to the historical precedents of persecution and martyrdom on which Christian faith was based. According to a reporter for Il Messaggero, the cardinal ‘belonged to a religion that was born with martyrdom and to this day finds in martyrdom its highest celebration’, and because of this it would always be ‘stronger than its persecutors’.44 Rusconi, in Oggi, linked the experiences of Hungary’s primate to Christianity’s origins: The Church … had its beginning in one who was also arrested because of political terror, brought to trial with slander and fraud, sentenced unjustly, reviled, humiliated, and finally ‘eliminated’ with three nails and a cross so that he would speak no more.45

In March 1949 Il Messaggero was ahead of all the other newspapers, even L’ Osservatore Romano, when it published an expert calligrapher’s analysis of signatures by the cardinal, according to which ‘if this was not such a sensitive case, any expert calligrapher would have stated confidently that the signature was not [Mindszenty’s]’.46 Subsequently, in the autumn of 1950, Il Quotidiano published in instalments the revelations from Laszlo Sulner, a handwriting expert for the Hungarian police who had fled to the West with evidence of the falsification of the trial records. Interestingly, these latter articles, which provided a worrying picture of the production of faked signatures for Mindszenty and the physical and psychological torture that had been a feature of his detention, were not taken up by the rest of the Italian press. More generally, from 1949 onwards the publications linked to the DC and Catholic Action did their best to present material on the ‘Church of Silence’: in this and subsequent years they published photographic material and articles on Il Messaggero’s investigation into the alleged falsification of Mindszenty’s signature on his confession; they periodically produced lengthy surveys of attacks on the freedom of Catholicism in Eastern Europe and statistics on the number of priests and activists who had been killed or imprisoned; and when they distributed pamphlets for the 1953 election setting out the campaign strategy, they reminded the public, five years on from 1948, that Catholics were absolutely forbidden to vote for the PCI.47 However, by that point these themes had lost much of their appeal to the readership of the ordinary press. By mid-​1949 interest had started to wane in the guidance on Communism delivered by the Church and the organised Catholic world, and in fact the

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declaration of the excommunication of supporters of the PCI had limited social consequences.48 Among the publications that were not directly affiliated to organised Catholicism, the only ones that regularly continued to address the problems of religious freedom behind the Iron Curtain were those where staff with links to ecclesiastical circles played an important role. This was the case for Il Messaggero, some of whose writers were very close to the DC leadership, and for the traditionalist Guareschi’s Candido. Moreover, as time passed their articles were increasingly written as broadbrush portrayals of the religious situation in the various Communist countries, with minimal fresh news content. Between 1949 and 1950 Il Messaggero went from reporting in detail on Communist attempts to create a state-​run Catholic Action in Czechoslovakia to printing more general pieces on its inner pages using old news.49 Similarly, Guareschi’s cartoons became ever less related to current news and increasingly used symbols of general reference, as in the illustrations featuring Stalin in person at the top of a Polish church tower, replacing the crucifix with a hammer and sickle.50

The secular Left and the spirit of Christianity With their return to normal operation after the fall of Mussolini’s regime, the parties of the Marxist Left were once again able to present themselves to Italian society. In this, they had to give due weight to the vital role that Catholic religious tradition played in influencing broad sectors of the Italian public, including segments of the rural and urban proletariat that these parties saw as an important reservoir of votes. The response from the PCI and PSI ‘Press and Propaganda’ sections to blistering attacks by the Church leadership and organised Catholicism could not be restricted to attempts, however frequent, to counter the allegations of religious persecution with some sort of formal justification, or to play down events by refusing to see the political confrontation in terms of being ‘for Christ or against Christ’, and instead as only for or against land reform, works councils, or other specific proposals.51 The leadership of the two parties encouraged a process of development of their messages that was based on the claim that they shared the cardinal values of Christianity with their opponents, or even the assertion that they were in fact its only true interpreters. The Catholic response to this approach settled on drawing a parallel with the ‘main tendue’ (outstretched hand) extended by the Communist leader Maurice Thorez at the beginning of the period of the Popular Front in France. Like Ledit between 1935 and 1938, a decade later Lombardi viewed the ‘mano tesa’ offered by the PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti as simply a tactical ploy by the Communists in order to gain acceptance within a society that observed the values of Catholicism, to be abandoned for the ‘pugno chiuso’ (clenched fist) the moment that their strategy had led to the imposition

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of materialist principles.52 The Catholic analysis certainly grasped the great distance that separated the teaching of the Catholic Church and the secular world of the Italian Left, but its crudely dualistic formulation of the contrast between belief and atheism left it unable to go further than the basic accusation of ‘bad faith’. The claim by the Socialist and Communist parties that they, rather than the clergy, were the correct interpreters of the gospel message in fact derived from a long-​standing idea that had taken different symbolic and linguistic forms over time: this was characterised by the image of Christ placed in opposition to the Church establishment, subverting the interpretation of the gospel message provided by Catholic doctrine.

From ‘socialist Jesus’ to ‘Bolshevik Jesus’ During the intellectual debates that paved the way for the French Revolution, and even more so as this unfolded, the traditional interpretations of the Gospel based on ideals of poverty and equality, which had long been an element within European culture, had already been strongly politicised in images of Jesus Christ that contrasted his teaching with the role that the Catholic Church had taken in society. The Church hierarchy was accused of mirroring the unjust social order; the strongest attacks derived from what some claimed as the original Christian teaching, identifying the theme of universal brotherhood with that of liberation of the earth’s oppressed.53 These political interpretations of Christ were passed down to movements in which the concept of the ‘socialist Jesus’ spread during the nineteenth century. In Italy, in particular, the idea of Christ as the friend of the poor met with great success from the 1880s onwards, due to its dissemination by Camillo Prampolini among the people of the Po valley. The image of a ‘Messiah of the exploited’ in fact proved to be better suited to the peasant imaginary than the positivist rationalism typically espoused by the leaders of ‘evolutionist’ socialism, and in the imaginary of the labouring masses it helped to delineate an idea of socialism that was not too far removed from the spirituality of a supposedly primitive Christianity.54 With descriptions of the ‘socialist of Nazareth’ and the ‘socialist dressed in red’ or ‘with a red cloak’, attempts to create a system of socialist religious points of reference that rivalled organised Catholicism, including workers’ catechisms and prayers, occurred up and down Italy. At the dawn of the new century, in publications such as Il Seme (The Seed), there was definitive recognition for the host of illustrations and visual references that located the figure of Jesus in opposition to capitalist oppression, depicting him among or leading ordinary working people; these images even started to inspire those writing for Critica Sociale.55 The strength of this stylistic device in the self-​representation of activists within the Left was particularly apparent in the period after the Second

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Figure 1  Poster by the Italian Socialist Party for the general elections of 1946

World War, when the Socialist Party’s regained freedom of political expression was marked by the poster it produced for the elections to the Constituent Assembly:  Christ himself invited the people ‘to vote for the socialism that saved the poor from exploitation by the rich’, with words from the Gospel of St Matthew: ‘[t]‌ruly I say unto you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven’.

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During the same period there was a re-​establishment of the full range of images and stylistic features that belonged to the anti-​clerical concept of Christianity, in the satirical newspapers that gave voice to a revived left-​ wing anti-​clericalism. In cartoons published in Don Basilio, God himself was represented as reading the anti-​clerical weekly with gusto, recognising the views expressed as his own, and Christ abandoned a wicked priest who had attracted the wrath of his parishioners: these illustrations made their contribution to the renewed strength of the stereotypical images of the priest swathed in black, with his wide-​brimmed hat hiding a crafty grin, and the priest so fat that his cassock barely contained him. Visually, this was the metaphorical expression of the same message that had been launched in January 1947 when the ‘Amici di Don Basilio’ (Friends of Don Basilio) group was founded in Rome: Citizens! We have no intention of rejecting the historical and moral mission of the Church, founded by Jesus Christ for the defence of the oppressed and the redemption of the poor … We want people to open their eyes to the difference between religion and clericalism.56

During the campaign for the general election of April 1948, the themes and symbols that had collected over several decades around the socialist interpretation of the figure of Jesus were a primary element in the political communication of the Popular Front. The cartoons in Avanti! emphasised that the path indicated by Jesus ‘did not lead to Wall Street’, and the Redeemer himself was seen voting for and promoting the Front, mixing with the poor just as in the illustrations of fifty years previously.57 The PCI’s Press and Propaganda Section especially encouraged its activists to use this motif; it had long been in use within the Italian Left, but had never before been openly used by the Communists. In March 1948 the slogan ‘Gesù Cristo primo socialista’ (Jesus Christ the first socialist) was offered in Propaganda, already incorporated in a leaflet that could be pulled out and distributed. This took up the well-​known passage from the Gospel of St Matthew on how hard it would be for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and then developed the theme: Jesus was born in a stable: his cradle was a pile of straw. The first to worship him were the shepherds of Bethlehem. For thirty years he lived the life of a carpenter … His disciples were poor people, and humble workers …. Jesus never sought friends among the rich and powerful. Indeed, he always went against them with his reproaches and curses … For centuries on end, Christians were persecuted, tortured and killed … The rich, the powerful and the oppressors claimed that Christianity destroyed religion, the family and property, that Christians ate children, that they were immoral, and so forth. AND THE TRUTH was that Christianity was instead the movement of the poor, of slaves, of people deprived of their rights, and of oppressed peoples.58

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Thus while the Catholic world was using the persecution of the early Christians to relate to the experiences of the Chiesa del Silenzio, the PCI instead drew the parallel with the plight of the more needy classes and the political groups they related to. A few days later, with the elections fast approaching, Propaganda made a comparison between Jesus and the Communists: The Communists are men and women who want to banish hunger, poverty, slavery, war and violence from the world. It was for these aims that Jesus Christ preached and spilt his blood almost two thousand years ago. He taught the slaves of that time to break free from their chains.59

Criticism of the Church and class struggle In the Communist campaign material of 1948, as with any political interpretations of Jesus in the modern age, the inclusion of Christ and his teaching within the field of socialist symbolism went hand in hand with criticism of those who claimed the exclusive right to represent him on this earth. In the poster that best represents the way the theme was used, the images of Christ, the apostles and St Francis were accompanied by an explanatory caption: Christ was a carpenter. The apostles were fishermen, craftsmen, and very ordinary people. For three centuries, the early Christians went to their martyrdom for social equality and liberation of the oppressed. St Francis gave his possessions to the poor.

In the bottom half of the poster, clearly separated from the images above in a layout that provided a visual representation of the yawning gap, information on the Vatican’s interests in the global economy was presented and commented on: BUT TODAY, while many humble priests can barely manage to get by, many bishops and cardinals are among the biggest capitalists.

This was followed by a detailed list of Vatican property: valuable estates, hospital departments, millions of acres of land right across the world, and billions of lire invested in industry and the service sector. These critical attacks referred back to a somewhat rigid interpretation of the role of the Catholic Church in Italy. This had been set out in full by Togliatti in his speech to the higher ranks of the party on 7 April 1945, a year or so after his return to the country: There are obvious difficulties that arise from the influence of a conservative, even reactionary, section of the Church’s structure … This is a very serious matter, because in Italy there are Catholic religious masses whom we do not reject, who approach our party and to whom we reach out.60

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This opening towards the ‘masse cattoliche’ (Catholic masses), as they were termed, was accompanied by a concern that the Church hierarchy would take the position of rejecting any cooperation with the Marxist Left. Togliatti made a rigorous distinction between the ‘masse’ and the ‘organizzazioni’, which he had applied when teaching ten years earlier at the School of the Communist International: When we talk about ‘opponents’, we are not referring to the masses who have joined Fascist, social democratic or Catholic organisations. Our opponents are the Fascist, social democratic and Catholic organisations, but the masses who have joined them are not our opponents: they are the masses of workers and we must do everything we can to win them over.61

In January 1948, in his report to the sixth party congress, Togliatti reviewed developments in the three years since his speech of April 1945, making further theoretical refinements to his assessment of the Catholic Church. The hierarchy that answered to the Curia and the Pope was no longer able to interpret the spirit in which the wisest believers lived a Christian life, and he saw the explanation for this in the class war between capitalists and workers: The highest ranks of the Church … are no longer capable of listening in the same way, because they have connected themselves to the structure of capitalist society and to its ruling groups. They have even linked their direct activity to capitalist forms of ownership and exploitation … Due to the Vatican’s penetration of the structures and workings of capitalist society, it is no longer possible for the Catholic Church to maintain a position that is independent from that of the management groups of major capital.62

Immediately after Togliatti’s speech in the session on 6 January, the PCI’s publicity machinery started work on descriptions of the ‘reactionary’ position of the leadership of the Catholic world on the economic front. On 15 January a special feature appeared in Propaganda with the heading ‘Il Vaticano potenza capitalistica’ (The Vatican: Capitalist Power): this was intended for use by activists, and described all the financial and economic ventures undertaken by the Roman Church and its affiliated bodies in the years since the papacy’s loss of temporal power.63 At the beginning of March much the same information was repeated on the front page of L’Unità, laid out like a poster or leaflet for display and distribution; this was accompanied by a pictorial version in which the connections between the Church’s various financial interests were presented in a tree diagram with the dome of St Peter’s at the top, like a protective canopy for the Church’s business.64 The same visual device was used in a poster that showed sacks of money in various currencies sitting just under the dome, accompanied by an explanatory text: Why does the Vatican engage in politics, rather than concerning itself with religion? And why, instead of defending the poor, does it practise the politics

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of the rich? Because the Vatican is a great capitalist power that has formed alliances with bankers, large landowners and speculators, who all hide in the shadow of St Peter’s.

From this point onwards, the complex social role of the Church in maintaining the cultural backwardness and subservience of the subordinate classes, long criticised by the secular Left, was presented simply in terms of property, with the Vatican portrayed as a capitalist power that was hostile to the development of socialism simply in order to protect its own interests. From late 1947 to 18 April 1948, when the need to produce election material that was straightforward and had an immediate impact favoured simplification of the message, all the communication channels close to the secular Left were influenced by the approach that the PCI’s Sezione stampa e propaganda had developed. The critique that had been more traditional within Italian secularism, which reflected an intellectual and moral opposition to Catholic teaching, was often relegated to second place. At almost exactly the same time as Togliatti’s definitive formulation, the thoughts of Lelio Basso, the PSI leader, started to appear in Avanti! Basso attributed the DC’s decision to put an end to the broad united anti-​ Fascist governments in 1947 to the influence of the Roman Curia, who were ‘concerned … about defending capitalist interests, to which the Vatican, now one of the most powerful Italian holding companies in Italy, felt itself tied’.65 In Don Basilio, on the other hand, there was a marked increase in the frequency of items that referred to the wealth of the Vatican and its role in Italy’s economic life. A  series of cartoons was published, for example, in which it was noted that the ‘Servant of the servants of God’ had 3,392 waiters in his employment, and members of Catholic Action were portrayed as fat capitalists in top hats and tails and given the punning caption ‘Azionisti Cattolici’ (Catholic shareholders).66 Shortly before election day, in response to Pius XII’s ‘With Christ or against Christ’ address, the editors highlighted the economic theme in order to emphasise how little the Catholic hierarchy and the DC had to do with the Word of Christ; they even used a biblical quotation in support of their argument, knowingly mimicking one of the conventions of papal documents: Of course one cannot serve two masters. A Christian knows this, but also knows that these two masters are not … God and the parties of the Left, but, if anything, their opposites, as St Matthew tells us: ‘No one can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and Money’ (4:24) … To reach the kingdom of God one cannot follow the path taken by billionaires disguised as Franciscans.67

The general renewal of criticism of the Church’s financial activities was further fuelled by a timely court case that involved a senior prelate, Monsignor Edoardo Cippico, an official in the Vatican City’s Treasury. In March 1948 Cippico was found to have been involved in a series of frauds and misappropriations of

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funds. Journalists from L’Osservatore Romano, with colleagues from the rest of the Italian Catholic press following their lead, argued that Cippico should be seen as ‘a wretched common criminal’, and flatly rejected the idea that priests at a higher level had been involved.68 However, the idea of the ‘merging and interpenetration’ of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the world of financial speculation was the principal element in the Communist commentary on this episode. Starting with the early news coverage in L’Unità at the beginning of March, the spotlight was turned on alleged attempts by priests in the Curia to obstruct investigations and cover up the suspect’s disappearance; as time passed the implications of the enquiry seemed to be widening, to the extent that, according to rumours emanating from the Communist newspaper, ‘frauds planned by the Secretary of State’ were being considered, as well as currency transfers so large that they could only have been arranged at the most senior levels within the Curia. Towards the middle of April it became clear that the wilder theories were unfounded, and in a leading article Togliatti stressed the significance of the controversy as a whole, saying that it was unnecessary to establish the direct responsibility of the papal officials: The worrying issue is that those signatures, of men who are closest to the Sacred Keys … could have been accepted in the world of the shadiest business … In that world, nobody was surprised that those men and those bodies were trading in and smuggling currency in such colossal amounts. This means that those men were in fact seen as regulars in that market.69

Coverage of the Cippico affair meant that those involved in the Popular Front’s political communication could add a further development to the image of Vatican circles as focused on business and speculation. Information on the Church’s involvement in Italy’s capitalist world, already scarcely to be applauded, was linked to rumour about other illicit financial dealing, so that the two were more or less identified with each other in a kind of assimilation between financial activity and theft. The editors of L’Unita, and subsequently the other newspapers of the Left including Avanti! and Il Paese, tried to hold the spotlight on this affair for as long as possible, as the elections were to be held only a month or so later; they published leading articles protesting about the minimal attention that the ‘bourgeois’ press was giving to these events, and conducted brief investigations into other murky financial operations involving people in holy orders.70 A case such as the Cippico affair inevitably stimulated some very lively satirical treatment. In the weeks prior to the election, the campaigning journalists of Don Basilio gave ample space to the illegal activities of a fictional priest, presenting comic episodes that included an account of the prelate’s imagined childhood: right from the cradle, the little boy is intent on stealing money and chequebooks, and according to his uncle is destined for the Vatican where these

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qualities can best be expressed. Also published, and distributed with this weekly publication, were posters for the fictitious ‘Comitato Cippico’ (Cippico Committee), which were biting parodies of the Civic Committees’ wall posters: for example, the Catholic exhortations to vote, with pictures of rabbits and the caption ‘lui non vota’ (he doesn’t vote), were replaced by a caricature of Cippico intent on snatching someone’s bag, with the punning caption ‘lui vuota’ (he cleans you out).71 Portrayals like this, in the final leaflets and newspaper-​style wall posters that the Popular Front produced before the election, made Cippico’s name and face emblematic references to dishonesty, exploitation and collusion between the Catholic Church and the ‘reactionary’ ruling classes. This was still the case in 1953, in the Communist pamphlets rejecting accusations that the clergy were being oppressed behind the Iron Curtain: the priests imprisoned for common crimes by the ‘new democracy’ regimes were described as ‘ “Cippicos” … not “martyrs” for the faith, as they would have us believe’.72 After the wide circulation of pieces based on the Vatican’s involvement in the worst features of the capitalist economy, and as 18 April drew closer, the Left’s campaign material focused on another issue intended to contribute to the image of the senior Catholic priesthood as far removed from Christianity’s real spirit of liberty and justice. A fortnight before the vote, first on 3 April and continuing the following day, the culture section of L’Unità was entirely dedicated to presenting ‘Documenti segreti della diplomazia vaticana’ (Secret documents of Vatican diplomacy), as part of an investigation that continued for the next few days. A series of incidents were presented in which the Curia had supposedly brought pressure to bear, first in court circles and then, after the referendum of June 1946, on the DC: in exchange for funding for the election campaign, the Church hierarchy allegedly obtained the exclusion of the parties of the Left from government and the implementation of a rigidly anti-​Soviet foreign policy, with even assistance to the return of an authoritarian regime not ruled out. On 4 April, Il Paese and Avanti! also devoted their culture pages to the presentation of these documents, which observers held to be absolutely extraordinary and very enlightening on the covert political orientation of the Curia. The Catholic response began on 6 April with a series of articles in L’Osservatore Romano intended to demonstrate the poor credibility of the information that the Popular Front had collected. What had been produced had largely been taken from the book Documenti segreti della diplomazia vaticana, which was said to have been published shortly before in Lugano.73 The Vatican newspaper, however, argued that the typesetting betrayed its Italian origin: it could be traced back to UESISA, the printing firm in Rome that the PCI generally used. It was yet to emerge that the work had been compiled by Virgilio Scattolini, a forger who was already well known in the Fascist era, and had been rather hastily pulled together: the documents had no archival references, there was no explanation of

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how there had been access to the secret conversations and exchanges that were reported, and the movements of some of the individuals mentioned could easily be disproven. Revelations as to the unreliability of these documents were swiftly publicised in the Catholic and generally non-​Communist press: several issues of Il Quotidiano printed articles on this, and in Oggi on the day of the election itself there was prominent coverage of ‘the Vatican’s loud laughter’ at discovery of the forgery.74 The Popular Front’s final major attempt to influence the public prior to the vote thus in fact proved to be counterproductive; it undermined the credibility of this political alliance, which had already been sorely tested in previous weeks by the repercussions of the Communist Party’s seizure of power in Czechoslovakia and other reports on the increasingly violent manifestations of Soviet Russia’s dominance in Eastern Europe.

After 18 April: a muted campaign The embarrassment generated by the ‘Documenti segreti’ episode may have contributed to a moderation of the Communists’ communication strategy regarding religion and the Church in the period after 1948. Within the PCI’s official campaigning, the only concerted return to openly hostile initiatives against the Catholic hierarchy came at the end of 1949, when after some months of delay a themed issue of Propaganda set out the party’s response to the excommunication that had been inflicted on Communist supporters in July. The illustrations and articles in this issue returned to the earlier investigations into the economic and financial power of Vatican circles, with slogans such as ‘The Vatican keys open all safes’ contrasting with the ‘Christian hope of millions of the dispossessed’ that was to be fulfilled ‘in socialist society’. Picking up the discourse that had been developed in previous years, passages from the Bible were placed next to articles from the Soviet Constitution of 1936:  for example, St John’s ‘God chose those whom we call the poor’ was linked to a loose version of Article 1, ‘The Soviet Constitution gives the Power of State to whoever produces and works’; St Paul’s ‘He who does not work, neither shall he eat’ went with a sentence from Article 12, ‘In the USSR, work is a duty and a matter of honour for every able-​bodied citizen’; quotations from the Acts of the Apostles on the ‘communism’ of the early Christians were put with Article 6, which places land and the means of production in collective ownership; and the Gospel saying ‘Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire’ was complemented by the phrase ‘in the USSR the rotten tree of privilege and exploitation has been felled’.75 In the articles in this issue anti-​clerical criticism did not address the interpretation of Catholic beliefs head on, instead generally taking a more indirect approach. The Catholic hierarchy was presented as being against the people

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because of the anti-​national role it had played ever since the Middle Ages, particularly during the Risorgimento, and because of its opposition to any attempt at social development or the distribution of material wellbeing.76 Anti-​Catholic attacks occasionally resurfaced in subsequent years within Communist discourse, like an underground river, to be drawn once again to the public’s attention; this often occurred during debates that seemed far removed from religious themes. References to the debates with the Church remained fairly frequent in the newspapers that took more direct inspiration from traditional anti-​clericalism, especially in their articles on culture. In Il Paese, for example, many writers complained of the difficulties experienced by Italian Protestant minorities in celebrating acts of worship, despite the guarantees of the Constitution and other legislation, due to the pressure that local clergy exerted on the police. In the newspapers of the Left, some of the most forceful contributions to the anti-​clerical campaigns of the period 1946–​48 were not followed up. In particular, articles featuring the news of immoral sexual behaviour by priests, which had frequently appeared in the months prior to 18 April 1948, were subsequently rarely seen; they generally gave way to vivid historical accounts in the cultural pages featuring entertaining episodes from the lives of popes and prelates. This sort of newspaper feature was by no means new, as back in the early years of the century Guido Podrecca’s satyrical journal L’Asino (The Donkey) had published tales of the Curia from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Immediately after the fall of Fascism there was a resurgence of this type of story in the newspapers, so much so that as early as October 1945 the Catholic activist Igino Giordani, writing for Il Quotidiano, was complaining about the taste for ‘portrayals of the Curia of the Renaissance based on the clichés found in cheap literature, which went out of fashion in about our grandparents’ time’.77 From 1950 onwards, tales from ecclesiastical history made regular appearances in the newspapers of the anti-​clerical Left, starting with articles offering comic accounts of celebrations of the Holy Year in the era of papal nepotism.78 At a point when there was a preference for more subtle attacks in the war with the Church hierarchy, spicy items of current news on the sexual life of priests were replaced in Avanti! by stories of high-​class prostitutes in the time of the Papal States who had managed to avoid prosecution thanks only to their good relationships with members of the Curia, their regular customers.79 At much the same time, Il Paese’s culture pages, for their part, featured a whole series of papal portraits that included the intrigues and gluttony of the Avignon popes: Sixtus IV, who was implicated in the Pazzi conspiracy, and Sixtus V, who as a priest, according to some sources, had carried a stick under his cassock, as a cardinal had cut off the ear of another prelate who had mocked him for his humble origins, and then as pope would not tolerate even the most modest

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displays of affection between courting couples.80 Some of the most entertaining accounts concerned the murky power struggles within the walls of the papal palaces: in every epoch apparent goodwill concealed tensions worthy of a nest of vipers, which were to emerge within the papal conclaves.81 To summarise, a full analysis of the developments in political communication by the Left in its battle with the Catholic hierarchy and institutions demonstrates the watershed signalled by defeat in the elections of 18 April 1948. From that point onwards, the attempt to formulate a direct and systematic campaign in response to Catholic hostility, by reducing the Church establishment to a tool of international class struggle and claiming to be the correct interpreters of Christianity’s gospel message, was largely abandoned. The newspapers with the strongest links to the secular tradition continued to publish critical articles, but with a softer edge, while the PCI’s channels of communication abandoned references to the Church other than when responding directly to attacks by organised Catholicism.

Morality and immorality The development of the battle over religion showed how the political conflict, in its extreme polarisation, reached into areas that were very far removed

Figure 2  Leaflet by the Civic Committees for the general elections of 1948

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from the debate on government and policy. Another important aspect of this battle involved mutual accusations of immoral behaviour: the total absence of common ground led to individual conduct well away from the public sphere being interpreted in a spirit of dualistic antagonism. Moreover, this occurred despite the fact that the assessment of conduct in terms of probity and honesty was the area in which the cultures of the two camps least differed, because they shared a grounding in the Catholic moral tradition that pervaded society.82

Catholic morality and atheist immorality in Italy in the 1950s From the 1930s onwards, Catholic criticism of the immorality inherent in Communism had principally favoured representing the Soviet regime as a form of atheistic materialism. From the perspective on Communism formulated in the papal encyclical Divini Redemptoris, the most conspicuous consequence of the implementation of a doctrine based on the rejection of God and all spirituality was the destruction of all forms of morality within community life. In 1936, in a special issue of Lettres de Rome on Soviet family law, Father Ledit had eloquently expressed similar ideas. In his view, Marx, whose materialism prevented him from seeing any sacred bond in the marriage vows, had concluded that ‘the bourgeois marriage … was nothing other than hypocrisy, which merely served to perpetuate ownership by inheritance’. With the October Revolution, this thinking had been relentlessly applied to the legislation of the new atheist state: on one side, the establishment of marriage simply by registration and a divorce process that was all but immediate had eliminated the difference between licit and illicit sexual relations, while legislation on female emancipation had come down to taking the role of wife and mother away from women and taking the responsibility for educating children in community living away from families.83 On the other, the task of education in moral conduct had been stolen from the Church by the state and Communist Party youth organisations, which provided an atheist education and an interpretation of personal relationships that was almost bestial.84 According to the account in the Lettres, these oppressive initiatives had had a profound effect on public morality: crime was steadily rising among children and young people who had been educated outside the family; sex education had led young people into mimicking sexually explicit behaviour at a tender age, and was encouraging inappropriate relationships between teachers and pupils; and natural family feelings had thus been so severely eroded that the phenomenon of bežprizornost’ –​the abandonment of children who then had to live on their wits on the streets –​had become a significant social problem, especially in large cities.85 The material gathered by Ledit reached an impressively large audience, and became the basis for a set of popular beliefs about Soviet social morality

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that was accepted not only by Catholics, but also in circles that were normally less influenced by the Church. A good example was the success of the slogan ‘I communisti mangiano i bambini’ (Communists eat children):  this was too overstated to be taken up by mainstream publications, yet its use remained widespread at a grassroots level. It probably originated in the rumours of cannibalistic practices in Russia during the Revolution, the civil war and the frequent famines, but its use took hold because it resonated with people’s fears about the effects that exposure to non-​Catholic social and religious values would have on education and childhood.86 Starting with Lombardi’s reprise of the portrayal of moral disaster in La Civiltà Cattolica in 1946, in much of the Italian press there were frequent references to Catholic beliefs about Communist concepts of family life, sexual mores and the education of children for virtuous social conduct, although these references were often made in passing and were not fully developed: the assumption seemed to be that the audience would already have had a broad understanding of the themes, and all that was needed was a basic and rather general reminder. Similarly, the wording of election leaflets selectively drew on and implicitly referred to the vocabulary and set of images that had been developed and consolidated over time. On the Catholic side, there was a more focused attempt to develop and circulate information on these themes when the Catholic movement started to organise for the Giornata per la difesa dell’infanzia (Protection of Childhood Day) on 21 May 1950. That same year the PCI, after trying out its ideas in Emilia, had encouraged the establishment on a national basis of the Associazione Pionieri d’Italia (Italian Pioneers Association:  API), an educational organisation aimed at children and young people and modelled on the Pioneer Organisation active in Russia. One of the API’s primary objectives was of course ‘to represent a healthy and suitable alternative to the clericalists in the field of education’, and it used the model of Catholic Action’s youth movement to offer an educational initiative in combination with leisure activities such as sport and singing.87 The provincial branches of Catholic Action, especially in Emilia and Tuscany, realised the potential threat from a body competing with them on their own terrain, and on their insistence there was a carefully orchestrated campaign to construct a negative image of the API, run by the Catholic Action press office with help from Catholic youth organisations.88 At the beginning of 1950 they started to collect the API’s leaflets, invitations to festivals, comics and songbooks. The youth sections of Catholic organisations soon received circulars calling attention to the inclusion of unsuitable lyrics in the Communist repertoire, such as the partisan song ‘Fischia il Vento’ (The Wind Whistles) with its invocation of revenge on the Fascists, and highlighting other opportunities to criticise the material distributed by the API. Meanwhile, the reports from Catholic Action’s central offices, which gave examples of the information gathered and circulated

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this nationally, were collated in about April. These had been compiled with help from teachers, parish priests and religious education instructors, and generally described incidents involving young members of the Pioneers who had been caught swearing in public or being disrespectful to priests. These cases must have been isolated, as the same episodes, seemingly with the same origin, were repeatedly mentioned in all the documents; the almost simultaneous appearance of the same stories in all the Catholic publications, in May and June 1950, served to amplify the message. Right across Italy people could thus read articles that were very similar in both content and structure. They learnt that ‘a priest had greeted one of his former acolytes with “Cristo regni” (“May Christ reign”), and the reply received was “Mai” (“never”)’; that ‘on May Day some of these young children, marshalled in columns under banners and flags, were abusing the priests they passed with certain terms that perhaps they did not yet even understand’. In parts of the diocese of Reggio Emilia, apparently, some parents talked to their children openly about ‘adultery, bigamy, separation, and so forth’, while ‘the worst and most obscene words and blasphemies were uttered by boys and young men, and even by girls, with a shocking fluency’, and some Pioneers had tried to set fire to the church and give the primary school teachers a kicking. The reports were accompanied by fuller articles that attributed this disgraceful behaviour to the API’s educational methods. According to the leader writers who used the material provided by Catholic Action as a template for their articles, ‘the Associazione Pionieri d’Italia gathered together children and young people … in order to educate them in a Bolshevik fashion and “free them from religious superstition” ’; the API was said to be competing with religious services by organising sports sessions on Sunday mornings, and in Prato or Empoli (or ‘throughout Italy’, as Il Quotidiano was quick to claim) ‘they went as far as organising a swearing competition at a gathering of young people:  the winner was awarded a football’. Other pieces on the API’s educational strategy, allegedly reported by Pioneers who had withdrawn from the organisation, echoed previous reports of sex education and promiscuous games in the Soviet system, but placed the incidents closer to home: ‘in the presence of more than fifty children rituals of sexual initiation were celebrated, with practical demonstrations’; parties for children in the API included ‘erotic dances’; and news emerged of ‘certain obscene photographs circulating among the children in this Communist environment’.89 As the Giornata per la difesa dell’infanzia approached, every Catholic publication with a national circulation gave over an increasing amount of front page space and the entire culture section to these stories, complementing them with other articles, often written by priests, that commented on the reports. These commentaries also frequently used the same model, which centred on quoting and

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discussing the well-​known biblical passage that features the stone with which people should drown themselves if they have led young people into disgrace.90 In June, the stories about the API that had by then been circulating for some time finally appeared in Traguardo, put to use by the DC’s Press and Propaganda Section.91 The material from the newspapers was subsequently reproduced in the form of leaflets such as the one compiled by Don Lorenzo Bedeschi, a journalist with L’Avvenire d’Italia who had long been engaged in attacks on Communist conduct in Emilia, and had been producing articles on the API and the issue of the corruption of childhood.92 The outbreak of the Korean War in late June drew attention away from the theme of childhood in Catholic publications. The Catholic youth organisations renewed their efforts as Christmas approached, using a manual structured around Luoghi comuni per la campagna dell’infanzia (Commonplaces for the campaign on childhood) which returned to the main themes of the debate and reiterated the points made in campaigning at the start of the year.93 As the international situation was still keeping the Catholic daily newspapers busy at the end of 1950, almost the only way to promote this second revival was direct distribution by Catholic activists of leaflets and other basic material. After the start of 1951 there were no further efforts to circulate this material, but the themes set out in this period continued to act as points of reference.

Morality and politics in the Communist world: from anti-​capitalism to the ‘profiteer’s trough’ Catholic campaigning against the activity of the API pushed the educational and leisure initiatives organised for children by the activists of the Left into a serious crisis, and met with a response from the editors of L’Unità and, to a lesser extent, from the rest of the Communist press. At the height of the Catholic campaign, accusations of immorality and rejection of religion were directed the other way with the publication of a detailed list of cases of sexual crimes that had been perpetrated in Italy by priests or members of Catholic organisations.94 The practice of throwing such accusations back at their opponents had been a fairly well-​established feature of Communist political communication. Prior to the April 1948 elections, supplements issued with Propaganda had responded to renewed criticism of the destruction of the family in the USSR by identifying the distortions of capitalism as the obstacle to family happiness.95 In other contexts the mistaken ideas that threatened good behaviour were attributed, even more simply, to a moral slackness that derived from the wealth guaranteed to a small minority by the distortions of the ‘bourgeois’ system. In short, the way that the message was constructed made explicit the thinking wherein ‘that which is proletarian is moral, and that which is bourgeois is immoral … in

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a formulation that assigns particular anthropological features … to the workers as a “human aristocracy”, which almost has the chromosomes of the aristòi in its blood’.96 The cartoons in Vie Nuove satirised the phenomenon of increasing adultery among the wealthier classes, often tolerated by the spouse; the choice of examples implied that it was only a major capitalist who could keep both a wife and a lover without difficulty, showering them with diamonds and furs. Similarly, ‘vices’ such as cocaine use and homosexuality were portrayed as typical of the further degeneration of the bored and depraved upper middle classes, who did not have to spend time earning their daily bread. The publications of the Left showed the same disdain, in the period around 1950, towards the ‘esistenzialisti’ (existentialists), as they were known: the term was used here to represent more a set of fashionable transgressive attitudes than a school of thought. The arrogance of their irreverent attitudes towards religious sentiment and their immoderate behaviour was attacked in an article in Il Calendario del Popolo, a Communist magazine with a working-​class readership, which offered a caustic assessment of them as ‘Daddy’s boys who were playing with big words’, providing amusement for the ‘corrupt bourgeoisie’. According to the anonymous observer, this phenomenon was of considerable social significance in that it signalled the now marked decline of a society based on capitalist exploitation: ‘[a]‌s in every era of decadence, through these characters with their irresponsible and anarchic temperament, society shines a light on its own disaster’.97 The Communist claim to be a bulwark of the defence of morality, in contrast to the decadence of bourgeois custom, played its own distinct part in communication. However, this and related issues were not used by the central ‘Press and Propaganda’ offices as spurs for organised campaigns; they had their particular place in reference to broader debates, such as the criticism of American society as an example of ‘mature capitalism’ and praise for the healthy behaviour that was said to characterise Russia and the ‘new democracies’. The theme that the PCI campaigns persistently focused on instead, by highlighting specific cases, was the probity and honesty of the politicians and parliamentarians in the opposing camp. Ever since May 1947, Communist posters had portrayed the new government, with the Marxist parties excluded, as a grouping closely linked to the world of major financial capital; the 1947 and 1948 output of the PCI’s Sezione stampa e propaganda particularly emphasised the many positions that ministers in the De Gasperi governments had retained on the boards of companies, agricultural businesses and banks. On one side, criticism focused on the distorting effects that this concentration of interests among decision-​makers could have on the management of Italy’s economy and finances; on the other, in a more direct way that was better suited to provoking the indignation of an impoverished

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and unsophisticated public, it highlighted the accumulation of earnings and profits, which stood in contrast to the virtuous modesty of the ordinary citizen.98 After the majority coalition was installed in government by the 18 April election, the discourse that had now been established on the amassing of positions and income was not dropped; rather, the criticism was further refined, pointing out the potential consequences if these same individuals and interest groups were to enjoy a prolonged stay in power. In 1949, one of the most popular stands at the Festa de l’Unità (organised annually by the PCI in support of its newspaper) featured the Bottega degli scandali (Shop of scandals), whose displays illustrated instances of criminal behaviour by Christian Democrat functionaries. The relationships between those in government and capitalists, which from the Communist perspective could be seen as a distinguishing feature of ‘class government’, began to be represented as the basis for widespread criminality, embezzlement and misappropriation by politicians who exploited power to their own advantage, and by whoever was in a position to guarantee them substantial rewards.99 In May 1950 the issue of the increasing number of financial offences by ‘alti papaveri’ (bigshots) in the DC came right to the fore in the newspapers of the Left after disclosures by Ettore Viola, a Christian Democrat parliamentary deputy who in various newspaper articles had reported widespread illegal practice within his party, and had threatened to name those responsible. Leading articles and news items in L’Unità gave much space to the mounting scandal, and were supported by other newspapers of the Left in their conjecture that the ‘caso Viola’ was only the most conspicuous evidence of the spread of ‘corruption and … profiteering that had become a prominent feature of the clerical regime’.100 ‘Members of the party of Christian Democracy, Church leaders, men of the majority, canvassers and ministers: on you go, in safety, towards the trough!’: this was the ironic conclusion to one of L’Unità’s most forthright pieces on this issue.101 As well as widening the accusations of criminal behaviour to the entire coalition government, this initiated the use of frank and ironic phraseology, seen here in the word ‘greppia’ (trough), which was to become a fixed reference point in this campaigning. The verbal and pictorial use of dietary functions as a metaphor for robbery flourished in the material produced by the Left, after the final issues of Don Basilio, at the beginning of the year, had signalled a strong revival of this simple satirical device. Attacks on Christian Democrat dishonesty thus became a prominent element of Communist discourse, as could be seen in the regular references to this theme in Propaganda. In March 1951, the material that the Sezione stampa e propaganda produced to support PCI activists came in the form of a special issue to revive interest in criminal behaviour within the government, reviving the heading ‘La bottega degli scandali’. Its central item was a comprehensive

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chronology of episodes of embezzlement and dishonesty that had involved the PCI’s opponents, running from the caso Cippico of 1948 up to the caso Viola of the previous year. The other pieces also located all the earlier instances of illegal entanglement between government representatives and economic power within a coherent discourse that could be used in campaigning. The presence of Christian Democrat members of the government (such as Mario Cingolani, Cesare Merzagora, Teresio Guglielmone, Giovanni Pollastrelli and Giuseppe Togni) on the boards of the most important Italian companies was presented as the outcome of a determined illegal strategy aimed at the concentration of power. The analysis accompanying the information took an approach that was essentially faithful to the class-​based foundations of the Communist programme: a direct link was made between the spread of criminality within the ruling class and the lack of proper representation of workers’ interests at the highest levels, and it was claimed that ‘the scandals may cease when the government no longer includes the men of the banks and landowners, but the genuine representatives of the people’.102 The round of local government elections in 1951 and 1952 provided the proving ground for a campaign focused on Christian Democrat financial misappropriation, including the relevant vocabulary, then in its first developmental phase. For the issue of Propaganda published in April 1952 prior to the Roman elections, a list was compiled of the family members and colleagues of pro-​ government local officials who had received aid or assistance; this was then contrasted with the proper and effective management of resources by the local administration in Bologna, where ‘i ricchi’ (the rich) had to pay the highest local taxes. One month later, just before voting day, the Roman edition of L’Unità started to publish cartoons about the ‘divoratori’ (devourers): the leaders of the opposing parties whose greed was so great that they could be pictured eating the whole of Italy served in a sandwich.103 The period during which these metaphorical ideas and references settled into a coherent structure was the campaign against implementation of the new electoral law, which occupied both the PCI and the PSI for the entire first half of 1953. Linguistic references to forks and their use multiplied, to the extent that they became very familiar to the readers; these references were also repeated in the visual imagery of cartoons and posters, often as the result of mutual contamination between PCI and DC material. In one illustration, the three prongs of a large fork held up by De Gasperi made the DC’s shield, with the word ‘Pastas’ at its centre in place of the usual ‘Libertas’.104 In other examples the shield’s cross was formed by a knife and fork, while the central scroll carried the word ‘Pappatas’ (evoking the idiomatic ‘pappa e taci’ [gobble and keep quiet]), and the flags of the centrist parties fluttered from cutlery rather than a pole, as if to represent the distinguishing nature of their political

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programme. Some of the newspaper’s slogans were adopted for leaflets, such as ‘In the booth the forchettoni (“big forks”, or “guzzlers”) can’t see you. Vote against corruption’, which was clearly an adaptation of Guareschi’s poster of 1948 that had said ‘In the election booth God can see you, not Stalin’.105 As a more general point, the use of a visual metaphor from everyday life such as the fork allowed the PCI’s graphic artists to develop a series of messages that were more varied and direct when compared to the seriousness of visual representation in 1948. Particular use was made of devices borrowed from advertising that were well known to the electorate. A poster depicting DC leaders shouldering large pieces of cutlery, for example, copied the layout of a poster advertising a well-​known cutlery brand, while the use of dietary functions as a metaphor for political misdeeds led the Press and Propaganda Section into distributing a poster in which the forchettoni were invited to aid their digestion by drinking the liqueur Cynar.106 Developments in the campaign that had the battle with the forchettoni and the ‘mangerie’ (illicit gains) of the government at its centre were not limited to visual material, but were expressed in every aspect of the PCI’s political communication. At the beginning of May, L’Unità published the ‘Dizionario della greppia’ (Dictionary of the trough), which systematically presented, in alphabetical order, the themes and protagonists in the controversy over the amassing of posts and profits by DC parliamentary deputies; meanwhile, every Monday the back page was given over to a display of satirical material suitable for reuse as the campaign, under the heading ‘Il forchettone di lunedì’. Central to this material were personal attacks, naming and shaming DC deputies who had been particularly greedy in their accumulation of political and financial positions and the related earnings. This followed the application of the directive issued by Gian Carlo Pajetta in his report of February 1953 to the Sezione stampa e propaganda: I believe that the way to triumph over our adversary is by creating slogans and a typology … We must create the ‘Guglielmone’ type, for example; we must publish a photograph of Guglielmone and of all the others who have lots of appointments, and say: ‘this man has this many jobs and earns this much, this one … ’. We must create a situation in which when a Christian Democrat speaks, people should be saying ‘He’s a Guglielmone as well’. 107

In the lists of the ‘cumulisti’ parliamentarians, amassing executive roles in both the public and private sector that were in theory mutually incompatible and all very well paid, Senator Guglielmone was in fact at the forefront:  with his winning total of sixteen management positions in businesses that enjoyed state concessions, he had once been described as ‘Il re delle forchette’ (king of the forks). His name was then reused at the local level, for example in a

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leaflet produced by the Tuscan PCI featuring the Florentine employee Teresio Guglielmone, possibly invented for the occasion: He wishes it to be known that he has nothing in common with Teresio Guglielmone the well-​ known DC forchettone, multimillionaire speculator, grabber of positions and profits, and a typical representative of the guzzlers at the Christian Democrat trough.108

This climate of criticism of the corruption, robbery and greed of the centrist grouping in government allowed the meaning of one of the most well-​known and distinctive expressions in the history of Italian political campaigning, ‘legge truffa’ (swindle law), to acquire its full weight. The phrase had come into regular use in the final two months of 1952, initially in Socialist circles: in the leading articles and parliamentary reports in Avanti! the electoral bill had quickly been termed the ‘“truffa” clericale’ (clerical ‘swindle’), with the noun in inverted commas that were soon to disappear, and then within a few weeks ‘legge truffa’ had replaced the other phrases such as ‘legge ruba-​seggi’ (seat-​stealing law) and the law of the ‘ladri di seggi’ (seat thieves), all of which had portrayed the proposed law as a theft. As for the PCI, as early as 15 November 1952 the circulars of the national Press and Propaganda Section were mentioning the ‘legge truffa’ when addressing their activists.109 However, the expression was slow to be more widely adopted, in part because the PCI leadership was initially less resolute in its opposition to the bill, thinking that the proposal to award the electoral majority a higher proportion of the parliamentary seats could be toned down during the parliamentary process.110 By December, however, the use of the expression ‘legge truffa’ by the writers for Taccuino del Propagandista was encouraging activists to make a direct connection between the proposed legislation and dishonesty:  it was said that Christian Democracy’s ‘desire to defend their regime of exploitation and privilege at all costs’ was the fundamental reason for their wish to engineer an unassailable majority of parliamentary seats.111 From this point onwards the PCI put the full weight of its communication systems behind the campaign against the legislation. The strong link between the campaigns against the ‘truffa’ and the ‘forchettoni’, running in parallel, was made particularly clear in their visual imagery: the votes that the parties within the government intended to ‘steal’, with the adjustment in seat allocation, were represented as money stolen by the majority coalition’s leadership, and as wallets picked from the pockets of voters. A series of visual experiments using the same metaphors culminated in what became one of the most famous campaign posters: an advertisement for the fictitious film ‘L’ultima truffa’ (The Final Swindle) whose actors had the misspelt names of the principal centrist figures, with De Gasperi himself in the starring role, wearing a thief ’s mask and escaping with the loot.112 These visual representations did more than just emphasise the link between the preservation of the government’s power

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that was motivating the electoral legislation and the perpetuation of the systematic robbery that the PCI had been railing against; they also made a much broader connection to the immoral and dishonest attitudes of the government’s representatives, who were portrayed as ready to swindle the country’s citizens over their vote in the same way that they were ready to resort to criminal behaviour whenever they had the opportunity to improve their financial position. The SPES office attempted to rebut the accusations, using words like ‘forchetta’ and ‘truffa’ to describe the Communist approach.113 One DC poster, for example, actually applied ‘forchettoni’ to Togliatti and the PSI leader Pietro Nenni, who were photographed enjoying lavish restaurant meals. The caption pointed out that thanks to the ‘illusions’ of the ‘proletarian’ electors, the leaders of the Left could allow themselves to have ‘princely houses, luxury premises, leisure trips, maids, chauffeurs, and “secretaries” ’:  this final item alluded to the malicious insinuation of an affair between the Communist Secretary Togliatti and the young Communist parliamentary deputy Nilde Iotti. The heading ‘Questa è una truffa’ (This is a swindle) was given to official Soviet photographs from the early 1950s that had been doctored to place Georgy Malenkov closer to Stalin, in order to give him greater legitimacy as the latter’s successor, while an election poster with the caption ‘La pace truffa dei comunisti’ (The Communists’ peace swindle) reiterated the contrast between the PCI’s pronouncements in defence of peace and the bellicose activity of international Communism.114 However, the very fact that the DC’s publicity staff needed to use the term coined by their opponents was an indication of how effective the Communists’ efforts had been. This was later confirmed in the memoirs of Giulio Andreotti: When the day came that the expression ‘legge truffa’ entered everyday jargon, and was even used by deputies in the parliamentary majority when defending it, I think that the great flag of victory could have been raised in the camp of the extreme Left.115

Notes 1 See R. A. Ventresca, From Fascism to Democracy: Culture and Politics in the Italian Election of 1948 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). 2 On this writing see for example A. Wenger, Rome et Moscou: 1900–​1950 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1987); P. Chenaux, L’Église catholique et le communisme en Europe (1917–​1989) (Paris: Cerf, 2009). 3 On the impact of Ledit’s work on Catholic culture, see A. Mariuzzo, ‘Il cattolicesimo organizzato in Italia 1945–​ 1953:  Successo dell’anticomunismo, fallimento dell’egemonia’, Italia Contemporanea, 258 (2010), 9–​12; G. Chamedes, ‘The Vatican, Nazi-​Fascism, and the making of transnational anti-​communism in the 1930s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 51:2 (2016), 261–​90.

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4 ‘Radiomessaggio natalizio di S.S. Pio XII’, L’Osservatore Romano (24–​25 December 1947), pp. 5–​6. 5 F. Alessandrini, I cattolici e il comunismo (Rome: AVE, 2nd edn, 1947), p. 6. 6 For further discussion of Father Lombardi’s reflections on Communism in 1945–​ 46, see A. Mariuzzo, ‘Gli articoli di Padre Lombardi su “Civiltà Cattolica” ’, Quaderno di Storia Contemporanea, 38 (2005), 75–​92. 7 ‘Gli obblighi di coscienza relativamente alle elezioni’, Il Quotidiano (8 April 1948). 8 On the religious and political significance of the Madonna pellegrina in Cold-​War Italy, see A. Bravo, ‘La Madonna pellegrina’, in M. Isnenghi (ed.), I luoghi della memoria: simboli e miti dell’Italia unita (Rome–​Bari: Laterza, 1996), pp. 525–​36. 9 D. Mondrone, ‘Colei che salverà l’Italia’, La Civiltà Cattolica (3 January 1948), pp. 14–​25. 10 See J. H. Ledit, ‘La Russie sous la terreur policière’, Lettres de Rome sur l’Athéisme Moderne (15 July 1938), pp. 209–​15. 11 R. Lombardi, ‘Il programma politico comunista’, La Civiltà Cattolica (18 May 1946), p. 282. 12 R. Lombardi, ‘Discussione del programma comunista’, La Civiltà Cattolica (3 August 1946), pp. 163–​6. 13 I. Giordani, ‘Natura del confronto’, Il Quotidiano (10 February 1948). 14 The richest collection of Italian political posters, from 1946 to the most recent election campaigns, is the Banca dati sul manifesto politico e sociale contemporaneo, curated by the Gramsci Institute of Emilia-​Romagna in Bologna and available online at www.manifestipolitici.it. All posters mentioned in this book, if not specified otherwise, can be found there. 15 C. Adami, ‘Il papa e la pace’, Il Quotidiano (30 August 1947). 16 Manoukian, La presenza sociale del PCI e della DC, p. 337. 17 On this initiative, see Mariuzzo, ‘Il cattolicesimo organizzato in Italia’, 18–​20. 18 See A. Riccardi, Roma ‘Città sacra’? Dalla Conciliazione all’operazione Sturzo (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1979). 19 ‘Votare’, Il Quotidiano (8 October 1947). 20 See A. D’Angelo, De Gasperi, le Destre e l’‘operazione Sturzo’: Voto amministrativo del 1952 e progetti di riforma elettorale (Rome: Studium, 2002). 21 For this interpretation, see Riccardi, Roma ‘Città sacra’?, p. 397. 22 ‘Esortazione di S.S. Pio XII ai fedeli di Roma (10 febbraio 1952)’, La Civiltà Cattolica (16 February 1952), pp. 359–​60. 23 See R. Sani, ‘Roma cattolica: un’idea per un rinnovamento su scala mondiale. La mobilitazione di padre Lombardi’, Humanitas, 40 (1985), 59–​87. 24 R. Lombardi, ‘Il vessillo di un mondo migliore da Dio voluto’, La Civiltà Cattolica (1 March 1952), pp. 477–​86. 25 R. Lombardi, ‘Un grido d’allarme: salvare la patria’, Il Quotidiano (21 May 1952), supplement. 26 Mondrone, ‘Colei che salverà l’Italia’, pp. 22–​3. 27 A. Riccardi, ‘Il Vaticano e la questione della pace nel secondo dopoguerra’, in M. Pacetti, M. Papini and M. Saracinelli (eds), La cultura della pace: dalla Resistenza al Patto Atlantico (Ancona: Il Lavoro Editoriale, 1988), pp. 314–​15. 28 W. Röpke, ‘Sociologia del comunismo’, Il Mondo (10 June 1950), review of J. Monnerot, La sociologie du communisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1949).

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2 9 Nautilus, ‘Due pilastri’, Corriere della Sera (11 September 1949). 30 See C. Falconi, Gedda e l’Azione cattolica (Florence: Parenti, 1958), pp. 151–​5. 31 ‘Esortazione di SS. Pio XII’, pp. 357 and 360. 32 ‘Radiomessaggio natalizio di S.S. Pio XII’, L’Osservatore Romano (24–​25 December 1947). 33 S. Lener, ‘Difesa della religione e competizioni elettorali in Italia’, La Civiltà Cattolica (20 March 1948), p. 570. 34 R. Arata, ‘Per la civiltà’, Il Popolo (9 February 1949). 35 ‘Radiomessaggio natalizio del Sommo Pontefice Pio XII’, L’Osservatore Romano (24–​25 December 1950). 36 ‘La lettera apostolica Veritatem Facientes del Sommo Pontefice all’episcopato al clero e ai cattolici di Romania’, L’Osservatore Romano (28 March 1952). 37 The encyclical Orientales Ecclesias was issued on 15 December 1952; it is available online at www.vatican.va/​holy_​father/​pius_​xii/​encyclicals/​documents/​hf_​p-​xii_​ enc_​15121952_​orientales_​it.html. 38 The documentation is in AAC, PG VII, box 3. 39 I. Giordani, ‘La Chiesa del silenzio’, Il Popolo (25 January 1953). 40 ‘Il cardinal Wyszynski’, Il Popolo (2 October 1953). 41 G. Guizzardi, ‘Potere ideologico, organizzazioni e classi sociali’, in M. Isnenghi and S. Lanaro (eds), La Democrazia cristiana dal fascismo al 18 aprile: movimento cattolico e Democrazia cristiana nel Veneto, 1945–​1948 (Venice: Marsilio, 1978), p. 361. 42 See G. Petracchi, ‘I gesuiti e il comunismo tra le due guerre’, Nuova Storia Contemporanea, 8 (2004), 22–​3. 43 See G.  De Vries, ‘La Chiesa russa sotto il regime sovietico’, La Civiltà Cattolica (4 May 1946), pp.  178–​9; G.  M. Schweigl, ‘Vita cattolica nell’URSS’, La Civiltà Cattolica (21 February 1948), p. 342. 44 ‘Il cardinale Mindszenty è stato condannato all’ergastolo’, Il Messaggero (9 February 1949). 45 E. Rusconi, ‘Perseguitati e oppressi hanno il loro primate’, Oggi (17 Februray 1949). 46 This quotation is from an article in L’Osservatore Romano (1 March 1949)  that summarised the articles published in Il Messaggero. 47 Traguardo (1–​15 February 1950; 14–​28 February 1949; 1–​15 March 1949); A.  Del Sasso, ‘Perché i cattolici non possono votare PCI’, supplement to Il Popolo (12 May 1953). 48 See Casella, Clero e politica in Italia, pp. 382–​404. 49 On Czechoslovakia, see Il Messaggero (21 June 1949). For more general stories, see, for example, ‘Come la Chiesa di Roma si difende nei paesi comunisti’, Il Messaggero (23 July 1950). 50 Candido (22 February 1953). 51 S. Cavazza, ‘Comunicazione di massa e simbologia politica nelle campagne elettorali del secondo dopoguerra’, in P. L. Ballini and M. Ridolfi (eds), Storia delle campagne elettorali in Italia (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2002), pp. 208–​9. 52 See R. Lombardi, ‘Una “mano tesa” minacciosa’, La Civiltà Cattolica (5 May 1945), pp. 147–​59, and ‘Dalla mano tesa al pugno chiuso’, La Civiltà Cattolica (7 February 1948), pp. 238–​51. 53 See D. Menozzi, Letture politiche di Gesù: dall’Ancien Régime alla Rivoluzione (Brescia: Paideia, 1979).

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54 See R. Zangheri, Storia del socialismo italiano, vol. 2: Dalle prime lotte nella Valle Padana ai fasci siciliani (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), pp. 369–​81. 55 See R. Pisano (ed.), Il paradiso socialista:  La propaganda socialista in Italia alla fine dell’Ottocento attraverso gli opuscoli di Critica Sociale (Milan:  Franco Angeli, 1986); S. Dominici, La lotta senz’odio:  Il socialismo evangelico del ‘Seme’ (1901–​1915) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1995). 56 A copy of the document is held in ACS, DGPS, G 1944–​1986, folder 70 G/​47. 57 Avanti! (11 March 1948 and 15 April 1948). 58 Propaganda (20 March 1948). 59 ‘Chi sono i comunisti? Cosa vogliono? Che cosa stanno a fare al mondo?’, Propaganda (11 April 1948). 60 P. Togliatti, ‘Il Partito comunista nella lotta contro il fascismo e per la democrazia’ (Speech to the Second National Council of the PCI), in Palmiro Togliatti. Opere, vol. 5, ed. L. Gruppi (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1984), p. 129. 61 P. Togliatti, ‘Corso sugli avversari’ (Course taught at the School of the Communist International in Moscow, January–​April 1935), in Palmiro Togliatti: Opere, vol. 3.2, ed. E. Ragionieri (Rome:  Editori Riuniti, 1974), p.  533. The lessons on Fascism Togliatti delivered in his Corso sugli avversari are now collected in P. Togliatti, Sul fascismo, ed. G. Vacca (Rome–​Bari: Laterza, 2004). 62 P. Togliatti, ‘Rapporto al VI Congresso del Partito comunista italiano’, in Palmiro Togliatti:  Opere, vol. 5, ed. L. Gruppi (Rome:  Editori Riuniti, 1984), pp. 402–​4. 63 Propaganda (15 January 1948). For further analysis of the significance of the Vatican’s financial affairs during the twentieth century, and their importance in sustaining the international administrative and diplomatic organisations of the Catholic Church after the loss of the Papal States, see J. F. Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican, 1850–​1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 64 L’Unità (18 March 1948). 65 ‘La relazione di Basso sulla lotta socialista per la democrazia’, Avanti! (16 December 1947). 66 Don Basilio (13 November 1947 and 7 September 1947). 67 ‘Per essere con Cristo bisogna votare contro la DC’, Don Basilio (4 April 1948). The quotation is actually from Matthew 6:24, misplaced by Don Basilio. 68 ‘Speculazione ignobile’, L’Osservatore Romano (7 March 1948). 69 Palmiro Togliatti, ‘All’ombra delle Sacre chiavi’, L’Unità (14 March 1948). 70 See, for example, ‘Vaticano, frati minori e gesuiti mobilitati nel traffico dello zucchero CICA’, L’Unità (30 March 1948). 71 Don Basilio (21 March 1948). 72 See the pamphlet ‘Chiesa del Silenzio?’, distributed by Communist activists in 1953. A copy is in APC, 0401 1279. 73 Documenti segreti della diplomazia vaticana, 2 vols (Lugano: SCOE, 1948). 74 See, in particular, ‘Perché il preteso diario è un falso costruito male’, Il Quotidiano (8 April 1948); V. Favori, ‘La grande risata del Vaticano’, Oggi (18 April 1948). 75 Propaganda (30 November 1949). Although ‘Dio ha scelto coloro che noi chiamiamo poveri’ was attributed to St John, it was actually a liberal translation of the Epistle of James (2:5).

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76 See the range of headings for comments, including ‘Il Vaticano contro il Risorgimento’, ‘L’Unità d’Italia bestia nera del Vaticano’, ‘Il Vaticano contro i grandi italiani’, ‘Con le armi straniere contro la libertà del popolo italiano’ and ‘Contro il progresso e la civiltà’, Propaganda (30 November 1949). 77 I. Giordani, ‘Cattolicesimo e comunismo’, Il Quotidiano (5 October 1945). 78 N. Poli, ‘Aperta la Porta santa da un cardinale diciassettenne’, Avanti! (26 April 1950). 79 N. Poli, ‘Sfuggivano alle persecuzioni solo “quelle” di alto rango’, Avanti! (2 March 1950). 80 See the following articles in Il Paese: M. Alessandrini, ‘Avignone “colosso feudale” pieno d’intrighi e di corruzione’ (7 April 1952); G. Gabrielli, ‘Sisto IV contro il Magnifico in lotta sanguinosa e spietata’ (8 November 1950); M.  Alessandrini, ‘Deriso per le sue origini di porcaro il futuro papa strappò l’orecchio a un collega’ (16 June 1950), and ‘Cinque anni di galera per un candido bacio’ (27 July 1950). 81 See G.  Lupi, ‘Un succedersi di colpi mortali dati e ricevuti col sorriso sulle labbra’, Il Paese (17 December 1952); L. Callari, ‘Un maiale scannato per la salute del cardinale’, Il Paese (19 January 1953). 82 This analysis is presented in S. Bellassai, La morale comunista:  Pubblico e privato nella rappresentazione del PCI (1947–​1956) (Rome: Carocci, 2000); see especially pp. 115–​22. 83 ‘La conception soviétique de la famille’, Lettres de Rome sur l’Athéisme Moderne (March 1936), pp. 53–​5. 84 ‘L’école soviétique et la religion’, Lettres de Rome sur l’Athéisme Moderne (July–​August 1935), pp. 1–​5; ‘Où en est de l’école soviétique’, Lettres de Rome sur l’Athéisme Moderne (1 September 1937), pp. 257–​62; ‘Le problème de l’éducation en URSS’, Lettres de Rome sur l’Athéisme Moderne (1–​15 August 1938), pp. 227–​32. 85 ‘Le problème de l’éducation en URSS’, Lettres de Rome sur l’Athéisme Moderne (January 1936), pp. 1–​4. 86 See S. Pivato, I comunisti mangiano i bambini: storia di una leggenda (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013). 87 On the API see Bellassai, La morale comunista, pp. 321–​35; S. Franchini, Diventare grandi con Il Pioniere, 1950–​1962: politica, progetti di vita e identità di genere nella piccola posta di un giornalino di sinistra (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2006). 88 For further discussion see M. Barbanti, ‘Cultura cattolica, lotta anticomunista e moralità pubblica (1948–​1960)’, Rivista di Storia Contemporanea, 21 (1992), 157–​70. 89 A comprehensive collection of articles and material used in this campaign is kept in AAC, GIAC, box 844, folders 2, 5 and 6; box 845, folder 7; and box 846, folder 12. 90 See, for example, L. Cardini, ‘Il sasso al collo’, Il Quotidiano (18 May 1950). 91 Traguardo (11 June 1950). 92 See, for example, L. Bedeschi, Dissacrano l’infanzia! I  pionieri d’Italia (Bologna: ABES, 1950). 93 There is a copy in AAC, GIAC, box 844, folder 2. 94 ‘Un terrificante elenco’, L’Unità (24 May 1950). 95 Supplement to Propaganda (20 January–​5 February 1948). 96 Bellassai, La morale comunista, pp. 140–​1. 97 ‘Occhio sul mondo’, supplement to Il Calendario del Popolo (December 1950), p. 17. 98 Some campaigning material from this period was collected by the police, and is now kept in ACS, DGPS, Affari Generali Riservati, box 29, folder K1B.

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99 See G. Gozzini and R. Martinelli, Dall’attentato a Togliatti all’VIII Congresso, vol. 7 of P. Spriano (ed.), Storia del Partito comunista italiano (Turin: Einaudi, 1998), pp. 466–​7. 100 A. Coppola, ‘Gli scandali e il malcostume dilagano tra gli “alti papaveri” democristiani’, L’Unità (19 May 1950). 101 ‘Il caso Viola’, L’Unità (25 May 1950). 102 Propaganda (March 1951), p. 2. 103 L’Unità (16 May 1952). 104 L’Unità (9 April 1953) 105 There is a collection of these flyers in ACS, DGPS, Affari Generali Riservati, 1953, box 21, folder G1 A ag I. 106 On the development of this strategy, see also Novelli, C’era una volta il PCI, pp. 84–​93. 107 Problemi della propaganda nella preparazione della lotta elettorale, report of 13 February 1953, in APC, Archivio M, part  13, box 73, # 6a. Part of this is published in G.  Quagliariello, La legge elettorale del 1953 (Bologna:  Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 534–​48. 108 Published in D. G. Audino and G. Vittori (eds), Via il regime della forchetta: Autobiografia del PCI nei primi anni ‘50 attraverso i manifesti elettorali (Rome: Savelli, 1976). 109 See the PCI’s Circular 128 of 15 November 1952, on ‘Campagna per il proporzionale’, a copy of which was retained by the police and is now in ACS, MI, Gabinetto Partiti Politici, box 69, folder 175 P 93. 110 See Quagliariello, La legge elettorale del 1953, pp. 55–​7. 111 Taccuino del Propagandista (15 January 1953). 112 Much of the visual material used in the 1953 campaign has been published in an exhibition catalogue:  Senato della Repubblica (Archivio storico), Fu vera truffa? Stampa e manifesti delle elezioni del 1953: mostra documentaria (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003). 113 Advice on this was first published in Traguardo in the issue of 15 December 1952. 114 Copies are conserved in ACS, DGPS, Affari Generali Riservati, 1953, box 21, folder G1 A ag I. 115 Quoted in F. Malgeri, De Gasperi e l’età del centrismo (1948–​1954), vol. 2 of F. Malgeri (ed.), Storia della Democrazia Cristiana, 6 vols (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1988), p. 184.

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3 Freedom and democracy

The first Italian studies of political language, published in 1960 in a collection edited by Paolo Facchi, emphasised that the semantic field relating to the concept of ‘democracy’ was used by all parties, with the partial exception of the neo-​Fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement: MSI), with reference to their own political side.1 This mode of self-​description was a way of refusing to recognise their opponents’ allegiance to values that everyone regarded as essential for political coexistence after the defeat of Nazism and Fascism. Within the discourses of the different political cultures, however, the term ‘democracy’ took on very different meanings. Both for the Communists and, even more so, for the heterogeneous sphere of anti-​Communism, a definition of democratic action that related to the specific characteristics of their own ‘front’ was primarily derived, in a negative fashion, from the contrast with the ‘other’: an ‘other’ that was often compared with the enemy in the recent war, now seen as encapsulating the complete opposite of democratic values.

The Popular Front: ‘progressive democracy’ and anti-​Fascist democracy Progressive democracy looks not to the past, but to the future. Progressive democracy makes no truce with Fascism, but destroys any possibility of its return. In Italy, progressive democracy will destroy all remnants of feudalism, and will solve the problem of land by giving this to those who work it; it will deprive the plutocratic groups of any possibility that they might once again return … to take the government into their hands.2

In this extract from one of Togliatti’s most important speeches during the numerous rallies held straight after his return to Italy, he set out the contribution that the Communist Party was preparing to make to the reconstruction

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of the Italian political system in the period after the war. Most commentators have placed this rather unclear definition of ‘progressive democracy’ in the context of Communist membership of Italy’s governments of anti-​ Fascist unity between 1944 and 1947. Its connection to the moderate and conciliatory approach of the PCI while it was part of the government meant that the programme of ‘progressive democracy’ could not really be compared ‘to the plans for society, with identical or similar definitions, that in much the same period came to be considered the objectives that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe aimed to achieve’; the different geopolitical situation prevented ‘the call for a multi-​party system and a mixed economy … from becoming … a cover for the unscrupulous seizure of power and the destruction of political democracy’.3 The implementation of ‘progressive democracy’ continued to be the rallying cry even after the PCI had passed into the ranks of the opposition, and especially following the call to ‘close ranks’ at Cominform’s founding conference in Szklarska Poręba in September 1947, when the diametrical opposition between the Western and Eastern blocs became crystal clear. Until then, the term had been used to describe the approach of unity and collaboration with the ‘bourgeois’ forces of anti-​Fascism; the expression used remained unchanged, but from that point onwards ‘progressive democracy’ began to be understood in terms of the new rationale of contraposition that was to typify Cold War Communism. In his key speech to the Cominform conference, setting out the approach that had been developed in Moscow for the years ahead, Andrei Zhdanov posited the existence of two ‘camps’, one ‘anti-​democratic and imperialist’ and the other ‘democratic and anti-​imperialist’; the latter ‘had succeeded in making … progressive democratic transformations that bourgeois democracy was no longer capable of achieving’.4 In his subsequent report to the PCI’s Central Committee, Togliatti confirmed acceptance of the Zhdanov line in Italy: The terms of the current struggle … are between a reactionary bourgeois democracy and progressive democracy … either … there will be a relentless return towards anti-​democratic reactionary forms, or our position, for progressive democracy, will be established.5

Thus from the second half of 1947 onwards, the term ‘progressive democracy’ contained within it two ideas mixed together: its place as a stage towards the construction of socialism, and opposition to the forces of bourgeois ‘reaction’. The channels of political and ideological education for activists transmitted a similar approach, locating the expression within a cultural framework that explicitly related to developments in Eastern Europe. Giulio Trevisani’s Piccola enciclopedia del socialismo del comunismo, a reference book for disseminating party doctrine among the party’s grassroots activists which first appeared in 1945, described ‘democrazia progressiva’ in its revised edition of 1951 as ‘a transitional

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form’ aimed at ‘creating the conditions’ for achieving a ‘socialist democracy’, exemplified by the Soviet political system in which the divergent interests that derived from class differences had disappeared. The book gave Czechoslovakia, Poland and Bulgaria as the best examples of the application of ‘progressive democracy’, and said that ‘the Communist Parties in the other countries were fighting’ to follow their example.6 In the period when the Democratic Popular Front was forming, around these formulations of doctrine there was a development of references to the phenomenon of ‘progressive democracy’ within communication by both the PCI and PSI; these references were not always systematically organised, but are important if viewed as a whole. As early as the summer of 1947, and with greater conviction in the early weeks of 1948, the terms ‘paesi a democrazia progressiva’, ‘paesi di nuova democrazia’ and ‘democrazie popolari’ (‘countries of progressive democracy, ‘countries of new democracy’ and ‘people’s democracies’) were used to describe those territories where, in the words of Avanti!’s editors, ‘the revolutionary forces had been … liberated’ by the ‘Red Army’.7 The same ideas were expressed in Vie Nuove: [In these countries] power not only derives … from the people, but is firmly in the hands of the people, who govern and administer the state according to the interests shared by the vast majority of the population … [and] all citizens feels they are taking part in the life of the State, and are connected to its needs and its achievements.8

During the same period, the same terminology was used when presenting the electorate with the Front’s new political plan. This was supposed to be, in the words of Togliatti, the means of ‘finding Italy’s way of achieving a new democracy’.9 This was to be a democracy, the Socialists’ Lelio Basso added, ‘not just in the formal sense, but in its essence … understood as the real participation of the workers in the social, economic and political life of the country’, and the opposite of the ‘parliamentary democracies [that] showed themselves to be more aristocratic or paternalistic than popular, and more government by the elites or, even worse, by cliques than government by the people’.10 In a similar vein, Mario Scoccimarro of the PCI described the Front’s programme as ‘an abandonment of the old terms of a strictly parliamentary democracy, based on the interplay between the parties … leading the working class to seek and form a system of alliances between the different elements of the lower orders’.11 As the election approached, newspaper articles drew increasingly direct comparisons between the Italian context and the situation in Eastern Europe: the Bulgarian ‘Front of the Fatherland’ was said to be the ‘equivalent of our Popular Front’, because it comprised all society’s ‘democratic organised forces’, and the

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groups that opposed it ‘inevitably ended up … coming together in the sphere of Anglo-​Saxon interests, placing themselves at the service of foreigners’.12 A few months earlier, Gian Carlo Pajetta had identified Bulgaria as an example to follow in order to resume speaking ‘a language that Europe had spoken for many months’, ‘a “lingua ciellenistica” ’ (a language of the CLN: the Committee of National Liberation); he thus drew attention to an aspect of the Marxist Left’s relationship with the concept of democracy that continued to distinguish it for decades to come.13 In his very first speech after returning to Italy, Togliatti had made it clear that ‘in a democratic and progressive Italy there ought to be … various parties’, and that the political forces that ‘had a basis of support among the people and a democratic and national programme would remain united’, within the spectrum of organisations that made up the great anti-​Fascist alliance.14 The forces of the Left that were excluded from the government in May 1947 saw the breakdown of this broad collaboration as an assault on the democratic experience, and from its foundation the Popular Front was presented as a union that was open to ‘all the forces that are loyal [to the] spirit of the Resistance’, which the Christian Democrats had violated by ending ‘cooperation’. In short, the parties of the Left claimed to represent the ‘four-​ fifths of the electors’ who had voted for the parties within the anti-​Fascist coalition in 1946 (including those voting for the DC, which was already under attack at that point).15 In this altered political situation, the Popular Front became ‘the equivalent of both the Anti-​Fascist Alliance and Committees of National Liberation’.16 Emphasis was naturally given to a ‘fundamental element’ of ‘progressive’ regimes: ‘the role as guide of the proletariat –​led by the Communist Party, the Communist and Socialist Party, or a unified party’.17 In Avanti!, in particular, the Popular Front was promoted in terms of its strong representativeness of society generally:  it was a body ‘open to all capabilities and aspirations to bring about democracy’ and to ‘men of all parties and of no party’.18 The editors especially attempted to convey an image of the alliance as ‘plurale’, highlighting the involvement of small movements outside the major parties such as the radical Catholics grouped around the former partisan Ada Alessandrini, and promoting initiatives that were well supported by ‘independent’ figures, such as the Alleanza per la Difesa della Cultura (Alliance for the Defence of Culture). The limited room for manoeuvre allowed by the Zhdanov approach was of course a constraint on the actual breadth of involvement in the Front: it was difficult for groups that were not susceptible to the ideas of the Marxist Left to be involved, given that the founding values of the alliance were openness ‘to labour taking the road to power’, and removal of the obstacles that the ‘economic structure of bourgeois capitalist society’ placed in its way.19 This apparent shift in meaning derived from an increasing overlap between the concepts of ‘progressive democracy’ and ‘democracy’ pure

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and simple:  increasingly, the forms of government that did not envisage a leading role for the Socialist and Communist Parties were viewed as unsuited to ensuring ‘true’ democracy, and in the end any political forces hostile to the programmes of the Popular Front were no longer seen as democratic. Just at the point when Italians had stopped talking in the lingua ciellenistica mourned by Pajetta, with the exclusion from government of the PCI and PSI in 1947, the first doubts were voiced about the democratic functioning of the DC and other parties in the government coalition, and then circulated with increasing persistence. In January 1947, with the first hints of a possible break in anti-​Fascist unity, a number of Communist representatives had started to say that a government based on a simple parliamentary majority, in line with the norms of ‘bourgeois democracy’, would be less legitimate than one based on the ‘unity … of all the working people’.20 Following the upheavals in the government in May, the PCI’s publicity machine geared itself up for its first campaign as an opposition party. In the national and local press, and in a series of leaflets distributed throughout the country, the vote of confidence that had been secured by a majority segment of the Constituent Assembly was deemed insufficient, or indeed irrelevant; the Communists began to refer to De Gasperi as the leader of a ‘presidential government’, or better still as a ‘cancelliere’ (‘chancellor’), evoking the institutional systems of Central Europe in which the government had not been accountable to parliament.21 Just a few weeks later, in the newly established Propaganda, the centrist forces started to be portrayed in an increasingly negative light in a column that listed points of comparison between the two camps under the heading ‘Vera democrazia/​ falsa democrazia’ (True democracy/​false democracy):  there was no longer any acknowledgement of democratic behaviour by the other side, and the language used now ignored the distinctions that had previously been made between ‘bourgeois’ and ‘progressive’ democracy. From that point onwards, and for the rest of its life within the Italian republic, the PCI used the commemorations of Italy’s liberation on 25 April as an opportunity to claim the role of guardian of the ‘spirit of the Resistance’, seen as the indispensable element underpinning the spirit of democracy, to the point that the two were viewed as one and the same. At the same time, adaptation for current use of the ideals of the Resistance, seen as the necessary and sufficient reference points for taking action, was accompanied by a refusal to recognise that these were shared by its political opponents.22 To summarise, the Communist Party’s attempt to commandeer the symbolic capital of the semantic field relating to the term ‘democrazia’, by using the adjective ‘democratico’ exclusively to describe itself, resulted from the increasingly strong identification made between the PCI, anti-​ Fascism and democracy, complemented by the strengthening of its opponent’s identification with ‘fascismo’.

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Fascism in democracy: the battle against the ‘totalitarian’ DC The origins of the ‘governo nero’ During the 1930s, and even more so during the Second World War, a particular interpretation of the Fascist phenomenon and the ‘objective basis’ for its rise, relating it to the concept of class struggle, became firmly established within international Communist culture. In Georgi Dimitrov’s classic formulation for the seventh Comintern congress in 1935, the Fascist phenomenon was nothing other than ‘open dictatorship by the most reactionary, chauvinistic and imperialist elements of financial capital’. Once the PCI was again able to operate openly, it too used this interpretative framework for any discussion of the Fascist enemy. There were no references to more sophisticated Communist analysis of the phenomenon, such as that by Togliatti in the series of lectures he had given in 1935, at the School of the Communist International in Moscow, in which he had acknowledged the mass dimension of the Fascist presence in Italian society.23 One reason why the partial and one-​sided definition of Fascism as capitalist dictatorship was so successful within Communist circles was certainly its potential for development ‘in variable forms’, as Annie Kriegel ably explains:  through this, any situation involving class struggle could also be described in terms of ‘Fascism’ and ‘anti-​Fascism’.24 In post-​war Italy, the first attempt to describe the objective basis of Fascism in these terms occurred in 1946 with the wide circulation of Lucio Lombardo Radice’s book Fascismo e anticomunismo. Appunti e ricordi. Lombardo Radice was a young intellectual, and one of the most prominent figures then moving towards the PCI. He charted the history of recent years and showed how every form of hostility towards Communism had been ‘a weapon in Fascism’s battle against democracy’, as each had aroused an irrational ‘repugnance’ towards the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, an eventuality that was the ‘summit’ of ‘democratic life’.25 Thus while anti-​Fascist collaboration was still at its height, there was a warning that the Fascist threat could be concealed within any approach showing hostility towards the PCI. Togliatti had voiced a similar warning in his speech of April 1945: The battle against Communism inevitably becomes a struggle that breaks up the front fighting for democracy and freedom, because it is futile to think that this front could be solid if it does not rest on the unity of the workers … We must put ourselves on guard against slander and mistrust of the Communist Party. This was how Fascism began.26

The political crisis of May 1947, concluding with the exclusion of the Left from government, was once again a watershed event, in that it pushed the communication channels close to the PCI into attacking the Christian Democrats with

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the powerful weapon that identified hostility towards the Communist Party with Fascism. While the Press and Propaganda Section developed the campaign against De Gasperi’s ‘chancellorship’, writers for Don Basilio made the most of the more cutting tones that satirical publications could employ. They alternated between ‘chancellorship’ and ‘regime’, and described the ejection of the Left from the government as a ‘colpetto di stato’ (mini coup d’état), because the supposed ‘broadening of the ministerial base’ had mutated into ‘only Christian Democrats in the government’.27 Over the following weeks the magazine’s tone became even stronger, and it started to use the term ‘governo nero’ (black government) to describe the single-​party Christian Democrat government created in May. Given the magazine’s anti-​clerical position, this expression accommodated references to both the Fascist Blackshirts and the colour worn by those in religious orders; from 1946 onwards, there were regular references in Don Basilio to the Church’s unreserved support for Fascism, culminating in the statement that if only the Vatican had not given its approval to Fascism and Nazism, Hitler would have remained a house painter, Mussolini would never have gained total power, and the war would not have destroyed Europe.28 The DC of this ‘colpetto d’état’ was thus portrayed in the magazine as a new version, in both its men and its methods, of the authoritarian regime for which the Church had been jointly responsible: Can it be only a coincidence that Catholic parties and the men that come out of them, as quickly as they can and wherever possible, always choose dictatorship? Among today’s dictators, most are Catholic, and strictly Catholic … Taking power in Catholic states … is not possible without reaching an agreement with the Vatican: after this, there will be an open road and blessings: Pavelic and Mussolini understood this … This is why free men relentlessly oppose the DC, which is the most recent expression of eternal clerical politics.29

These comments were matched by increasingly harsh verbal and visual references to current events and protagonists. In a cartoon on 12 August 1947, De Gasperi delighted in the fact that Italian reconstruction was more efficient than that in Germany, ‘because while with us Fascism has returned to power, in Germany Nazism has not yet risen again’.30 A month or so later, a caricature appeared of Minister for the Interior Mario Scelba with his nose as a Fascist bundle of rods and his oval face distorted to echo the shape of the Fascist Party symbol.31 Scelba was accompanied in a number of cartoons by his ‘zelantissimi sbirri’ (very zealous cops): these were sometimes depicted as tonsured members of a religious order, making the sign of the cross, and sometimes as black-​shirted Fascist militia men in the service of the regime or large landowners, carrying clubs blessed by a priest and ready to assault anyone in their path.32 A regular feature for the readers was ‘La colonna infame’ (The column of infamy), which every week shone

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the spotlight on little-​known members of the Christian Democrat governmental underworld, revealing their misdemeanours under the Fascist regime and their ‘rehabilitation’ thanks to the efforts of influential prelates. The campaign in Don Basilio had an immediate impact within Communist circles: between the summer and autumn of 1947 the expression ‘governo nero’, which described De Gasperi as ‘Fascist, clerical, and manipulated by dark and dangerous interests all at the same time’, featured in leaflets produced locally, articles in affiliated publications, and wall posters.33 In the campaigning material produced by the central Sezione stampa e propaganda, references to Fascism in relation to news items were initially indirect. This can be seen in a poster for general distribution produced in September, which ‘denounced … the sudden attack by De Gasperi and his cronies’, where the text was accompanied by images of Fascist militia members and dead partisans as a reminder of what the ‘democratic forces’ had faced in order to achieve the victories that were now under threat.34 From late 1947 onwards, as the election season started, a set of linguistic references became established that was increasingly explicit in its identification of the Christian Democrat government with Fascism. In particular, the parties’ official positions started to overtly reflect this approach:  the identification of capitalism with Fascism was put forward with increasing clarity as the fundamental ideological basis for opposition to the new ‘regime’. The methods used by the police to suppress any protests had already been criticised in cartoons and posters, which even showed photographs of the victims’ corpses above slogans such as ‘1948 will not be like 1922’; in a leading article by Luigi Longo, these became ‘police and dictatorial methods’ that, after the ‘coup d’état’, had to be employed by a government which with increasing openness opposed the ‘programmes of the parties of the war of national liberation’, and which was described as ‘a genuine dictatorship by the most reactionary members of Christian Democracy and by the bosses’.35 Shortly afterwards, in the news pages of L’Unità, the riot police were described as ‘sturm-​batalionen’ and the protesters arrested as ‘rastrellati’ (rounded up), in reference to life under the Fascist Italian Social Republic.36 By February 1948 the police had become a DC ‘militia’.37 Finally, one of the Democratic Popular Front’s first official communications concluded by accusing the DC of ‘betraying the trust of its popular base, which it had used … as a shield for its reactionary politics, moving towards support for the interests of those social groups that identified … with Fascism and Nazism’.38 The national Press and Propaganda Section used special issues of Propaganda to marshal these themes for use in the final stages of the election campaign. Dimitrov’s description of Fascism became the starting point for the claim that ‘Christian Democracy has its social roots in those groups of the financial, economic, industrial and landowning oligarchy which, having nourished Fascism and the direct dictatorship, are now fighting fiercely to save at least the system

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of the concealed dictatorship’.39 Not long after, Propaganda’s writers also equated the use of the police in breaking up various protests with practices under Mussolini, and it was claimed that the decision not to prosecute former leaders proved that ‘the DC and Fascism were serving the same interests’, and consisted of essentially the same men. As a further demonstration of this, in plans for newspaper-​style wall posters on the subject, activists were encouraged to contrast the ‘22,960 years’ of prison to which Communists had been sentenced with the lives that Christian Democrat leaders had had: sheltered in a library, like De Gasperi; quietly living and working in Italy, like Scelba; or indeed as members of the National Fascist Party, like the ministers Giuseppe Togni and Giuseppe Pella, whose photograph as a Blackshirt had been printed before.40 In parallel with events in the Communist domain, from the second half of 1947 the identification between Fascism and the current centrist government was also being strongly made in the PSI’s Avanti! Here, however, the role played by the relationship between the government and major capital in Italy’s alleged weakening by Fascism was described in a direct and almost instructional fashion, as if it was felt that activists and the higher ranks needed to have an ideological education in the approach that by then had been generally accepted within the nascent Popular Front as the official interpretation. In August 1947 Edoardo Rossi accused De Gasperi of having ‘given a jolt to the great values … [of] anti-​ Fascism’, adopting the expression ‘governo nero’. He went on: Prime Minister De Gasperi, on top of making a business agreement among financial groups, has evidently developed another agreement  –​which we would call a crime  –​with Italy’s most reactionary groups, whose origins go a long way back before (or after) 25 July [1943], and go on into the ‘Social Republic’ of Salò.41

When plans to establish the Popular Front were announced in December, the PSI formally proposed ‘to bring together all those Italians who fought against Fascism, and who now realise that Fascism … was represented … by the plutocratic oligarchies who dominated Italy at the time and who now, through the DC, are dominating it again’.42 As 1948 began, expressions such as ‘regime’ and ‘clerico-​fascismo’ (clerical Fascism) were being used in the news sections, while violent episodes involving the police drew comparisons with the events of 1922.43 In February, with the election campaign ahead, a leading article explicitly linked Fascism, capitalism and the DC government: De Gasperi’s party … has become the guarantor of the party of capital, both internally and abroad … just as Fascism was in the past ventennio [twenty-​year period] … If, after liberating the country and founding the republican and democratic state, the people’s movement does not attack the old capitalist

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order … it will be driven back to its starting position, not necessarily to Fascism in the Mussolinian sense of the word, but to domination by the large landowners in the South and the industrial monopolists in the North … [which is] equivalent to dictatorship.44

Like the Communists, the Socialists prepared for the election in the belief that the choice lay between, on the one hand, a return to authoritarianism and, on the other, a ‘radical and total break in the Italian state’s line of continuity’ based on the socialist interpretation of the experience of the Resistance, with no real room for other possibilities.45

From the ‘governo nero’ to ‘Christian Democrat totalitarianism’ With the election over, there was no relaxation in the tone of the debate; the language that had developed in the interpretation of the DC as ‘Fascist’ found its way into the first document produced by the PCI after 18 April, a resolution by the Central Committee in May 1948. In this, the ‘Christian Democrat “victory” ’ had made evident the ‘violation of the electoral freedom of the Italian people’, which ‘highlighted … the difficulty that the reactionary conservative forces now have in achieving popular support with a freely and fairly expressed vote’. The argument was further developed: The DC, around which the most reactionary groups of the bourgeoisie come together, moves towards the reconstruction and defence of the ruling positions of those privileged capitalist groups that dominated in the previous ventennio, and have been responsible for the Fascist dictatorship and war … In Italian domestic politics the DC’s leaning towards the monopoly of power and the creation of a clerical and conservative regime jeopardises our democratic victories … The DC favours the creation of a religious and police state, and therefore also threatens … the citizen’s freedom of conscience and basic rights. The anti-​ Communism of the DC [is] an exact reproduction of the anti-​Communism of Fascism.46

Thus not only had the ‘Fascist’ interpretation of government policies not been abandoned, but subsequently it gained even greater currency. Following the attempt to assassinate Togliatti in July 1948, Mario Scoccimarro argued in the PCI magazine Rinascita that ‘we are setting out towards a regime … which, although still not openly Fascist, is increasingly permeated by the Fascist spirit’.47 The identification between the DC, capitalism and Fascism also cropped up frequently in late 1949 and early 1950, when a very tense atmosphere was generated by protests that ended in tragedy after the police’s involvement. After the death of some agricultural labourers at a demonstration in Celano, in Puglia, a leading article in Avanti! called on ‘those Italians who remember

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the Fascist crimes of the previous post-​war period … to open their eyes’, and described the incident as ‘a typical class crime, a crime against agricultural labourers … carried out and clearly organised in the form of a Fascist style of criminality’.48 Communist and Socialist verdicts on this were reinforced when Scelba proposed that the problems posed by heightened social conflict should be addressed exclusively as a public order issue, and that the tension should be dealt with by ‘civil defence laws’ that would give special powers to the police forces in the event of serious need. Although the draft legislation arrived in the Chamber greatly toned down thanks to De Gasperi’s opposition to the severe stance taken by the Minister for the Interior, L’Unità was quick to revive the language of the Fascist era in its description of the proposals as ‘leggi eccezionali’ (exceptional laws).49 Elsewhere, these were subsequently termed ‘provisions of a genuine Fascist stamp’ that were creating ‘a kind of voluntary militia for national security’ in order to address the unrest.50 Ottavio Pastore, editor of the Turin edition of L’Unità, used these events as the cue for a ‘Discorso agli antifascisti’ (Address to the anti-​Fascists), in which the supposed authoritarian origins of the government demonstrated the correctness of the Communist diagnosis: Preventing the rebirth of Fascism is not … possible without vanquishing those particular groups, the large estate owners and the big monopoly capitalists, who now have their party in the parliamentary majority of the DC, and their government with De Gasperi.51

By the spring of 1950, this sort of comparative language was fully back in use in all publications on the left. In their commentary on the tragic outcome of demonstrations and the government’s draft legislation, leader writers in Il Paese discussed the DC’s ‘dictatorial supremacy’ and a ‘return of Fascism’.52 The civil defence laws were described by Mario Berlinguer as ‘a coup d’état’ that ‘recalled  … the measures introduced by Mussolini’s regime after 3 January [1925]’, and which turned the police into a ‘new militia’ in the service of the landowners.53 The ‘civil defence’ measures came to be described as a ‘legge superfascista’ (super-​Fascist law). However, it was mainly in Avanti! that the issue of ‘civil defence’ was addressed by emphasising the parallel between the centrist government and Fascism. One of the first editorials on this located the Minister for the Interior’s proposals in a wider ideological context: Historically, in terms of political ideology, Fascism has been characterised by … the establishment of the executive’s excessive power over the citizen, and in social terms by the seizure of power by privileged minorities against workers’ organisations … How can the actions of the Christian Democrat government be understood, if not as an attempt to achieve the very same ends …?54

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Over the following months there were almost daily comments on the ‘authentic Fascist spirit’ of these ‘police state measures’, while illustrations on the front pages reflected these ideas: for example, the butt of a rifle (a weapon that had become an emblematic reference in the rhetoric of Fascism) was pictured destroying a tablet representing the Italian Constitution.55 The biggest effort to establish the ‘Fascist’ interpretation of Christian Democracy’s politics as an enduring reference within the expressive choices of the Socialist Left was made by the PSI leader Lelio Basso, who in 1951 published a collection of his writings and speeches since 1943; seen in the context of the political tension of the time, these made a persuasive case for the similar nature of the former and current adversaries. In his preface, Basso made the interpretative key explicit: The new Italy, born of the Resistance and Liberation, has not in fact destroyed what was the real essence of Fascism; nor has it defeated the forces that had brought Fascism to victory, which first conveniently moved into various parties more or less aligned with the CLN, and then concentrated themselves within the DC.56

The title of Basso’s collection –​Due totalitarismi. Fascismo e Democrazia Cristiana (Two Totalitarianisms: Christian Democracy and Fascism) –​contained the word ‘totalitarismo’ (totalitarianism), which the journalism of the Marxist Left had generally avoided. This semantic field had in fact rarely appeared in their publications and other output; when used, the noun was often qualified by an adjective, as in ‘totalitarismo democristiano’ or ‘totalitarismo clericale’, so that it had a particular meaning within a specific context.57 The word was used with increasing frequency, especially in the comparison between the DC and Fascism, with the campaign to mobilise forces against the legislation of 1953 that was to give an enhanced parliamentary majority to the outright winners of an election. For the Socialists, Basso followed Due totalitarismi with another collection of writings to mark the occasion, Il colpo di stato di De Gasperi (De Gasperi’s coup d’état), in which he explained Christian Democracy’s attempt to launch an ‘assault on the Constitution’, in the first place by neglecting its implementation and subsequently by trying to modify it, and expounded the manifest incompatibility between ‘a democratic Constitution and a totalitarian government’.58 On the Communist side, by contrast, the comparison between the DC and Fascism was particularly emphasised at rallies and in speeches, almost all of which were published and circulated by the Press and Propaganda Section. As the elections approached, increasing use was made of the word ‘totalitarismo’, as if this characterisation of the Christian Democrat government provided the culmination of the parallel with Mussolini’s regime. By reinforcing the image of the DC as totalitarian, the language deployed by Communist representatives

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emphasised the identification of the government in office with Fascism, going well beyond the original purely class-​based and anti-​capitalist references. In this regard, the most frequently repeated symbolic reference was the comparison between the new electoral legislation and the system adopted through electoral reform in 1924, which had smoothed the path towards the Fascist regime, to the extent that in 1953 it became the pivotal element in representation of the Christian Democrat ‘regime’. In November 1952 it was Togliatti, once again, who laid out the argument: What they want to do is similar to what the Fascists did with the Acerbo Law in 1924. By diminishing the importance of the bourgeois parliamentarism then in place, that law also favoured the establishment of a totalitarian regime … Now, by means of a similar law, they want to create similar conditions, which will enable the clerical party to remain in power indefinitely.59

In parliament a few days later, Togliatti fleshed out the comparison by pointing out that the arguments used to justify the new electoral bill –​‘the need to create “a stable parliamentary situation”, to create a strong government, and to have a uniform majority’ –​were ‘identical’ to the case made by the Fascists in 1924. In further reference to the past, he continued: At the time … the Catholics with democratic leanings, led by Gronchi, expressed their distaste clearly … But there was one person, also a member of … the Partito Popolare … who ordered his colleagues to abstain from voting. That man is [Prime Minister] De Gasperi.60

Togliatti thereby established the essential elements of the Communist argument regarding the ‘Fascist’ nature of Scelba’s proposed legislation: the resemblance to the Acerbo Law, which was somewhat hurriedly identified as the decisive and practically only factor in the conclusive establishment of Fascist power, and the memory of the response to this by the Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI), in which many of the Catholic leaders had been active prior to the advent of Fascism. By November, Taccuino del Propagandista had already organised its publicity material along these lines, publishing excerpts from the speeches of PPI parliamentary deputies in the 1923–​24 period for distribution and discussion.61 In the wake of this initial activity, reference was made to Giacomo Acerbo at every opportunity, in the press as well as in speeches and leaflets. Both in parliamentary addresses during the bruising clash over approval of the legislation and at rallies during the protracted election campaign, one of the key phrases used to describe the new electoral law, alongside the more widespread ‘legge truffa’, was the ‘legge Acerbo–​Scelba’ (Acerbo–​Scelba Law).62 Opposition newspapers published cartoons in which De Gasperi referred to Acerbo for an explanation of the law, and highlighted the alleged Fascist past of the experts

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who had drafted Scelba’s legislation.63 L’Unità called on Giacomo Acerbo himself to speak:  one of the charges in his trial for involvement in Fascism had derived from his law of 1924, and he sought to defend himself by demonstrating the substantial similarity between his proposal and that now being debated in parliament.64

The simplifications of visual imagery and ad personam invective In the leading articles of the opposition press, identification of the DC with Fascism was often accompanied by warnings about its fundamental nature, in contrast to its appearance. In this vein, in 1950, the historian Gabriele Pepe, a cultural and political columnist for Avanti!, observed that ‘ “Fascism” is not just the swagger of handsome bootlegs … the display of the doctrine of superman, and cowardice veiled by sham courage when people are well protected by the police; above all it is a political conduct, and a practice for ruling’.65 Taccuino del Propagandista addressed the issue in another way during the great campaign against the ‘legge truffa’, preparing activists in how to respond to potential objections to such a direct comparison between the Catholic party and Fascism: Not all Italians have … understood … the essentially Fascist nature of clerical politics. For many people, Fascism is simply unfettered violence, the suppression of Parliament, and corruption. Because Parliament is still functioning today, and … the government and the dominant party … do not remain in place by means of the violence of action squads, power through violent means … some people believe that the current regime is a democratic regime.66

While a less cautious and more direct comparative vocabulary was now often the choice in the language of news coverage, this was even more the case for parallel developments in visual communication, where immediacy and strong modes of expression were the marks of effectiveness. An example of the visual choices made in representing Christian Democrat ‘Fascism’ is provided by a Communist poster of 1953, which depicted Fascist leaders with arms raised in a characteristic salute and invited people to vote against the DC with the slogan ‘their carnival was preparation for the death of our youth’; to make the message as clear as possible, the danger of drifting towards authoritarianism was visually identified with this ‘carnival’, which in other quarters had been seen as a peripheral aspect of the Fascist phenomenon. The use of similar devices was even more common in the cartoons and illustrations that often accompanied the text. Fezzes, black shirts and clubs were the iconographic elements used to distinguish the images of policemen and ‘celerini’ (riot police) after any violent repression, while the caricature of a uniformed Fascist always accompanied those of

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a senior prelate and a capitalist in depictions of the social and ideological bloc that maintained the DC in government. These types of visual reference, drawing on portrayal of the Fascism of the past, were also used in the pictorial caricatures of the main political enemies, especially those such as De Gasperi and Scelba who had been the most regular targets of satire since 1947. Particularly from 1950 onwards, the Prime Minister frequently appeared in caricatures wearing a black shirt and fez, striking poses that recalled Mussolini and Hitler. He was the main character in a series of cartoons and sketches featuring the government in Vie Nuove, with the title ‘Come quando c’era l’altro’ (Just like when the other one was here), while the cartoons in Il Paese had him in the foreground but casting the shadow of Mussolini on the wall behind, or treading in the Duce’s footprints (labelled ‘anti-​national laws’, ‘favouritisms’ and ‘violence’).67 The editorial staff of Propaganda, for its part, recommended that activists campaigning against the electoral reform should use a cartoon in which De Gasperi, dressed as a Fascist militiaman, was trying to make Italy swallow a toad (the electoral reform) and promising that ‘then I’ll give you something nice’, in reference to the castor oil notoriously used by Fascist thugs.68 Scelba, the Minister for the Interior, had already been identified before April 1948 as the person responsible for a ‘police dictatorship’ and ‘atti duceschi’ (Duce-​like deeds), while an article on his ministerial decrees had the German word ‘verboten’, an implicit reference to the period of Nazi occupation, as its title.69 The ‘Fascist’ associations of Scelba’s image in the collective imaginary of the Left underwent further development for the 1948 elections, first of all in cartoons where he was always depicted with a club, the Fascist weapon that his riot police carried, and then in pages of L’Unità produced for use as wall posters, including one that quoted Scelba’s description of Fascism in 1922 as the ‘well-​meaning intention to bring a seemingly revolutionary situation back to normality’.70 Subsequently, and in particular after tragic incidents during clashes between the police and protesters at a trade union demonstration in Modena in January 1950, Scelba was held directly responsible for any episode of police violence, in a campaigning atmosphere in which increasingly violent captions were given to posters picturing hands and weapons dripping with blood. A poster of 1953, for example, showed a hand busy writing about ‘gallows’ and ‘forced labour’, while the drops of blood besmirching it were labelled ‘Modena’, ‘Melissa’ and ‘Portella della Ginestra’ (the locations of three major tragedies), and also ‘partisan martyrs’, as if the same entity was responsible for all these incidents. Although the emotional impact was favoured over a structured argument in this kind of poster, the lesson lying behind the imagery was once again the continuity between Fascism and the police system that was responsible for these

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incidents. In this environment, the representations of Scelba underwent further development, and wider dissemination:  this could be seen in his caricature which became a portrait of Mussolini when turned upside down; in the drawing that portrayed him as Giotto alongside Mussolini as Cimabue; and in the comments in L’Unità after his appointment as Prime Minister in 1954, a decision described as ‘the worst solution of the Right that could be introduced under the disguise of centrism’.71 Within the anti-​government campaign that the Communists mounted on the basis of the close relationship between Fascism and the ‘bourgeois’ parties of the centrist coalition, there was a symbolic role for representatives of the previous regime who were still making appearances in the news in the 1950s, such as General Rodolfo Graziani. In March 1950 his trial and early release from prison took place just at the point when social conflict and public protest had intensified, and when repressive action by the government was increasingly being seen as a return to the methods of Fascism; these events gave rise to widespread indignation among the public, especially because the Communist and Socialist press had seized the occasion to encourage suspicions of collusion between former Fascists and government bodies.72 Starting with the work on ‘operazione Sturzo’ prior to the local elections in Rome in 1952, conservative representatives of the Catholic world and the hardline Church lobby made contact with Graziani and other neo-​Fascist leaders. The Communist press exaggerated the significance and representativeness of these meetings, presenting them as yet more examples of the ‘Fascist’ decline of the DC. Subsequently, in May 1953, the Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti met Graziani at a rally before the national elections; L’Unità then published a party statement that was repeated in numerous leaflets and posters, and which emphasised the symbolic significance carried by both the figure and the name of Rodolfo Graziani: We came to know Graziani’s name because we used to see it printed on Nazi announcements. Graziani’s name came to be recognised by the young Italians who were rounded up, deported and killed by the German invader … It is a name that means betrayal of one’s own country: a betrayal for whose redemption much blood has been spilled … We could not have imagined that this government, in order to buttress its power, would take in the proven and sworn enemies of the nation.73

On 7 May, two days after this had been published, the Communist Youth leader Enrico Berlinguer located the episode within the customary class-​based interpretation: ‘two men –​both in the service of the wealthy and the privileged –​have signed … the infamous pact of the clerical and Fascist alliance’.74 In particular, however, the meeting between Andreotti and Graziani generated visual imagery, including a two-​faced portrait featuring De Gasperi and Mussolini, and election

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slogans addressing the abandonment of the democratic ‘mask’ by the Christian Democrat ‘regime’.75 The principal effect of these symbolic and visual simplifications was to suggest similarities between the Fascism of the past and the Christian Democrat government that were not constrained by the basic socio-​economic interpretation of the Fascist phenomenon that had given rise to the comparison, and often went much further. From about 1950, these symbolic meanings helped to establish a definitive image of the political battle: this was based on a diametrical opposition to Fascism, understood as a negative entity that could adapt to changing circumstances but would always be clearly identifiable by the public. This mechanism for boosting one’s status by delegitimating the opposition was to persist in the repertoire of the Italian Left despite changes in the political environment.76

Anti-​totalitarianism and anti-​Communism in Italian journalism of the early 1950s During the 1940s, some elements within the Catholic world had sought to portray the tradition of democratic freedoms that were being defended by confronting Communism as more explicitly ‘Christian’. With a degree of caution, the Pope’s Christmas radio broadcasts of 1942 and 1944 had gradually abandoned the support the Church had given to those totalitarian regimes that had shown respect for ecclesiastical prerogatives.77 After the war, and especially following the first attempts by Pius XII and Truman to move closer together in 1947, Catholic commentators began to contrast the Christian message, which was open to ‘all defenders of humanity’, and the authoritarian regimes that ‘enforced ideologies’ by pursuing political practices that ‘the West’ had abandoned.78 For the 18 April 1948 elections, some of those on the left within Christian Democracy also stated their willingness to change ‘the old rules of political democracy’, in an implicit reference to the exercise of religious influence.79 However, this position was never fully absorbed within the linguistic register of Christian Democrat campaigning. The position of DC leaders during the De Gasperi era, to quote Pertici, had ‘democratic Catholic’ and ‘liberal’ impulses ‘mixed together’. Articles by the journalists closest to the Prime Minister, from Igino Giordani to Rodolfo Arata, linked the role of Christian thought in achieving democracy to a ‘historical tradition’ of thinking on justice and individual rights. In short, the gap between ‘secular’ democracy and ‘Christian’ democracy was not to be bridged by awarding Christianity a privileged position within the democratic system, but rather by recognising as essentially Christian the ‘perfectibility’ of the management of public affairs, the ‘primacy of the mind and culture, faith in freedom understood as a complete expression of humanity … acceptance

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of the law desired by the people … and condemnation of any use of force and violence’.80 While the forces of the Left had put themselves forward at the 1948 elections with one definition of ‘true democracy’, Christian Democrat representatives and their varied group of secular allies thus laid claim to the values of freedom and democracy by using generally positive images, reinforced by placing these in opposition to their adversaries. To be ‘democratic’ meant opposition to dictatorial oppression, which was essentially the objective that had been pursued by the enemies defeated during the Second World War. Both the forces of the Left and the main anti-​Communist voices made the comparison between their opponents and Fascism, seeing the experience of the war and its clashes as a reference point for their work on legitimation and delegitimation. In this, Italy seemed to be following a trend typical of the entire Western world, whereby the cultural and political debate after 1945 included a comparative analysis of the Nazi regime and the current Soviet experience using the concept of ‘totalitarianism’. This term had emerged during the early 1920s in order to describe particular aspects of the Fascist phenomenon, and was already being used between the two world wars for comparisons between the USSR and the dictatorships in Italy and Germany. Subsequently, it became ‘the great mobilising and unifying concept of the Cold War’, which ‘channeled the anti-​Nazi energy of the wartime period into the postwar struggle with the Soviet Union’.81 Although the semantic field of ‘totalitarianism’ had originated in Italy, during the post-​war period Italian intellectuals were only peripherally involved in its evolution, and the concept had to be reimported. Studies by the German economist Wilhelm Röpke, in particular, made the Italian public aware of developments in comparative work on Nazism and Communism. His books, including Internationale Ordnung and Die Krise des Kollektivismus, were quickly translated; his articles were given ample space in reviews such as Il Risorgimento Liberale and, from 1949, Il Mondo, and highlighted the measured and critical nature of the comparison between Communism and National Socialism.82 Il Mondo brought together many intellectuals who had for some while been making the link between anti-​Communism and anti-​Fascism; more generally, it was an important medium for raising Italian awareness of international work on the totalitarian features of the Communist phenomenon across the world. Reviews and surveys by Nicola Chiaromonte and Enzo Tagliacozzo made readers aware of the latest writing by American sociologists and journalists, and of work by members of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which Chiaromonte was involved in from its foundation. In the world of Italian journalism, reintroduction of the term ‘totalitarianism’ to political debate was often regarded with mistrust. Intellectuals on the left, such as Delio Cantimori, described the concept as a device ‘to project … the

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odium of being an “adversary of freedom” onto one’s opponent, at one stroke lumping them together with the National Socialist, the Fascist, and so on’.83 On the other side, observers with impeccable conservative credentials held much the same doubts, especially because of the strength that had been maintained in many areas of political and sociological studies by the cultural tradition that had developed with Fascism. In a leading article that Camillo Pellizzi wrote for Il Tempo shortly after his return to university teaching, after the phase of removing former Fascists from office, he argued that it was ‘difficult to determine precisely what [the word “totalitarianism”] meant’ when used in the post-​war period; the only certainty was that it ‘meant … something evil, something against which one should fight, a leprosy of which the Earth should be cleansed’.84 These opinions had their counterpart in the use of this semantic field by anti-​Communist communication networks. The word ‘totalitarismo’ was not in fact employed regularly in journalism; there was a noticeable increase in its frequency of use in the months prior to election campaigns and in accounts of rallies and parliamentary speeches, which is to say in the journalistic output that most faithfully repeated the language of politicians engaged in the battle. Moreover, its semantic field came to overlap with other more general terms such as ‘dittatura’ (dictatorship), or was distorted by other influences, illustrating the limitations of the concept’s still uncertain development. In the same way, Catholic journalism developed its own vocabulary for the dictatorships of the twentieth century, especially for discussion of their policies of persecution towards the Church; as a result, its communication networks made much greater use of nouns such as ‘dispotismo’ and, especially, ‘tirannide’ (‘despotism’ and ‘tyranny’), which removed the political system under discussion from its specific historical context and likened it to all the great enemies of the Christian faith, from Nero to Napoleon. In relation to other words, across all these situations, ‘totalitarismo’ was most often used when the intention was to explicitly emphasise the comparison of Communism with Fascism and Nazism. Frequently, either the noun was used in the plural or a range of totalitarian situations were discussed; Communism was described as ‘neo-​totalitarismo’ in order to distinguish it from similar experiments in the past.85 Thus in Italian post-​war journalism the description ‘totalitarismo’, adjusted to the needs of the Cold War, never became a widespread or entrenched intellectual tool for relating Communism to the Fascist experience. However, it was certainly an element, albeit not central, in a process of assimilation between these two phenomena that very gradually developed within the language of the anti-​Communists, through the encounter between various stimuli and different languages.86 The undiscussed and almost instinctive identification between the two regimes had already been established in the months immediately following Liberation, with the first attempts at campaigning material by those groups that

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were hostile to the PCI but still had no clear affiliation. At the end of 1945 in Bologna, slogans appeared such as ‘ieri in camicia nera, oggi in camicia rossa’ (yesterday in a black shirt, today in a red shirt) and ‘Che cosa era il fascismo? Niente altro che il comunismo interpretato da Mussolini’ (What was Fascism? Just Mussolini’s interpretation of Communism), while there was abuse for ‘fascismo rosso’ (red Fascism). Giuseppe Dozza, the Communist mayor of Bologna who intercepted these leaflets and sent them to Togliatti, said that he was concerned, because in his view it indicated a pervasive attitude.87 Similar leaflets subsequently circulated in other parts of the country; before the elections for the Constituent Assembly of 2 June 1946, posters appeared in the Veneto with slogans like ‘Profiles of the three brothers known as: Communism –​Nazism –​Fascism’.88 At much the same time, material was being produced in central and southern Italy by the populist Fronte dell’Uomo Qualunque (Common Man’s Front) which attacked Communism by juxtaposing the PCI’s programme with references to Fascism. ‘Farla finita col fallito totalitarismo statale’ (Away with this failed state totalitarianism): so ran the heading of the section of its programme devoted to criticising Communism, which was unreservedly identified with Soviet ‘Communist totalitarianism’, surely to be rejected by ‘the Italian people, masters of civilisation’, who were said to understand ‘the totalitarian experience’ better than anybody else, and would never want to repeat this.89 After the eruption of debate in the wake of events in May 1947, writers for Il Popolo cautiously took up the comparison between Fascism and PCI policy that had already been circulating in other publications. As pieces for Candido had been doing for some months, articles argued that many former Fascists were joining the PCI in order to indulge their ‘anti-​libertarian’ tendencies.90 As the election season of 1948 approached, a simplified ‘battle’ language was organised around the concepts developed by journalism. By means of quotation from the speeches of DC parliamentary deputies and politicians, expressions such as ‘partiti democratici’, ‘vere forze democratiche’ and ‘forze schiettamente democratiche’ (‘democratic parties’, ‘true democratic forces’ and ‘straightforwardly democratic forces’) became fairly firmly established among the phrases used by the Italian ‘independent’ newspapers to describe the parties that had been part of the government since December 1947. Linguistic allusions to the resemblance between the opposition and Fascism, similar to those circulating within the Left, then began to spread:  opposition leaders became ‘gerarchi’ (hierarchs), activists within their youth organisations became ‘avanguardisti’, and every outbreak of political tension provided the opportunity for a worried reference to the situation of 1921–​22. During the period that followed the elections for the first legislature, there was an increasing use of lexical choices that derived from connecting Fascism, or Nazism, with the experience of Italian and foreign Communism, not least

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among writers who earlier had been little inclined to adopt them. Significant examples include the use of ‘Gauleiter’ to describe Communist leaders from behind the Iron Curtain, and Guareschi’s expression ‘compagno antemarcia’ (pre-​ march comrade), which referred to people who had joined the Italian Fascist Party before the March on Rome brought it to government.91 These references, which were often suitable for increasing the emotional impact, complemented the much better developed line of critical argument aimed at the repressive tendencies of the ‘new democracy’ regimes. In anti-​Communist circles, in contrast to developments on the left, for a long time it was not felt necessary to develop a coherent framework that would identify their opponents with the ‘absolute negative’ represented by Nazism and Fascism, as the experience of international Communism offered a point of reference that was even better suited to campaigning use. The situation changed, at least partly, when the country entered the period between the local elections in various major Italian cities in 1951 and the general election of 7 June 1953. Unlike in 1948, centrist anti-​Communism found itself in competition with a heterogeneous but very energetic set of forces to its right, and Christian Democracy’s need to address this situation had important consequences for the development of its campaigning discourse. In an observation of June 1952, following a round of local elections, Traguardo’s editors warned activists about the ‘concentric attack that … had been launched by the extreme Left and the extreme Right’, and of the ‘danger of encroaching totalitarianism’. ‘Every totalitarianism is to be fought:  the most serious and looming danger, however, is the Communist one’:  this sentence set out clearly the approach that political communication was to take over the next twelve months.92 On the back of these directives, the campaigning machinery of the DC, and of Catholicism in general, provided summaries of the PCI and MSI programmes in the posters and pamphlets they distributed to local branches, using much the same phrases: ‘dictatorship by a group of officials and military personnel’; ‘suppression of personal freedoms’; ‘suppression of freedom of the press’; ‘wages set by the state and suppression of the right to strike’. Also, increasingly often, because of the ‘dual assault’, they modified much of the imagery that had previously been tried out in 1948. The shield with the cross was thus used to defend the country not just from the threat of the hammer and sickle, but also from arrows launched by the Fascist bundle of rods; the fork in the road offering the choice between freedom and dictatorship became instead ‘la strada giusta’ (the right path), with terrible dangers to both right and left; and the USSR and Fascism were brought together in the controversy over the Italian prisoners in Russia, with the ghostly figures that in 1948 had begged their mothers to ‘vote for them too’ now becoming ‘sent to Russia by the Fascists, held back by the Communists’.93

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The ‘countries of despotism’ The decision to broadcast the image of a totalitarian ‘double attack’ in 1952 and 1953 certainly helped to create an enduring link between the two political extremes within those parts of the electorate that voted for the centrist parties, and particularly Christian Democracy. Rejection of the parties that years later came to be described as ‘opposti estremismi’ (opposing extremisms) was matched by an increasingly clear moderate, inter-​class and inclusive image that became the distinguishing feature of self-​representation by Italy’s forces of government. In the earlier period, however, as mentioned above, the use of vocabulary that compared Communism and Fascism had not become a central device in the political debate. During the campaigning battles of 1948, for example, this sort of comparison might have seemed insubstantial when put forward in isolation, whereas criticism of the PCI’s anti-​democratic nature based on the dramatic events under way in Europe appeared to have more persuasive potential in its repetition and circulation.

The practice of the coup d’état The first news about repressive politics in the countries of Eastern Europe that achieved really wide coverage in the Italian media was the sentencing on 16 August 1947 of Nikola Petkov, the Secretary of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union who had been in government alongside the Communists before opposing them, to death by hanging. ‘Democracy “advances” in Bulgaria’, ran the subheading of an article in Il Popolo in which Petkov was described as ‘the first hanged’, as if more could expect this fate.94 The story was then picked up by all the non-​party newspapers in a similar style: according to Ugo D’Andrea, Il Tempo’s expert on Eastern Europe, events in Sofia demonstrated the ‘methods and logic of the totalitarian system’, showing ‘that the Second World War had not solved the problem of individual freedom’.95 In March 1948 one of the slogans that Candido offered for the election campaign was ‘La democrazia del fronte si chiama Petkov’ (The name of the Front’s democracy is Petkov).96 After these early references to authoritarian degeneration in Iron Curtain countries, the general coverage in the Italian press began to follow an interpretation that had already partly been established in the investigations by Washington’s State Department into the potential Communist threat, which in due course became a reference point for political journalists and activists.97 The anonymous author of a leading article on Petkov in Il Popolo recognised the presence of a broader ‘tactic’ in the approach of the Communist Parties: Wherever it can … the Communist Party pursues the policy of blocs, fronts, and union councils … In blocs of several parties they will almost always predominate … In all countries where the Communist Party comes to power,

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sooner or later the opposition is suppressed … This is how ‘progressive democracy’ is installed in all territories protected by Soviet bayonets.98

By the end of the year, the non-​party newspapers that were openly lining up in favour of the centrist grouping had adopted and promulgated a similar interpretation of events behind the Iron Curtain, which was supported by incidents such as the enforced abdication of the King of Romania. In November 1947, for example, a leading article in Il Messaggero used the ideas propounded by the DC newspaper, and even some of its terminology, to set out the stages of Communist assumption of power: ‘[i]‌n the aftermath of liberation … the Soviet occupation and influence would lead to … a strengthening of the Communist Party, at least because of the need to maintain good relations with Soviet Russia’. In the medium term, it was argued, ‘the Communist Party … would assume a dominant position’ in government coalitions, ‘not so much by acquiring most of the government posts, but by taking the most important ones’. At this point, the objective would be ‘to assume an absolute majority in parliament’ in order to ‘push through … any measures, even anti-​democratic and anti-​liberal ones’, and with this in mind the Communists would act ‘by subjugating … the parties closest to them, and by crushing and eliminating those furthest away’.99 In 1948, shortly before the election, the credibility of the interpretation that had already been circulating for months was bolstered by the news trickling out of Prague during the ‘coup’ by the Communist leader Klement Gottwald. In addition to the undoubted tactical value prior to the 1948 election of an emphasis on this model for interpreting events in the East, this kind of reference continued to be effective throughout the 1950s and was frequently revived in newspaper coverage of foreign affairs as a general analytical model for events within the Soviet ‘empire’. In April and May of 1953, as Italy entered a period of pre-​election tension, the approach was taken up again in a comprehensive and extended form that was almost instructional: Franco Fucci, a journalist with Il Popolo, offered a serialised account of the Communist seizure of power in Iron Curtain countries as material for use in the election campaign. The overall title of these articles, ‘La tecnica del colpo di stato dei comunisti’ (The Communists’ coup d’état methods), was clearly borrowed from a book by Curzio Malaparte, which had only been published in Italian in 1948 but was already well known in the original French version that had circulated illegally in Fascist Italy. Just as Malaparte had argued that the Bolsheviks in 1917 had been the first to provide ‘a logical sequence in the preparation for a revolution’, Fucci extrapolated a ‘rational route’ from the range of events in Eastern European countries, illustrating how ‘the Communists, while occasionally adapting their tactics, kept them strictly in line with Stalinist models’.100

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Fucci’s series of features, however, added nothing to what had already been said by commentators in the main Italian newspapers at the end of the 1940s, to the extent that in some respects even the similarities to Malaparte’s book were not original. This can be seen in a comment by Guareschi written just a few days after the ‘Prague coup’: The method of the coup d’état has now undergone such profound and radical transformations … that one needs to have followed recent events in Central and Eastern Europe very carefully in order not to risk mistaking the abuses with which the Communists have appropriated power for the democratic developments of particular political situations.101

The revival of this approach in 1953 had a significant impact in the campaigning world. At much the same time as Fucci’s articles, a list appeared in Traguardo of all the ‘colpi di stato’ that had taken place in areas of Soviet occupation,102 and the organisers of the Mostra dell’Aldilà seized the occasion to run through the phases of the Communist ‘method’.103

Influences from the outside world The teleological and formulaic interpretation of the events that had led to the formation of the people’s democracies during the second half of the 1940s, with the energy of its simplifications, certainly proved appropriate for the needs of an uncompromising battle, and especially suited the great election contests. At moments when the dialectical clash was less intense, well away from the jousting of the elections, political language was especially influenced by another type of news product: articles that provided news on political and social life behind the Iron Curtain, which was mediated by refugee accounts and newspaper reporting from abroad.104 The wish to know more about Soviet life was widespread in post-​ war Italy, in particular because the information that had percolated through during the Fascist era had been considered unreliable (not always correctly), while articles in the Socialist and Communist newspapers were driven by celebratory intentions that tended to be rejected within moderate circles. Eastern Europe was closed to Italian reporters, other than for short trips, and for many Italians this helped to foster an attitude towards the Soviet mystery that was ably voiced by Max David, a reporter for Corriere della Sera who in 1950 had reached the Russian border during a trip to Turkey: Russia … is just a country inhabited by people like us … but it is difficult for minds like ours, faced with Russia, to remain content with this simple image … As I looked at Russia … I had the feeling that I was committing an illegal and almost immoral act (like, for example, forcing oneself to investigate the secrets of an opened grave).105

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Within non-​ Communist news networks, the principal sources presented as first-​hand evidence were the accounts of the many refugees who had arrived in the West from the USSR or the ‘new democracy’ countries. One of the first publications to cover their stories was Il Tempo, which gave space to various prominent members of the Romanian and Polish anti-​Communist opposition who had fled their countries during 1947. However, the major Italian publishing event involving an account from behind the Iron Curtain occurred immediately prior to 18 April 1948, when the translation of Victor Kravchenko’s autobiographical I Chose Freedom appeared.106 Kravchenko, a Ukrainian official with a Soviet trade mission in Washington, had obtained political asylum in the United States in 1944. His book was given an ecstatic reception in Italy from the start by both the secular press and religious publications, and the following year both Kravchenko and his work became even better known when he brought a libel case against the editors of Les Lettres Françaises, a French literary review with Communist sympathies that had accused him of lying. The trial in Paris was the focus of global press attention; all the Italian newspapers followed its proceedings, using both their usual correspondents in France and additional reporters, including Bruno Romani and Mino Caudana, sent to Paris by Il Messaggero, and Guido Piovene for Corriere della Sera. During the period prior to the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, as a result of the accounts of the trial, the international news coverage in both these publications resurrected reports of the great purges of the 1930s, and of everyday life overseen at every juncture by the political police.107 The end of the 1940s also saw the creation of international organisations that brought together the refugees and anti-​Communist political exiles who had been scattered across Europe, with financial and organisational support from the American intelligence services. These latter agencies particularly worked on disseminating the refugees’ writings and other contributions, using the network of cultural bodies, such as the ‘Committee for a Free Europe’, that they could control.108 It was thanks to these bodies that Italian translations of books by refugees received coverage in the newspapers, which often published extracts prior to their launch. In August 1948, for example, substantial passages from One Who Survived by Alexander Barmine, a former senior official in the Russian military intelligence services who had defected to the United States, were serialised in Il Messaggero.109 However, the most important pieces to appear in Italy during this period were published exclusively in Il Popolo, which in the late spring of 1949, under the heading ‘La rivoluzione prefabbricata’ (The manufactured revolution), printed extracts from the Italian version of Le Coup de Prague by Hubert Ripka, a former Czechoslovak government minister who had left the country in 1948 and subsequently became president of an international refugee association.110 Il Popolo followed this up by publishing an analysis of life behind the Iron Curtain by Walter Kolarz, another prominent writer in this field.

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Alongside this type of article, Italian periodicals devoted increasing space to another kind of journalism, quite distinct from the news items and leading articles on international politics: Iron Curtain reportage. Major travel features had been enthusiastically received by Italian newspaper readers ever since the reports that Luigi Barzini had written for Corriere della Sera at the beginning of the century; when editorial teams were reorganised after 1945, it was soon felt necessary to offer not only straightforward news items from abroad, but also feature articles with culture and society as their focus. In this vein, articles started to appear in the Italian press that were intended to satisfy the readership’s curiosity about the Communist world, using a more expansive and accomplished literary prose. Vittorio Guido Rossi, who worked for Corriere and was more a writer than a journalist, was able to spend two months in the USSR in 1951: this was a hard-​ fought concession, as evidenced by the direct involvement of Italian diplomats in Russia that made the trip possible and allowed the Milanese newspaper to stand out from its rivals, which had to make do with foreign material.111 Il Messaggero was particularly active in this: in 1950 alone, it published two important pieces of reportage drawn from books by the American Edmund Stevens, a former Moscow correspondent for several conservative publications, and pieces by the Franco-​Russian writer Michel Gordey.112 Analysis of these important examples of Cold-​War journalism shows how after 1948, through the lens of dissidents and special correspondents, interpretative frameworks were created that consolidated the image of the Soviet Union as a country of dictatorship and despotism, an image which had been developing over the previous years. In this regard it was significant that the Italian press showed substantial interest in the elections to the Supreme Soviet of 12 March 1950, which were held up by newspapers on the left as a model of ‘Socialist democracy’. In Corriere della Sera, the presentation of events included the news from Luigi Crucillà, the Stockholm correspondent, that the death penalty had been reintroduced shortly before the elections in Russia.113 The tragic irony evident in elections carried out within single-​party regimes was subsequently conveyed in reports by Stevens, which were almost instantly translated into Italian for Il Messaggero. He wrote about the USSR as ‘probably the votingest [sic] country in the world’: nominees to the Supreme Soviet were elected with figures above 99 per cent, with ‘members of the Politburo … neatly graduated in decimals according to order of importance’.114 The American was present the following day at the inaugural session of the assembly, and was unsurprised by the unanimity within ‘the one government body whose proceedings are open to foreign correspondents and diplomats’, which he saw as ‘a sure sign that no state matters of consequence are to be dealt with’.115 It is rather puzzling that Stevens was apparently able to compose and submit an article on the meeting of the Supreme Soviet just two days after its members had been elected; the image he

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presented does in fact appear to reproduce a somewhat pervasive cliché, which a year later Rossi, when visiting the assembly, was quick to repeat: ‘[o]‌ne person went up to the desk for speakers and read from a piece of paper; then all the representatives, every single one, raised their hands. All the hands were up, suddenly, all together; the hall was a field of hands; no one said a word’.116 This type of observation, widely circulated, provided the context in which Guareschi’s sarcastic description of Stalin’s election as ‘representative of the Soviet people’, ‘an event so great and so unexpected’ that it ‘aroused enormous surprise throughout the world’, could register its full impact.117 Leaving aside the more directly political features of the Soviet dictatorship, its nature was captured by Western correspondents in their portrayal of everyday life. The news from the reporters and the pictures presented by feature writers in their travel stories placed the reader within an environment that they could compare with their own lives. As against the attempts to decipher the power struggles in the Kremlin, the oppressive atmosphere of everyday uncertainty was rendered rather better in the descriptions of how and to what extent the secret police loomed like a mysterious threat over every citizen, to the point that Western correspondents had great difficulty getting Russians to talk to them. Gordey gave the heading Viaggio in silenzio (Silent journey) to one of his pieces of reportage, published in Italy in Epoca with photographs by Robert Capa, because although Russian was his second language he could not find anyone willing to talk to a foreigner. This was one of the reasons why Communist society was described by visitors primarily in terms of what they could observe, such as the shapeless masses of people, all looking alike and equally expressionless, who went about the streets of Moscow, Belgrade and Budapest. The distinctive feature of the Communist dictatorships that had the greatest impact on Italian journalism was undoubtedly the great political trial. In the way that they addressed the purges related to the Stalinist ‘normalisation’ of the people’s democracies, from the trial of László Rajk in Hungary to the charges against Rudolf Slanski in Czechoslovakia, and in how they described proceedings relating to the ‘Doctors’ Plot’ in Moscow in January 1953 and the sentencing of major Church figures, mentioned earlier, Italian correspondents took their principal inspiration from what was known about the ‘Great Terror’ of the period 1936–​38. The Italian public’s understanding of those events had come from the meagre supply of monitored news stories allowed into the newspapers under Fascist censorship, but thanks to this some strong images had got through, conveying, for example, the suspicion that behind the ‘listless and exhausted’ appearance of those accused, and ready to confess, lay sophisticated methods of torture and the use of drugs.118 In the post-​war period the great protests against the Soviet trials that had come from the anti-​Stalinism of the left, such as Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and Isaac Deutscher’s Stalin, appeared

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in Italian translation.119 With this material providing context, the Italian writers dealing with the resumption of political trials in the establishment of the ‘people’s democracies’ were able to draw the ritual aspect of the trials out of the available news, and developed a descriptive model that allowed the little that was known to be included in a complete story. Charges, always similar and always improbable, were followed by the ritual of confessions with very little credibility, and the invariable conclusion (except, significantly, in the case of the ‘Doctors’ Plot’) was a series of harsh sentences.

From news stories to campaigning material: the linguistic consequences of the USSR’s negative image The circulation of personal accounts from behind the Iron Curtain had direct consequences for the development of language and campaigning material. After the publication in Italy of Kravchenko’s memoir, the press adopted the expression ‘scegliere la libertà’ (choosing freedom) to refer to dissidents arriving in the West, and this was also the inspiration for a poster distributed nationally by the Civic Committees. This portrayed a refugee who forced his way through the barbed wire of the Iron Curtain, leaving the spires of the Kremlin –​the customary representation of Russian and Soviet despotism –​in the background, and arrived in Italy to tell people not to vote for the Front. The emotional impact of the arrival of Soviet exiles and their stories, which American experts saw as a weak point in the publicity machinery of international Communism, also influenced the development of visual communication later on.120 In 1949 and 1950 Traguardo published a series of photographs portraying refugees and others fleeing Eastern Europe, to illustrate the extent of this phenomenon; sometimes, the people who ‘were seeking … freedom’ did this ‘in vain’, and the illustrations showed them being shot.121 These types of image and story also provided the basis three years later for the Mostra dell’aldilà, which according to reporters was intended to spread the news about the ‘two thousand refugees a day who were crossing the Iron Curtain, risking their lives, and abandoning the Soviet paradise’.122 The wealth of news stories on the ‘people’s democracies’ that reached the West also had an impact on the development of campaigning material. This was perhaps the clearest example of the vital role played in the creation of symbolic and distinguishing reference points by sectors of the mass media that were seemingly less affected by politicisation, and more oriented towards the simple reporting of events. Political communication was influenced by the model that news stories and reportage had gradually constructed for presenting features and stories about ‘everyday Stalinism’: this involved obsessive control, an efficient and ruthless repressive system, and widespread fear.123 Il Popolo, in

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grave and concerned tones, and Candido, whose satirical approach emphasised the more surreal aspects, often published stories about the travesties of Soviet criminal and civil legislation, which SPES brought together in a booklet for the 1953 election campaign.124 As regards visual imagery, SPES and the Civic Committees were quick to convey the same atmosphere in the illustrations for the newspaper-​style wall posters devoted to Eastern Europe, in which soldiers and police furtively observed scenes of everyday life.

Figure 3  Poster by Christian Democracy for the general elections of 1953

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Campaigning material especially embraced the vocabulary relating to political trials and purges, many of which in fact took place during the 1951–​ 53 election period and were quickly transformed into fresh material to fuel domestic political campaigning. At the end of 1952, the editors of Traguardo made the link between the most recent victims and those of the 1930s: for the activists’ benefit, a page was created that listed all the Communists executed under Stalin (with the heading ‘Absent with good reason from the Russian CP Congress’), for use in posters and leaflets.125 The same theme was pursued in February 1953 in a special issue with the title ‘Hanno “tradito” Stalin e sono stati soppressi” (They ‘betrayed’ Stalin and have been suppressed), which provided a list of those who had been purged and an introduction that reiterated the established formula. Even Pajetta was alarmed at the potential success of an electoral campaign based on references to the great purges occurring in Central and Eastern Europe; this was reflected in his February report to the PCI’s Press and Propaganda Committee: They have hung 16 people in Prague. If in contrast to this trial we can only offer the battle for the thirteenth monthly payment to pensioners, or the battle over Gronchi’s failure to respect Article 32 of the regulations for the Italian parliament, then the people will say: Yes, all right, but they have hung 16 people over there!126

Some phrases, such as the expression ‘colpo alla nuca’ (shot in the back of the neck), became common: this was often used in satirical sketches by Guareschi and Jacovitti, and almost ritually qualified by the adjective ‘classico’. Good examples of the style of language adopted can be found in the publication La Settimana Comunistica (The Communist Week), which was produced by the Civic Committees and issued shortly after Stalin’s death. This was a parodic version of the weekly puzzle magazine La Settimana Enigmistica: the price of a copy was given as ‘50 kopecks’; the list of contents included ‘the people’s puzzles and Stakhanovite charades’; the column offering quirky facts provided information on the most well-​known victims of Communist repression; and the crossword puzzles had clues such as ‘[w]‌hoever tries to speak in countries under Russia will soon become this’ (answer: ‘extinct’), and ‘[t]his precedes the spontaneous confessions of the enemies of Communism’ (‘torture’).127 The most obvious outcome of the encounter between influences from the outside world and Italian anti-​Communism’s need for an attacking language was the opportunity created to identify aspects of Italy’s imagined life in the wake of a victory for the PCI, using the descriptive framework that had developed on the basis of news from behind the Iron Curtain. Over the years, from 1947 onwards, criticism of international Communism was principally expressed as an aspect of the domestic debate, implying that Italian Communists should be held responsible for events on the wider stage; this was the approach taken in

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anti-​Communist election material. After the end of the coalition governments of national unity, doubts as to whether the Italian Communists really shared democratic values started to be expressed in commentary on various news events. The discovery of weapons secreted by PCI activists, a theme that Il Popolo had begun to cover on a regular basis, was given as an example of ‘progressive democracy based on bombs and gelignite’.128 As the Communists started to seize power in Central and Eastern Europe, the triggers for debate proliferated and became more serious. From the aforementioned coverage of the sentencing of Petkov onwards, and in addition to the occasional linguistic references that related Communist dictatorship to Fascist dictatorship, the most significant feature was the more or less explicit accusation that the Italian Communists were following the path taken by their Bulgarian ‘comrades’.129 As the 1948 general election approached, SPES, and in particular its director Giorgio Tupini, helped to consolidate these ideas. Tupini published a short book that structured the debate by applying the classic dichotomy between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ to the Communist programme:  a dichotomy that had already been developed by Father Ledit and his group during the period of the popular fronts. The Communist leaders, according to Tupini, were ‘skilled tacticians … who had learned the art of advancing and retreating at the school of Lenin’. He described their acceptance of democracy as ‘expedient’: ‘progressive democracy’ was in fact only a regime ‘whose intention was to “progressively” realise the dictatorship of the proletariat … in contrast to democracy understood as a regime that would ensure freedom for all’.130 In 1947 and 1948 he wrote numerous pieces for the party’s paper that adopted much the same tone: at the end of September 1947, for example, he gave the title ‘Se Togliatti fosse Petkov’ (If Togliatti was Petkov) to an article in which he wrote that ‘L’Unità rejoiced that the Bulgarian comrades were able to use those persuasive arguments denied to their Italian comrades by a democratic regime that was new but already sufficiently strong’.131 At the beginning of 1948, while other writers for Il Popolo were asking people to ‘remember Petkov’, Tupini was still reproaching the Socialists working for the Popular Front, reminding them that there was only one predictable outcome ‘of the fronts, blocs and federations supported by Communism’ in the rest of Europe: ‘whoever forms allegiances with the Communists dies’.132 Tupini’s language was clearly echoed in the language that the SPES leadership used not long afterwards in articles in the newly created Traguardo: It will be necessary to tell Italians that the Front is the tool of the Communist Party … In the countries of Eastern Europe the Soviet regime has made its way peacefully and cunningly, using fronts, blocs, alliances and so on, so that at the right moment it can liquidate all opposition and all the parties, beginning with the Socialist ones.133

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By the end of February this early charge of Communist ‘duplicity’ was already gaining currency when confirmation of the ‘Prague Coup’ came from behind the Iron Curtain, serving as definitive evidence in favour of any distrust of Communism. The general drift of the commentaries was to reiterate, more insistently, the idea of the ‘lesson’ for ‘those who, in their tragic innocence, took part in the game played by the “front” ’.134 The culmination came on 1 March, when all the major newspapers published De Gasperi’s speech on events in Czechoslovakia: this saw the affair as a confirmation of the authoritarian danger lurking behind the Popular Front’s potential election victory. Subsequently, and especially in the language employed in the election rounds of the period 1951–​53, the full-​blown involvement of the Italian Communists in the crimes of their ‘comrades’ in power became a well established idea, to the extent that it became implicit. This was particularly evident in a series of leaflets from the Civic Committees, given the title ‘Dove comandano loro’ (Where they rule), which used illustrations to show the meaning in the Communist world of ‘critica’ (criticism) –​a pistol aimed at the back of the neck –​and ‘autocritica’ (self-​criticism) –​a Communist with a gun to his own temple –​to help people to imagine what would happen if ‘they’ were to win in Italy. The directness of these references was only possible because of the many news stories and features, during the less frenetic political climate after 18 April 1948, that had identified attitudes and long-​term objectives within the PCI that were typical of the Western interpretation of the Communism of the ‘new democracies’. Among the stories that were given this sort of treatment, the most discussed was the expulsion from the PCI of the Emilia Romagna parliamentary deputies Aldo Cucchi and Valdo Magnani for expressing views that did not reflect the party line on the differences between Italian national interest and the Soviet cause.135 The great interest that the ordinary newspapers showed for several weeks in the Cucchi–​Magnani case derived from the hope that this crisis might represent the conclusive implosion of pro-​Soviet Communism in Italy. Even when it became clear that expectations about the significance of this case needed to be scaled down, however, the newspapers continued to cover the fate of the two ‘heretics’. In one article, it was revealed that ‘Valdo Magnani … had felt it necessary to say to his relatives, only half in jest, “Take note that I have no intention of killing myself; if they say that I committed suicide, say that it’s not true” ’.136 The atmosphere of constant suspicion and surveillance in which the dissidents said that they were forced to live, caught between contempt from their former comrades and fear that their families might be put under pressure because of them, was highlighted as a concrete example that would help all people ‘to imagine … a state in which a party that had come to use these methods was in power’.137 The most original and well-​developed efforts to put forward worrying theories about the Communist ‘method of the coup d’état’ being applied to Italy

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took place not within news stories but in opinion pieces, where columnists could range more freely. At the beginning of 1951, in response to the first hints of rifts within the anti-​Communist front of 1948, a piece in Il Messaggero appealed for a return to unity against the PCI, presenting a hypothetical but realistic scenario in which the Communists rose to power. This imagined the government collapsing over an unimportant amendment, and Togliatti being asked to form a new administration. Before the elections that give a majority to the Left, the PCI shows its most moderate face, assisted by its ‘comrade’ regimes, which set Cardinal Mindszenty free and send Dynamo Moscow to lose 3–​1 in a friendly football match in Rome. It is only after victory by the Left that the narrator sees one of his Communist colleagues becoming his boss, and when he starts to complain he is told ‘that he will regret it’, for the first time since the era of oppression by the Blackshirts.138

From the gallows to ‘Baffone’: negative imagery Various contentious ideas about the dictatorial nature of Communism found their expression in a rich visual and metaphorical mode of communication, which conveyed the significance and emotions of global politics to the public. Prior to 18 April 1948, the various publicity offices and communication media had already taken part in a substantial exchange of strategies for representing the conflict. The Communist threat to liberty, for example, was primarily depicted using images of death, blood and violence: there were scythes dripping red, Russian soldiers with the Front’s insignia slaughtering prisoners, and skulls in the uniform of Red Army soldiers. Similar imagery lay behind the changes that Traguardo suggested should be made to the Popular Front’s motto, ‘Peace, Freedom, Work’, so that it should read:  ‘Peace in the cemeteries; Freedom for dictators; Work in Siberia’.139 The reference to Siberia was an archetypal feature of the representation of Communism as a metaphor for ‘imprisonment’; by the second half of 1947, Il Popolo and Il Quotidiano had introduced expressions such as ‘ceppi ai piedi’ (shackles on the feet) and ‘catene’ (chains) in reference to the Popular Front’s programme. As April approached, Oreste Mosca took his cue from Guareschi’s well-​ known images of the ‘cervello all’ammasso’ (party line) and ‘l’obbedienza pronta, cieca, assoluta’ (willing, blind and absolute obedience) to portray the Communists as ‘poor people … who have already voluntarily entered the concentration camp that has been prepared for all of us’.140 Campaign material produced by the Civic Committees also adopted this approach, showing Central and Eastern Europe surrounded by barbed wire and taking up the theme of prison bars in election leaflets and strip cartoons. The comparison between the USSR and imprisonment was also expressed in new ways after the 1948 election. In

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voting rounds in the early 1950s, for example, a Civic Committee poster called attention to the imprisonment of footballers in the Soviet team after a defeat by Yugoslavia: a menacing caricature of Stalin was dressed as an inflexible referee, while the players were shown with a lead ball at their feet. In diametrical opposition to this world of the Left, the ‘democratic’ parties, and especially the DC because of its electoral strength and presence in society, were represented as essentially a means of defence. SPES posters made use of the DC symbol, a shield, as a suitable metaphor to represent the defence of Italy, and had the tip of the Communist sickle sticking into it. The Civic Committees, on the other hand, pictured votes for the DC as an insurmountable wall defending a well-​organised farmstead, threatened by rapacious hands bearing the hammer and sickle symbol, and as the drawbridge defending a castle from the invading horde. Moreover, numerous newspaper articles developed this theme immediately prior to the election. As early as October 1947, Giuseppe Cappi of the Christian Democrats had described his party as the ‘baluardo di libertà’ (bastion of liberty) in a battle in which ‘the system of representation itself, the vital essence of democracy, was in play’.141 This imagery was used again five months later in an official DC document, an appeal to Italians with the title ‘La Democrazia cristiana per la salvezza della libertà’ (Christian Democracy for the salvation of freedom), which was published in both the Catholic and the secular press.142 For years the ‘forca’ (gallows), which became a metonym for Soviet authoritarianism, retained a particular potency among the weaponry of visual imagery. At the time of the hanging of Petkov, Guareschi had developed this symbol in a series of cartoons that included an illustration of Stalin in front of a map of Europe, using the gallows to indicate the countries where, in his words, ‘we have established democracy’.143 This one image encapsulated the stark contrast between the ‘democratic’ vocabulary of the Communist world and the reality of events in Eastern Europe, summarising an argument made in most of the leading articles on this topic in the non-​party newspapers. In his ‘Giro d’Italia’ column at the end of 1947, Guareschi distorted ‘Cominform’ to create ‘Cominforc’.144 From the start of 1948 onwards, his collaboration with SPES led to the circulation of a similar image, both in the leaflets that Traguardo offered its activists and in the recommended topics for discussion, with the suggestion that the symbol of the Front ‘was hiding the noose that Togliatti, like Dimitrov, had reserved for his opponents’.145 Less than two months before 18 April, the shock over the Czechoslovakian coup d’état gave this symbol a renewed topicality and an even more pressing reality. A cartoon published on 29 February, for example, represented the programme of the ‘Czechoslovakian Popular Front’ as a stack of gallows ready for use. In this particular case it was only implied that in Italy people were ready to follow this example, but the references soon became

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more explicit: drawings showed a truckload of gallows arriving in Rome labelled as ‘Soviet aid for the election campaign’, while in other illustrations the ‘F’ of ‘Fronte’ was transformed into a gallows.146 It was during 1952 and 1953, however, that the visual image of the gallows achieved universal recognition, becoming one of the shared symbols within anti-​Communist vocabulary. The particular reason for this was the opportunity it provided to refer to the great wave of political trials. The spread of the image could still be traced back to the cartoons in Candido: at the end of 1952, the defendants in the Slanski trial were portrayed as puppets manipulated by Stalin, who was pulling their strings using a system of gallows.147 Similarly, an illustration published in January 1953 at the time of arrests over the ‘Doctors’ Plot’ featured the idea that the gallows factories would require some especially motivated Stakhanovites.148 Despite the bitter campaign that Guareschi fought against the government in 1953 because of his hostility to the new electoral legislation, that year saw a proliferation of the gallows symbol that he had created. Its use spread right across the campaigning material coming from the Catholic movement: SPES, in particular, placed the legislation to create an enhanced parliamentary majority next to the gallows, to contrast the ways that the opposition was to be dealt with by the two sides, and then, although without much success, tried to launch the term ‘legge antiforca’ (anti-​gallows law) in contrast to the ‘legge truffa’, as the electoral legislation had been termed.149 The contrast that was made between the themes of the gallows (‘forche’) and the forks (‘forchette’) that the Communists were debating at the same point, which depended on the similarity between the words, proved to be rather more successful. ‘They’ve invented the forchette to hide the forche!’ said a leaflet that reproduced a cartoon in Il Popolo, in which the forks waved by the Communists failed to hide the gallows lurking behind, and some of the election slogans featured puns such as ‘i veri forchettoni’ (literally, ‘the real big forks’, but subverting this Communist critique of capitalism, discussed earlier, by transforming the word into ‘the real big gallows men’), referring to Molotov, Malenkov and Beria.150 A further element whose symbolic value was fully exploited within anti-​ Communist propaganda was the negative mythology relating to Stalin, which was placed in conceptual contrast to the personality cult that typified Communist culture. The positive mythology about Stalin had gradually developed during the 1930s, through the creation of ‘a series of identifications that permeated the very fabric of socialist society: the identification of the individual with the group, the group with the leader, and the leader with the group’.151 In parallel, there was an increasing focus among critics of the Soviet regime on the resemblance between the historical figure of the leader of Russia and the dictatorial and repressive figures of the Communist system. From Der rote Zar by Christian

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Figure 4  Poster by the Italian Communist Party for the general elections of 1953

Windecke, to Boris Souvarine’s well-​known Staline of 1935, to the work by Deutscher mentioned earlier, critical left-​wing analysis of Soviet Communism had taken the form of biographies of Stalin;152 over time the term ‘Stalinism’ gained currency in these circles, although it was only at the end of the 1950s that moderate journalism identified this with ‘the true face of Communism’.153 In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Russian contribution to the downfall of Nazism had boosted the prestige of Stalin and his regime among non-​Communists, so much so that Kravchenko, during his early years in the United States, had to counter the American ‘justification of Soviet despotism’ and thinking whereby ‘the Soviet dictatorship was fully identified with the Russian people’.154 Here again, it was the escalation of renewed international

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tension that revived the figure of the Soviet leader as a worrying symbol of totalitarian violence and autocratic despotism. Stalin’s name was used in the press as a metonym for the Soviet regime and the international Communist movement, and he was invariably portrayed as having sole responsibility for every political decision. The trips people made to the USSR in 1950 and 1951 provided additional detail for this identification. In particular, both Rossi and Gordey were struck by the ubiquitous image of the dictator in Russia: the man who ‘had achieved power … by staying quiet … [and] making himself invisible’, ‘was part of everyday life’, and ‘one got used to seeing him at every moment’, to the extent that ‘a three-​year-​old girl could already babble his name’.155 There was a particular proliferation of Stalin’s image in the world of political illustration, for both symbolic and metaphorical purposes. In the period 1947–​48 the development of the caricature of the Communist dictator was, once again, the work of Guareschi. At much the same time as the emergence of the famous slogans ‘Dio ti vede, Stalin no!’ (God can see you, not Stalin!) and ‘Mentre tu dormi, Stalin lavora’ (While you sleep, Stalin is at work), Candido presented illustrations in which the Georgian leader was portrayed as an executioner complete with the gallows on his shoulder, and as a killer whose knife dripped blood. The image thus constructed became established in the visual representation of Stalin in anti-​Communist circles. The caricature promoted by Guareschi, in particular, was distinguished by its exaggerated ‘baffoni’ (big moustache), which stood out on a face whose salient feature was its stern and menacing expression. The cooperation between Guareschi and the Catholic publicity offices helped to disseminate these characterisations of Stalin by the publication of cartoons in other media channels, and especially by means of the wide use of posters: in these, as in previous illustrations in Candido, Stalin’s face was hidden behind the image of Garibaldi, and was used to symbolise the USSR in its dominance of Eastern Europe. After 18 April, in line with a growing trend that was also evident abroad, this type of caricature was used whenever it was felt necessary to stir up fear over the darker aspects of Communism. Stalin was therefore pictured alongside the dove of peace, driving the train of socialism as it passed over people’s bodies, threatening the West with the tentacles of an octopus, and even with his face masked by lists of candidates in the local election campaigns. The strength of this negative imagery indirectly affected the PCI’s own operations. In Italy, positive references to Stalin emerged with the first news about the battle of Stalingrad and continued during the wait for the arrival of ‘Baffone’ as a saviour; they had quickly been established as markers for the identity of Italian Communists in the period after Liberation, although they were not especially prominent in the party’s own external political communication, which remained somewhat defensive over the figure of the Soviet leader. For example, Togliatti’s brother-​in-​law Paolo Robotti suggested in his book on the

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USSR that people could respond to questions on why Stalin had been in power in Russia for such a long time with a reminder that ‘in the USSR … there was such a vast network of elected representative bodies, both at the centre and in outlying areas, that any personal dictatorship was completely impossible’. Stalin, Robotti argued, was an impressive and respected guide, but did not run the state’s institutions, and ‘there was no law that forced anyone in the Soviet Union to believe in what he said’.156 There was only a temporary lapse from this approach within Communist circles in the period after the dictator’s death, when PCI leaders launched a major public display of his personality cult. The day after Stalin died, while L’Unità’s headlines described him as ‘the man who has done more than anyone for the liberation and progress of humanity’, Togliatti remembered the Soviet leader as ‘a giant in thought and deed’, predicting that ‘a whole century would bear his name’.157 Not all the parties in the opposing camp managed to respond consistently to this approach, and in general the tendency to imbue Stalin’s image with negative meaning made his death a problematic event for the anti-​Communist publicity offices. As a satirical magazine, Candido could afford to maintain a more openly critical tone. When news came through about Stalin’s health problems, he was represented with a gallows as his walking stick in a cartoon with the title ‘Il vegliardo maledetto’ (The cursed old man).158 In the first issue after his death, Guareschi placed his grave in a bleak landscape of dead trees, with a gallows as a cross and the epitaph ‘Here lies Stalin, born too soon and died too late’; in the same issue, the commemoration concluded with a series of illustrations that portrayed him in a Dantean inferno, content to find himself in the circle of violence where he was condemned to eternal immersion in blood.159 The editors of Il Quotidiano aligned themselves with Candido, and decided not to address Stalin’s death in a leading article. Otherwise, there was generally a different approach: although Traguardo printed cartoons that were much the same as those in Candido, in which ‘the spiritual testament of the great Stalin’ was a gallows, a direct attack on the memory of the Soviet leader had become very difficult.160 Faced with the death of a man who had made his mark on an era, many writers ended up by juxtaposing their distaste for the bloodshed and repressive cruelty and their respect for a character who had exercised a degree of fascination on even his strongest critics. In the leading articles of the political newspapers there was no forgetting or minimising the crimes by the regime of which Stalin was the incarnation, but they were interpreted as elements in a titanic scale of evil, like the dark side of a greatness that had shown its positive side at Stalingrad.161 A different approach, which was understandable in the general emotional atmosphere over the death of Stalin, could be seen in the serialised publication of his biography in Epoca, starting in late March 1953. The narration attempted

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to humanise a character who had always been burdened with strong symbolic elements, and offered an interpretation based on Stalin’s private and family life, from his youth through to his assumption of power. Oggi, on the other hand, marked the Soviet leader’s death with an article by Edilio Rusconi headed ‘Non siamo in lutto per Stalin’ (We are not mourning for Stalin); he commented that ‘Stalin’s name will certainly endure for centuries; but the Communists should not glory in this, because Satan’s name will last for eternity’.162 Less than two months later, however, the terrible memory of the Georgian dictator started to be softened by Oggi’s publication of Stalin’s supposed ‘testament’, in which he seemed to have planned the détente that the new leadership of the USSR was pushing forward both internally and abroad.163 As an event of major importance, Stalin’s death also had a significant effect on the production of visual material. One item that was certainly a boon to anti-​Communist propaganda was the sudden end of the trial relating to the ‘Doctors’ Plot’, whereby straight after the dictator’s demise the victims of the final repressive crackdown, orchestrated by the Stalinist establishment, were recognised as innocent. ‘Ci credono stupidi’ (They think we are stupid), ran the heading in an SPES leaflet on the affair, while Il Quotidiano included a series of cartoons on the sudden end to the most recent Soviet ‘conspiracy’, as well as a list of the victims of Communism with the heading ‘Anche questi hanno confessato’ (These too have confessed).164 Apart from a few exceptions like these, however, by March 1953 the anti-​Communist visual imagery that was being produced in the run-​up to the June election had become less aggressive. In many cases the SPES and Civic Committee posters, which resurrected illustrations and situations where Stalin had figured in previous years, transferred their attention to Georgy Malenkov: caricatures were offered of the portly new Russian leader poised to gobble up all the European countries, lauded by Italy’s Communists and Socialists, or protesting at the sentencing of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg at the same time as having ‘Western spies’ hung.165 The thinking that lay behind all this activity, referred to in leading articles by respected writers in the non-​party newspapers, was that behind the tactical appearance of a softened position there was an essential strategic continuity in international Communist policy. A cartoon in Il Quotidiano, which was then reused by the Civic Committees, suggested that Italians should not let their guard down against the Communist danger of dictatorship, and depicted the differences between ‘Stalin’s plan’ and ‘Malenkov’s plan’: the former was a cannon, while the latter was the same cannon simply embellished with floral designs.166 However, Malenkov’s name had only started to appear regularly in Italian news stories from the Soviet Union a few years earlier, around 1950, and his face was almost unknown.167 It was therefore difficult for his caricature to carry the full weight of the metonymic representation of an entire political and

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social regime or for it to arouse the emotions and feelings generated by the image of his predecessor, who had become a full-​blown negative icon thanks to thirty years of accumulated meaning.

The Constitution and its implementation The Constitution and the Italian Left: ‘a democracy of substance’ and parliamentary safeguards It has been generally acknowledged that during the early 1950s, with the parties of the Left pushing for full implementation of Italy’s new Constitution and attempting to defend its advances, the image of the Constitution ‘gained substance’ as a ‘solemn political agreement between Italians’ and as the ‘conceptual fulfilment of the liberation struggle’, which was threatened by a ‘ “failure of implementation” due to the presumed calculated and reactionary intentions of Christian Democracy’.168 However, the particular symbolic value of the Constitution in the vocabulary of the Italian Left had been maturing over time, through a continued process of reflection on changes in the political climate. The PSI and PCI press did not focus aggressively on the work of the Constituent Assembly while this was in progress. At the beginning of 1947 Quaderno dell’Attivista was mainly publishing material intended for internal discussion, which simply gave a generally positive judgement on various extracts, in particular on the nature of ‘economic democracy’ which it argued was inherent in the Republic’s foundation on labour. However, there was some criticism of passages in which the more ‘progressive’ and ‘radical’ positions had been toned down.169 After the Popular Front had been formed, the Socialists in particular declared their commitment to ‘the actual fulfilment, in letter and in spirit, of the principles inscribed in the Republic’s constitution’.170 It was due to them that the Manifesto al paese, the document with which the Front presented itself to the country at the beginning of February, described as ‘recognised and consecrated in the Constitution’ the ‘profound structural reforms’ that the Popular Front was putting forward in order to strengthen ‘true’ democracy.171 Article 1, ‘Italy is a democratic republic founded on labour’, was especially subjected to examination in this regard. Sandro Pertini of the PSI interpreted this opening sentence by comparing it with the proposal for a ‘republic of workers’ from the PCI and his own party, which earlier on had been rejected by the Constituent Assembly, and stated that ‘Italy would truly have become a republic founded on labour’ only when ‘all the obstacles … had been removed … that were obstructing millions of workers in the full development … of their involvement in the political, economic and social organisation of the country’.172

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In the Socialist discourse of 1948, reference to the Constitution’s text clearly seemed to be secondary to the proposal for a more general programme of ‘progressive’ reforms, and some respected voices did not rule out revision of the Constitution in line with the ‘new democracy’. In contrast, the Communist press and publicity machinery, bolstered by references in their programme to concrete examples of ‘progressive democracy’ in Eastern Europe, did not give the Constitution as much space. Subsequently, the election defeat of 18 April and the crisis in plans for the ‘new democracy’ meant that the theme of the Constitution was addressed even less frequently and had less importance in political language, at least until late 1950. At that point it was the Socialists, faced with the first obvious delays in implementing constitutional commitments, who reiterated the need to create a way forward for the ‘most vital part of the Constitution’: the section that related to ‘the protection of labour in all its forms and applications … land reform … and the involvement of workers in the management of businesses’. As PSI member Mario Bracci wrote in Il Paese: History’s judgement of … [the] Italian Republic will truly depend on the achievement, or not, of these aims: whether, that is, the Italian people … finds the necessary energy and solidarity to give itself a system that completes our Risorgimento with the establishment of a socialist society, or whether instead the Constitution has only been the legal expression, swollen with rhetoric and poisoned by bad faith, of the vain ambitions and delusions of a people inevitably destined to be overwhelmed by its own social and political misfortunes and by foreign domination.173

This clearly confirmed the role of the Constitution as an instrument for the much-​longed-​for democratic development of society: it was seen as an important staging post in the potential culmination of an entire historical process in pursuit of ‘democrazia sostanziale’ (democracy of substance). In leading articles in Il Paese during 1951, there was a strengthening of the expressive style used to criticise the delays in implementing the social reforms envisaged in the Republic’s founding legislation; this was often backed up by a comparison with constitutions described as socially innovative, such as ‘Dimitrov’s constitution’ in Bulgaria.174 For their part, the PCI leaders showed in their speeches and articles that they shared the Socialist approach. In June 1950, for example, Togliatti released statements that were immediately reported by L’Unità on the constant government infringements of the ‘right to work’ endorsed by the first article of the Constitution, and referred to a ‘government of unemployment’. Before discussing the failure to implement the guarantees of social progress, however, the Communist leader pointed out another issue: ‘ “Liberty” is written into the Constitution, and liberty is today at the mercy of any official in the prefecture or the police, not to mention the Minister of the Interior!’175 Within the journalism

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of the Left, in parallel with the return to an interpretation of the Constitution’s text that focused on demands for social reform, another interpretative line had in fact been developed, stimulated by the prefecture’s response to protests about the government’s foreign policy in its draft ‘civil defence’ legislation. These proposed laws, in particular, were described as ‘anti-​constitutional’ as well as ‘Fascist’ and ‘reactionary’, because they allegedly violated the Constitution’s statements on the freedom of political expression. From the Communist and Socialist perspective, not only had the government thus shelved the ‘progressive’ clauses in the Constitution, but also ‘the prescriptive measures [concerning individual freedom] were rendered impracticable by the increased force of Fascist decrees and laws’, and the Constitution was ‘paralysed’ in all aspects of its implementation.176 From the spring of 1950 onwards, the PCI’s communication systems focused their campaigning efforts on this particular topic; with their ability to reach the public, they contributed to making constitutional provisions a pressing issue. On 14 March Togliatti’s deputy Pietro Secchia made a speech, published in full in L’Unità, which identified the Constitution as a defence against ‘the abuses, illegal acts and violence that the police have been responsible for’, and accused the government of ‘not wanting to modify Fascist legislation in order to make it conform’. During the same period, the PCI’s national Press and Propaganda Section promoted the first real organised action aimed both at disseminating information and at parliamentary monitoring of implementation of the Constitution’s text, maintaining the focus on its themes of liberty and respect for democratic and pluralist practice.177 These efforts had rapid results: in many Italian towns and cities associations of ‘Amici della costituzione’ (Friends of the Constitution) sprang up, largely consisting of Communists and Socialists but often led by respected figures who either were not party members or actually supported the secular parties of the centre.178 During 1950 all news publications close to the PCI and PSI began to play their part in this campaign. Before the year was out, the debate relating to the alleged contrast between the politics of the centrist government and the Constitution was being developed within visual imagery, with cartoons on this appearing in the newspapers: a good example was an illustration in Il Paese that depicted the text of the Constitution being arrested and handcuffed because it went against ‘Fascist’ measures.179 This cartoon encapsulated a range of ideas and debating points that had been developing and circulating widely on the left during 1950:  the identification of the Constitution with anti-​Fascism, in opposition to images that had by then become associated with Fascism such as that of the police, or with reference to the Fascist codes that continued to be applied unrevised, was represented in a powerful visual metaphor that replaced the victims of repressive police action with the Constitution. In brief, at the

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root of the campaigns by the PCI and PSI to defend the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution lay the same ideological approach, whose import was to demonstrate the incompatibility between a document that had originated in the Resistance struggle and a government that was by nature ‘totalitarian’ and ‘Fascist’. During the long season of election campaigning between the spring of 1952 and June 1953, political discourse on the theme of the Constitution developed along lines that had already been sketched out. However, the pervasive intensity and thoroughness with which the powerful publicity machinery of the PCI appropriated this theme gave the word ‘Constitution’ a semantic intensity and symbolic value that stood on its own. The Socialist and Communist campaign of 1953 was typified by headings such as ‘Il nostro programma si può riassumere in una sola parola:  Costituzione’ (Our program can be summed up in just one word: Constitution), which appeared in the local press to introduce a speech by Secchia;180 by Socialist posters using Nenni’s phrase, ‘The Constitution, the whole Constitution, and nothing but the Constitution’; and by the leading articles by Vezio Crisafulli, an eminent lawyer who had long been active in the PCI: The Communist Party’s election programme can be summed up … in one single and very simple formula: respect for and the actual application of the Republic’s constitution … The very words of the Constitution condemn the politics of the powers and men of 18 April.181

Much of the effectiveness of the campaigning references to the Constitution, however, was actually due to the vagueness in meaning that the term had acquired in the Socialist and Communist political vocabulary over previous years. For the message’s audience, it could in fact have represented the promotion of ‘structural reforms’ just as easily as the guarantee of liberties. The assimilation, especially by the Communists, of their own political programme to the text of the Constitution allowed them to promote some of the distinguishing features of their ‘people’s democracy’ without being limited to the references that had not proved persuasive in 1948, and at the same time let them present the document as a point of reference for mobilisation against an alleged return of authoritarianism.182 When it proved necessary during the election campaign to flesh out references to the Constitution with greater detail, however, in the Communist camp there were no hesitations. In November 1952, in the report that launched a broad publicity campaign on this issue, Togliatti provided an interpretation of the key speech that Stalin had given about a month earlier at the nineteenth congress of the Soviet Communist Party, in which he had urged the Communist Parties ‘to raise again … the banner of bourgeois democratic freedom … that ha[d]‌been flung overboard’ by their opponents:

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First of all there is a proclamation of political and civil equality for citizens. Then there is the widest recognition of the rights to freedom in all areas: organisation, protest, the press, and expression of citizens’ views using every means. There follows acknowledgement of rights of a social nature … The structure of the state is based on its parliamentary nature and the existence of different political parties, which should fight each other democratically, without any discrimination between them, in order to achieve leadership of the government and national life.183

During the period when the ‘legge truffa’ was under debate, the Constitution was in essence the symbol whereby the PCI ‘restated its own right to political action’ within a pluralist system of ‘bourgeois’ democracy, ‘putting more emphasis on the demand for recognition of the rights of citizenship than on the responsibilities’, and even rejecting this recognition for their opponents, who were seen as perpetrators of the ‘assault’ on its implementation.184 Not long after the distribution of his report, Togliatti returned in parliament to the theme of the defence of the Constitution in one of the key moments of that period:  his speech to the Chamber of Deputies against the proposed legislation whereby an enhanced parliamentary majority would be awarded to outright election winners. This was then published in L’Unità as ‘Togliatti leva alta in Parlamento la bandiera delle libertà democratiche e costituzionali’ (In parliament Togliatti raises high the banner of constitutional and democratic freedoms), and was taken up by all sections of the Communist press as well as included in the documentation put out by Propaganda and the new Taccuino del Propagandista. Togliatti expressed his fear that a parliamentary majority of 65 per cent, so close to the two-​thirds required for amendments to the Constitution, might lead to the abolition of the referendum system, the definitive cancellation of all the constitutional guarantees that had yet to be implemented, and even the restoration of the monarchy (which was impossible using the ordinary reform procedures in the Constitution). For Togliatti, the proposed legislation was an attack on the spirit of the Constitution, and he went through the encroachments item by item: Article 1, which founded the Republic on labour, was thrown into doubt because ‘most workers were in the ranks of the parties against which this law was directed’; Article 3, which endorsed the equality of all citizens, would become redundant because the new majority system ‘hindered the involvement of workers in the leadership of political life’; Article 48 was threatened because the equality of the vote was denied. To the serious charge of infringing some of the founding principles of the Constitution, Togliatti added the alleged violation of Article 49, the only clause in which political parties were mentioned, claiming that the award of a parliamentary majority meant radical change to ‘the function of particular political entities’, which the Constitution recognised as vehicles for the free expression of the will of the people.185

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In the wake of Togliatti’s speech, the publications of the Left made the Constitution one of the main elements in the campaign against the ‘legge truffa’. Special issues of Taccuino, published at the same time as the PCI leader’s speeches, reported his argument, reminding people of the failure to create the institutions for safeguarding the Constitution, accusing the government of pursuing a policy hostile to the Constitution, and in particular focusing on the violations of the articles on the equality of citizens and free political action which lay behind the proposed electoral legislation.186 The newspapers of the Left took up all these points: in December 1952 Il Paese published a series of leading articles on the risks of constitutional reform with a ‘reactionary’ majority of 65 per cent, frequently accompanied by cartoons on the topic, and even offered its readers an almost complete version of the parliamentary speech with which Piero Calamandrei, a Social Democrat and lawyer, left the centre coalition over his opposition to a law that he felt made the Constitution meaningless.187 References to the Constitution in fact permeated every aspect of how the campaign against the ‘swindle law’ was presented to the public, illustrating all its legitimating potential. In the first place, Togliatti had claimed in the speech already quoted that ‘representation of the nation … is only achieved when the parliamentary institutions faithfully mirror the opinions and the political forces present in the country’. To follow that up, in Taccuino activists could read excerpts from a speech to the Constituent Assembly by the DC lawyer Costantino Mortati that favoured introducing proportional representation to the text of the Constitution. The same publication also provided calculations whose central idea was that the current government was the only alliance that could secure the support needed to take the prize offered by an outright majority; these showed that ‘the clerical plan was attempting to make the vote of a citizen opposed to the government worth only half that of someone supporting the Government’.188 There followed explanatory posters and diagrams on the number of votes that the different alliances needed to elect a parliamentary deputy, which established a degree of identification between proportional representation, the Constitution and democracy. There was a general revival of what had been called the ‘retorica del proporzionale’ (rhetoric of proportional representation):  an idea that had accompanied the development of mass democracy across Europe around the start of the twentieth century, in which ‘proportional representation was … the fairest system, because it guaranteed the faithful translation of the ideological preferences of the electoral body’.189 However, the image of the Constitution that reached its fullest development during the battle against the electoral law was its representation as a constraint on action that could be taken by the government. In Togliatti’s description, repeated in leaflets, ‘it was the pact that bound both the workers and the government’: a pact to which the latter had to ‘remain faithful’.190 Secchia added to this during debate in the Senate on the legislation:

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A regime is democratic when liberty and civil rights are not regarded as minimal concessions that the government can arbitrarily grant or remove … A regime is democratic when civil liberties are the right of all citizens, and are guaranteed by a constitution that no government or government authority can violate with impunity.191

It was interesting to see promotion of the important role that the opposition played in democratic life, especially when contrasted with the unity over objectives that had been required during the 1940s in the programmes of ‘popular democracy’. From the start of the 1950s onwards, the prospect of a long period of opposition led to a reassessment of the role that the PCI and PSI were preparing to play in the political arena and the resources available to them, in order to make their restraint and disruption of centrist government policy more effective. This theme became especially important in political communication when the PCI and PSI had to persuade the public of the importance of seemingly sterile parliamentary debate, and explain the positive side of the generally unpopular practice of ‘ostruzionismo’ (filibustering), which was widely used by the opposition parties in early 1953 in their attempt to prevent the electoral legislation being passed. At the end of 1952 Taccuino del propagandista suggested that activists deal with this issue by referring to a glorious precedent: in 1899, this had prevented the approval of legislation proposed by the Pelloux government which would have limited the freedom of expression.192 In the weeks that followed, this suggestion was adopted by L’Unità, which recalled these events in editorials and pictures of parliamentary sessions of the period. Similarly, in December and January, the culture pages of Avanti! featured a series of articles by Renato Carli-​Ballola that reconstructed events at the turn of the century:  these both highlighted the popular support that was enjoyed by the ‘democrats’ of 1899, with an implicit link to the ‘battle in Parliament and in the country’ against the legislation on the parliamentary majority, and helped to give the struggle of 1899 a heroic aura that was intended to bathe the current protest in its reflected light. Even Giulio Trevisani in Il Calendario del Popolo, a monthly publication aimed at the popular market that was rarely interested in current politics, devoted an article in a similar vein to the battle that ‘saved liberty’ in Italy at the end of the nineteenth century.193

What sort of Constitution for the anti-​Communists? In 1948, Catholic and Christian Democrat communication also addressed the topic of the Constitution only rarely, and then in the context of other major issues for debate. Their material favoured themes with an emotional impact connected to general and broadly based fundamental values, and the Constitution was primarily regarded as a specific and concrete entity that bolstered the individual liberties threatened by the ‘totalitarian’ offensive.

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The first important stand taken on the subject occurred in Il Popolo only in 1950. Starting in March, its journalists developed a framework for responding to Communist criticism of the unconstitutional nature of the plans for ‘civil defence’ and ‘protected democracy’ that had been circulating in government circles after the explosion of serious social tensions at the beginning of the year. Paolo Emilio Taviani of the DC rejected the concerns raised by De Gasperi’s statements about the ‘strong state’, urging people not to believe that ‘the freedom of citizens would be secured by the weakness of the state’: the effectiveness of a democratic regime lay in the resolution with which it opposed its enemies, namely those ‘Bolsheviks, who want a weak state so that they can take action as the great suppressors of all liberties’.194 As time passed the exchange of attacks through the press became increasingly frequent and lively, and especially involved sardonic commentary on articles by the opposing camp. At the height of the debate on ‘civil defence’, in August 1950, Scelba made a speech to Gioventù Operaia Cattolica (Catholic Young Workers) mentioning his concern that the Constitution would become ‘a trap for the freedom of the Italian people, which it was intended to ensure’.195 The DC’s Il Popolo defended the Minister for the Interior’s statements from the inevitable attacks: ‘Tell us, Il Popolo’, writes … the Communist newspaper, ‘how, when and where the constitution could become a trap’. Every time, ingenuous comrades, that you invoke its protection, you are at the same time trying to abuse its spirit. When you hold a rally that has been banned by the authorities and you cry out that the Constitution endorses the freedom of assembly … when you encourage armed revolt against the democratic state and you scream that the Constitution guarantees the freedom of speech and freedom of the press … when you distribute weapons to your militants … and then declare that the Constitution guarantees the inviolability of the home.196

The Communists had been energetically making their case to the Italian public for the full implementation of constitutional guarantees. The responses to this, as above, provided the basis for a more developed approach to the Constitution’s values by the government grouping, and in particular by the DC, the party that had the greatest responsibility for government. In particular, at the end of 1952 and the beginning of 1953, leading Christian Democrats gave speeches and interviews, reported in all the main newspapers, explaining the vast difference between freedom of political action, guaranteed to activists of all legally constituted parties, and the abandonment of the country to ‘anarchy and public uprisings’. They also expressed the need ‘to take plenty of preventative measures, rather than later having to mourn the loss of liberty due to not having done all that was necessary’; from the centrist perspective, a resolute defence of the spirit of the Constitution and a firm check on the actions of the ‘undemocratic’ opposition parties became essentially much the same thing.197

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With the approach of the 1953 elections, the tone of Christian Democrat articles became increasingly defensive:  in response to the accusations levelled against the new electoral law, an article in Il Popolo stated that ‘the defence of democratic institutions … is the first and most absolute principle in the Constitution’, and the role of defending the essential nature of the Constitution, fraudulently appropriated by the opposition, was explicitly claimed for the government grouping.198 The paper’s editor, Rodolfo Arata, was even more forthright in his description of the PCI and PSI as ‘forces that cannot hide their real totalitarian and dictatorial intentions behind the show of a hypocritical formal observance of the democratic order’.199 The general idea that the Communists ‘would make use of democracy today in order to kill democracy tomorrow’, fostered by reference to the practices that had been tried out over time behind the Iron Curtain for seizing power using ostensibly regular elections, was the central element of SPES newspaper-​style wall posters in the campaign of 1953, and was the inspiration for leading articles in pro-​government newspapers during the same period.200 In particular, as the elections of 7 June approached, the leading political commentators for Corriere della Sera, Panfilo Gentile, Alfio Russo and Silvio Negro, reiterated the government’s case on the need for ‘rapid and suitable measures’ against ‘the  Communist assault’; they argued that the proposals for ‘civil defence’ and the legislation on the parliamentary majority were examples of the application of the ‘Constitution in the spirit in which it was conceived and understood by the vast majority of Italians’.201 In conclusion, in the early 1950s the centrist forces within the government seemed to share a position that was in favour of the guarantees within the Constitution and was based on their substantial preservation, although with some potential strengthening of the state’s powers to control political activity. However, within the complex anti-​Communist world such essentially moderate ideas found themselves up against much firmer positions. In the first place, the Catholic world closest to the right, much of the Church hierarchy, and the activists in the Civic Committees only supported Christian Democracy’s position to the extent that it reflected an understanding of the political landscape in which ‘the defence of democratic and constitutional freedom meant restriction of the political space occupied by the Communists’; the latter, they believed, should not really enjoy any political rights, not even the right to play the role expected of the opposition in a pluralist regime.202 Despite these pressures, the government never seriously considered the option of making the Communist Party illegal, primarily to avoid further exacerbation of the ideological divisions within Italian society. Second, the editors of political newspapers geared towards a more decidedly conservative readership put forward proposals for revision of the Constitution

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in order to bolster the anti-​Communist struggle. At the forefront in this was Renato Angiolillo’s Il Tempo, which demonstrated its limited enthusiasm for the new Constitution as early as 1948. During the debate over the ‘civil defence’ laws in the summer of 1950, the leader writers of this Roman newspaper observed that respect for the Constitution did not mean ‘seeing it play the sad part of an elderly and confused lady victimised by childish trickery’, and suggested that its text could be revised if this would prevent the Communists from ‘muddying the waters’ of public opinion.203 During the battle over approval of the law on the parliamentary majority, when most of the moderate press was trying to mitigate concerns about the possibility of constitutional amendments by a majority of 65 per cent, a leading article in Il Tempo argued that revision of the Constitution was necessary: ‘[i]‌f the next Parliament undertook constitutional reforms, what would the harm be in that?’, the journalists wondered, especially if ‘the current constitution … had proved to be inadequate and imperfect in more than one aspect’. The article closed with a reminder that ‘the Albertine Statute [of 1848] was reformed for the first time after barely three months, and this was a glorious reform: it replaced the blue flag [of the House of Savoy] with the Italian tricolour’.204 In its attempt to play down the significance of potential amendments to the Constitution, this comparison implicitly belittled the document’s democratic origins and the importance of the complex processes that had produced it:  features that had made the Constituent Assembly a unique experience in the history of Italy, not only from the Communists’ perspective but also for the pro-​government press. Subsequent articles in Il Tempo fleshed out the critique of Italy’s constitutional arrangements with specific proposals, first of all arguing that the Communist Party should be made illegal and denied access to constitutional rights. Some correspondents, such as Alberto Giovannini, an economist from the free trade school, went further, portraying many of the Constitution’s details as simply a springboard for launching the collectivist revolution: The Italian constitution … is nothing other than the legalised synthesis of the crisis of the liberal or bourgeois state, or whatever you want to call it. It therefore actually represents a door thrown open to Bolshevik revolution … The battle that the Communists have started … derives from their need to prevent the creation, through a revision of the Constitution, of the modern democratic state, which would be capable of successfully withstanding the Soviet state that Communism would bring.205

The involvement of Guareschi, during the campaign over the ‘legge truffa’, further questioned and weakened the position on the Constitution taken by the anti-​Communist front that had triumphed in 1948. He argued for the complete rejection of any electoral reform aimed at strengthening the government: any

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measure preventing the development of a parliamentary presence that reflected popular support for pro-​monarchy and conservative anti-​Communist forces, which were not part of the centrist majority, was in his view ‘unconstitutional’. With his customary verve, Guareschi borrowed the food-​ related linguistic references that were favoured at the time by Communist campaigning; the expression ‘legge truffa’ found itself transformed: [There was] a large dish … of legge trippa (‘tripe law’) … that the people sitting at the government table had prepared in order to prolong the long lunch after 18 April, expertly cooking the entrails of the Constitution: of the sacred and inviolable principles of democracy, and other such poultry available, in the style of Montecitorio [seat of the Chamber of Deputies] and Palazzo Madama [the Senate].206

Candido’s criticism of the parliamentary majority’s legalistic rhetoric, not unlike the criticism generated by the PCI’s Press and Propaganda Section, was thus merged with criticism of the more or less legitimate dealings related to a continuing hold on power. In conclusion, examining the system of conceptual references and vocabulary use that featured in debates on the Italian Constitution allows us an overview of the paths taken by the parties of the Left and the anti-​ Communist camps in their development of definitions of democracy in the period around 1950. By engaging in a campaign to defend the Constitution, the Communists not only developed a language suitable for appropriating the core values of liberal and pluralist democracy, but also gave structure to a message that justified their role in opposition. On the same issue, the anti-​Communist world demonstrated the difficulties it faced due to the varied nature of its constituent parts. The circles that opposed the PCI did identify shared approaches to portrayal of the enemy and its dictatorial nature, but displayed radically different attitudes in their interpretation of the legislation on which Italian democracy was founded and their understanding of how this should be applied.

Notes 1 P Facchi (ed.), La propaganda politica in Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1960). 2 P. Togliatti, ‘Per la libertà d’Italia, per un vero regime democratico’ (Speech at Teatro Brancaccio, Rome, 9 July 1944), in Palmiro Togliatti: Opere, vol. 5, ed. L. Gruppi (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1984), p. 76. 3 A. Agosti, ‘  “Partito nuovo” e “democrazia progressiva” nell’elaborazione dei comunisti’, in C. Franceschini, S. Guerrieri and G. Monina (eds), Le idee costituzionali della Resistenza (Rome: Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, 1997), pp. 236–​7.

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4 The official Italian translation of Zhdanov’s speech is in A. Zdanov, Politica e ideologia (Rome: Rinascita, 1949): see pp. 27 and 32–​3 for quotations. 5 Quoted in A. Agosti, ‘Il Partito comunista italiano e la svolta del 1947’, Studi Storici, 31:1 (1990), 86. 6 G. Trevisani, Piccola enciclopedia del socialismo e del comunismo (Milan: Cultura Nuova Editrice, 3rd edn, 1951), p. 146. 7 ‘Per l’URSS la guerra sarebbe una maledizione’, Avanti! (11 October 1947). 8 ‘Né socialiste né borghesi le nuove democrazie popolari’, Vie Nuove (28 September 1947). 9 ‘Togliatti indica la funzione dell’Italia nella lotta per la libertà e la pace nel mondo’, L’Unità (6 January 1948). 10 L. Basso, ‘Fronte democratico popolare’, Avanti! (9 December 1947), and ‘Il partito e il Fronte’, Avanti! (30 December 1947). 11 R. Carli-​Ballola, ‘Unità sindacale e democrazia popolare nei discorsi di Di Vittorio e Scoccimarro’, Avanti! (7 January 1948). 12 R. Carli-​Ballola, ‘Bulgaria: democrazia popolare’, Avanti! (10 January 1948). 13 G. C. Pajetta, ‘Cinque partiti intorno a un tavolo’, L’Unità (14 September 1947). 14 P. Togliatti, ‘La politica di unità nazionale dei comunisti’ (Speech given in Naples, 11 April 1944), in Politica Comunista:  Discorsi dall’aprile 1944 all’agosto 1945 (Rome: Società Editrice L’Unità, 1945), p. 46. 15 See L. Longo, ‘La causa dell’inquietudine’, L’Unità (1 December 1947); A. Boldrini, ‘Lo spirito della resistenza’, L’Unità (6 December 1947); ‘A tutti gli uomini, a tutte le donne d’Italia’, L’Unità (3 February 1948). 16 ‘Battaglia aperta’, Avanti! (1 February 1948). 17 This description is given in Trevisani, Piccola enciclopedia, p. 164. 18 ‘Consacrazione’, Avanti! (8 February 1948). 19 ‘Battaglia aperta’. 20 U. Terracini, ‘Significato del tripartitismo’, L’Unità (26 January 1947). 21 The relevant printed material is conserved in ACS, DGPS, Affari Generali Riservati, 1947–​1948, boxes 29–​30, and in APC, reel # 139 1656. 22 See also E. Galli Della Loggia, ‘La resistenza tradita’, in G. Belardelli, L. Cafagna, E. Galli della Loggia and G. Sabbatucci, Miti e storia dell’Italia Unita (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), pp. 157–​65. 23 Togliatti, Sul fascismo. 24 A. Kriegel, ‘Le mythe stalinien par excellence: l’antifascisme’, in M. Flores and F. Gori (eds), Il mito dell’URSS: la cultura occidentale e l’Unione sovietica (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990), pp. 217–​23. 25 L. Lombardo-​Radice, Fascismo e anticomunismo:  appunti e ricordi, 1935–​1945 (Turin: Einaudi, 1946), pp. 53–​4. 26 Togliatti, ‘Il partito comunista nella lotta contro il fascismo e per la democrazia’, pp. 131–​2. 27 See ‘Come De Gasperi ha salvato l’Italia’, Don Basilio (12 August 1947); ‘De Gasperi ottimista fregatura in vista’, Don Basilio (25 August 1947). 28 ‘Se il Vaticano avesse voluto’, Don Basilio (11 April 1948). 29 Don Basilio (30 November 1947). 30 Don Basilio (12 August 1947).

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31 Don Basilio (21 September 1947). 32 See ‘I clericali insultano Cristo’, Don Basilio (25 August 1947), and cartoons in various issues of Don Basilio (7 September 1947; 26 January 1948; 1 February 1948). 33 A. Ventrone, ‘Forme e strumenti della propaganda di massa nella nascita e nel consolidamento della repubblica (1946–​ 1958)’, in M. Ridolfi (ed.), Propaganda e comunicazione politica:  storia e trasformazioni nell’età contemporanea (Milan:  Bruno Mondadori, 2004), p. 211. 34 A copy is conserved in ACS, DGPS, Affari Generali Riservati, 1947–​1948, box 30, folder K1B. 35 L. Longo, ‘Le cause dell’inquietudine’, L’Unità (1 December 1947). 36 L’Unità (14 December 1947). 37 L’Unità (6 February 1948). 38 ‘A tutti gli uomini, a tutte le donne d’Italia’, L’Unità (3 February 1948). 39 Supplement to Propaganda (20 January–​5 February 1948). 40 Propaganda (20 March 1948). 41 E. Rossi, ‘Il governo nero ha posto in liquidazione i valori della resistenza e dell’antifascismo’, Avanti! (12 August 1947). The date 25 July 1943 is symbolic of the collapse of the Fascist regime in Italy, prior to the establishment of the Italian Social Republic in the Italian North. 42 Avanti! (9 December 1947). 43 See P. Nenni, ‘Le elezioni dal ‘21 al ‘48’, Avanti! (14 April 1948). 44 ‘Paura e fede’, Avanti! (5 February 1948). 45 G. Arfé, ‘Introduzione’, in R. Ruffilli (ed.), Cultura politica e partiti nell’età della Costituente, vol. 2:  L’area socialista:  Il Partito comunista italiano (Bologna:  Il Mulino, 1979), p. 11. 46 This resolution was published in a supplement to Quaderno dell’attivista (June 1948). 47 ‘Dal “Fronte popolare” alla “Alleanza democratica” ’, Rinascita (June 1948), p. 292. 48 L. Luzzatto, ‘Delitto di classe’, Avanti! (3 May 1950). 49 L’Unità (19 March 1950). For the lively debate on the bill, see F. R. Scardaccione (ed.), Verbali del Consiglio dei ministri:  maggio 1948–​luglio 1953 (Rome:  Consiglio dei ministri, 2005). 50 Supplement to Propaganda, 1951. 51 L’Unità (8 April 1950). 52 V. Nasi, ‘La dura verità’, Il Paese (25 April 1950). 53 M. Berlinguer, ‘La nuova milizia’, Il Paese (30 September 1950). 54 G. Petronio, ‘Democrazia cristiana e fascismo’, Avanti! (23 March 1950). 55 Avanti! (18 March 1950). 56 L. Basso, Due totalitarismi: fascismo e Democrazia cristiana (Milan: Garzanti, 1951), p. v. 57 As a general reference for the use of the term in Communist and Socialist culture, see ‘Totalitarismo’, Rinascita (November–​December 1946), pp. 289–​91. 58 L. Basso, Il colpo di stato di De Gasperi (Milan: Editrice Civiltà, 1953), pp. 55–​6. 59 P. Togliatti, ‘La difesa della Costituzione repubblicana nel Parlamento e nel paese’, in P. Togliatti, L. Longo and C. Salinari, Per la Costituzione democratica e per una libera cultura:  Rapporti alla sessione del CC del PCI del 10–​12 novembre 1952 (Rome:  Ufficio stampa del PCI, 1952), p.  35. For further discussion, see M. S. Piretti, La legge truffa: Il fallimento dell’ingegneria politica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 145–​51.

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60 ‘Togliatti chiama gli italiani a difendere l’uguaglianza del voto’, L’Unità (1 December 1952). 61 See Taccuino del Propagandista (15 December 1952). 62 See, for example, Avanti! (11 December 1952). 63 See Avanti! (12 December 1952). 64 ‘La legge Scelba è copiata dalla mia!’, L’Unità (18 January 1953). 65 G. Pepe, ‘Antifascisti pentiti’, Avanti! (7 April 1950). 66 Taccuino del Propagandista (1 December 1952). 67 See various issues of Il Paese (8 April 1950; 3 September 1950; 24 January 1951; 23 January 1953). 68 See the supplement to the December 1952 issue of Propaganda. 69 See Avanti! (10 April 1948). 70 L’Unità (1 April 1948). The cartoon appeared in Avanti! (26 March 1948). 71 See the discussion in Il Paese (26 March 1950); Avanti! (10 March 1950); L’Unità (5 February 1954). 72 See, for example, M. Ferrara, ‘Lo scandalo Graziani’, L’Unità (11 March 1950). 73 L’Unità (5 May 1953). 74 E. Berlinguer, ‘Graziani e i giovani’, L’Unità (7 May 1953). 75 See posters conserved in ACS, Raccolta di manifesti elettorali –​Elezioni politiche, box 3. 76 For further discussion, see E. Galli Della Loggia, ‘La perpetuazione del fascismo e della sua minaccia come elemento strutturale della lotta politica nell’Italia repubblicana’, in L. Di Nucci and E. Galli della Loggia (eds), Due nazioni: Legittimazione e delegittimazione nella storia dell’Italia contemporanea (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 227–​47. 77 See P. Scoppola, ‘Introduzione’, in R. Ruffilli (ed.), Cultura politica e partiti nell’età della Costituente, vol. 1: L’area liberal-​democratica: Il mondo cattolico e la Democrazia cristiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1979), pp. 147–​57. 78 See G.  Sala, ‘Al servizio della pace’, Il Popolo (29 August 1947); L.  A. Mondini, ‘Discussione?’, Il Popolo (30 August 1947). 79 G. Gronchi, L’ascesa delle classi lavoratrici nella rinnovata democrazia italiana:  Discorso tenuto al Teatro Adriano di Roma il 21 marzo 1948 (Rome: SPES, 1948), pp. 5–​6. 80 Pertici, ‘Il vario anticomunismo italiano’, p. 305. 81 A. Gleason, Totalitarianism:  The Inner History of the Cold War (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 3. 82 W. Röpke, Internationale Ordnung (Erlenbach:  Rentsch, 1945; published in Italian as L’Ordine internazionale, Milan:  Rizzoli, 1946); Die Krise des Kollektivismus (Erlenbach:  Rentsch, 1947; first published in Italian as La crisi del collettivismo, Florence: La nuova Italia, 1951). 83 D. Cantimori, ‘Un’utopia conservatrice: La “terza via” di W. Röpke’, reprinted in Studi di storia (Turin: Einaudi, 1959), p. 706. 84 C. Pellizzi, ‘Totalitarismo’, Il Tempo (7 March 1950). 85 See L. A. Mondini, ‘I comunisti e la pace’, Il Popolo (17 October 1948). 86 See also S. Cavazza, ‘La transizione difficile:  L’immagine della guerra e della resistenza nell’opinione pubblica dell’immediato dopoguerra’, in G. Miccoli, G. Neppi Modona and P. Pombeni (eds), La grande cesura: La memoria della guerra e della resistenza nella vita europea del dopoguerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), pp. 427–​64.

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87 The documents are preserved in APC, reel # 091 1614–​1615. 88 Casella, Clero e politica in Italia, pp. 358–​9. 89 L’Uomo Qualunque material is reproduced in M. Ridolfi and N. Tranfaglia, 1946: La nascita della repubblica (Rome–​Bari: Laterza, 1996), pp. 66–​7. 90 G. Andreotti, ‘Un uomo solo’, Il Popolo (14 August 1947). 91 See Il Popolo (12 January 1951); Candido (26 April 1953). 92 Traguardo (June 1952). 93 ACS, Raccolta di manifesti elettorali –​Elezioni politiche, box 3. 94 Il Popolo (22 August 1947). 95 U. D’Andrea, ‘Libertà sul patibolo’, Il Tempo (25 September 1947). 96 Candido (7 March 1948). 97 See, for example, H. Fish, The Challenge of World Communism (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1946). 98 Il Popolo (22 August 1947). 99 ‘Partiti socialisti’, Il Messaggero (26 November 1947). 100 C. Malaparte, Coup d’état:  The Technique of Revolution (New  York:  Dutton, 1932; originally published in French as La technique du coup d’état, Paris: Grasset, 1931; published in Italian as Tecnica del colpo di stato, Milan:  Bompiani, 1948), p.  72; F. Fucci, ‘Le forze democratiche ungheresi avrebbero potuto salvare la libertà?’, Il Popolo (5 May 1953). 101 Candido (29 February 1948). See also ‘La tecnica del colpo di stato per uccidere la verità’, Candido (12 March 1948). 102 Traguardo (31 March 1953). 103 See the description of the relevant stands by G. De Sanctis, ‘Quanto costano un pane e un vestito in Russia e negli altri paesi soggetti al comunismo’, Il Messaggero (9 May 1953). 104 For further discussion see A. Mariuzzo, ‘ “La Russia com’è”: L’immagine critica dell’Unione sovietica e del blocco orientale nella pubblicistica italiana (1948–​ 1955)’, Ricerche di Storia Politica, 10 (2007), 157–​76. 105 M. David, ‘Quattro passi per scommessa al di là del confine sovietico’, Corriere della Sera (8 July 1950). 106 V. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom (New York: Scribner’s, 1946; published in Italian as Ho scelto la libertà, Milan: Longanesi, 1948). 107 For further discussion of the Paris trial, see. M. Flores, L’età del sospetto: i processi politici della guerra fredda (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995), pp. 184–​97, and the memoirs of P. Daix, Tout mon temps: Révisions de ma mémoire (Paris: Fayard, 2001), pp. 265–​8. 108 See S. Dufoix, ‘Les ennemis de mes ennemis:  Modalités de l’anticommunisme gouvernemental comme action publique secrète’, Communisme, 62–​ 63 (2000), 85–​103. 109 A. Barmine, One Who Survived: The Life Story of a Russian under the Soviets (New York: Putnam, 1945). The book appeared in Italian, with a different transliteration of the author’s name, as A. Barmin, Uno che sopravvisse: la vita di un russo sotto il regime sovietico, trans. A. Pavese (Bari: Laterza, 1948). 110 A. Ripka, Le coup de Prague:  une révolution préfabriquée. Souvenirs (Paris:  Plon, 1949; published in English as Czechoslovakia Enslaved:  The Story of the Communist Coup d’Etat, London: Gollancz, 1950). 111 See Mariuzzo ‘ “La Russia com’è” ’, p. 162.

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112 The principal source for the features by Stevens was This is Russia, Uncensored (New York: Didier, 1950). For Gordey’s writing, see Visa pour Moscou (Paris: Gallimard, 1950; published in English as Visa to Moscow, London: Gollancz, 1952). 113 Corriere della Sera (14 January 1950). 114 Il Messaggero (13 March 1950); Stevens, This is Russia, p. 24. 115 ‘Come funziona il Soviet supremo’, Il Messaggero (14 March 1950); Stevens, This is Russia, p. 15. 116 V. G. Rossi, ‘Come ho visto Stalin’, Corriere della Sera (24 April 1951). 117 Candido (19 March 1950). 118 See, for example, Val., ‘La ritrattazione di Krestinski ottenuta con atroci torture’, Corriere della Sera (5 March 1938), and ‘Si precisa lo scopo del tenebroso dramma giudiziario’, Corriere della Sera (27 January 1937). 119 Koestler, Darkness at Noon; I. Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1949; published in Italian as Stalin:  una biografia politica, Milan: Longanesi, 1951). 120 See J. Burnham, The Coming Defeat of Communism (New York: Day, 1950), pp. 208–​22. 121 Traguardo (5 March 1950). 122 De Sanctis, ‘Quanto costano un pane e un vestito’. 123 S. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 124 A copy is conserved in ACS, Raccolta di manifesti elettorali –​Elezioni politiche, box 1. 125 Traguardo (30 November 1952). 126 Pajetta, Problemi della propaganda nella preparazione della lotta elettorale, published in part in Quagliariello, La legge elettorale del 1953, pp. 534–​48. 127 A copy is conserved in ACS, Raccolta di manifesti elettorali  –​Elezioni politiche, box 4. 128 Il Popolo (24 August 1947). 129 Il Popolo (17 September 1947). 130 G. Tupini, Il comunismo: dottrina e tattica (Rome: SELI, 1947). 131 G. Tupini, ‘Se Togliatti fosse Petkov’, Il Popolo (26 November 1947). 132 G. Tupini, ‘Equivoco’, Il Popolo (24 January 1948). 133 Traguardo (15 February 1948). 134 G. Piovene, ‘Non se l’aspettavano’, Corriere della Sera (27 February 1948). See also ‘La lezione di Praga’, Corriere della Sera (26 February 1948); C.  Trabucco, ‘Il gioco si ripete’, Il Popolo (26 February 1948). 135 See Gozzini and Martinelli, Dall’attentato a Togliatti all’VIII Congresso, pp. 199–​210. 136 ‘I due “ribelli” dell’Emilia rossa sfidato Togliatti a misurarsi in pubblico’, Corriere della Sera (2 February 1951). 137 ‘Quello che si dice in Emilia’, Il Messaggero (29 January 1951). See also A. Cavallari, ‘Sappiamo tutto di Cucchi e Magnani’, Epoca (24 February 1951), and the investigation by Ugo Zatterin that was published in Oggi in articles in February and March 1951. 138 D. Martucci, ‘Come potrebbe arrivare il governo che non vi aspettate’, Il Messaggero (11 March 1951). 139 Traguardo (21 March 1948). 140 O. Mosca, ‘Il 18 aprile vi libereremo’, Candido (21 March 1948).

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141 Il Popolo (6 October 1947). 142 See for example its appearance in Il Quotidiano (5 March 1948). 143 Candido (12 October 1947). 144 Candido (26 October 1947). Guareschi’s regular ‘Giro d’Italia’ column was a roundup of news items presented in an ironic tone. 145 Traguardo (15 February 1948). 146 Candido (7 March 1948; 28 March 1948). 147 Candido (30 November 1952). 148 Candido (11 January 1953). 149 Traguardo (30 January 1953). 150 Il Quotidiano (20 March 1953). 151 A. Marchetti, ‘Tecniche e significati del mito di Stalin’, Annali della Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini e della Fondazione di Studi Storici Filippo Turati, 3 (1991:  special issue, L’URSS il mito le masse), 307–​28. For more recent and fuller discussion, see B. Apor, J. C. Behrends, P. Jones and E. A. Rees (eds), The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 152 C. Windecke, Der rote Zar (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1932; also published in Italian as Lo zar rosso, Milan:  Hoepli, 1932); B. Souvarine, Staline:  Aperçu historique du bolchévisme (Paris: Plon, 1935); Deutscher, Stalin. 153 See the entry on ‘Stalinism’ in the SPES activists’ handbook, Il nuovissimo centone: Dizionario dell’elettore democratico (Rome: SPES, 1963), p. 229. On use of the term ‘Stalinism’, see R. H. McNeal, ‘Trotskyist interpretations of Stalinism’, in R. C. Tucker (ed.), Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation (New York: Norton, 1977), p. 30. Souvarine claimed in a lecture of 1964 that he had been the first to use the term; this was published as Le stalinisme: Ignominie de Staline by Cahiers de Spartacus. For further general discussion, see A. Litvin and J. Keep, Stalinism: Russian and Western Views at the Turn of the Millennium (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005). 154 Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, p. 467. 155 M. Gordey, ‘Le mamme insegnano ai figli a chiamare il dittatore “zio Stalin” ’, Il Messaggero (21 August 1950). 156 P. Robotti, Nell’Unione Sovietica si vive così (Rome:  Edizioni di Cultura Sociale, 1950), p. 55. 157 L’Unità (6 March 1953); P. Togliatti, ‘Un gigante del pensiero e dell’azione’ (speech to the Chamber of Deputies, 6 March 1953), in Palmiro Togliatti: Opere, vol. 5, ed. L. Gruppi (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1984), pp. 727–​9. 158 Candido (14 Decembe 1952). 159 Candido (15 March 1952). 160 Traguardo (20 March 1953). 161 See ‘Il maresciallo Stalin è morto’, Corriere della Sera (6 March 1953); R.  Arata, ‘Il mistero dell’uomo e il suo destino’, Il Popolo (6 March 1953). 162 Oggi (19 March 1953). 163 Oggi (7 May 1953). 164 Il Quotidiano (9 April 1953; 10 April 1953). A copy of the SPES leaflet is conserved in ACS, Raccolta di manifesti elettorali –​Elezioni politiche, box 1. 165 See the material conserved in ACS, Raccolta di manifesti elettorali –​Elezioni politiche, box 1.

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166 Il Quotidiano (17 May 1953). 167 One of the first full descriptions of Malenkov for the Italian public appears in E. Stevens, ‘Gli uomini intorno a Stalin’, Il Messaggero (15 March 1950). On the general lack of awareness about him among the Western public, see E. Gilmore, ‘La personalità di Malenkov resta ancora un mistero’, Corriere della Sera (13 August 1953). 168 E. Galli Della Loggia, ‘Il mito della Costituzione’, in G. Belardelli, L. Cafagna, E.  Galli della Loggia and G.  Sabbatucci, Miti e storia dell’Italia Unita (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), pp. 188–​91. Similar conclusions are drawn in the essays collected in A. Barbera, M. Cammelli and P. Pombeni (eds), L’apprendimento della Costituzione (1947–​1957) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1999). 169 For further discussion see R. Ruffilli (ed.), Costituente e lotta politica: la stampa e le scelte costituzionali (Florence: Vallecchi, 1978). 170 Avanti! (4 January 1948). 171 Avanti! (2 February 1948). 172 S. Pertini, ‘Disertori’, Avanti! (15 February 1948). For the debate in the Constituent Assembly, see Camera dei Deputati, Segretariato Generale, La Costituzione della Repubblica nei lavori preparatori dell’Assemblea costituente (Rome: Camera dei Deputati, 1977), vol. 1, pp. 430–​9. 173 M. Bracci, ‘Il coltello di Janot’, Il Paese (5 March 1950). 174 Il Paese (5 December 1950). 175 L’Unità (3 May 1950). 176 P. Mancini, ‘Attentato al Parlamento’, Avanti! (1 June 1950). 177 See Propaganda (15 March 1950), and the circular for activists ‘Appunti per la campagna per la libertà costituzionale’, 27 December 1950, which is conserved in APC, reel # 0323 0561–​0562. 178 See R. Colozza, ‘Il PCI e le associazioni per la tutela della Costituzione (1950–​ 1955)’, Ricerche di Storia politica, 14 (2011), 163–​90. 179 Il Paese (20 December 1950). 180 See for example Il Lavoratore, the paper of the Communist federation of Pisa (9 May 1953). 181 V. Crisafulli, ‘Viva la Costituzione’, L’Unità (2 June 1953). 182 On this see also M. Lazar, ‘La famille politique communiste face à la démocratie libérale et au capitalisme de 1945 à nos jours’, in Les familles politiques en Europe occidentale au XXe siècle (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2000), pp. 165–​78. 183 Togliatti, ‘La difesa della Costituzione repubblicana’, p. 23. 184 Ventrone, La cittadinanza republicana, p. 10. 185 Togliatti’s speech of 8 December 1952 has been published in Quagliariello, La legge elettorale del 1953, pp. 300–​19. 186 Taccuino del propagandista (15 November 1952; 1 December 1952). 187 Il Paese (13 December 1952). 188 Taccuino del Propagandista (15 November 1952). 189 See G. Quagliariello, ‘La transizione alla democrazia in Italia e in Francia’, in E. Aga-​Rossi and G. Quagliariello (eds), L’altra faccia della luna: I rapporti tra PCI, PCF e Unione Sovietica (Bologna:  Il Mulino, 1997), pp. 74–​5. For general discussion of demands for proportional representation systems in Italian political

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debate, see M. S. Piretti, La giustizia dei numeri: Il proporzionalismo in Italia (1870–​ 1923) (Bologna:  Il Mulino, 1990); S. Bettinelli, All’origine della democrazia dei partiti:  la formazione del nuovo ordinamento elettorale nel periodo costituente (1944–​1948) (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1982). 190 Taccuino del Propagandista (1 December 1952). 191 P. Secchia, La nostra lotta per la libertà, la pace e la Costituzione: discorso pronunciato al Senato il 13 marzo 1953 (Rome: ETI, 1953). 192 Taccuino del Propagandista (15 December 1952). 193 ‘L’ostruzionismo salvò la libertà’, Calendario del Popolo (December 1952). 194 P. E. Taviani, ‘Libertà e autorità’, Il Popolo (21 March 1950). 195 Scelba’s speech was published in Il Popolo (17 August 1950). 196 ‘Vi conosciamo mascherine’, Il Popolo (20 August 1950). 197 See ‘Difesa civile’, Il Messaggero (19 September 1950); ‘Lo stato forte e la libertà in un colloquio con De Gasperi’, Il Messaggero (8 July 1952). 198 ‘Sabotare il Parlamento è il vero scopo dei comunisti’, Il Popolo (1 July 1952). 199 R. Arata, ‘Certezza nella democrazia’, Il Popolo (29 July 1952). 200 See in particular the material put forward in Traguardo (15 December 1952). 201 A. Russo, ‘Con le leggi della democrazia’, Corriere della Sera (6 June 1952); S. Negro, ‘Garanzia di libertà’, Corriere della Sera (21 March 1950). 202 Riccardi, Il ‘partito romano’, p. 129. 203 M. Lupinacci, ‘Al di là della libertà’, Il Tempo (19 August 1950); E. Vanni, ‘Guerre-​ sorpresa’, Il Tempo (11 July 1950). 204 ‘Proprio così’, Il Tempo (7 December 1952). 205 A. Giovannini, ‘Fronte al comunismo’, Il Tempo (20 January 1953). 206 Candido (25 January 1953).

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4 The fatherland, the Italian nation and its role in the world

The Communists and Italian national tradition In 1953, in the small town of Brescello, near Reggio Emilia, the Communist mayor Giuseppe ‘Peppone’ Bottazzi is giving the final speech of his campaign for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies. As a staunch Communist, Peppone begins by vigorously reminding his audience of the role of international Communism in the promotion of world peace, placing it in sharp contrast to ‘capitalist and warmongering reaction’: For all the black crows that talk about the fatherland, about threatened sacred borders and other nationalist rubbish, we say that we are the fatherland, we are the fatherland, and the fatherland is the people! And this people will never fight against the glorious country of Socialism, which will bring freedom and justice to our oppressed proletariat! And you young people who enter those cruel barracks, you will tell those who try to arm you and use you for their filthy interests, you will tell them that you will not fight!

In response to the speech, Peppone’s steadfast opponent, the parish priest Don Camillo, uses loudspeakers to play the patriotic song ‘La Leggenda del Piave’, an anthem to the Italian army’s revival after its defeat at Caporetto during the First World War. The mayor, who fought against the Austrians when he was little more than a boy, cannot suppress his memories, and his speech involuntarily changes direction: When the cannon thunders, it is the voice of the fatherland that calls, and we will reply: ‘present!’ We old ones, who wear on our chests the medals for valour that we won on the battlefield, will then join the young men, and we will fight forever, and wherever! And we will throw our spirits forward, surpassing every obstacle! We will defend the sacred borders of Italy, against every enemy, from

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the West and the East, for the independence of the country, and solely so that the King and the fatherland, indissoluble, shall be safeguarded!

The unexpected conclusion to this rally, however, is anything but a failure: the audience of ‘Reds’ is in fact so responsive to traditional appeals to patriotism that they raise Peppone aloft in triumph. Meanwhile, at the top of the steeple, Don Camillo is also overwhelmed by his emotions and reduced to tears on hearing the words of his old comrade-​in-​arms, despite the fact that the two men are now divided by different ideologies. This well-​known scene from the film Don Camillo e l’onorevole Peppone, directed by Carmine Gallone and developed from a screenplay by Giovanni Guareschi, provides an excellent representation of the complex mixture of references to Marxism-​Leninism, national identity, and rejection of the aggressive nationalism that had pervaded the Fascist era. These were the distinguishing features of the relationship between Communist militancy and allegiance to Italy in the immediate post-​war period.

The construction of a symbol: Garibaldi, from the radical Risorgimento to national symbolism. After the PCI had regained its legal status, Italian Communists worked hard to create an identity for the party in which its complete involvement in the Italian national tradition stood alongside and, at least in terms of public presentation, had greater prominence than its internationalist dimension, which the electorate often found hard to understand. In the era of the Republic, the main endeavour by the Italian Left to create a symbolic reference point that would support its dialogue with Italian national sentiment occurred at the time of its great commitment to the elections of 18 April 1948. As the liberal journalist Vittorio Gorresio observed, ‘Garibaldi has been turned into a Communist, and the Italian volunteering tradition is shown to have had its continuation in the Garibaldi brigades’.1 From the disappointments of the election campaign of 1948, Garibaldi’s portrait, which was employed as a distinguishing feature, was the only image used by the Popular Front that remained vivid in Italian memories. Around this reference the Communists and Socialists were able to weave a web of other references to Italian history and the most evocative symbols of Italian unification: the image of ‘the hero of the two worlds’ came to symbolise the desire of the Marxist parties not only to take their proper place within Italian history and philosophical tradition, but also to be the means whereby the working masses became fully integrated into the nation. The Popular Front’s symbol, Garibaldi with the star of Italy as background, was almost completely borrowed from the groups of partisans that had been

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organised by the PCI, the Garibaldi Brigades. In choosing this name, they in turn had linked themselves to an earlier event, the Spanish Civil War, in which the many Italians who fought for the Republic had formed the Garibaldi Battalion; this consisted of volunteers with a range of positions within the anti-​Fascist Left, but especially Socialists, Communists and Republicans. The war in Spain had been a watershed in terms of the political significance of Garibaldi’s image in several ways: first, the republican and Mazzinian political tradition saw this war as the ‘most recent volunteering episode’ that could be traced back to the general’s military action in defence of liberty in various countries;2 second, Communist involvement in the defence of the Spanish Republic contributed to what Claudio Pavone has called ‘Garibaldi’s glorieuse rentrée into the world of Italian and international Communism’. From that point onwards, initially in the exiled Communists’ Lo Stato Operaio and subsequently in L’Unità and other publications that emerged in liberated Italy, there was a reappraisal of the values and figures of ‘the so-​called Risorgimento’, a description offered by Italian Communists at the Lyons Congress of 1926 in a clear attempt to distance themselves from it.3 At the time of the Second World War, the relationship between patriotism and what distinguished the Communist programme was of interest to the whole world of international Communism; in Italy, however, these decisions about self-​representation had particularly lasting consequences, especially because they had to find their place within a tradition that was deeply rooted in the culture of the Left.4 The broader context in which references to Garibaldi were supposed to be understood had already been clearly explained by Togliatti in his speech on policy of 11 April 1944, after his return to Italy. Having said that the Communists ‘were in the company of the great men of our Risorgimento … Carlo Cattaneo, Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi’ in their proposal for the rapid convocation of a Constituent Assembly, he sketched out an authentic ‘democratic’ genealogy whose legacy the PCI claimed in its role as the representative of Italian workers: The working class has never been external to the interests of the nation. … Workers and craftsmen were the core of those fighting in the Five Days of Milan … [W]‌e find workers and craftsmen in Garibaldi’s legions … wherever people fight and die for liberty and the country’s independence. We lay claim to the traditions … of this great movement of the working masses and the people, which … has fulfilled a great national function of recovery, revival and renewal of Italy’s whole existence.5

In the vision that the Communist leadership sought to revive, Garibaldi was above all the great hero of the ‘radical’ Risorgimento, very different from its conservative version, according to an interpretation that had developed alongside the political culture of the Italian labour movement from its outset. This

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had in fact developed in close contact with the ‘betrayed democracy of the Risorgimento’,6 and within these circles the Garibaldi who was a humanitarian socialist, anti-​clerical, internationalist and conspirator had been the subject of an almost salvationist veneration even before his death.7 Within the critique that opposed the monarchical and liberal establishment there had developed around this cult of Garibaldi, often partnered with the cult of Mazzini, an interpretation of Risorgimento events that represented them as a ‘conquista regia’ (royal conquest) by the House of Savoy. From this perspective, the people’s involvement had been exploited by the ruling classes for expansionist purposes, and had not led to a genuine national ‘revolution’ based on full participation of the entire population in the life and social development of the national community. Right from the start, socialist culture accommodated critical views of the Risorgimento epic, and placed the country’s social divisions within a class-​based interpretation:  Italian unification had been an unfinished revolution, which had involved the working classes without them being able to take a single step forward towards emancipation. The mass movement that grew around the new Italian Socialist Party had been the main vehicle for disseminating this image of the Risorgimento, in which the analysis based on class conflict was muddled together with reference to the events and personalities that carried symbolic value in Italian history. The result, in 1947 and 1948, was that Garibaldi’s image was chosen to represent the Blocco del Popolo (People’s Bloc) in the local elections and the Popular Front in the general election. During the campaign for the April 1948 election, numerous articles in Avanti! developed references around the image of Garibaldi that laid claim to the main episodes of the ‘popular’ Risorgimento for the tradition of socialism. This election year was the centenary of many key events in the history of the unification process, which allowed them to be commemorated. About a month before polling day, various newspaper articles celebrated the Five Days of Milan; these included a leading article in Avanti! on 18 March, the day that the Milan revolt began in 1848, which claimed for the ‘democratic’ political camp the legacy of the great movements that a century earlier had given the Risorgimento its popular and volunteering imprint: Milan’s 1848 was neither neo-​Guelph, nor Savoyard, nor bourgeois and aristocratic. It was democratic. It was popular … The European 1848, including that of Milan, bore within it the urgency of a popular revolution … The ‘black government’ has nothing to do with the Five Days. And De Gasperi, this neo-​Guelph who has arrived a century late … has nothing in common with Cattaneo, nor with the Milanese.8

Pieces like this introduced culture pages that were packed with features reconstructing the events in question, where the appreciation of democratic

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and popular rebellions was conveyed in a tone that almost sanctified the people. Meanwhile the foreign oppressors of the Italian nation, and the reactionaries who had supported them as the guarantors of social conservatism, were identified as forerunners of the present-​day enemies.9 Similar tones and references could be found in the culture pages of L’Unità:  these featured an account of the Five Days by a ‘Milanese worker’ who had taken part, and frequent reminders of the positive and enthusiastic assessments of the Risorgimento made by Marx and Engels.10 However, the most comprehensive formulation of the genealogy of the major national movements of the Italian Risorgimento had been put forward at the end of 1947 by Pietro Secchia, who claimed ‘for the Italy of labour, for democratic and anti-​ Fascist Italy … for the popular and working classes’ the major endeavours of the Risorgimento, from the battle of Curtatone and Montanara in 1848, which had involved Tuscan volunteers supporting the Piedmontese army in their defeat of the Austrians, to Garibaldi’s troops fighting the Bourbon forces on the Volturno river in 1860, to Italian resistance to the Austrian assault on the Piave river in 1918. In contrast, political opponents were accused of being heirs to the ‘ “king’s vultures” who fired on Garibaldi’s volunteers at Aspromonte’, and to the ‘Fascist functionaries’ who ‘betrayed the country, and sold it to the foreigner’. Secchia concluded by relating his whole address to a strengthening of the symbolism of this ‘Garibaldi of the People’s Bloc’, who was imagined as ready to renew his battles for freedom and democracy: Will Garibaldi return? … Yes, Garibaldi has returned, the Garibaldian spirit did not die in 1882 and cannot die until the peace, independence and future of our country are no longer under threat, and until Italy has been renewed.11

This attribution of a strongly popular and class-​based meaning to the myth of Garibaldi and the epic deeds of the Risorgimento was the most obvious and conscious aspect of the Socialist and Communist operation to appropriate the ‘best’ part of Italian history. In their development of symbolism, however, the leaders of the Popular Front never tried to brush aside Garibaldi’s prior image as the hero of all Italians, who had contributed to Unification in collaboration with the other great ‘padri della patria’ (fathers of the fatherland). As Simonetta Soldani, among others, has observed, during the 1870s ‘there started to slowly take shape a simplified and “mythological” image of the Risorgimento … whose mainstay was a varied pantheon of fathers of the fatherland, glorious episodes, and heroic words and deeds’. In this, the major characters who had taken part in the unification process, often embroiled in jarring personal and political clashes, were made to appear united within a single system of references as ‘common forefathers’ of all Italians. This conciliatory interpretation had been adopted over time as the official canon, and

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was disseminated in particular in the primary schools that the masses started to attend in real numbers in the 1880s. The ‘thousands of copies of history textbooks filled with “patriotic” stories and reflections’ were complemented by biographies of the ‘founding fathers’, whose ‘suitably romanticized lives allowed the mythology of national redemption, whose construction had been considered necessary, to be given flesh and blood’.12 The construction of an image of the coherent and harmonious development of the various souls of the nation, which in some ways echoed the culte des grands hommes that had been the basis of a shared historical tradition within French culture, could not prevent the survival in the real world of the alternative interpretations of a radical Risorgimento history.13 It was, however, impressively successful: a universe of symbolic meanings was established in the nation’s collective imagination that had to be taken into account in any subsequent interpretation. Thus when the parties of the Popular Front portrayed Garibaldi as a ‘socialist’ hero in 1947 and 1948, they also retained references to his more traditional image. Informative historical pieces on the general’s life that appeared in Il Calendario del Popolo in the second half of 1947 and early 1948, preparing the way for the use of his portrait in the election campaign, were reminiscent of the hagiographic sketches that were familiar to the public from school textbooks. In using the unresolved confusion of references to Garibaldi, they presented an iconic figure who could be adapted for different types of voter, in order to engage the workers just as much as the patriotic middle class. In a more general comparison with the epic deeds of the Risorgimento, claims to its democratic tradition were complemented by the recollection of events with fewer ideological connotations. In 1947, the end-​of-​year supplement to Il Calendario del Popolo, ‘Almanacco di tutti’ (Almanac for all), offered a Risorgimento ‘martyrology’ without making any distinctions in its subjects’ political allegiance. Over the preceding year, this monthly’s column dedicated to popular stories, ‘Spigolando fra le date’ (Browsing through the dates) had recounted incidents such as the neo-​Guelph Vincenzo Gioberti’s entry into the Church’s index of prohibited books, and the execution of priests and other patriots in the Belfiore valley by the Austrians while the Church hierarchy remained silent.14 It was, however, in the characterisation of their adversaries and their ‘antenati’ (forefathers) that the Communist intention to lay claim to the legacy of the entire Risorgimento tradition was particularly obvious. We have already seen how the DC and its allies were not portrayed as followers of the moderate line that had opposed the Garibaldian and Mazzinian positions, but rather as heirs to the alliance between the foreign powers and reactionary ecclesiastical hierarchy that had kept Italy in submission until 1861. When the Holy See approached the White House in the summer of 1947 by means of a cordial written exchange between Pius XII and President Truman, L’Unità’s editor, Pietro Ingrao, feared

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some sort of return to the oppression of the Risorgimento:  this might have seen the relegation of an entire ‘glorious strand of our history’, which included, without distinction, ‘Pisacane, Cavour, Spaventa and Garibaldi’.15 The relation of historical events to the present became more direct and acerbic in the cartoons: there was wide circulation of an illustration in Vie Nuove that featured the same cardinal ordering serial attacks on Garibaldi, first by a French soldier in 1867 and then by an American in 1948.16 A similar tone was taken by articles in the culture pages that were given over to reconstructing the past, but written with the liveliness of an opinion column; shortly before the election, Paolo Spriano repeated with delight the opinions of Catholic circles in 1848, dubbing a Church publication that had criticised the ‘bandit’ Garibaldi ‘Il Popolo of a century ago’.17

The Risorgimento and national symbolism after 1948: from Gramsci’s Notebooks to campaign material The claims made by the PCI and PSI to a historical tradition and references that were so deeply entrenched in the Italian imaginary were not exclusive to the election campaign; in subsequent years, the legitimating use of the symbols of Italian unification continued to be a calculated cultural decision. In May 1953, for example, an illustrated page in Avanti! on the history of socialism portrayed Garibaldi as the first Italian socialist, and a figure of reference in the tradition of thought and action that the labour movement could relate to.18 Similarly, the reuse of the Popular Front’s symbolic system was evident in articles in L’Unità in the period after 1948. In February 1949, the paper returned emphatically to the myth of Garibaldi for a celebration of the centenary of the Roman Republic, with articles that recalled his heroic defence of the provisional government and his involvement in the struggle, offering the events of 1849 as an example for the present.19 The cultural operation undertaken by the Communist Party was more systematic. In 1949, its approach to the Risorgimento was given a new and prestigious theoretical basis: preceded by a short extract in L’Unità in January 1948, the volume of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks that related to the Risorgimento, edited by Felice Platone, saw publication. Gramsci had developed a clear ideological perspective on the historical analysis, returning to the debate of the pre-​Fascist years and the line of thinking that had started with Alfredo Oriani and continued with Piero Gobetti and Gaetano Salvemini. Beginning with description of the Risorgimento as a ‘royal conquest’, he contrasted a moderate current, which ‘saw unification as an enlargement of the state of Piedmont and the property of the [Savoy] dynasty’, with Mazzini’s Partito d’azione (Action Party), which did not really know how to lead a ‘national grass-​roots movement’

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and ‘confused the cultural unity that existed in the peninsula … with the political and territorial unity of the great popular masses who existed outside that cultural tradition’.20 In short, the essentially critical view of the Risorgimento Left that Gramsci presented in his Notebooks was based on the broad acceptance of a Marxist analysis that could not detect within the process of national unification either the constituent elements of the model of ‘bourgeois’ revolution, or an adequate attempt at popular involvement in national life. Gramsci’s analytical framework was to have an enormous influence on Italy’s Marxist historiography, but its immediate application to the Communist political programme had to contend with a system of national symbols that was less discriminate in its judgement and better suited to offering the public points of reference that could be widely shared, and which had become well established in the preceding years. It was principally for this reason that there was only a partial accommodation of Gramsci’s thinking within the party’s journalism. The PCI’s communication clearly drew on Gramsci’s writing to round out the description of the Resistance as a completion of the Risorgimento, or as a ‘second Risorgimento’.21 Communists and Socialists had already appropriated this expression during the war, taking it from Giustizia e Libertà circles, and as the Resistance experience gradually receded this sort of idea provided the basis for the construction of the ‘myth’ of the anti-​Fascist armed struggle. At first, the references were somewhat vague. It was really as the 1950s started, in the wake of the rapid spread of Gramscian analysis, that there was an increase in articles that portrayed the struggle against Fascism as a moment of full involvement in national life for the ‘working class and the developed working masses … and the political forces of the Communists, Socialists, and left-​wing democrats’, and as the beginning of ‘a process of inclusion of the popular masses in the life of the state’ that was facilitated by the Socialist and Communist Parties.22 It was particularly when the Korean War broke out, and the forces of the Left were directly accused of being unwilling to defend the nation against an aggressor, that the leader writers for Avanti! and L’Unità vigorously argued that their respective parties represented ‘the good forces of labour and architects of the second Italian Risorgimento’, which ‘were the real fatherland, the fatherland of labour, social justice, liberty and peace’.23 In their mobilisation for the 1953 election, journalists and activists at every level in the PCI and PSI thus had an important tool available for symbolic reference to the past; newspaper articles and speeches written for rallies could point to the link between the two historical episodes in a clearer and more structured way. In Il Paese, the Socialist Giorgio Fenoaltea declared that whoever ‘took action in the spirit of the Resistance … was taking action in the spirit of the Risorgimento … [the Resistance] added to the Risorgimento what it lacked, and brought it to fulfilment’, making ‘the

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entire Italian people … fight in unity … for their liberty’.24 The Communist Edoardo D’Onofrio, for his part, had a defence of the ‘second Risorgimento’ as the centrepiece of one of the most impassioned moments of the election campaign in Rome: The first Risorgimento unified Italy, and ensured its independence … The second Risorgimento brought Italy back together again, after Fascism and the war had wrecked it and broken it in two; it ensured its independence again and gave it order as a republican regime with broad democratic freedoms … Our battle of today … has meaning and assumes national value precisely because its objective is the fulfilment of the demands of the Risorgimento.25

It was also in the 1950s, and on the same interpretative basis but by means of a process of cultural development that required more time than the rapid and unfettered invention of election slogans, that numerous aspects of ritual reference to the partisan experience started to permeate the popular culture of the Socialists and, even more so, the Communists. The national and local cult of the martyrs of the Resistance, who had given their names to local party branches and whose images were jealously protected, may have helped to give the historical fact of the partisan war a mythical and salvationist value that supplemented the basic achievement of liberty from the dictatorship, turning the Resistance into the authentic origin of the concept of citizenship that was espoused by the cultures and subcultures of the Italian Marxist Left.26 In the PCI’s campaigning material and political language, despite the presence of references to Gramsci, the framework of national references offered was, once again, not uniform and straightforward. Differend interpretations could be made of the expression ‘second Risorgimento’ as applied to the Resistance: ‘the “other Risorgimento”, which could give a voice to the “other” Italy … which until then had remained defeated and marginalised’, but also that of ‘the “fulfilment” of the Risorgimento process, following a line of continuity with the pre-​Fascist past’.27 The PCI had not in fact renounced ‘use of all the clichés about Italian history as a perennial fight for freedom’, nor interpretation of these through a lens that located the party as heir to every positive tradition that had found expression in the nation’s development.28 Even the great idols of the Risorgimento, disparaged by Gramsci, were too popular to be discarded as features of an iconography that could be referred to. At the beginning of the 1950s, the editors of L’Unità returned to the entire spectrum of national symbolism in its articles and illustrations, contrasting the secularist Cavour and Victor Emmanuel II with the ‘clerical’ leanings of the current government.29 In May 1953, while condemning the alliances made between ‘false’ liberals and the DC’s ‘sanfedisti’ (a reference to pro-​clerical reactionaries of the Restoration era), Togliatti interpreted Stalin’s directive to ‘raise and carry forward’ the ‘banner of national independence

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and national sovereignty … thrown overboard by the bourgeoisie’ in terms of reclaiming the moderate figures who had led the Risorgimento: The great liberal movement of the Risorgimento demanded a profound transformation of our country and was the implacable adversary of the reactionary clerical bloc. The flag of liberty and independence, dropped by people like Villabruna [and the Italian Liberal Party], has been picked up and raised high by the Communists.30

The image of the PCI’s present-​day opponents, the parties in the centrist government grouping, was generally equated with the Catholic party’s loyalty to the Church, and they were unequivocally awarded the role of inheritors of the Church’s past deeds against the Italian nation. Before the April 1948 election, and more so afterwards, the negative figure in the Communist version of Italian history was the papacy, which according to the short history lessons in Il Calendario del Popolo ‘had summoned the foreigner into Italy’ back in the times of Charlemagne, and was ‘driven only by its interest in expanding the territory of the nascent Papal State and consolidating its own political power’.31 This was the tone adopted by the parties of the Left and the newspapers affiliated to them in the annual commemoration of 20 September, the day when the Pope lost Rome to Italian troops in 1870 and therefore the most overtly anti-​clerical Risorgimento anniversary, while the government was accused of downplaying this. Furthermore, straight after the excommunication of Communist supporters in 1949, all the Communist-​aligned publications started to circulate an illustration from Don Basilio that featured a worker being welcomed by the ghosts of not only Cavour, Garibaldi and Mazzini, but also Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Just a few days earlier a culture article in L’Unità had explicitly stated which legacies were represented by the two parties: We say that the Italy of Christian Democracy is the Italy of the anti-​ Risorgimento … today only the parties of the Left hold high the flag of the Risorgimento in Italy, while the Christian Democrats and their allies are intent on recreating the old Papal State of Gregory XVI, typified by immobility and obscurantism … To each his part: to the Christian Democrats, [the role of] representing today’s Solaro della Margarita or Taparelli d’Azeglio; to the parties of the Left, leading the political struggle in the name of the … eternal ideals of liberty.32

To summarise, in the analysis of the Marxist Left’s construction of a linguistic and symbolic framework of reference to national sentiment, the essential element that emerges is its ambiguity, which has generally not been clearly identified. In the period 1947–​48, the Left’s choice of Garibaldi as a symbol continued to accommodate competing interpretations:  one that was more

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Figure 5  Poster by the Popular Front for the general elections of 1948

ideologically appropriate, and one that was more widely shared. Subsequently, a similar interpretative approach proved applicable to the language developed in the general interpretation of the role of the Risorgimento in Italian history. It can be argued that this imprecision in meaning boosted the ‘symbolic capital’ of this lexical machinery.

The crossfire over the ‘fifth columns’ The anti-​Communist Garibaldi The effectiveness of a campaigning approach can often be deduced from the effort its opponents make to challenge it. As regards the adoption of Garibaldi for use in the publicity of the Left, opposition was in fact very strong. The Republican Party (PRI) saw use of the image of one of its heroes as full-​blown theft, and responded by nominating Clelia Garibaldi, the general’s daughter, to contest the elections of April 1948. Her candidacy was widely publicised; posters reproduced the telegram with which she had responded to the invitation, ‘I accept, as my father would have accepted’, and she declared that she recognised the PRI as ‘the true continuer of his action and doctrine’. For a few days this gave the PRI an unaccustomed amount of coverage in the national press. An opinion piece in Candido spelt out the intended message of this candidacy:

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People believe in Garibaldi less and less. His own daughter, Clelia, nominated by the Republican Party, will vote against her father:  by this we mean, of course, against the image of Garibaldi, because the soul of the hero was, and can still only be, for the Republican Party.33

During the election campaign, amazement that the ‘totalitarian’ parties of the Left had appropriated the symbol of freedom and struggle against oppression was also conveyed to Italian voters in letters from their fellow nationals across the Atlantic. Italian-​American periodicals, in both New York and San Francisco, urged their readers to exert pressure on relatives in Italy by reminding them how the great Risorgimento general embodied the values that the United States had adopted, in the war and afterwards, by fighting all forms of tyranny.34 It was probably no coincidence that this theme was taken up in the culture pages of Il Messaggero during the same period:  three days before the election, Garibaldi was described as ‘the most unsuitable symbol for anti-​America’, with quotations from his letters recalling the celebratory welcome he had received in New York and ‘Lincoln’s unconditional admiration’ for him. The scathing conclusion hinged on the low opinion that Marx had held of the Left within the Italian Risorgimento, and used a somewhat offensive phrase he had written, taken out of context, which SPES had reproduced in Traguardo not long before: Everyone must realise that it is at least strange that Garibaldi has now been brought into action in order to bring together, under his flag, all those who oppose North American policy and instead follow the doctrines of Karl Marx, who, in his famous letter of 1864 to Engels, made this assessment of Garibaldi’s conduct: ‘I would rather be a louse than present a pitiful spectacle of such eminent imbecility’.35

Attacks on the unwarranted appropriation of the myth of Garibaldi by the PCI and PSI had in fact already started before the official formation of the Popular Front, when the face of ‘the hero of the two worlds’ had been the symbol of the People’s Bloc for the local elections of 1947. The day before the elections in Rome on 12 October, Igino Giordani, who was directly involved due to his candidature as a city councillor, wrote a leading article in Il Popolo on ‘Garibaldi’s incompatibility with the People’s Bloc’. In the first place, he argued, ‘victory by the Bloc would bring Rome into the orbit of the Comintern’, and for a fervent patriot such as ‘the hero of the two worlds’ it would have been an ‘undeserved disgrace’ to become the symbol of an organisation that was marked by such strong foreign influence. Second, ‘because of his humanitarianism, Garibaldi would certainly not have stood … alongside a heterogeneous coalition, launched by and dominated by Marxism, and therefore the doctrine of class struggle, which he shrank away from’.36

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Perhaps the sharpest observation on the matter appeared in Candido at the beginning of 1948, when it seemed that the PCI and PSI might be abandoning the symbol of Garibaldi for the general election. With his customary clarity, Guareschi derided the choice of potential replacements: Now the only issue is to find an image to stick on election posters in place of the rejected Garibaldi. Mazzini, Jesus Christ, Matteotti, Turati, Pius IX and the others, committed to parties of the Right and the Centre, have been discarded. Only Lenin and Stalin remain, but these are already in use by the PSI and PCI respectively, and choosing either might give the impression that one party was dominant within the Labour Front … Christopher Columbus would be fine, but reeks of ‘democristamericanismo’ (American Christian Democracy). Cavour is compromised, Bartali is otherwise occupied, and Coppi is not fit. They could use Italy, with a tower on her head, as the brand. Very inconveniently, however, Italy has not joined the Labour Front.37

For Guareschi, a joke was enough to raise questions about the fragility of a cultural construction that enjoyed deep roots within the Left, but in the eyes of the anti-​Communists was entirely opportunistic. Guareschi wanted to stress that Garibaldi’s face in reality meant nothing to the Communists: they were simply looking for any image that Italians would have learnt to admire at school, or watching the Giro d’Italia, and which would serve to hide the true nature of their party. Close to the elections, these ideas were taken up in a cartoon that was printed several times during April 1948: a Communist agitator was describing the symbol of the Front as Garibaldi with the Star of Italy as background, when talking to a patriot; as St Joseph with the comet as background, talking to a Catholic; as Stalin with the Soviet star as background, talking to an ardent Communist; and even as St Anthony the Abbot, patron saint of animals, when trying to convert a cow.38 Not long before, and particularly in response to the city council of Turin beginning to organise the commemoration of 1848, Guareschi had widened his destructive critique to attack the broader Communist attempt to appropriate the Risorgimento tradition as a whole, using a series of cartoons with the title ‘Risorgimento alla Negarville’, Celeste Negarville being the Communist city mayor who gave the celebrations a strong ideological stamp. In the heavy-​ handed style of political humour, these protested at the distortions of history in Communist publications: the crowd was depicted rejoicing out of ‘its gratitude to Karl Marx who had granted the Constitution’; Cavour was none other than Marx again, now seen voicing the protests of the oppressed proletariat at the Congress of Paris in 1856; Garibaldi’s speech at Teano, where in reality he had handed over authority in the Italian South to the King, proclaimed his support for the People’s Bloc; and so on.39 After February 1948, when confirmation came that Garibaldi’s face would still be used as the election symbol for the Left, Guareschi made an energetic

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return to developing the satirical use of the hero’s image for anti-​Communist purposes. Initially, the cartoons tended to distinguish between two different characters, the Garibaldi of history and the ‘Garibaldi of the Front’, who could be recognised by the star behind his head even when his whole body was portrayed. It was this new Garibaldi who greeted Stalin as king of Italy, and replied ‘Obbedisco!’ (I obey!) to the Soviet leader’s orders.40 The ‘real’ Garibaldi was pictured at the barber’s, asking to have his beard and moustache removed so as not to resemble the political symbol who had usurped his image, and rising out of the ballot paper to order a citizen not to vote for him.41 Another idea that Guareschi and his co-​editor Mosca also used to expose the PCI’s exploitation of Garibaldi was the representation of his image as a mask, behind which the ‘Front was trying to bring Stalin into Italy’.42 In an illustration during Carnival season, Stalin hid behind the mask of the hero, and was ready to retain this disguise until 18 April.43 Collaboration between the editors of Candido and those responsible for organised Catholicism’s election publicity helped to make this sort of reference to Garibaldi a recurrent feature in the language of political confrontation of the period. To add to the reproduction of Guareschi’s drawings of Stalin disguised as Garibaldi, there was a widely distributed image, used as a poster, leaflet and cartoon in SPES publications, in which Garibaldi became Stalin when turned upside down. This was first offered to grassroots activists by Traguardo on 28 March 1948. The editors of Avanti! responded to this visual joke by producing a caricature of De Gasperi that became Truman when inverted; however, this image was much less reproduced, as Truman’s name and face never acquired the negative value with the Italian public that Stalin had for anti-​Communist opinion.44 The apparent need of the Communists to hide themselves, their international references and their own symbols behind Garibaldi, a need that was perceived as a real deception of the electorate, had by this time been commented on in all the political communication channels hostile to Communism. Even before SPES recycled Guareschi’s ideas, the point had been widely made at political rallies, and was emphasised by De Gasperi in Turin in early March: The Communist Party … does not put its cards on the table, and is not honest in the political game. If its emblem is in fact the hammer and sickle, and if its leader is called Lenin or Stalin, then why does the PCI hide behind Garibaldi?45

In Nuoro, the following month, he made much the same point: Today, behind the likeness of Garibaldi, we can see those who seek to undermine liberty in Italy. And we, who are for liberty, let us defend Garibaldi, but not defend those who hide behind him.46

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Opposition to Communism and the denial of national identification Similar ideas to those discussed above were presented in a visual form in posters that the Civic Committees produced for the 1948 campaign, but in these it was Garibaldi in person who could be seen distancing himself from the Popular Front. For example, the general was seen on horseback at the head of his troops, following a brutalised version of Togliatti, who was the only person left still waving the banner of the Front’s ‘false’ Garibaldi. While behind the resurrected ‘Thousand’ a line from ‘Garibaldi’s Hymn’ was picked out, ‘Si scoprono le tombe, si levano i morti’ (The graves are uncovered, the dead rise up), the refrain, ‘Va fuori d’Italia, va fuori o stranier!’ (Leave Italy, leave, O foreigner) was attached to the figure of Togliatti. These elements illustrated the position underlying all the criticism levelled at the PCI’s decision to look to the Risorgimento for its symbols. Behind the caustic commentary on Communist referencing of Italy’s national epic lay the idea that it was at the very least inappropriate for a party that was pro-​Soviet, and therefore inherently non-​Italian, to evoke the Risorgimento. The persecution of the Communists because they had been ‘antinazionali’, as agents of a foreign power with which, moreover, there had been cordial relations for long periods, had been a primary element in Fascist propaganda on the construction of an ‘ideal fatherland’ for ‘true’ Italians, from whom those individuals and groups that had been hostile to the establishment of the regime were necessarily excluded.47 After the war, the revival of aspects of this imagery was the principal unifying feature of the idea of the nation that was put forward in all anti-​Communist circles. Faced with the destruction of national sentiment, after Fascism’s appropriation of nationalism and the regime’s military defeat, the only serious attempt to rescue Italian tradition and the idea of the nation took place within the Catholic cultural domain: this was the only sphere that could counter the Marxist Left with both its mass entrenchment in Italian society and its vision of Italy’s international mission, which by then was widely established within its own cultural and doctrinal programme.48 The piece that particularly expressed this position was an article by Father Lombardi in La Civiltà Cattolica in January 1947, which for the first time in the post-​war period called for Italy’s great spiritual mobilisation, and for a re-​awakening of the Catholic faith that he saw as the essential culmination of the anti-​Communist drive. The Italy that Lombardi wished to rouse was the ‘Italy of St Francis, St Clare, St Catherine, and St Bernardino; the Italy of St Pius V, St Louis, Don Bosco, Cottolengo, and St Francesca Cabrini’. His plan to re-​Christianise society could only begin with a nation whose spirit was deeply imbued with Catholic religiosity; his conclusion was that ‘being a good Italian includes being a good Catholic; being an anti-​Catholic, for us,

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includes being a traitor to the fatherland’.49 This sort of idea, strongly supported by the ideals of traditional Catholicism, was greeted with a degree of caution within the DC. The leader writers for Il Popolo and SPES activists restricted themselves to the vague acknowledgement of an idea that was viewed favourably by broad swaths of Catholic opinion, but would have been unlikely to be accepted by the audience of secular cultural groups that the centrist government needed to address. As a counterpart to the rather general appeals to national pride, for example by reference in leading articles and the culture pages to great Italians in history, the anti-​Communist networks particularly chose to illustrate national spirit by means of its inversion, hoping to consolidate its diverse range of voters by presenting a gallery of images and expressions that were charged with meaning. In the first place, the initial signs of widespread hostility towards the ‘Moscow agents’ at the helm of the PCI took the form of anti-​Soviet polemic as early as 1945. From the nineteenth century onwards, Western culture had been nourishing an image of Russia that was essentially mysterious and threatening, due to its supposed intentions towards the West and the fear generated by its appearance as the oppressive ‘despotic East’. In more recent times, this image had been fused with the more general fear of Communism as the subversion of society and established order; in the defeated Italy of the post-​war period, this mixture of fears and images with a strong emotional impact had found its most concrete expression yet in the public perception of diplomatic disputes that were to persist for years, from the Soviet veto of Italy’s membership of the United Nations to disputes over both Trieste and the treatment meted out by the ‘slavi’ to Italians in Dalmatia, which was now occupied by Tito’s Yugoslavia. However, the issue that generated the greatest emotional response from the public was the fate of the Italian soldiers who had been imprisoned during the campaign in Russia.50 Only meagre numbers of Italian soldiers had returned after the war, while the Soviet authorities had remained silent on the fate of the others: thousands were in fact handed over after the Kremlin had officially stated that all the Italian captives had returned home. This all contributed to an air of suspicion and rampant rumour in the major newspapers, which were trying to satisfy the public’s interest in the face of the cautious stance taken by the Italian government. When it came to the April 1948 election, this theme was taken up for use in campaigning material. The DC’s bulletins soon started to urge their speechmakers to refer to ‘the missing Italians in Russia’, as well as the fate of ‘Italian Trieste’ and the ‘lands redeemed at the price of so much blood’ that were now being trampled by ‘Slav hordes’, as the most ‘tragic signs of [Soviet] wickedness’.51 It fell once again to Guareschi to add visual references to the debate; his cartoons depicted Italian prisoners with their army uniforms now

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in tatters, as slaves working in frozen wastes under their Russian taskmasters, whose fur hats noticeably displayed the same star as that of the Popular Front, and even as ghosts, who from the posters asked their mothers ‘to vote for them too’, or appeared to Italian Communists visiting Russia.52 As election day approached, the Associazione nazionale reduci di Russia (Italian Association of survivors from Russia) published a one-​off issue of the newspaper Russia that included not only descriptions of the appalling life in the Soviet Union, but also, in particular, a list of ‘aguzzini’ (torturers): those Italian Communists who had interrogated prisoners or had been responsible for their ‘re-​education’.53 These included Edoardo D’Onofrio, a prominent PCI member, who in the months that followed was portrayed by the main anti-​Communist publications as the archetypal torturer of Italian prisoners. This media operation helped to keep the affair alive after 1948, as it continued to feed journalists and the campaigning machinery with material that was even more explicit and detailed; in 1949, Traguardo provided SPES activists with details of D’Onofrio’s alleged deeds as an aguzzino, for potential use in newspaper-​style wall posters.54 However, it was the magazine Oggi, which had published one of the first press investigations of the issue in the second half of 1948, that particularly focused on the Communist official and publicised the action taken by Italian survivors from the Soviet Union against the PCI.55 Although there were Communist attempts to defuse this controversy, including the libel case that D’Onofrio instigated, and lost, against those responsible for the special issue of Russia, attacks by the moderate and conservative press continued. In February 1950 Oggi started to publish a new investigation into the Italians still missing in Russia; the author was Giovanni Messe, the general and most right-​wing senior officer of the Armata Italiana in Russia (Italian Army in Russia), who had been a favourite target of Communist publicity. In 1952, Epoca, on the other hand, published an investigation by Ezio Saini into the unreported presence in the USSR of Italian prisoners, who in contravention of the Geneva Convention had been held back to work on Russia’s reconstruction and new infrastructure. From the end of May onwards, Saini’s feature included letters from relatives of the missing Italians asking survivors and international organisations for news, and the replies from whoever could offer information; the outcome was the publication of a list of missing Italians who might still have been prisoners. In this climate, organised political communication, and particularly the Catholic element within this, could easily return to the issue of the prisoners in its attacks, especially during an election campaign. Many newspaper-​style wall posters produced by SPES and the Civic Committees, repeating the news items that had already appeared in the mass media, featured references to Russia’s failure to hand back prisoners who were still alive, whose existence was taken as a given.

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These specific attacks, in which the supposition that the Italian Communists were jointly responsible with the Soviet regime was reinforced by the issue’s emotional impact, were of course located within a broader context, which was pervaded by ideas about the ‘anti-​national’ role of the PCI in Italian politics that were much more overt and reasoned. In this arena the leading article by Giuseppe Sala, published on 30 September 1947 in Il Popolo with the heading ‘Italiano il PC?’ (Is the PC Italian?), represented a real declaration of war. Writing in the period immediately after the founding conference of Cominform, Sala directed his accusations mainly at the party’s ‘ruling class’, which was very different from its electoral base: the former ‘had until now provided evidence of its loyalty to its resolutions and plans, which certainly did not derive from the will of the Italian people’. As the weeks passed, the issue was revisited using language that was increasingly less cautious and more direct: Cominform’s creation was described by Christian Democrats, but also in the secular press, as a ‘clarifying indication’ of the fact that ‘the Communist Parties are pawns in a game that is not one played within their nations, but is a struggle on behalf of the more or less imperialist interests of a great foreign state’.56 As the 1948 election drew closer, the ideas and fears that related to Russia were projected onto the domestic opponent, to the extent that they almost merged. On election day itself, a long article in the culture pages of Il Popolo reminded people that ‘in voting for the Popular Front, you would have voted for the victory of Russian communism, not Italian’, and represented the Soviet threat in terms of absolute otherness in relation to Italians’ decisions about their lives; Communism was portrayed as a descendant of the barbarian hordes that in past times had threatened Europe from the East.57 This general reference to international Communism’s inherent ‘oriental despotism’ was common during the 1948 campaign, and found a particular expression in Civic Committee posters: taking their cue from the propaganda of the Fascist war, these revived the image of Red Army soldiers with accentuated Asian features, poised to invade Italy. This visual representation met with some success, and the physical characteristics of Moscow’s troops became a stylistic device that was used in the newspaper-​style wall posters as a quick way of representing ‘the otherness, in relation to the Western Christian, of the Bolshevik’, who ‘seemed to be almost the product of biological mutation’, or indicated his belonging to ‘a foreign race, repulsive and far removed even in their physical attributes’.58 These ideas gained less of a foothold in written journalism, with the exception of persistent references by Il Tempo’s correspondents to ‘invasion’ by the ‘Asian horde’, and to the ‘Siberian civilisation’ that Togliatti was supposed to want to import.59 After 1948, extreme caricatures of the ‘Asiatic’ nature of the doctrines of Soviet Communism gave way to a possibly less colourful interpretation that was

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Figure 6  Poster by the Civic Committee for the general elections of 1953

more suited to international developments. Just before the April election, Igino Giordani, in his customary evocative style, had already given voice to this in Il Quotidiano: Between the Second and Third World Wars –​the survivors will one day say –​ the Marxist proletariat believed that it was fighting for the emancipation of

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labour, but instead fought for Slav imperialism. Tsarism consumed Marxism, taking advantage of it as a vehicle in its march forward.60

In other words, the Communist political and theoretical programme came to be described as inseparable from the Soviet Union’s expansionist intentions, which were fulfilled using the control and methods that had belonged to the old Russian imperialism. The Italian Communists were thus depicted as one of Russia’s attacking brigades. These charges found their coherent linguistic representation in mid-​1950, in the wake of the concerns generated by the beginning of hostilities in Korea. On 2 July, in a speech in Varallo Sesia that was reported by all the main newspapers, De Gasperi argued that events in the Far East should serve as a warning of the need to ‘prevent the establishment … of a fifth column ready to obey external orders’ in Italy as well.61 The term ‘quinta colonna’ (fifth column) derived from military language, and since the Spanish Civil War had referred to groups sympathetic to the enemy that operated from within. Prior to 1950 it had only been used occasionally to describe the Communists, but with the explosion of the first ‘hot’ conflict between the two blocs its use quickly became widespread. Similarly, use of the vocabulary of war spread rapidly across the West to describe the clash with the Communist world: this was now seen as a modern ‘total war’ that had to be fought in every area of social life by following a careful strategy.62 De Gasperi made his personal contribution to the spread of the term ‘fifth column’ as a reference to the Communists, using it on almost all his public appearances during the summer of 1950. In the conflict under way, he wrote in the 7 July issue of Il Popolo, ‘the aggressor is aided by the internal fifth column which is able to act freely using democratic structures’; in a speech in parliament on events in Korea, he said with reference to Italy that ‘[t]‌here is a fifth column, a systematic and organised fifth column, which in times of emergency tends to exacerbate the domestic situation by introducing elements of breakdown’.63 As always, Il Popolo and other newspapers close to the government, especially Il Messaggero, gave ample coverage to De Gasperi’s speech, and quickly adopted the expression ‘quinta colonna’. The phrase found its way into satirical illustrations, often merging with the image that Guareschi particularly favoured of the ‘pugnalata alla schiena’ (stab in the back) that the Communists were deemed ready to administer to their fellow Italians. Implicit in the expression ‘quinta colonna’ was the word ‘traditore’ (traitor), which was much harsher and consequently used more sparingly. Voters were frequently asked by posters in all the Italian republic’s early election campaigns not to ‘betray the fatherland’ by voting for the hammer and sickle symbol, but in verbal communication the semantic field of ‘tradimento’ (‘betrayal’ or ‘treason’) was only used at moments of particular tension, when accusations became more direct and explicit. At the very beginning of the Korean War, for example, in

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response to a blatant denial of the evidence by the Italian Communists, the editor of Il Messaggero Mario Missiroli allowed himself to use words that implied the need for concrete measures against such an ‘anti-​national’ position:  ‘the ancient world knew nothing of these issues. It recognised treason and gave it the punishment reserved for patricide, but it had no experience of the abandonment of one’s fatherland in the name of a theoretical principal’.64 A lack of acknowledgement of the PCI leadership’s affiliation to Italy was common, especially in output that was less emotionally charged, and was often flavoured with a pinch of irony. Guareschi renamed the PCI ‘the Foreign Legion’ which ‘represented the interests of Cominforc in the Italian parliament’, and called the Po river passing through his region of Emilia ‘the quiet Don’; in many of his cartoons he had the Communists shouting ‘Viva la Russia’, ‘as good Italians’, when protesting about American interference in Italy.65 In the pages of Oggi that featured news photography, Italian Communists, especially when on a delegation to the USSR, were pictured with other members of the ‘staff of Red collaborationism’, sometimes also dressed in Russian-​style clothing.66 The general trend within the messages was to make the semantic link between the words ‘comunista’ and ‘straniero’ (‘Communist’ and ‘foreigner’), contrasting both with ‘italiano’; this resulted in the well-​known Civic Committee poster of 1953 that showed a cross over the symbol of the PCI, pointing out that ‘Communists vote this way, not Italians’. A similar effect was achieved by the play of symbols in visual material, including output for important local council elections like those in Rome:  the Civic Committees offered posters that represented Communist victory in the councils by Soviet flags on major city monuments, such as St Peter’s Basilica and the Vittoriano monument in the capital.

The countercharge: ‘slaves to the foreigner’ in Communist language The leadership of the PCI, and consequently the PSI, mainly responded to accusations about their allegiance by counterattacking, using interpretative frameworks that to a great extent mirrored those of their opponents. This approach was encapsulated in an article by Ruggero Grieco for the thirtieth anniversary of the PCI’s foundation. After declaring that the Communists were ‘loyal to proletarian internationalism and defenders of national interests’, values that necessarily went hand in hand, he launched his attack on their opponents: Behind the ‘defence of the fatherland’ [they] wish to disguise the defence of specific class interests, at the cost of abandoning the principles of national and state sovereignty, and of the sovereign rights of the people, without which there is no national state of any kind … The Italian working class and the Communist Party, which are profoundly national, and inspired by the

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noble ideas of brotherhood and unity that bind the workers of all countries together … raise high the flag of Italy’s democratic rebirth and peace among all peoples, in respect for the right of peoples both large and small to liberty and independence, the unshakeable basis of international law.67

In 1947 Felice Platone had responded to Giuseppe Sala’s article ‘Italiano il PC?’ with an article in the Roman edition of L’Unità, ‘Italiana la DC?’ (Is the DC Italian?), which from the title onwards went through Sala’s piece, changing the target. Platone rejected the charges by identifying the PCI with the Italian working masses, which was intended to rebut claims that the party was alien to national interests:  ‘Il Popolo, when casting doubt on the Italianness of the party of Italian workers, has even forgotten the Christian virtue of decency’. Moreover, he argued that in its denial of the correspondence between the interests of Italy and those of the working classes, the DC was demonstrating its inability to represent ‘the hundreds of thousands of … Italian workers [who] had honestly served in its ranks’: When the Christian Democrat publication says, for example, that the Russians defended Moscow and Stalingrad not for the interests of the workers but for the independence of Russia, what can this mean except that for the Christian Democrats the interests of working people and the interests of the nation are divergent and in conflict?

His conclusion was caustic: The leadership of the DC and its men in government have estranged themselves from the nation to such a degree that they cannot even understand what is and what is not Italian either in domestic policy or in international relations.68

Subsequently, the ‘Press and the Propaganda’ sections of the Left offered fuller explanations of the string of dependent relationships that were alien to national life, but to which the DC leadership seemed inextricably tied. A summary was offered in Trevisani’s Piccola enciclopedia: The DC can today be described as the leading party of Italy’s conservative and reactionary forces and, at the same time, the party of trust in American and Atlantic strategy. This is no coincidence:  due to the support of the Church, which gives it the opportunity to control large masses in the country, and due to its insensitivity to the nation, which derives from being a Catholic party closely linked to the Vatican, a supranational power, the Christian Democrat Party is qualified to fulfil these responsibilities.69

In Avanti! and L’Unità from late 1947 and into 1948, there were frequent returns to the theme of Christian Democracy’s alleged subjection to the Vatican Curia; these took up the attacks on Italy as a ‘new Papal State’ that had previously been published in Don Basilio, and especially in the commentary of its ‘L’asservitore

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romano’ column (literally ‘The Roman enslaver’, but playing on L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper). With regard to allegations of the anti-​national role of the Church, however, from the end of 1947 the criticism that located the threat to Italy overseas was more significant. At this point the key vocabulary signifying hostility towards the particular relationship that the Italian government was establishing with the US administration began to take shape. The Communists had already accused the United States of laying the foundations of Italy’s ‘colonial enslavement’, with the complicity of the government, during the period of military occupation; now, however, their attacks particularly addressed projects linked to the Marshall Plan. In the final months of the Constituent Assembly, Togliatti himself had reacted strongly to the possibility of American aid for Europe, fearing a loss of autonomy: We are dealing with the entire economic future of our country, not in terms of our present and future economic opportunities, but rather as regards the needs of American imperialism, American industries, and American trade.70

At the same time the articles in Propaganda, quickly turned into leaflets that repeated them more or less to the letter, had clearly illustrated the dynamics of the new American political and economic ‘imperialism’. If we believe what was written, the Communist Party would have accepted as ‘welcome’ some ‘genuine American aid’, but behind ‘appearances’ lurked the removal from Italy of both currency and the managerial independence of businesses where US capital was invested.71 The Marshall Plan was represented as simply the latest offer of this type of counterfeit aid, depicted in cartoons as a mousetrap in which the cheese was decorated with the stars and stripes.72 It was argued that the invasion of American products would suffocate Italian manufacturing and make the Italian market dependent on the United States, to the extent that the bestowal of aid would become a weapon of ‘blackmail’ which many Western countries were seeking to avoid. During the campaign for the 18 April election, this kind of interpretation was repeatedly offered to activists, culminating in its clearest exposition at the end of March: During the war [US] industrial production grew enormously. Today, their domestic market can no longer absorb its products … In order to avoid domestic crisis, without giving up their earnings, American capitalists want to conquer world markets and subjugate all countries. This is the meaning of the Marshall Plan … They want to turn Europe into a market for exploitation: a colony where American capitalists can do as they please.73

After the election, and after the Marshall Plan got under way in June, there was a return in Communist circles to analysis of the nature of this operation and its consequences, with some more rigorous contributions; the substance of the party’s approach, however, remained unchanged. The most comprehensive

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summary of all the critical thinking, and also the most quoted, was Togliatti’s speech to the Chamber of Deputies on 10 July, later published as ‘Piano Marshall, piano di guerra’ (Marshall Plan, War Plan). Once again, he took up the issues that had been addressed at length in the Communist campaign material of 1948, in which the Plan was described as a tool for attacking Italian independence: it was seen as a means for US capitalism to shift the effects of the post-​war crisis onto European soil, culminating in the elimination of any autonomy in production and economic policy, and also as the first step towards the establishment of a war economy, leading Western countries towards rearmament and hostility towards the ‘new democracies’.74 The interpretation developed during 1948 was further strengthened the following year, in the light of an event that could be interpreted as the logical consequence of the authoritarian and militarist policies of the United States in Europe: the drafting of the North Atlantic Treaty, which the Italian government signed after the DC had excluded the possibility of joining any type of military alliance in its electoral campaign.75 In 1949 and 1950, following the customary pattern, the intellectuals who wrote for Rinascita offered an interpretation of the Treaty’s provisions that bolstered its image as a war alliance, whose clauses prevented the democratic institutions in European countries from determining the declaration of hostilities.76 Meanwhile, the news stories and campaign material that dealt with more mundane and immediate issues, such as military exercises and the misbehaviour of foreign troops, were located within this bigger picture. The ‘piano di guerra’ was followed by the ‘patto di guerra’ (war pact), as it was described in the title of a special issue of Propaganda in April 1949: a treaty that as it developed would place ‘Italian troops in the service of foreign staff’, and would put ‘the economic life of the country under the control of the NATO Standing Committee, led by an American’.77 The return of American soldiers, as well as being presented as an insult to Italian national pride, was an opportunity for the Left to recall an even deeper humiliation, which many Italians had already lived through between 1943 and 1947. ‘As the “Joes” come back, so do the “segnorine” ’: this was the heading Il Paese used in 1948 when it reported the first appearance of American soldiers, observing that they were accompanied by the return of the moral and social corruption that Italy had previously been forced to endure.78 The mass return of foreign troops was seen as inevitably leading to a rise in prostitution: the apparent moral decline was evoked in a number of novels and films set during the war years, including Malaparte’s La pelle and Camillo Mastrocinque’s Siamo uomini o caporali?79 To fuel the debate, Propaganda created a regular column to report on the brawls and sexual improprieties involving American soldiers. In the period 1953–​54 there were attempts to establish the European Defence Community, which attracted criticism from the Communists very similar to that

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aimed at the North Atlantic Treaty. Starting on 1 March 1953, an investigation by Renato Mieli was published in L’Unità on ‘this, shall we say, “community” ’, which ‘was neither European nor defensive’, but which, like the Treaty, was viewed as an instrument of aggression against Russia, whose only purposes were to be a cover for German rearmament and to allow the command of European armed forces to be transferred to the United States.80 Continuity in the issues raised over national independence from the United States was matched by a lexical continuity in the writing and speechmaking of Communist origin that lasted well beyond the 1950s. The goal of ‘indipendenza nazionale’, alongside ‘pace’ (peace) and ‘lavoro’ (work), became one of the cardinal elements in the political and electoral programme of the parties within the Left, in contrast to the supposed aims of their opponents. From 1948 onwards, the latter were described in words from the semantic field relating to ‘servi’ (servants or slaves); they were also given the adjective ‘atlantico’, generally with negative connotations, to indicate any initiative of anti-​Soviet inspiration. Moreover, when the language of patriotism and the nation was applied to description of the opposition between the blocs that characterised national and international political conflict, it conformed to an essentially class-​based analysis; from this perspective, national belonging was necessarily mediated by the parties of the Left, as the political programme of the PCI and PSI pursued the interests of the working masses and therefore the nation. This language illustrated an unbridgeable gap between ‘the fatherland’ that consisted of all Italian citizens, whose interests were represented by the parties of the Left, and the ‘imperialist’ interests of the ‘American monopolists’, who were poised to unleash a war and send the ‘cannon fodder’ to die, for reasons that included their need to avoid an overproduction crisis and find markets for their investments. At the time of the war in Korea it was thus not unusual to find writing like this in L’Unità: The young people of Italy, both women and men, are understanding, increasingly well, that the ‘fatherland’ is not just the land of a handful of great financiers, landowners and foolish servants of the foreigner … The real fatherland, that of the tricolour flag, that of the Italians, is an Italy where all honest people might live in peace, work, produce, and trade … and bring up their own children without fear of seeing them emaciated, disabled, or torn to pieces.81

From the Socialist camp Sandro Pertini expressed similar ideas, rejecting the epithet ‘fifth columns’ that De Gasperi had attached to the Socialist and Communist opposition: The wholesome forces of labour, architects of the second Italian Risorgimento, are those who have now been described as ‘fifth columns’ only because they dare to rebel against every instance of exploitation … and are ready to rise up

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once again against the foreign invader … However, these ‘fifth columns’ now, as before, represent the true fatherland, the fatherland of labour, social justice, liberty and peace.82

Iconography and strategies of exposition: indications of common ground? From the visual perspective, the imagery used by Communist activists in their cartoons and election posters closely followed the themes debated in the press, although they looked for a clearer and more immediate communicative impact by using symbolism that verged on the grotesque. In 1948, for example, members of the government grouping that allegedly served the United States were represented as dogs held ‘on a leash by a single master’: Truman with the White House in the background. The same leaflet offered an image borrowed from the emblem of the recording company La Voce del Padrone (His Master’s Voice), in which the same dogs were listening to a gramophone broadcasting the US government’s position.83 This cartoon was hugely successful and for years was reused in the local press, where the dog was generally given the features of De Gasperi. Shortly afterwards, De Gasperi and his ministers appeared in posters dressed as puppets, led by Truman as Uncle Sam in stars and stripes: an image that had previously been used in Fascist war propaganda. However, the old and familiar visual metaphor of puppetry was also revived in posters produced by Catholic anti-​Communist organisations:  Nenni and Togliatti were shown being manipulated by Stalin, and then by Malenkov. In more sophisticated illustrations, Togliatti, as a puppet, pulled the strings of another puppet with Nenni’s features, or of someone voting Communist ‘in good faith’. The common use of representational devices by the two opposing sides did not stop there: for example, we can see the delegitimating assimilation of the opposing superpower to the Nazi enemy, which could often be understood by reference to the more general comparison between the enemy camp and Fascism. For those driven by hostility towards the Soviet Union and its politics, it was customary to relate the expansionist practices of the Communist bloc to Germany’s conduct during the 1930s and 1940s. ‘Who among us, observing the methods of Russian expansionism, does not remember those of Hitler’s expansionism?’ wondered Ettore Vanni in Il Tempo in January 1948.84 At much the same time, in an article which urged people to remember that ‘Christian Democracy had not signed any treaty of alliance, either military or political, with the USA’, Traguardo drew its readers to a conclusion: Who, then, threatens our peace? The Communists, who are currently busy considering aggression and revolt, and who systematically accuse others of preparing for aggression and war. ‘Around Germany tightens the threat by

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governments who wish to assail it with war’, Hitler said in 1938. But in 1939, it was he who began the war.85

From 1949 onwards, when the military alliance with the Americans emerged, the SPES magazine’s favourite slogan declared that ‘Hitler would not have ordered the war if the Atlantic Pact had been in place’, with an implicit return to the earlier comparison.86 This stylistic device became widely used. In response to the surprise attack on South Korea and reactions to this from international Communism, Rusconi wrote a very stern leading article for Oggi maintaining that people were faced with the same ‘propaganda trick that Hitler used every time he gobbled up a little piece of Europe’. His conclusion was that ‘the Communists’ pursuit of Nazi methods, and their use of almost the same words, is entirely logical, given that they are the Nazis of today’, by which he meant the world’s most concrete threat to liberty and peace.87 On the left, as was the case over references to Fascism in Italian politics, references to the German enemy were developed more systematically. In August 1947 the first considered comparisons emerged, although at this stage they were still partial and implicit in the references made to the searing memories of the recent conflict. This can be seen in a passage that Secchia wrote about Auschwitz:  ‘[a]‌nd yet when we have these Nazi monstrosities in front of us, there are already people who are preparing for equally monstrous horrors with atomic bombs. Will men allow such horrors to be repeated?’88 Once again, the election campaign that followed brought out stronger headings in Propaganda, such as ‘Truman come Hitler’ (Truman like Hitler).89 Subsequently, activists were continuously encouraged to compare American politicians with the Nazis, under the general category of ‘provocatori di guerra’ (warmongers) who were exploiting the alleged ‘Soviet expansionism’ to legitimate their own aims.90 After the approval of the North Atlantic Treaty the references became more complex:  from describing the alliance as similar to the Anti-​Comintern Pact and the Pact of Steel that had dragged Italy into war, they evolved into a proposed comparison between the DC and Fascism based on the idea that both political forces had opened the door to a foreign occupier.91 The linkage between alleged US imperialist intentions and the experience of Nazism became a primary element not only in satirical cartoons, but also in paintings by politically committed artists. In 1950, in response to the Korean War, Renato Guttuso produced a drawing for L’Unità with the title ‘Identità di vedute’ (Meeting of minds), which depicted Mussolini shaking hands with Hitler on one side and Truman and Douglas McArthur doing the same on the other.92 This was just a foretaste of the great mobilisation of all pro-​Communist artists for an exhibition in Rome to mark General Eisenhower’s visit in January 1951; tellingly, this was given the same title, ‘L’arte contro la barbarie’ (Art against barbarism), as the exhibition that had been organised at the same venue in 1944

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to document the consequences of Nazi violence.93 The themes of the paintings by Guttuso, Mario Mafai, Domenico Purificato and others, or at least of those reproduced in the press of the Left after the forced closure of the exhibition by the police, generally went no further than using a more engaging style to repeat ideas that had already been expressed in the cartoons and illustrations of campaign material. Due to his presence in the news, Eisenhower was the main figure in these artworks, joining Truman as a symbol of American imperialism; their faces were surrounded by swastikas, or by SS symbols of the skull and crossbones, and sometimes either they or an anonymous American soldier, representing the US military, held De Gasperi and Scelba on a leash. The titles, such as ‘Ricordatevi di Norimberga’ (Remember Nuremberg) by Ugo Attardi, also made fairly direct references to Nazi warmongering; this was often located within more general symbolic contexts of death and destruction.94 The delegitimating reference to Nazism was deliberately and overtly used in a new theme that emerged during the same period: criticism of the plans to rearm West Germany, which continued to be a feature of Communist journalism at least until the major controversy over the European Defence Community in 1953 and 1954.95 With its campaigns structured by its publications for internal circulation, the PCI ensured over time that the debate over West Germany’s definitive entry into European military plans generated an emotional response from the public, resurrecting memories of the tragedies experienced at the hand of the ‘tedeschi’, a word that in the Italian collective imagination was uncritically related to ‘nazisti’, ‘Wehrmacht’ and ‘SS’.96 Both the Communists and anti-​Communists accused each other of betraying the fatherland, and both attempted to capture the exclusive right to refer to the principal symbol of national unity. From 1945 onwards the PCI in particular felt the need to develop a symbolic relationship with the tricolour flag, and to make this relationship apparent. It was not the only political party to include the national flag in its emblem, but in 1945 its constitution set out detailed rules for the display of the tricolour alongside the red flag in all party branches, at every rally organised by the PCI or the Communist trade union federation CGIL, and at every official ceremony.97 In response to the Communists’ strategic adoption of the national flag, anti-​Communist campaigning bodies that were producing posters and visual material sought to separate and counterpose the Italian flag and its Communist counterpart, which was also the banner of a foreign state, in an increasingly emphatic manner. For election campaigns in the early 1950s, SPES and the Civic Committees devised designs in which a hand tore the Communist flag away from the two flags of the PCI symbol, in order to liberate the image of the tricolour and leave ‘no veil over the Italian flag’. Elsewhere, the Communist threat to the nation was represented by a red flag splitting the tricolour in two, like a hammer or an axe; in another poster the

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Italian standard had an indelible pencil, for voting against the Communists, as its flagpole. In short, there was a trend towards ‘an overlap between universal acceptance of the tricolour and its use for party purposes, so that … awareness of one’s membership of a single national community came to be filtered and influenced by ideological and party allegiances’.98 A similar discourse applied to other images with high symbolic content, such as the representation of Italy as a woman with a castellated crown. This figure had ancient origins, appearing on coins from the first century BCE, and during the revolutionary and Napoleonic era had been revived along the lines of France’s Marianne. However, the histories of representations of Italy and France as a woman were very different. Marianne came into being as an eminently revolutionary and republican symbol for one particular side, but during France’s Third Republic she was accepted as the all but unique image for the nation.99 Her Italian counterpart, despite not having such strong political connotations to her origin, struggled to establish herself within the symbolism of monarchist and liberal Italy. On monuments, if present at all, she had a marginal and decorative place, and even when she was used on coins and medals ‘she was unable to acquire defined features and impose herself with her own autonomy’:100 [She was represented] sometimes as a nautical maiden, sometimes as a ploughwoman, with a variety of attributes that can only be an indication of the uncertainty with which one moves towards the delineation of an image … that needed to be characterised in an open way.101

In the post-​war period, representation of Italy as a woman became more widely recognised, not least because she appeared in the series of stamps that were the most commonly issued by the Italian Postal Service for at least twenty years. In terms of party political output, her treatment could instead be seen as the end product of the weakness of her symbolic value. If we return to the comparison with France, the figure of Marianne was also used by the different political parties in a context of marked ideological and cultural conflict; but even when she was supposed to be represent one section of society against another, this heroic symbol of France remained a militant woman ready for battle, capable of defeating her enemies on her own, be they Gaullists or Communists; she maintained an impression of strength and solidity both in the most serious commemorative posters and in satirical illustrations.102 By contrast, every time Italy with her castellated crown was adopted for political purposes, from 1948 onwards, she was portrayed as weak and in need of help to avoid defeat; her presence was generally not that of a protagonist, but an accessory strengthening the position of the political party requiring support. Guareschi, in his cartoons, was the first to start depicting an Italy who was ragged, weak, in need of help, and even threatened by the Communists with a highly evocative stab in the

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back.103 Also in 1948, she was defended from the mortal blow of the hammer and sickle by the crossed shield of Christian Democracy in a Civic Committee poster. Two years later, the same organisation represented Italy tied to a stake and threatened by a tank, to show yet again how ‘the Communists … wanted to destroy her’. For the council elections of 1952, Gedda’s movement developed an illustration in which menacing hands, marked with Communist symbols, were attacking the towers on Italy’s castellated crown, symbolic of the cities whose administration was essential to the country’s wellbeing. In the Communist camp similar stylistic devices were in use, and the woman representing Italy was often portrayed as a prisoner of either the Americans or the government.104 Interestingly, a similar fate befell other symbols which were less charged but still had a high impact on the public, such as the great sportsmen of football and cycling:  the two sports most beloved of Italians. In 1948, the Civic Committees produced a poster in which all the great cyclists, including Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali, urged Italians not to vote for the Popular Front. In 1950, by contrast, the Partisans for Peace made the announcement that ‘the azzurri d’Italia [Italian football team] have signed against the atomic bomb’, publishing photographs of the footballers who were on their way to Brazil to defend the World Cup. The following summer, when the Giro d’Italia was passing through Emilia, local editions of L’Unità started to publicise the fact that initiatives by the peace movement were getting the support of Italy’s leading cyclists and best-​known trainers; according to police authority records, those concerned later claimed that they had been approached by seemingly ordinary autograph-​hunters, and had been completely unaware that they were signing political petitions.105 The exchange of delegitimating language on the value of patriotism became particularly well developed in the personal attacks launched by ‘Press and Propaganda’ sections against the main leaders of the two parties. For their opponents, De Gasperi and Togliatti both became individualised symbols of the failure to fulfil the responsibilities that every citizen and every politician had to the fatherland. Starting with the campaign for the Constituent Assembly in 1946, local branches of the DC circulated leaflets that reported Togliatti’s declaration on taking Soviet citizenship in 1930: For myself, to have abandoned Italian for Soviet citizenship is a reason for particular pride. I do not feel tied to Italy as if to my homeland … To have renounced Italian citizenship is a reason for particular pride, because as an Italian I felt like a miserable mandolin player and nothing more. As a Soviet citizen, I know that I am worth ten thousand times more than the best Italian citizen.106

Togliatti’s words were of course taken completely out of context in relation to their original political environment, when the Fascist regime was in its heyday.

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While there had been a restricted distribution of such leaflets in the period immediately after the war, in 1953 SPES began to reissue the same material on a national scale. Between the two electoral rounds, every trip taken to Russia by Togliatti, who was described by Angiolillo as ‘ex italiano’ (former Italian), generated wild speculation that was out of all proportion to the legitimate concerns of the journalists.107 ‘Many people wonder whether a country with a temperate climate like Italy … really needs to be left for Russia in December, to complete a period of convalescence’, commented a leader writer for Il Tempo. After observing that this approach showed that the Secretary of the PCI ‘was really more Russian than Italian’, the journalist continued: Will the honourable parliamentary deputies, when the Communist leader resumes his place in the Chamber of Montecitorio, not wonder whether he has returned from the Soviet Union with instructions and orders intended to compromise their personal liberty and the future of the fatherland?108

The images and caricatures that showed Togliatti, sometimes with the faithful Nenni in tow, in Malenkov’s pocket, or busy cleaning the boots of Stalin and his successor, were complemented by illustrations, often inspired by Guareschi’s cartoons, that portrayed his lack of ‘italianità’ (Italianness). Right from its first issues, Candido represented Togliatti in a range of ways that emphasised his foreignness: refusing to read Corriere della Sera and Il Messaggero, which to him were ‘the foreign press’; considering founding an Italian edition of L’Unità, to match the Russian one already in circulation; speaking at a PCI congress as a ‘foreign delegate’, and as a ‘representative of Russia’; packing his suitcases with his wife after the announcement of the expulsion of all foreign agitators from Italy; and looking unsure where to go when Stalin ordered him to ‘rimpatriare’ (return home).109 The thread common to all these illustrations was made explicit by Guareschi when the Communist Secretary had a car accident in 1950. The president of the Republic Luigi Einaudi knew Togliatti personally, having taught him at university, and sent a telegram with his best wishes; Guareschi interpreted this gesture as one more illustration of ‘the increasingly worrying inferiority complex that Italians have towards Communism’. Togliatti, he said, was not ‘an adversary’, but ‘a sworn enemy, … the leader of the Soviet vanguard poised to bring war to the nation at the first signal’; the President, guilty of this lapse, was first described by Guareschi as simply ‘senator’, and subsequently as ‘father of the Communist publisher [Giulio] Einaudi’.110 The figure of De Gasperi, as discussed earlier, was often portrayed, as were other politicians, as a symbol of ‘servitù’ (‘servitude’ or ‘slavery’) to the United States, both visually and in verbal metaphor. He was also the subject of one especially harsh attack: Communist publicity often described him as ‘von Gasperi’, the ‘Austro-​American chancellor’, to cite one of the least unfortunate epithets.111

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Don Basilio, from the start, had made this sort of reference:  for example, it pictured the Prime Minister receiving the congratulations of the Archbishop of Bressanone (in the Alto Adige) for having set right the wrongs inflicted on the Habsburg Empire.112 In 1948, Communist speakers at rallies began to refer to De Gasperi’s parliamentary experience under the Austro-​Hungarian Empire, and in particular to his disagreements with Cesare Battisti, whose image as a patriot had been elevated into myth by his death in the First World War. A week before the general election, this attack was stepped up by leading articles in L’Unità quoting Battisti, in whose opinion the future DC leader was ‘an advocate for Austria, and a man who is determined to follow Austria’s cause to the very end’; the paper observed that ‘this assessment by Battisti is the assessment of history’. Readers were then reminded of De Gasperi’s detachment on hearing the news of his fellow countryman’s execution: The announcement was read by one of the members of the President’s office … It might even have been De Gasperi himself who read those harsh Teutonic words, which should have hurt him deeply … What is certain is that De Gasperi remained quietly in his place. He did not protest, and did not even attempt to say something in memory of his deceased colleague … What could have been said by the man who, while Battisti was leaving Austria for Italy to carry on his struggle … had gone back to Austria declaring that he had ‘to do his duty’.113

The total absence of evidence for these allegations about De Gasperi’s lack of reaction to Battisti’s death was sometimes dealt with by rhetorical devices, such as ‘it might even have been De Gasperi himself ’, which placed the future prime minister in the spotlight. Elsewhere, it was recalled how his former party had declared its loyalty to the Emperor on 24 May 1915 (without mentioning whether he had had any reservations), when ‘it cursed Italy’, and how he had taken part, during the war, in mourning the death of Franz Joseph.114 The weakness of the case being made was generally fairly evident, but this kind of discourse on the ‘Austrian’ De Gasperi demonstrated clear aims in political communication, with the attempt to indicate a predisposition on his part to serve foreign interests. ‘A servant then of the Emperor of Austria, and a servant now of the Emperor of America. Against Italy, both then and now’, wrote Pietro Ingrao in a leading article of 14 April, whose sentences seemed like ready-​made slogans.115 All this was conveyed by invoking the Habsburg Empire, which as the historical enemy of the Risorgimento and the Italian nation was a negative icon in Italy’s patriotic rhetoric and popular culture. The stark comparison between the images of De Gasperi and Battisti played its part: the disagreements between the former and one of the fatherland’s martyrs interlinked with the alleged indifference shown by ‘von Gasperi’ in response to the tragedy of a man being executed. The conclusions that voters were supposed to draw were clear, and

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were made explicit: ‘[w]‌e present … the voters with a question: is De Gasperi an Italian? Can this man be seen as a faithful son of Italy? In our opinion, no’.116 The press campaign was accompanied by cartoons, posters and, especially, leaflets, which depicted the hanged Battisti. ‘What De Gasperi did to Battisti yesterday he would like to do to Italy today’, ran one caption; ‘[w]‌hen they hanged him De Gasperi approved’, went another. On the other side of the sheet there was a message: While a shiver of horror ran down Italy at the news of his hanging, two Italian traitors, one safely hidden away in the Austrian parliament and the other a fierce fighter against our soldiers on the Carso [plateau] and Montello [ridge], showed their satisfaction:  these were the brothers Alcide and Augusto De Gasperi … The bones of Italian martyrs shiver in our war cemeteries.117

After the election defeat, this issue was abandoned other than in occasional mentions by the Socialists. However, it came back with a vengeance, and with even greater emphasis, for the elections of 1953. In March, during negotiations over the status of Trieste, cartoons appeared in L’Unità in which De Gasperi had both an Austrian helmet and an American army helmet, suggesting that if it was up to him the city would remain in foreign hands forever.118 The celebrations for 24 May, the date when Italy had entered the war against Austria in 1915, marked the real start of a new focus on the issue in Communist campaign material; as an article in L’Unità declared, ‘[t]‌he wolf, says an ancient proverb, can change its skin, but not its evil, and the evil of this man who now pretends to celebrate 24 May as an Italian is the evil of anti-​Italianness’.119 Just a few days later in Il Paese, an investigation started into the ‘Austrian’ past of the Prime Minister, who was portrayed as the heir to the ‘champions of the anti-​Risorgimento’, and as ‘a good patriot … but a good Austrian patriot, loyal to the Emperor and the cause of the Empire’.120 The stories about De Gasperi and Battisti that had been published five years earlier appeared in L’Unità again at the beginning of June. Battisti’s hanging and the role of De Gasperi at the time was a story that could be used in posters to counter the anti-​Communist theme of the forche. Gian Carlo Pajetta set out the line to be taken in a circular of 27 May establishing the communications task, addressed to the heads of local ‘Press and Propaganda’ sections: We must react vigorously against those who want to use these forche to make people not only forget their own forchette but also forget that we are dealing with instruments whose use the Christian Democrats and Republicans ought not to presume they can discuss without arousing the disgust of Italians. Cesare Battisti hung from the Austrian gallows while De Gasperi was hoping for victory for the Emperor of Austria … An effective form of propaganda would be to put the photographs of Cesare Battisti next to the grim instruments depicted by the Civic Committees.121

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‘De Gasperi has nothing to say about this’ was the slogan most often placed beside the image of Battisti’s gallows. In 1948, there had been no response from the DC camp to this provocation; in Togliatti’s view this constituted an admission of guilt, although it is more likely that the decision reflected a wish not to fan the flames of the accusations.122 Five years later, and possibly facing a much more evenly balanced election contest, the Christian Democrats decided to respond with an essay by Igino Giordani. In essence, his piece reported the research that he himself had conducted in Trentino, consulting both the press and witnesses, which allowed him to praise the exemplary national sentiment that De Gasperi had shown as early as the turn of the century, and to downplay the clashes with Battisti as ‘circumstantial … debates’, which put the Catholic parliamentary deputy in opposition not to a ‘martyr of the war of liberation’, but to ‘the leader of a local party’ and an ‘anticlerical socialist’. Giordani’s pamphlet reproduced an essay that had been published by the PPI press office in 1925, with only minor cuts:  insinuations about De Gasperi’s alleged collaboration with Austria had in fact previously been the theme of an attack by the Fascist press, aimed at discrediting the PPI member who had been the strongest opponent of the nascent regime. Giordani recalled all this in a preface to the new edition, thus both defending De Gasperi against the accusations and making a link between the values of anti-​Fascism and anti-​Communism: ‘[o]‌ne might have thought that when Fascism fell, false accusations would have fallen too. But we have had to observe that, with Fascism fallen, some Fascists still remain, although now clothed as anti-​Fascists’.123 The clash between the symbolic figures of De Gasperi and Togliatti was responsible for one of the most engaging episodes of the ‘poster war’ of 1953. The PCI’s Press and Propaganda Section distributed widely a poster with the heading ‘Due uomini  –​due vite’ (Two men  –​two lives), which was also published in L’Unità and became a leaflet. The main episodes in the careers of Togliatti and De Gasperi were listed in two adjacent columns, to illustrate their responses to the main events of recent history. Togliatti fought in the First World War under the Italian Flag; staunchly opposed Fascism; and after 1945 battled for liberty and equality. ‘He served Italy’, read the caption to every episode. By contrast, his opponent served, in turn, Austria during the war of 1915–​18; Fascism, giving his vote of confidence to Mussolini’s government; the Vatican, taking refuge in a library without fighting the regime; and America, in his activity in government. SPES replied with a poster that used exactly the same format, in layout, colours and photographs, but of course offered entirely different messages. While Togliatti was still studying, De Gasperi was working for Trentino to become part of Italy; while the future Communist Secretary was an ‘imboscato’ (shirker), fighting the First World War in a depot for just a few months, De Gasperi ‘was protesting about Battisti’s execution’ and challenging

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‘the Austrian regime’ with his parliamentary speeches; under Fascism, the future prime minister was arrested, while Togliatti fled to Russia to ‘perfect his Bolshevik theory and practice’; and finally, since 1947 the Communist Secretary had been ‘out of the government … due to his double-​dealing and following his attempt to trade Gorizia for Trieste’. The comparison between these two products of the publicity machinery is emblematic of the non-​stop exchange of ideas and language that took place between the two warring sides over charges of ‘tradimento’ of the fatherland. Accusations of ‘anti-​national’ orientation were the arena in which the Communists and anti-​Communists can most clearly be seen acting out the publicity war as a rapid-​fire dialogue, in which each side presented itself as the sole valid interpreter of the true properties of citizenship in the new republic.124 Moreover, the advocates for both the warring sides came to develop representations of themselves and their opponents that followed on from the vocabulary, symbolism and specific content of the ‘national and patriotic code’ that had evolved during the Risorgimento and the decades after Italian unification; this took place in an environment where a range of linguistic tools were to some degree shared, which was perhaps evidence for a ‘shared [socio-​cultural] territory … that the different universalist and transnational references could only impinge on to a certain extent’.125

The dove of peace from the Red Army to the North Atlantic Treaty In 1952, by way of an introduction to the congress of the World Peace Council (formerly the World Committee of Partisans for Peace) due in Vienna in December, the head of the organisation’s Italian committee Emilio Sereni produced a pamphlet that was distributed by local PCI and PSI branches. Its protagonist, Gino Bianchi, was a conventional land registry official whose character development was traced by Sereni. Despite a lack of enthusiasm for politics Bianchi finally joined the Partisans for Peace, and in his story it could be observed how the struggle for Italian independence and the struggle for an end to conflict were so closely interwoven that they were almost the same thing. The contention that ‘Italy [was] reduced to being a foreign military base’, and that there had been a return to a situation that resembled the era of the Austrian Empire, acquired a particular edge because in the current situation ‘a country could find itself at war not only without its people having agreed to this, but also without those in charge, parliaments and even governments, knowing anything about it’.126 In the broader political debate after 1945, as well as in this little fable, the rejection of the power politics that had resulted in a catastrophic war was an indication, to all the leading figures in Italian politics, that the interests of the Italian nation needed to be identified in particular with peace and security.

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Figure 7  Postcard by the local committee of the Partisans of Peace in Bologna, 1949

The anti-​capitalist roots of the Partisans for Peace The theme of ‘peace’ was a field in which the Communist movement had traditionally managed to find common ground with other forces and, in particular, enter a dialogue with society. This had been the case in the 1930s, when the congresses against war and Fascism held in Amsterdam and the Salle Pleyel of Paris paved the way for an era of popular fronts, and it was also the case in the period around 1950.127 In Italy specifically, mobilisation against war and the use of atomic weapons was a key factor in the revival of the Marxist Left’s dialogue with society after its defeat in the 1948 election. The first major initiative of

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the Partisans for Peace in Italy was the collection of signatures against the ‘war pact’ of 1949; this was undertaken in a spirit of reaction to the election results of the previous year, the central objective of the PCI leadership being to collect a number of signatures that was significantly higher than the number of votes cast for the Popular Front.128 Starting with this first campaign to raise awareness, great efforts were made in the production of symbolic references, to the extent that Communist culture put the very foundations of its own doctrine into play in the development of an effective delineation of ‘peace’. The general notions of war and peace that had characterised the position of international Communism right from the start were based on Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin’s analysis of 1916 which had adopted and then developed the ideas circulating within the Socialist International at the turn of the century.129 Lenin had concluded that the most advanced stage of capitalist development led to the disappearance of real economic competition; this in turn led to national economies being managed by large monopoly groups, and to the most developed countries needing to expand in order to ensure cheap raw materials and non-​competitive markets for their businesses. Ultimately, he attributed the origins of modern war to friction between the imperialist powers, to the desire of imperialist countries to keep the world under their control, and to the resistance that other peoples offered against these objectives. In the popularisation of the Marxist-​Leninist message, this analytical framework became less flexible and more simplistic, and shifted in a direction that more clearly served the interests of the USSR. In brief, if a real and lasting peace could only be achieved by the eradication of capitalism and its contradictions, the struggle against war was ultimately the same as the defence of the international interests of the Soviet Union: a bridgehead for the fulfilment of a society that offered an alternative to capitalism, and without its conflict.130 The international Communist movement thus arrived at the start of the Cold War with a well-​developed set of ideological positions to draw on for descriptions of warmongering and peace. In his key speech at Szklarska Poręba in September 1947, mentioned earlier, Zhdanov set out the line that all parties around the world should take on international affairs, applying the classic principles of Leninist anti-​war thinking to the new international situation. As against the ‘democratic’ camp of the USSR and its close allies, the ‘imperialist’ camp was distinguished by its efforts ‘to prepare for a new imperialist war’ against the socialist world.131 At the end of the year, following the impetus given by the founding of Cominform and the resulting increase in Soviet pressure on the Italian Communist bodies, the PCI’s official publications, including those intended for internal circulation, began to promote the pro-​Soviet concept of the struggle against war, conveying this either as informative material or in terms suitable for immediate use in publicity. From its very first issue in

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early December 1947, Propaganda usually used the expressions ‘Fronte della pace’ (Peace Front) and ‘Fronte della guerra’ (War Front) when comparing the two blocs. Following the lead taken by Communist publications with wider circulation such as L’Unità and Rinascita, in the summer of 1947 the editors of Avanti! had started to tell Socialist activists what interpretative approach they should adopt. By the end of the summer, Mario Bracci had explained that Russia would never carry out an attack, because it did not have ‘essential needs’ and in fact was ‘abundantly provided with space and natural resources’; shortly afterwards, a leading article reiterated that ‘for the USSR war would be a curse’, as it ‘needed peace’ in order to manage its development.132 Over time, this position became well established within the Italian Left, principally because of the thorough educational work undertaken by party activists. While major awareness-​raising campaigns by the Partisans for Peace were under way, the PCI’s Press and Propaganda Section used Propaganda and Taccuino del propagandista to recall that ‘the Soviet Union has always struggled for peace’, from the first decree of the Bolshevik government declaring the cessation of hostilities against Russia’s enemies in the First World War: this approach had been consistently pursued in all the demands for disarmament that had been lodged with the United Nations and rejected by the Western powers.133 The essential role played by the USSR’s international policy in the defence of world peace became a topos of the image of Russia put forward by Communists in the West, and supporting material for the training of activists continued to point out its usefulness. Anniversaries of Russia’s October Revolution, incorporated in due course into the ‘Month for Italian-​Soviet friendship’, often provided the occasion for posters to present the Soviet Union as ‘the bulwark of peace against all the world’s warmongers’, who were represented by the leaders of the major Western powers, headed by Truman and intent on taking an aggressive approach towards Russia.134 This interpretation was made explicit during preparations for the ‘Month’ in 1950, an important year for campaigns against both Western aggression in the Far East and nuclear proliferation. Quaderno dell’Attivista published an article by the young Armando Cossutta: A quick look at the international situation is all that is needed to wonder what would be left of world peace without the wise, prudent and calm Stalinist policy, and without the USSR’s firm and persistent diplomacy and political activity against war … The Soviet Union is the most steadfast bulwark in the defence of peace … To publicise its policy is to unmask the advocates of war … and to strengthen the trust of honest people in the forces of peace.135

The relationship between a society and its approach to foreign policy held good at the other end of the spectrum:  the counterpart to the Soviet Union

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as ‘the bulwark of peace’ was the United States, seen as the hub of all military aspirations. During the campaigns against the American ‘warmongers’, the positions of Stalin and Zhdanov, which had already been expressed in rather general terms, were further distilled into slogans designed for their impact; the final result was the total absorption by Communist and Socialist language of the dualistic interpretation of international politics that typified Cominform discourse. The responsibility for initiating armed conflict was reduced to the pure and simple greed of industrialists, who saw it as an opportunity to increase their takings. ‘Whoever earns from war wants war!’, was the slogan suggested at the end of 1948 by one of the first issues of Propaganda entirely dedicated to campaigning for peace.136 Previously, it had formulated a discourse identifying those responsible for all wars as ‘the manufacturers of guns and nuclear weapons’ and ‘the groups of monopoly industrialists … [who] made vast profits in the war against Hitler’.137 In Italy as elsewhere, one especially significant element that over time came to distinguish the language of Communism’s anti-​capitalist peace initiative was the reduced emphasis on the universal rejection of violence. In October 1948, a piece in Propaganda had described the Socialist state as being ‘against any war as a matter of principle’, but in the next issue a correction appeared that was given more emphasis than the initial article: The previous issue of Propaganda … carried the phrase, ‘the Socialist state which is against any war as a matter of principle’. Is all this correct? Absolutely not! The printer has played a cruel joke on Propaganda’s editors! He has omitted a little word [which is] crucial to the precise meaning of the idea … but this word is essential for the correctness of the concept: the word ‘unjust’.138

This idea was to be widely circulated, more in the context of references to the realities of the international situation than purely in relation to the principle; it was necessary to address the fact that the USSR’s essential role in the safeguarding of world peace was primarily performed by its maintenance of a substantial military force. In his well-​known book on life in the Soviet Union, Paolo Robotti addressed the potential question, ‘Why does the Soviet Union, the country of socialism, need armed forces?’, by advising his activist readers to reply that ‘if the Socialist regime had not had its own armed forces, then it would now no longer exist’.139 During a period that saw some of the biggest pro-​peace campaigns in Italian history, Robotti repeated these ideas in articles in L’Unità: the anniversary in February 1951 of the founding of the Red Army provided an opportunity to sing the praises of a force that was ‘the defence of peace’, because it was ready to thwart the foolish aims of any aggressor.140 Not long before, when commemorating the victory at Stalingrad, the author

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had described the battle as a warning to present-​day ‘fomentatori della guerra’ (warmongers), identifying the military action that had defeated Nazism as the greatest triumph of peace-​making.141 The seemingly paradoxical linkage between military force and commitment to peace had deep roots in the symbolic references of the anti-​war movement of the Left. The choice of ‘Partisans for Peace’ as the name for the great international anti-​war movement was in itself pregnant with meaning, as it made a direct reference to the memory of a phase of violent struggle against the enemy. The name was determined at the official convening of the movement’s first congress, appearing in Italian in L’Unità on 18 March 1949, and for more than eighteen months ‘Partisans for Peace’ (or literal translations of this) was the organisation’s official name in all countries. In Italy, the new movement’s relationship to the Resistance was especially evident, not least because its founding congress in Paris ended on the eve of 25 April. This gave Communist publicists an opportunity to refer back to the recent but already widely exploited tradition of the Resistance when introducing the event: Scarcely four years have passed since the victorious end of the great popular and patriotic epic venture, and … the ideas of peace, labour and liberty that inspired the partisans … are being betrayed by those who have usurped the national victory … We are, therefore, urgently called upon to continue the struggle of 1943–​1945.142

The campaigns for peace were, in short, the most obvious example of the general attempt made within Communist culture of the post-​war period ‘to retrieve … the mechanisms of symbolic and political identification and integration of the “patriotic war” of 1943–​45’.143 Just as the old partisans had taken up weapons against the horror and barbarism generated by Fascism, an ‘open dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialistic elements of financial capital’, so the new Partisans for Peace undertook to prevent at all costs the return of horror and barbarism, in the form of a new war unleashed by the ‘imperialist’ capitalism dominating the Western bloc that was clustered around the United States. At the height of the debate over the Korean War, as the PCI’s seventh congress concluded, Togliatti gave clear expression to this position: Let the current rulers of Italy remember what happened when Fascism threw us into the war. … All the people … resisted, became organised, rose to their feet, and went into open struggle against the war policy of the Fascist regime, to the point that the regime was crushed … Let them all remember … that we are not pacifists, who go whimpering or begging for peace through the charity of their neighbours or the enlightenment of their leaders. We are workers who want peace, and know what has to be done to achieve this.144

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An ideal testing ground for consolidation of the use of this language was provided after the end of June 1950 by the start of the Korean War. This saw the peculiar situation in which the communications machinery of an organisation created to promote peace found itself principally having to talk about a war. The Partisans for Peace movement, bolstered by its international dimension, in fact took control of news on the conflict in the Far East:  war news stories in Avanti!, L’Unità and Il Paese depended on the information that its bulletins provided. The Partisans unequivocally supported the North Koreans. Italy’s newspapers of the Left started by explaining the war in terms of aggression from the South with American support, pushed back by the Northern army on the counterattack. Criticism of this interpretation quickly followed. In response, the Communist world and the peace movement reformulated their positions with greater complexity, but continued to refer back to the simplified Leninist approach to the concept of war: first, any political and military force that was not engaged in cooperation with the peace policy of the Soviet Union was identified as a ‘potential aggressor’; second, in the Korean case specifically, Italian pro-​Soviet newspapers repeated the accusation made against the United States by the Russian delegation to the United Nations, which argued that the foreign power that was first to intervene in another country’s internal conflict should be regarded as an aggressor.145 In the months that followed, an entire vocabulary was built around this concept of aggression. By means of a series of particularly significant lexical choices, events in Korea were presented in terms of the canons of a ‘just war’ that connected the peace movement to the memory of the Second World War. The South Korean military forces disappeared from the news after their defeat in the first assault, and the struggle was then between ‘Korean troops’ (without ‘North’ being specified) and ‘invaders’. Subsequently, the army of Kim Il-​Sung was increasingly described by the phrase ‘truppe popolari’ (the people’s forces). The application of the adjective ‘popolare’, also in use to distinguish the ‘new democracy’ regimes from Western governments, was particularly loaded with meaning, as it derived from the idea that the Communist troops represented the will of the entire Korean people. This interpretation could be seen in a speech by the former Resistance member Sandro Pertini: The workers and peasants of southern Korea are abandoning Syngman Rhee to his fate … the representative of a selfish and wretched managerial class, the servant of the alien invader. They are waiting for their brothers of the North as their liberators and … they are starting up a partisan war.146

Against the fighters of North Korea, ‘new Garibaldini’, were ranged American soldiers and politicians, now seen in a very different light to the liberators of Italy during the war on Fascism.147 From the very beginning, according

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to leading articles and news reports in L’Unità, these enemies of the ‘new partisans’ were using ‘a system reminiscent of that used by the Nazis’ with the Asian fighters and prisoners: this was illustrated by photographs that showed piles of corpses of bayoneted Asian soldiers.148 The comparison with the Nazis, already an aspect of Communist language when referring to the United States, reached a high point in the attacks on ‘warmongering’ America in the second half of 1950. This was driven home by the publication of documentation from the front, by the supposed confessions of US soldiers who were understood to have said that ‘they felt like Nazis’, and by headings that dismissed the troops fighting against the people’s Korea as ‘McArthur’s Nazis’.149 The most emphatic application of this demonising discourse on American action in Korea occurred not at the height of the war but in 1952, when it seemed to be coming to an end and public interest was on the wane. On 25 February, the World Peace Council made it known that it had received information, through members of the Chinese government, about the use of biological weapons by the United States. March’s Bulletin du Conseil Mondial de la Paix stated its general condemnation of these weapons, referring to the international agreement of 17 June 1925 (never actually signed by the United States) that had banned their use. Before making detailed accusations against the United States, however, the Peace Council’s committee decided to arrange inspections to gather further evidence. Commissions of doctors, journalists and lawyers connected to the peace movement were deployed to the locations implicated, and confirmation of the weapon use quickly arrived. A new periodical, Documentation sur la guerre bactériologique, was quickly produced and published by the World Peace Council in order to spread this new information among journalists and activists. In April and May 1952 it informed the world of the conclusions that had followed the various tests and potential proof. The written and photographic material was then reorganised for a series of pamphlets published over subsequent months. In April, two American airmen captured by the North Koreans, Kenneth Enoch and John Quinn, made confessions (later retracted) about taking part in the biological bombing and explained how the bombs worked. At the same time, a commission of doctors from Sweden, France, Brazil and several countries in Central and Eastern Europe declared that they had collected samples confirming the introduction of insects and bacteria that had not been in Korea or northern China for centuries, but had previously been used as pathogenic agents in Japanese biological warfare during the Second World War. However, the most widely distributed publication was the report by Yves Farge, a journalist, ‘fellow traveller’ with the French Communist Party and prominent member of the French peace movement, which was translated and circulated right across Europe: in Italy alone, 300,000 copies were published. According to Farge, the evidence

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from his investigation, carried out on site, was conclusive, having benefited from technical support from the governments and Peace Committees of Peking and Pyongyang.150 The Pentagon documents that might clarify the veracity of these allegations are still not available, and some experimental use of biological weapons by the United States cannot be entirely excluded.151 In any case, the allegations by the Partisans for Peace were picked up and widely published in the Communist and Socialist press, not least because they could be rounded out by further references and fitted neatly within the more general attempt to relate the Americans to the Nazis. After the invasion, the summary executions and the bombing, it seemed that the US armed forces had yet again demonstrated the degeneracy that made them just the same as the Wehrmacht. This latest news was presented to the Italian public between April and June 1952, in articles that commented, for example, that ‘[p]‌eoples … must put a stop to the heirs of Hitler’.152 The comparison was then adopted elsewhere, for example in an interview in Il Paese with Luigi Cavalieri, a member of the commission sent to Korea by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, whose heading drew a direct and damning parallel between ‘the atrocities carried out by the American criminals in Korea’ and ‘Nazi atrocities’.153

The use of universal references to peace in Communist communication The campaign against biological warfare allowed the publicity of the Left to develop a comparison between American troops and the Nazi invaders of the Second World War, but the public’s horror over the alleged war crime and biological attack also derived from the awakening of humanity’s ancient fear of mass death from epidemics. The enlarged images of the bacteria and viruses said to have been used in the attack were regularly reproduced in the newspapers; the Italian Partisans for Peace committee also sent the material to various local branches for use in a photographic exhibition about ‘the horrors of American aggression in Korea’, which was to show the most shocking examples.154 The treatment of this specific issue gives us a clear idea of the efforts that the Partisans for Peace made to convey a complex and articulate description and presentation of their work. They brought together the vocabulary and symbolic references of the anti-​capitalist and anti-​war movement and those of the more universal emotional rejection of military violence, which had generally been alien to the ideological world within which the Italian Marxist Left usually operated. The campaign for the April 1948 election saw a first attempt at formulating a set of ideas and references within the peace message that would be suitable for mobilising a much wider public than the traditional supporters of the Marxist Left. At the end of the previous year, a meeting of various women’s organisations

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connected to the Unione donne italiane (UDI) had resulted in the foundation of a ‘Comitato per la difesa della pace’ (Committee for the Defence of Peace), whose aim was to bring together ‘women from all the regions and every class and type, who will solemnly confirm their resolute intention to defend peace’.155 The idea behind this focus on women was that because of their role in society and particular sensibilities they especially, irrespective of their political sympathies, would have at heart the fate of soldiers, the first casualties in war, who were first and foremost their children, husbands, brothers and boyfriends. Moreover, propaganda from both sides during the war had already sensitised women, and mothers in particular, to the fate of their sons and loved ones in the forces; for the elections of 1946 the DC had tried to repeat this effect by using posters and postcards suggesting that if Italian mothers had been able to vote then Italy would never have entered the war. After 1949, the particular need to address women continued to influence the communications strategy of the Partisans for Peace. In particular, the importance of peace in the defence of childhood was a recurrent theme:  in campaigning posters for the great pro-​peace petitions, children invited their parents to sign, and mothers were depicted collecting the bodies of their children, reminding people of the danger of conflict. The card urging participation in the congress of Paris reproduced the photograph of a mother breastfeeding, directly linking the theme of world peace and security with women’s affection for their children and the need to raise them far from the horrors of war.156 In January 1951, in similar fashion, the UDI leadership and editors of Noi Donne again put forward the idea of women as the vanguard in the dialogue for peace, at a moment when some form of encounter with Communism’s opponents seemed possible. Three letters from the UDI leaders were published: Maria Maddalena Rossi wrote to the head of Christian Democracy’s Movimento femminile (Women’s Movement), Ada Alessandrini to the head of the Donne liberali italiane (Liberal Italian Women), and Rosetta Longo to the head of the Catholic Fronte per la famiglia (Family Front).157 This sort of approach was gradually formalised in the rules of conduct for party members, culminating in an issue of Taccuino del Propagandista in 1953 that was expressly dedicated to the female vote and pamphlets for UDI activists; the intention was that by appealing to women’s supposed natural inclination to reject violence and defend their loved ones, a greater degree of support could be achieved than by depending simply on ideology.158 The primary instance where pro-​peace discourse was reused occurred in the field of visual imagery with the symbol of the dove, a universal image of peace that had its roots in the origins of Western culture, in biblical literature, and which the peace movement of the Left appropriated as its distinguishing emblem. In Italy, this process began well before the formation of the Partisans

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for Peace movement at the international level: at the very beginning of 1948, a stylised dove was printed on the sheets of paper used to collect signatures for a petition on disarmament promoted by the UDI’s Comitato per la difesa della pace.159 Illustrations and photographs with the same motif were also on badges distributed by the UDI, and were circulated in the leaflets and magazines that provided information on this initiative.160 In March of the following year, just before the international congress in Paris, the drawing of a dove by Pablo Picasso, one of the delegates and present for the occasion, was chosen as the official symbol of the Partisans for Peace movement. The artist’s fame helped to ensure promotion of the image, which in a very short time not only became the direct metonymic representation of the peace movement, but also heavily influenced international Communist symbolism. The dove became so common in the ‘people’s democracies’ that it was placed alongside the Soviet flag, portraits of the founding fathers of Socialism, and depictions of Russian soldiers, as a symbol of the new regime.161 In the PCI during the 1950s, the figure of the dove became what has been called a ‘condensation symbol’: a sign with the capacity to synthesise and represent the party’s political identity.162 It occupied a place of honour in all the posters and cartoons that dealt with the theme of peace; for the local elections of 1951 and 1952, organised during the period of greatest pro-​peace commitment, it even sometimes replaced the hammer and sickle as the emblem with which the PCI presented itself, giving some idea of its strength. Among other expressive choices that the Partisans for Peace made to achieve the broadest possible rejection of war, there were particularly frequent attempts to stimulate general feelings of horror and rejection of war by referring to people’s experiences of just five or six years earlier during the Second World War. The war was portrayed as a conflict that had eliminated any remaining differences between soldiers and civilians, more so than its predecessor of 1914–​ 18, and had forced every part of the population to come to terms with death, destruction, and the horrors of weaponry and armed force. The experience of war could no longer be presented in a noble, heroic or otherwise positive way, especially to an audience that had lived through the trauma of seeing their land occupied and turned into a battlefield.163 The use that leaders of the peace campaigns made of images of the tragedy of 1939–​45 demonstrated their full awareness of its symbolic potential. In 1950, when signatures were being collected for the petition to prohibit nuclear weapons that had been launched at the World Peace Council’s committee meeting in Stockholm, the editors of L’Unità made frequent references to the atmosphere of the Second World War. In July, for example, a page that could be used as a poster to collect signatures presented images of London under German bombing alongside pictures of a Korean city recently subjected to similar treatment.164 A few days later, L’Unità’s culture pages featured an account of the long night of terror experienced by

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residents of Naples under bombardment; similar images had been appearing for some months in the newspaper-​style wall posters produced by pro-​Communist organisations.165 At the beginning of 1951, at the time of Eisenhower’s visit to Rome and during the most intense phase of the war in Korea, the PCI and the Partisans for Peace again used memories of the war to further amplify the public’s fears: reproductions of ration cards were sent out by post, at the same time that the Ministry of Defence was sending out cards to inform discharged soldiers about the procedures to follow in the event of their recall.166 The most potent image arousing fears of war in the years after 1945 was the atomic bomb. For at least twenty years after the Second World War, for Western societies ‘the bomb’ was a symbol of the unease that people felt in a situation of perpetual insecurity. In the United States, ‘the nuclear nightmare’ inspired whole streams of mass-​market film production, which helped to embed fears of the effects of a nuclear attack in the imaginary of all countries where American films were distributed.167 In Italy, the destructive potential of the new weapon was initially underestimated by the press.168 After March 1950, however, when the Partisans for Peace made banning the bomb the primary concrete objective of their international campaigning efforts, the Communist and Socialist press engaged in a concerted campaign of alarmism. In June, the Partisans distributed a poster right across Italy featuring the atomic mushroom cloud and providing facts on the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.169 Thereafter, the image of the explosion was frequently reproduced until it became freighted with meaning, particularly when it was accompanied by illustrations and photographs employing symbols representing death, such as skulls, bones and corpses. L’Unità printed similar images, accompanied by a gruesome account of the Hiroshima disaster. For the fifth anniversary of this tragedy, in August, its front page highlighted this message: ‘Five years ago, 120 thousand people died in Hiroshima. Remember this and join forces immediately with those fighting for the prohibition of nuclear weapons!’170 Propaganda, for its part, published a special issue in July with photographs of bomb survivors’ skin lesions and information on the destructive capacity of this type of weapon. The local Communist press published descriptions of the effects of an atomic bomb dropped on the main Italian cities, making the sense of danger even more immediate. Commenting on this eventuality, the Catholic press noted that ‘this terrible event would either be down to the Russians, and Communism would be to blame, or down to the Americans, which would presuppose a successful Russian invasion or armed conquest by the Partisans for Peace’.171 Catholic commentary had a peripheral impact on this campaigning, whose strategic purpose was to arouse an almost instinctive fear of the nuclear weaponry that was the subject of the petition. Before the end of the year, when the US government seemed to be considering a nuclear attack in Korea, the use of

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the atomic bomb had already become the distinguishing element of a qualitative leap in warfare that would lead to destruction of the world. In conclusion, during this period of major mobilisation by the Partisans for Peace for disarmament and against the atomic bomb, the political communication of the peace initiatives of the Left developed a concept of peace that was determined by two separate currents. On the one hand, the Marxist-​Leninist anti-​war movement related the struggle against war to the struggle against capitalism; on the other, symbols and emotional references were employed that did not have ideological connotations and derived from a more general rejection of war and violence. Throughout the communication process these two currents intermingled and merged together. In the simplest messages, conveyed visually, the idea of peace as a universal aspiration thus came to be identified with the idea of anti-​capitalist peace, particularly when the universal symbols of peace and the rejection of violence were given centre stage in the portrayal of ‘cannon manufacturers’, ‘imperialists’ and their ‘servants’ in general as ‘enemies of peace’. Especially during the election campaign of 1953, posters accused members of the Italian government of ‘being afraid of peace’, and of lining up with the Americans to the point of ‘oltranzismo’ (extremism); this idea was represented visually by De Gasperi shouting ‘monster!’ at an apparition of the dove of peace.172 The main target for satirical attacks, however, was Harry Truman, a symbol of everything negative that America represented for the world. Cartoons in Il Paese portrayed him as a hunter intent on shooting the dove of peace, and decorating the statue of peace with weapons and army uniform.173 In 1950 and 1951, when there seemed to be a real danger that the conflict in Asia would degenerate into nuclear warfare, the American President and Uncle Sam, often merged into one figure, were depicted with atomic bombs around their necks, or with their clutching hands ready to throw the bomb across the Pacific.

Opposing the Partisans for Peace: anti-​Communist counter-​propaganda The imprecision and ambiguity with which the campaigning output from the Partisans of Peace referred to markedly divergent concepts and anti-​war references were clearly important elements in the success enjoyed by the protests of the peace movement of the Left, even amongst sectors of the public that were at some distance from the Marxist parties.174 By reworking popularised Marxism-​Leninism in the light of the encounter with the values and images of the rejection of violence, the PCI was able to present itself to the public as the only legitimate representative of the universal value of peace, and as the only force capable of actually countering the danger of war. Not surprisingly, the

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ambiguity in the peace campaign’s language left it vulnerable to criticism, not least by commentators who were not directly involved in the political conflict. In the wake of an interview on peace released by Stalin in 1952, for example, Norberto Bobbio picked out various problematic issues: Peace … is an ultimate end only for those who believe that life is the supreme gift … If we put other gifts above life, such as freedom and justice, then peace ceases to be so eminently desirable … Peace thus generally aims at preserving a particularly satisfactory status quo. Peace is essentially conservative … There is something ambiguous about a pacifist political movement that is promoted and supported by followers of revolutionary theories: theories that put the ideal of justice above that of peace … The Partisans of Peace are curious peacemakers. They put themselves forward to restore peace between adversaries. However, they state from the beginning … that one of these two adversaries is right and the other wrong.175

The anti-​Communist voices that were engaged in mass publicity also frequently sought to counter the efforts of the Partisans for Peace with a campaign that focused on the inherent contradictions of the attempt to unite the more clearly anti-​militarist concept of peace with that of anti-​capitalism. A  real semantic and visual battle took place over the Communist attempt to appropriate the symbol of the dove, which conventionally had represented peace as a universal value and hope. The French organisation Paix et liberté had begun its campaign against Communism at exactly the same time as the peace campaigns, producing posters that had the dove of the Partisans dripping blood or mutating into a tank; inspired by this, the main Italian centres for producing visual political imagery set to work on conveying similar ideas in their illustrations.176 Posters produced by the Civic Committees tended to give the message that the Partisans’ dove should be seen as an aggressive threat rather than a message of peace: it was seen nesting in the cannon barrel of a Soviet tank, or carrying rifles and machine guns in its claws. In Il Quotidiano in June 1950, by contrast, Jacovitti drew ‘Picasso’s dovecote’ as a group of tanks invading South Korea; the following month, he made the dove into a bird of prey so dangerous that it scared off lions and snakes.177 The practice of calling the symbol of the Partisans for Peace ‘la colomba di Picasso’ (Picasso’s dove) became common, and implied that this representation was ‘other’ in relation to the traditional and universal dove of peace. An SPES poster summarised the reasons for this difference in verse: La colomba di Picasso Dica viva dica abbasso Quando appare sulla terra Porta jella porta guerra!

The dove of Picasso Might say ‘Hurrah!’ or ‘Boo!’ When it appears on Earth It brings gelignite and war!178

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Guareschi, for his part, when referring to the Communists refused to even use words that might retain some positive value: peace activists became ‘pacifondai’ (peacemongers), a neologism intended to reveal the aggressive nature of the movement, while the bird they had chosen as their symbol, rather than an innocent dove, became ‘the pigeon of peace’ or ‘the Trojan pigeon’ in which Stalin had hidden in order to get into Italy.179 The image of the dove being used to conceal something else was an important visual idea for use against Communist peace campaigns. Cartoons and posters were produced that represented the dove as a container for concealing weapons, which might subsequently emerge from its eggs, and as the shield behind which could be found vultures, cannon factories and hordes of soldiers ready to attack. The same device was subsequently used in a range of illustrations with very different symbolic content. In Il Quotidiano the word ‘pace’ (peace) was lit up by the ‘sole dell’avvenire’ (‘sun of the future’, typical of socialist symbolism), throwing ‘guerra’ (war) onto the ground as its shadow; another example had ‘pace’ traced out by the bayonet of a Red Army soldier.180 A Civic Committee poster presented the biblical image of a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing. Finally, an illustration by Guareschi, first used in 1948 and produced again in the summer of 1950, showed Communist agitators inviting their comrades to shout ‘Viva la pace!’ (Long live peace!) to mask the sound of guns, first in China and then in Korea.181 In all these cases, the task was to use the immediacy of instantly recognisable visual metaphors in order to express the idea that the Communist peace campaigns were not only the pretext for an unhelpful revival of tension within Italy, but also a tool to make the Soviet Union’s politics of aggression even more dangerous. In March 1950, when the first unofficial news arrived about the call for a petition to ban nuclear weapons, De Gasperi himself publicly expressed his doubts about the nature of this activity:  ‘if this is to do with publicity for peace, we should give it maximum freedom: but if it is to do with inciting and organising acts of sabotage, we will oppose it with maximum energy!’182 From then on, the editors of many publications, including those with different political positions, fed the debate in the press by publishing articles that expressed similar opinions and ideas. In Il Tempo, along similar lines, Manlio Lupinacci took up the metaphor of the dove in an article written for Easter: I should not be surprised when on this holy day for peace I find myself unable to push away thoughts that are not about peace. But peace itself has become a weapon of struggle in our opponents’ publicity: Picasso’s dove has brought in orders for sabotage under its wing … in the West, the word ‘peace’ serves as a password to bypass the guards of our common defence.183

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The Socialist and Communist nods of acknowledgement towards Catholic Action for its decision to sign the anti-​nuclear petition were, for Il Quotidiano, ‘a new aspect of the tactics of penetration and erosion’.184 According to writers for this Catholic newspaper, many European Communists had not concealed the fact that the manoeuvre was aimed at ‘threatening the imperialist armies and delaying the outbreak of war’, until the time came when the Soviet Union could win it.185 Edilio Rusconi took much the same approach, after the first indications of the success of the peace campaign; in response to the Communists who ‘enthusiastically announced that the USSR had the most invincible army’, he put forward an alarming historical analogy: ‘[t]‌he aim is to create a pacifist lethargy based on that created in Munich in 1938’.186 Similar references to the past appeared in leading articles on foreign policy by respected writers, such as Silvio Negro and Augusto Guerriero for Corriere della Sera.

Anti-​Communist conceptions of peace In short, it can be seen from the analysis of the means of communication and the systems for generating political publicity that lined up against Communism that these proved ready to respond to the activity of the PCI and its satellite organisations when they engaged in attacking and criticising the peace message. The same analysis, however, highlights the limitations of their attempt to offer the public something positive that could really compete with the Communist message. Christian Democrat leaders would themselves have admitted this; Paolo Emilio Taviani, thinking back to the dramatic drop in votes for the government coalition in 1953, wrote in his memoirs that ‘[w]‌e should have focused our publicity on Europe and the peace ensured by NATO. Instead, we repeated the anti-​Bolshevik slogans of ’48 without realising that the fears of ’48 were no longer there in ’53’.187 There is in fact some evidence of attempts to formulate a message along these lines. In April 1953, shortly before the election, SPES distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of a poster commemorating the fourth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty. This agreement between Western countries was presented as a shield defending the dove of peace, in the only serious anti-​Communist attempt at reappropriation of this symbol. The image was the product of a broader attempt to redefine the word ‘pace’, by making the connection with other values and concepts that were presented as inextricably linked to it. The value of ‘libertà’ was often seen as a necessary corollary to the value of ‘real’ ‘pace’, making the point that peace and bloodthirsty despotism were totally incompatible. Columnists in the moderate or broadly pro-​government camp frequently wrote about the North Atlantic Treaty as a ‘guarantee of peace in liberty’, because by signing this Italy had firmly anchored itself to the ‘democratic citadel’ that was resisting dictatorship. De

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Gasperi himself, in his address on the first anniversary of the foundation of NATO, had described the alliance as ‘a tool … to ensure liberty for all … [and] to not betray democracy’.188 The values of ‘sicurezza’ (security) and ‘difesa’ (defence) were also linked to the concept of ‘pace’. From early 1949, when Italian readers were introduced to the debate about Italy’s support for an alliance between the United States and the countries of Western Europe, columnists for the non-​aligned newspapers unanimously presented this possibility as a strong guarantee against further conflict. A  piece in Il Messaggero declared that ‘the solidarity’ that the treaty ‘ordained  … finally raised us up out of the torment of our lack of security’, using tones very similar to those of a party newspaper like Il Popolo.189 The editors of Corriere della Sera noted that ‘peace is not defended by presenting oneself to the potential invader as helpless’, and ‘the fear of war has always been the most effective tool for the preservation of peace’.190 Shortly afterwards, the same tones were taken in the parliamentary reports presented by members of the government and majority groups in favour of approval of the Treaty. De Gasperi opened the debate with a speech that made the need clear for reliable protection as the basis for work towards peace: Where will we be able to work better for peace: at the heart of a treaty for collective assistance and within a unified Europe, or lost in ideological battles and standing aloof from international currents? If we join a defensive Treaty on the basis that any attack on Russia is excluded, as is any obligation on our part to take part in any attack, I ask you if we will not then be in the best position to work for peaceful solutions and against any risk of war, should this ever arise.191

Significantly, this speech was published as a pamphlet with the title ‘Garantire la pace’ (Securing peace), and the addresses by other members of the majority coalition, based on similar arguments, were circulated with titles extolling the virtues of peace: ‘Il Patto atlantico è la migliore garanzia di pace’ (The North Atlantic Treaty is the best guarantee of peace) introduced the speech by the Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza, while Igino Giordani, then a DC parliamentary deputy, inverted the approach with his ‘No alla Guerra!’ (No to war!). Giordani placed much less trust than De Gasperi in the North Atlantic Treaty, but nevertheless acknowledged that it was the only way to give Italy a sense of peace: Why have we arrived at the Atlantic Treaty? … Because there is an Anti-​Atlantic Treaty … We are seeking a formula for coexistence … because we are isolated, because they threaten us, and because we are afraid … When one is afraid, one looks for company. And so we have sought this company … This Treaty has a defensive character; it is not against anyone, it is to defend someone.192

By comparing the Prime Minister’s speech and that of Giordani, a man considered with good reason to be very close to the ideas and political orientation

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of De Gasperi, we can see an early divergence in descriptions of the Treaty and its purpose. Very briefly, De Gasperi described it as a guarantee against being subjected to attacks, demonstrating his confidence in achieving the objective of peace that had been promised to the electorate in 1948. For Giordani, on the other hand, the alliance constituted a potential means of defence; it made an otherwise certain attack less likely, but not impossible. It is not surprising that his speech to the Chamber was pervaded by doubts: the DC’s internal debate had been fraught, and the official position of the parliamentary group had to accommodate the ambivalences that until then had been ‘confined to rumblings in the party press’.193 Columnists for Il Popolo and the major newspapers, however, adopted the position of De Gasperi. In the years that followed, they continued to see the North Atlantic Treaty as a ‘guarantee’ of peace, despite the intensification of pro-​peace efforts by the Communists; in the newspapers, there was more frequent explicit use of the word ‘pace’ in comparison with its predecessors ‘sicurezza’, ‘tranquillità’ and ‘legittima difesa’. Reading between the lines, there was still a degree of uncertainty in the attempt to relate the Atlantic Treaty to peace. In 1951, Traguardo suggested that activists produce leaflets with this line: ‘[l]‌et us thank Russia if the peoples must once again make provisions for their defence and fear war’.194 In this ironic ‘thank you’ the echo of Giordani’s speech could be detected: he had frequently claimed that the alliance was ‘a lesser evil’ to which ‘one was resigned’ when faced with the threat from the East; it was, he argued, ‘a necessary evil’, which ‘depleted humanity … could have done without’.195 The treatment in Traguardo may be indicative of the continuing unease felt in campaigning bodies over associating the North Atlantic Treaty with peace. In March 1949, SPES organised two special issues devoted to presentation of the new alliance, which was described as a ‘patto di pace’ (peace treaty) many times, from the section headings onwards. When following the general strategy that had been developed for contentious issues, the editors of the SPES publication were supposed to return periodically to the topics covered in special issues, providing reminders and updates; in the case of the ‘patto di pace’ these were fairly rare, not particularly meaningful, and largely limited to the first year after it had been agreed. It was more common to see references and illustrations regarding the dove of peace, sometimes even described as the ‘atomic dove’, as part of an inverted criticism of their opponents’ approach. Moreover, compared to the dozens of posters that were published to challenge the Communists’ ‘colombite acuta’ (acute dove-​itis), only a very small number made positive claims about the importance that securing peace had for the North Atlantic Treaty signatories.196 In brief, even in the most powerful and direct methods of communication, from posters to leaflets, attempts to unite the pursuit of peace with that of liberty and legitimate defence were unsuccessful.

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Figure 8  Poster by the pro-​government ‘Committee for Peace and Labour’, created in Rome in 1951

In order to explain this difficulty in communication, the first point that needs to be considered is that the Church leadership took an apparently inconsistent approach towards the foreign policy of Western countries. In early 1948, with the first indications of the Communist attempt to claim exclusive rights to the commitment to world peace, the editor of Il Quotidiano, Federico Alessandrini,

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started a campaign to give Pius XII back the role of ‘Prince of Peace’ which was due to him as God’s earthly representative. His role as an unheeded peacemaker at the outbreak of the Second World War was commemorated and then brought into the present in a time that seemed equally tense: The head of the visible Church himself … during the Second World War, while others were contributing to setting the fire alight and making it spread, restated and made current the commandment of justice in the relations between peoples and in social life … In a twilight world in which the fire of hatred lurks beneath the ashes that have been spread a little everywhere by hate, the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, Pius XII is the free Prince of liberty and peace.197

Three days before the April 1948 election, the same ideas were transported into the layout of an entire page of the newspaper for use as a poster, in which various articles recalled the Pope’s attempts to avert global conflict:  his declaration that ‘[n]‌othing is lost with peace, but everything can be lost with war’ was repeated several times on the same page. Also featured was his charitable work with the people of Rome, symbolised by the picture of his visit to the San Lorenzo district after it had been bombed in July 1943.198 This identification of the path of peace with the application of Christian teaching made the Communist ‘anti-​religion’, in Catholic eyes, the most striking opposition to any attempt at leaving the dangers of war behind. In response to the successes of the Partisans of Peace, Pius XII turned to his predecessors’ condemnation of the violence inherent in materialism and the denial of human dignity. This was seen in the papal encyclical Summi Maeroris, issued in the summer of 1950: A just and lasting peace … can only be obtained from the principles and norms dictated by Christ and put into practice with sincere piety … It is easy to conclude … how far removed from procuring a secure peace are those who trample underfoot the sacred rights of the Catholic Church … Through errors, calumnies and every kind of indecency they draw the people … away from integrity of morals, from virtue and innocence, to the allurements of vice and corruption.199

In earlier speeches, the Pope had seemed to suggest that the path towards peace lay in the formation of a defensive alliance between those who opposed the Communist error. The position taken in his Christmas radio broadcast of 1948 had in effect guaranteed that the military alliance with the United States would be accepted by organised Italian Catholicism; in his address, the Pope condemned the formula ‘peace at all costs’, which in his view ‘bolstered the security of those who were preparing to attack’, and argued that the saying ‘si vis pacem para bellum’ (if you want peace, prepare for war), even though potentially dangerous, was ‘not entirely untrue’. The invitation to ‘solidarity between

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nations’ intended ‘to discourage the aggressor’ was repeated with even greater conviction in the message that the Pope proclaimed when relations with the Communist bloc were at their most tense, immediately after the sentencing of Cardinal Mindszenty.200 In the face of the ‘most serious sins of atheism and hatred of God’, Pius XII ‘joyfully welcome[d]‌and approve[d] initiatives that aim to bring nations together in alliances with ever closer ties, with the purpose of thwarting these threats’.201 This stand can be seen as the moment of greatest proximity between the perspectives of the Holy See and the ‘Atlantic’ policy promoted by the United States at the end of the 1940s.202 With American involvement in Korea, however, their differences became more evident, above all because the position of the Catholic Church was dictated by pastoral criteria that often ignored the limitations of a pure and simple political confrontation. When war broke out, the Pope used his Christmas radio broadcast of 1950 to reject as ‘summa iniuria [the greatest injustice] … the charge of wishing for war and therefore collaborating with “imperialist” powers’; faced with an international rift, he advocated a solution ‘in the spirit of harmony and peace’.203 Many commentators for Italy’s secular press interpreted this address somewhat simplistically, declaring that for the Catholic Church the ‘alliance’ between the Vatican and the ‘Atlantic community … against “atheist Communism” ’ was ‘something that was of use for peace, but not for war’.204 A year later, however, the Pope was clearer still: the Church could not be regarded as ‘just another earthly power’ in the international arena, because its approach was founded not on the interpretation of ‘human’ ideologies, but on application of the judgement of God himself. ‘If we really wish to prevent war’, he said, ‘we must first of all seek to address the spiritual weakness of peoples: their unawareness of their own responsibility before God and men’, due to the failure to implement ‘Christian order’ on earth; his audience was urged to reject an approach driven purely by ‘hatred’, ‘greed’ and the ‘excessive craving for status’.205 In brief, Pius XII emphasised the need to not see the Catholic Church as an element within an international alliance; its teaching went above and beyond the parties in conflict and was not a political position, but a yardstick for judging right and wrong, and the only guide towards peace. The Church’s position created problems for the editors of Catholic publications whose role included greater political engagement. Leading articles in Il Quotidiano, and even more so in Il Popolo, could not ignore the clearly pro-​Western approach taken by a government dominated by the Christian Democrats, but at the same time the Vatican’s refusal to align itself with this position made it impossible to fully identify the sincere pursuit of peace with the ‘liberating’ American involvement in Korea. Moreover, although most of the Italian Church hierarchy had resolutely opposed any openness towards the initiatives of the Partisans for Peace, the tenor of the Pope’s vigorous appeal for

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efforts to end hostilities made many influential Catholics more responsive to Communist peace initiatives.206 To add to the pressure from some parts of the Catholic world to disavow direct military responses, another type of request succeeded in unsettling that segment of the public which at the end of the 1940s had related to a committed hostility towards Communism. From 1950 onwards, and more markedly after the North Atlantic Council had met in Lisbon in February 1952, Italy, like all NATO members, gradually increased its military spending with a view to defensive rearmament. The correspondents for Il Popolo and Traguardo did not pay much attention to this issue, not even publishing explanations that might have presented these initiatives as a deterrent against attack and to support the defence of liberty. By contrast, the non-​aligned press was far more interested in exploring the issue. Between 1950 and 1951 many newspapers returned to publishing leading articles by their experts on military and strategic matters: Il Tempo made use of an anonymous correspondent, ‘XYZ’; Ivo Luzzatti, an expert on military matters, came back to write for Corriere della Sera; and Giovanni Messe, the general, took on a similar role for Oggi. The content of their articles was often very technical, but the prevalent opinion was that there needed to be greater financial and technological commitment to an increase in weaponry in order not to be unprepared for an attack, which was described as anything but improbable. Behind these assessments there lay an ill-​concealed or explicit criticism of the government, which was judged too timid over the strengthening of Italy’s military arsenal. An article by Messe in November 1950 had the heading ‘In America parlano apertamente della nostra incapacità organizzativa’ (In America they talk openly about our organisational incapability):  he expounded his agreement with US criticism of Italy’s slowness to develop military programmes.207 Two years later, Luzzatti’s articles prompted a response from the Defence Minister Randolfo Pacciardi, who wrote personally to Corriere’s editor Guglielmo Emanuel to ask that the newspaper change its position.208 In France, just as in Italy, the media showed a growing interest during the 1950s in the military and strategic aspects of the confrontation with Communism. Opinion surveys revealed that the media’s increasingly clear description of the prospect of massive rearmament was received negatively by the public, both because of its potential financial consequences and because of the real risk of the armed conflict that was being described.209 While to date similar information has not been available for Italy, there too, in the opinion of Augusto Guerriero, people lived as if ‘the world was one step away from a new general war’:  or rather, ‘it was not really clear whether the new great war had actually already started’.210 One can imagine that the articles advocating rearmament, perhaps even presented next to reports of a nuclear test with the photograph of the infamous atomic mushroom cloud, may have had a similar effect on Italian

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readers and increased their fears of war. In any case, it seems evident that the anti-​Communist ‘front’ of 1948–​4 9 lost its unity in its attempt to develop a clear message on peace, showing what Pertici has called ‘the first cracks’: glimpses of a deeper crisis in the discourse formulated up to that point.211

Notes 1 V. Gorresio, I carissimi nemici (Milan: Bompiani, 1978; first published 1949), p. 47. 2 G. Tramarollo, ‘Garibaldinismo e mazzinianesimo nella storia d’Italia’, Quaderni della Labronica, 38 (1983: special issue, Garibaldi e Mazzini nella storia d’Italia), 11–​16. 3 C. Pavone, ‘Le idee della Resistenza: Antifascisti e fascisti di fronte alla tradizione del Risorgimento’, in Alle origini della Repubblica:  Scritti su fascismo, antifascismo e continuità dello Stato (Turin:  Bollati Boringhieri, 1995), pp. 41–​ 7; see also Z. Ciuffoletti, ‘Alle origini dell’idea di secondo Risorgimento: Socialisti e comunisti davanti al Risorgimento’, Il Risorgimento, 47 (1995), 348–​58. 4 See D. Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–​1956 (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2002). 5 Togliatti, ‘La politica di unità nazionale dei comunisti’, pp. 29–​35. 6 Pavone, ‘Le idee della Resistenza’, p. 30. 7 For a very fully developed discussion, see L. Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). 8 ‘Significato del ‘48’, Avanti! (18 March 1948). 9 For examples, see ‘Nella luce del Risorgimento Milano democratica’, Avanti! (20 March 1948); T. Rosa, ‘Umanità del Risorgimento’, Avanti! (26 March 1948). 10 L’Unità (21 March 1948). 11 P. Secchia, ‘Le bandiere della repubblica’, L’Unità (5 November 1947). 12 S. Soldani, ‘Il Risorgimento a scuola:  Incertezze dello Stato e lenta formazione di un pubblico di lettori’, in E. Dirani (ed.), Alfredo Oriani e la cultura del suo tempo (Ravenna: Longo, 1985), pp. 139–​40. 13 For the French experience, see J.-​C. Bonnet, La naissance du Panthéon: Essai sur le culte des grands hommes (Paris: Fayard, 1998). 14 Il Calendario del Popolo (January 1947; February 1947). 15 P. Ingrao, ‘Truman e Pio XII’, L’Unità (30 August 1947). 16 Vie Nuove (14 March 1948). 17 L’Unità (2 January 1948). 18 ‘La storia del PSI è la storia del progresso in Italia’, Avanti! (10 May 1953). 19 See P. Romano, ‘Cento anni fa nasceva la Repubblica romana’, L’Unità (9 February 1949); B. Prandi, ‘La Repubblica romana nacque su proposta di Garibaldi’, L’Unità (12 February 1949); A. Caracciolo, ‘Tutti i beni ecclesiastici sono proprietà della repubblica’, L’Unità (20 February 1949). 20 A. Gramsci, Il Risorgimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1949). For further general discussion of the importance of Gramsci’s thought in post-​war Italian communist culture, see especially S. Gundle, ‘The legacy of the Prison Notebooks: Gramsci, the PCI and Italian culture in the Cold War period’, in C. Duggan and C. Wagstaff (eds), Italy in

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the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society, 1948–​58 (Oxford: Berg, 1995), pp. 131–​47. For a reconstruction of the ‘Gramsci operation’, the complex adaptation of the text of the Notebooks to the needs of Cold-​War ideology and strategy, see C. Daniele (ed.), Togliatti editore di Gramsci (Rome: Carocci, 2005). 21 See Ciuffoletti, ‘Alle origini dell’idea di secondo Risorgimento’; A. Varni, ‘Il secondo Risorgimento’, Il Risorgimento, 47 (1995), 535–​43. 22 Togliatti, ‘La difesa della Costituzione repubblicana’, p. 24; P. Scoppola, 25 aprile: liberazione (Turin: Einaudi, 1995), p. 14. 23 S. Pertini, ‘Le “quinte colonne” ’, Avanti! (9 July 1950). 24 G. Fenoaltea, ‘Il Risorgimento’, Il Paese (30 April 1953). 25 E. D’Onofrio, Roma difenda il secondo Risorgimento italiano: discorso pronunciato a Roma nella Basilica di Massenzio il 26 aprile 1953 (Rome: PCI, 1953), p. 4. 26 See Kertzer, Politics and Symbols, pp.  17–​ 24, and, for the Socialist sphere, F. D’Almeida, Histoire et politique, en France et en Italie: l’exemple des socialistes, 1945–​1983 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1998), pp. 83–​95. 27 F. Traniello, ‘Sulla definizione della Resistenza come “secondo Risorgimento” ’, in C. Franceschini, S. Guerrieri and G. Monina (eds), Le idee costituzionali della Resistenza (Rome: Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, 1997), p. 20. 28 F. Andreucci, Falce e martello: identità e linguaggi dei comunisti italiani fra stalinismo e guerra fredda (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2005), p. 77. 29 L’Unità (20 May 1952). 30 L’Unità (30 May 1953). 31 Il Calendario del Popolo (July 1947). 32 P. Romano, ‘L’Italia DC nuovo Stato pontificio’, L’Unità (2 July 1949). 33 Candido (14 March 1948). 34 Wall, ‘America’s “best propagandists” ’, pp. 108–​10. 35 M. Dorato, ‘Garibaldi amico degli Stati Uniti’, Il Messaggero (15 April 1948). The quotation from Marx had also appeared in Traguardo (7 March 1948). 36 I. Giordani, ‘Garibaldi e il Blocco’, Il Popolo (11 October 1947). 37 Candido (4 January 1948). 38 Candido (4 April 1948; 11 April 1948) 39 See Candido (30 November 1947; 14 December 1947; 21 December 1947). 40 Candido (7 March 1948; 14 March 1948). 41 Candido (15 February 1948). 42 O. Mosca, ‘Chi voterà per la Democrazia cristiana’, Candido (29 February 1948). 43 Candido (29 February 1948). 44 Avanti! (2 April 1948). 45 Il Popolo (9 March 1948). 46 Il Popolo (2 April 1948). 47 See L. Di Nucci, ‘Lo stato fascista e gli italiani “antinazionali” ’, in L. Di Nucci and E. Galli della Loggia (eds), Due nazioni:  Legittimazione e delegittimazione nella storia dell’Italia contemporanea (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), pp. 127–​85; G. Petracchi, ‘Roma e/​o Mosca? Il fascismo di fronte allo specchio’, Nuova Storia Contemporanea, 6 (2002), 69–​92. 48 On the cultural roots of this development, see L. Ganapini, Il nazionalismo cattolico: I cattolici e la politica estera in Italia dal 1871 al 1914 (Bari: Laterza, 1970).

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49 R. Lombardi, ‘L’ora presente in Italia’, La Civiltà Cattolica (4 January 1947), pp. 12–​ 15 and 22–​4. 50 For the most complete reconstruction of this, see R. Morozzo della Rocca, ‘La vicenda dei prigionieri in Russia nella politica italiana (1944–​1948)’, Storia e Politica, 22 (1983), 480–​542. 51 Some of the documentation is presented in M. Isnenghi, ‘Alle origini del 18 aprile: miti, riti, mass media’, in M. Isnenghi and S. Lanaro (eds), La Democrazia cristiana dal fascismo al 18 aprile: movimento cattolico e Democrazia cristiana nel Veneto, 1945–​ 1948 (Venice: Marsilio, 1978), pp. 289–​90. 52 Candido (31 August 1947; 7 March 1948; 21 March 1948). 53 A copy is in APC, reel # 0186 0622. 54 Traguardo (15 August 1949). 55 See especially U. Zatterin, ‘Con una calza verde e una grigia D’Onofrio si presentò ai prigionieri in Russia’, Oggi (26 May 1949). In March 1950 Oggi also published the ‘Manifesto dei 526’, a further formal statement from the Associazione nazionale reduci di Russia. 56 ‘Fuori dall’equivoco’, Corriere della Sera (7 October 1947). Similar ideas were expressed by G. Tupini, ‘Togliatti è ora più leale’, Il Popolo (7 December 1947). 57 F. Bellonzi, ‘Vita o morte della nostra civiltà’, Il Popolo (18 April 1948). 58 S. Lanaro, ‘Società civile, mondo cattolico e Democrazia cristiana nel Veneto tra fascismo e postfascismo’, in M. Isnenghi and S. Lanaro (eds), La Democrazia cristiana dal fascismo al 18 aprile: movimento cattolico e Democrazia cristiana nel Veneto, 1945–​1948 (Venice: Marsilio, 1978), p. 17. 59 Among many examples, see E.  Vanni, ‘Alla conquista dell’Europa’, Il Tempo (7 October 1947); E Vanni, ‘Scuola asiatica’, Il Tempo (12 January 1948); R. Angiolillo, ‘Quattro soldi di conto’, Il Tempo (4 April 1948). 60 I. Giordani, ‘Morte e resurrezione’, Il Quotidiano (28 March 1948). 61 Il Messaggero (3 July 1950). 62 An example of the strength and pervasiveness of this interpretation at an international level was the impressive success enjoyed by one of its clearest expressions: James Burnham’s The Coming Defeat of Communism, published in 1950. This was widely reviewed in the Italian popular press; see for example Ricciardetto (A. Guerriero), ‘Memoria dell’epoca’, Epoca (6 January 1951). 63 The speech is quoted in G. Flamini, I pretoriani di Pace e libertà: Storie di guerra fredda in Italia (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 2001), pp. 8–​9. 64 M. Missiroli, ‘Un problema’, Il Messaggero (13 July 1950). 65 Candido (26 October 1947; and, for example, 14 January 1951). 66 See for example Oggi (18 April 1948). 67 L’Unità (21 January 1951). 68 F. Platone, ‘Italiana la DC?’, L’Unità (1 October 1947). 69 Trevisani, Piccola enciclopedia, p. 169. 70 ‘È possibile salvare la pace’, L’Unità (18 November 1947). 71 Propaganda (20 January–​5 February 1948). 72 See Il Paese (26 March 1948). 73 Propaganda (10 March 1948). 74 P. Togliatti, Piano Marshall, piano di guerra (Rome: Sezione Stampa e Propaganda del PCI, 1948).

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75 On the complex position of the DC on this new military alliance, see. G. Formigoni, La Democrazia cristiana e l’alleanza occidentale (1943–​1953) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996). 76 See S. Galante, La politica del PCI e il Patto atlantico: Rinascita 1946–​49 (Padua: Marsilio, 1973), pp. 122–​5. 77 ‘Duro colpo alla sovranità italiana accettato dal conte Sforza a Londra’, L’Unità (19 May 1950). 78 A. Oriani, ‘Coi “Giò” riappaiono le “segnorine” e la corruzione torna a dilagare’, Il Paese (26 February 1948). ‘Segnorine’ was the botched expression used by the US soldiers for Italian prostitutes, and was adopted by the Italian media to refer to those prostitutes who worked with the foreign occupying troops. 79 C. Malaparte, La pelle (Milan:  L’aria d’Italia, 1949; published in English as The Skin, trans. D. Moore, London:  Redman, 1952); Siamo uomini o caporali? (De Laurentiis, 1955), C.  Mastrocinque (dir.). On the significance in Italian imagery of the numerous cases of prostitution linked to the presence of foreign soldiers in Italy during the Second World War, see M. Porzio, Arrivano gli alleati! (Rome–​Bari: Laterza, 2011). 80 See, especially, ‘Che cos’è la CED?’, L’Unità (1 March 1953); ‘Chi comanda la CED?’, L’Unità (13 March 1953). 81 P. Togliatti, ‘La patria, la difendo; la “civiltà occidentale”, no!’, L’Unità (23 September 1950). 82 Pertini, ‘Le “quinte colonne” ’. 83 A copy of the leaflet is in APC, reel # 0186 0409. 84 E. Vanni, ‘Scuola asiatica’, Il Tempo (12 January 1948). 85 Traguardo (1 February 1948). 86 Traguardo (15 March–​31 March 1948). 87 E. Rusconi, ‘Una vecchia truffa’, Oggi (6 July 1950). 88 P. Secchia, ‘Auschwitz cimitero del mondo’, L’Unità (24 August 1947). 89 Propaganda (25 March 1948). 90 Propaganda (10 December 1948). 91 Propaganda (1 April 1948; September 1951). 92 L’Unità (21 October 1950). 93 On the initiative, and the police’s closure of the exhibition in defence of public order during a visit by an international body, see Guiso, La colomba e la spada, pp. 539–​56. 94 The paintings were reproduced in L’Unità (20 January 1951)  and Vie Nuove (29 January 1951). 95 See L. Risso, Divided We Stand: The French and Italian Political Parties and the Rearmament of West Germany, 1949–​1955 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2007). 96 For articles that typify construction of this stylistic feature, see Propaganda (April 1951; March 1953); Taccuino del propagandista (5 May 1953; 9 May 1953). 97 See G. Vecchio, ‘Tricolore, feste e simboli dello stato nel primo decennio repubblicano’, in F. Tarozzi and G. Vecchio (eds), Gli italiani e il tricolore: Patriottismo, identità nazionale e fratture sociali lungo due secoli di storia (Bologna:  Il Mulino, 1999), pp. 329–​91. 98 G. Vecchio, ‘Il tricolore’, in M. Ridolfi (ed.), Almanacco della Repubblica: Storia d’Italia attraverso le tradizioni, le istituzioni e le simbologie repubblicane (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2003), p. 52.

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99 See M. Agulhon, Marianne into Battle:  Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France, 1789–​1880, trans. J. Lloyd (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1981; first published in French as Marianne au combat: l’imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1789 à 1880, Paris: Flammarion, 1979); M. Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir: l’imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1880 à 1914 (Paris: Flammarion, 1989). 100 I. Porciani, ‘Stato e nazione:  l’immagine debole dell’Italia’, in S. Soldano and G. Turi (eds), Fare gli italiani: scuola e cultura nell’Italia contemporanea, vol. 1: La nascita dello stato nazionale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1993), p. 399. 101 Ibid., pp. 385–​6. 102 M. Agulhon, Les métamorphoses de Marianne: l’imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1914 à nos jours (Paris: Flammarion, 2001). 103 Candido (18 January 1948). 104 See for example Il Paese (8 April 1953); L’Unità (4 May 1953). 105 See documentation in ACS, DGPS, Affari Generali Riservati, 1951, box 2, C2, ag3, Movimento per la pace, folder 2. 106 Some leaflets have been conserved in APC, reel # 110 540. 107 R. Angiolillo, ‘quattro soldi di conto’, Il Tempo (4 April 1948). 108 I. Zingarelli, ‘Togliatti ad limina’, Il Tempo (20 December 1950). 109 Candido (29 September 1947; 5 December 1947; 11 January 1948; 8 February 1948; 18 February 1951). 110 Candido (3 September 1950). 111 See, for example, P. Togliatti, ‘De Gasperi non risponde’, L’Unità (15 April 1948). 112 See Don Basilio (7 September 1947; 18 August 1948). 113 ‘Battisti lo chiamò von Gasperi’, L’Unità (11 April 1948). 114 L’Unità (9 April 1948; 15 April 1948). 115 P. Ingrao, ‘L’ombra di L’Unità (14 April 1948). 116 ‘Von Gasperi è italiano?’, L’Unità (13 April 1948). 117 Material on this is conserved in APC, reels # 0186 0383 and 0390. 118 L’Unità (19 March 1953). 119 A. Pancaldi, ‘De Gasperi e il XXIV maggio’, L’Unità (24 May 1953). 120 Il Paese (28 May 1953). 121 The circular is conserved in APC, reel # 0401 1277. 122 See Togliatti, ‘De Gasperi non risponde’. 123 I. Giordani, La verità storica e una campagna di denigrazione (Rome: SPES, 1953). 124 On the idea of different citizenships and the ‘partitizzazione’ (division along party lines) of the concept of the nation, see the heated debate that developed after the publication of E. Galli Della Loggia, La morte della patria (Rome–​Bari: Laterza, 1996). In particular, see P. Pezzino, Senza stato:  Le radici storiche della crisi italiana (Rome–​Bari: Laterza, 2002); R. Bodei, We, the Divided: Ethos, Politics and Culture in Post-​War Italy, 1943–​2006 (New York: Agincourt, 2006; first published in Italian as Il noi diviso: Ethos e idee dell’Italia repubblicana, Turin: Einaudi, 1998). 125 Vecchio, ‘Tricolore, feste e simboli’, p. 371. 126 E. Sereni, Il giro d’Italia del cavalier Bianchi (Rome: Sezione Stampa e Propaganda della Direzione del PCI, 1952). 127 See. Y. Santamaria, ‘Un prototype toutes missions: le Comité de lutte contre la guerre, dit “Amsterdam–​Pleyel”, 1931–​1936’, Communisme, 18–​19 (1988), 71–​97. 128 See Guiso, La colomba e la spada, pp. 73–​6.

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129 See F. Andreucci, Socialdemocrazia e imperialismo: i marxisti tedeschi e la politica mondiale, 1884–​1914 (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1988). 130 See J.-​P. Rivenc, ‘Staline, “l’homme de la paix” ’, Communisme, 18–​19 (1988), 107–​19. 131 Zdanov, Politica e ideologia, p. 33. 132 M. Bracci, ‘Ma perché una nuova guerra?’, Avanti! (29 August 1947); Avanti! (11 October 1947). 133 See Il Propagandista (19 October 1951). 134 Some of these posters are conserved in ACS, DGPS, Affari generali riservati, box 32, folder K1B, Partito comunista italiano. 135 Cossutta’s article is reproduced in Flores, Il Quaderno dell’Attivista, p. 108. 136 Propaganda (10 December 1948). 137 Propaganda (5 December 1947; 15 January 1948). 138 Propaganda (10 December 1948). 139 Robotti, Nell’Unione Sovietica si vive così, p. 71. 140 L’Unità (23 February 1951). 141 L’Unità (3 February 1951). 142 R. Grieco, ‘Partigiani della pace’, Vie Nuove (24 April 1949). 143 A. Guiso, ‘Antiamericanismo e mobilitazione di massa: Il PCI negli anni della guerra fredda’, in P. Craveri and G. Quagliariello (eds), L’antiamericanismo in Italia e in Europa nel secondo dopoguerra (Soveria Mannelli:  Rubbettino, 2004), pp. 159–​60. 144 L’Unità (9 April 1951). 145 On the development and spread of the first aspect of this position, see Guiso, La colomba e la spada, pp.  260–​3. The second aspect was spelt out in P.  Ingrao, ‘Ultime dalla Corea’, L’Unità (7 July 1950). 146 Pertini, ‘Le “quinte colonne” ’. 147 The description ‘nuovi garibaldini’ is in Il Paese (10 January 1951). 148 L’Unità (27 June 1950). 149 L’Unità (30 August 1950; 1 September 1950; 2 December 1950). 150 Farge’s report was published in Italy as Rapporto sulla guerra batteriologica al Consiglio Mondiale della Pace: Berlino, 1–​6 luglio 1952 (Rome: Comitato italiano dei Partigiani della Pace, 1952). For further information on the distribution in Italy of campaigning material relating to the use of biological weapons, see Guiso, La colomba e la spada, pp. 604–​7. 151 See S. Endicott and E. Hagerman, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). 152 L’Unità (20 April 1952). 153 ‘Le atrocità compiute dai criminali americani in Corea superano in orrore e per numero le atrocità naziste’, Il Paese (29 April 1952). 154 Documents from this initiative are conserved in the personal papers of Ada Alessandrini, an Italian Socialist activist who became one of the Partisans for Peace leaders at both national and international levels in 1950: see especially the documents in AAC, 7.15.30. 155 See the presentation of this initiative in Noi Donne (2–​9 February 1948). 156 The card is reproduced in Novelli, C’era una volta il PCI, pp. 76–​7. 157 Noi Donne (7 January 1951).

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158 The material is conserved in ACS, DGPS, Affari Generali Riservati, 1953, box 21, folder G1A ag 1. 159 Some visual material collected by the police during political demonstrations is now in ACS, DGPS, G, 1944–​1986, box 123, folder G/​58, Comitato per la difesa della pace. 160 See Noi Donne (1–​8 March 1948). 161 See A. Åman, ‘Symbols and rituals in the People’s Democracies during the Cold War’, in C. Arvidsson and L. E. Blomqvist (eds), Symbols of Power: The Esthetics of Political Legitimation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1987), p. 43. 162 For the concept of a ‘condensation symbol’, see M. Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2nd edn, 1985). 163 See G. L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers:  Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 201–​5. 164 L’Unità (14 July 1950). 165 L’Unità (16 July 1950). 166 Police documents referring to the campaign are in ACS, DGPS, Affari Generali Riservati, 1951, box 2, C2 ag 3, folder 1. 167 See C. Hendershot, Paranoia, the Bomb and 1950s Science Fiction Films (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1999). 168 See M. De Giuseppe, ‘Gli italiani e la questione atomica negli anni Cinquanta’, Ricerche di Storia Politica, 3 (2000), 29–​51. 169 Copies of posters and leaflets are in CAA, 7.19.32/​b. The idea was put forward in the Quaderno dell’Attivista (15 May 1950); the editors had been inspired by newspaper-​style wall posters produced in Turin by local Communist activists. 170 L’Unità (6 August 1950). 171 ‘Guerra e pace’, Il Quotidiano (4 July 1950). 172 Il Paese (4 April 1953). 173 Il Paese (19 March 1948; 5 March 1950). 174 On the involvement of important elements within the Catholic world, see G. Vecchio, Pacifisti e obiettori nell’Italia di De Gasperi, 1948–​1953 (Rome: Studium, 1993). 175 This 1952 essay is included in N. Bobbio, Politica e cultura (Turin: Einaudi, 1955). 176 On Paix et liberté, see E. Duhamel, ‘Jean-​Paul David et le mouvement Paix et liberté, un anticommuniste radical’, and C. Delporte, ‘Propagande anticommuniste et images:  Le cas de Paix et liberté’, in J. Delmas and J. Kessler (eds), Renseignement et propagande pendant la guerre froide (1947–​1953) (Brussels: Complexe, 1999), pp. 195–​215 and 217–​25. 177 Il Quotidiano (27 June 1950; 7 July 1950). 178 A copy is conserved in ACS, DGPS, Affari Generali Riservati, b. 7, C2H, Manifesti di carattere politico, folder 2. 179 Candido (12 March 1950). 180 Il Quotidiano (13 September 1950; 24 November 1950). 181 Candido (12 December 1948; 2 July 1950). 182 De Gasperi’s speech was published in Il Popolo (2 March 1950). 183 M. Lupinacci, ‘Una colomba’, Il Tempo (9 April 1950). 184 ‘Inviti’, Il Quotidiano (9 April 1950).

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185 See the interview with the French Communist leader Waldeck Rochet, translated and published in Il Quotidiano (18 November 1950). 186 E. Rusconi, ‘La pace e il disfattismo’, Oggi (9 March 1950). 187 P. E. Taviani, Politica a memoria d’uomo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), p. 258. 188 Il Popolo (9 April 1950). 189 ‘Garanzia vitale’, Il Messaggero (22 March 1949). 190 ‘Libertà dalla paura’, Corriere della Sera (5 April 1949). 191 Garantire la pace: ecco lo spirito del Patto atlantico. Discorso pronunciato dal Presidente del Consiglio on. Alcide De Gasperi alla Camera dei deputati nella seduta notturna del 16–​17 marzo 1949 (Rome: SPES, 1949). 192 I. Giordani, No alla guerra! Discorso alla Camera dei deputati del 16 marzo 1949 (Rome: SPES, 1949). 193 E. Vezzosi, ‘La sinistra democristiana tra neutralismo e Patto atlantico (1947–​ 1949)’, in E. Di Nolfo, R. H. Rainero and B. Vigezzi (eds), L’Italia e la politica di potenza in Europa (1945–​1950) (Milan: Marzorati, 1988), p. 221. 194 Traguardo (14 January 1951). 195 Giordani, No alla guerra!; I. Giordani, ‘Patto atlantico’, La Via (19 March 1949). 196 The term ‘colombite acuta’ is used in, for example, B. Romani, ‘Convegni e giornate sulla pace si susseguono e si moltiplicano’, Il Messaggero (21 April 1949). 197 Il Quotidiano (11 January 1948). 198 Il Quotidiano (15 April 1948). 199 The papal encyclical was published in L’Osservatore Romano (27 July 1950). The English version is available online at: http://​w2.vatican.va/​content/​pius-​xii/​en/​ encyclicals/​documents/​ hf_​p-​xii_​enc_​19071950_​summi-​maeroris.html. 200 The Pope’s address was published in La Civiltà Cattolica (9 January 1949), pp. 119–​20. 201 ‘Esortazione apostolica di S.S. Pio XII all’episcopato cattolico per riparare ai gravissimi peccati dell’ateismo e dell’odio contro Dio’, La Civiltà Cattolica (23 February 1949), p. 475. 202 See P. C. Kent, The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: The Roman Catholic Church and the Division of Europe, 1943–​1950 (Montreal: McGill–​Queen’s University Press, 2002). 203 The text of the radio message was published in L’Osservatore Romano (24–​25 December 1950). 204 ‘La politica mondiale della Santa Sede’, Il Messaggero (5 January 1951). The interpretation in this leading article was explicitly denied by L’Osservatore Romano (9 January 1951). 205 ‘Radiomessaggio natalizio di S.S. Pio XII’, L’Osservatore Romano (24–​25 December 1951). 206 See Guiso, La colomba e la spada, pp. 361–​80. 207 Oggi (23 November 1950). 208 See G. Licata, Storia del Corriere della Sera (Milan: Rizzoli, 1976), p. 434. 209 See C. d’Abzac-​Epezy, ‘La perception de la menace aérienne en France, 1947–​1953: Renseignement, propagande et opinion publique’, in J. Delmas and J. Kessler (eds), Renseignement et propagande pendant la guerre froide (1947–​1953) (Brussels: Complexe, 1999), pp. 243–​55. 210 A. Guerriero, ‘Pace e disarmo da un anno all’altro’, Corriere della Sera (1 January 1952). 211 Pertici, ‘Il vario anticomunismo italiano’, p. 325.

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5 Towards a legitimation of prosperity?

With the end of the Second World War and consolidation of the rapid economic development and growth in production of what Hobsbawm called ‘the golden age’, in Western society the security of the population’s financial wellbeing became the principal parameter for assessing the validity of any party’s programme. In Italy, as elsewhere, the foundations were laid for an impressive increase in production and raising of living standards, but at least until the late 1950s the country’s main political cultures proved incapable of fully understanding these phenomena and engaging in debate on a proper socio-​ economic programme. Issues relating to the dynamics of economic growth and social progress only came to be included within the intense political debate after they had been presented through the distorting lens of the idealisation of opposing cultural models:  representations of the Soviet Union and the United States –​ Russia and America –​were the points of reference that enabled the different schools of socio-​economic thinking to go beyond simply criticising their opponents’ approach, and to present a positive programme to meet the Italian public’s demand for the security of its prosperity.

Communism and social progress: the ‘myth’ of the USSR The class divide and its representation The Communist approach to Italy’s economy in the post-​war period was not always consistent with the Marxist-​Leninist class-​based interpretation of social change that generally influenced the world view of Communist activists. During the period of national unity, the primary need to remain within the government pushed Togliatti and those determining the PCI’s economic policy, including Mario Scoccimarro, into making a positive presentation to Communist activists

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of the deflationary measures of downward pressure on wages and reductions in welfare benefits. The approach of ‘progressive democracy’ to economic planning ruled out rapid changes to the means of production and wealth distribution, even allowing a ‘wide margin for private enterprise’ and making efforts ‘against specific forms of profiteering, speculation and corruption’ rather than ‘against capitalism in general’.1 From the spring of 1947 onwards, after the crisis which had led to their exclusion from government, the parties of the Marxist Left offered an unsparingly harsh critique of Italy’s social situation and the government’s economic policy, with class struggle as its basis. The fundamental assumption was that the government coalition had been subjugated to the will of the most reactionary ‘groups of capitalists and bankers’, who were the most concerned with the exclusive and short-​sighted protection of their profits.2 In the posters and satirical illustrations addressing the ejection of the PCI and PSI from government, the social criticism that the Left now renewed could instantly be expressed by recourse to well-​ established and traditional stylistic devices that had remained largely unchanged. In the parade of caricatured social forces close to ‘Chancellor’ De Gasperi, alongside the priests and Fascists stood the capitalists, replete with top hats, cigars and vast paunches, and sometimes jealously guarding their profits behind the protection of a crossed shield. The counterpart of this imagery, often shown in the same illustration, was the proletariat: thin, emaciated and poorly dressed, but full of dignity and able to look the ‘padrone’ (master) proudly in the eye.3 The power of the iconography chosen essentially derived from the fact that these images had deep roots in the origins of labour movement culture. The characteristic features of the two figures, from their expressions to their clothing to their physical traits, had already emerged in early-​nineteenth-​century Britain in the first critical analysis of the social effects of industrialisation.4 These stylistic devices spread across Europe to reach the posters and cartoons produced by the Soviet regime’s publicity machinery.5 In Italy, too, the public developed a degree of familiarity with the metaphorical imagery contrasting the rich and poor, especially as a result of the cartoons printed in Critica Sociale and other Socialist-​oriented publications.6 This imagery had such power that even a conservative like Guareschi needed to adopt its visual devices in his cartoons, so that his audience would quickly grasp his criticism of the corruption of society and the scourge of poverty. The press activity that accompanied the Communist and Socialist forces between their exit from government and the elections of April 1948 fleshed out this profoundly dichotomous and dualistic image of Italian social divisions with alarming information and statistics on the socio-​economic situation, and with portrayals of real events and characters who almost corresponded to the

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contrasting rich and poor figures in the illustrations. The periodicals that the PCI’s Press and Propaganda Section produced for general distribution, especially Vie Nuove which at the time was seeking to increase its circulation, started by publishing investigations and reports on the rise in living costs after the rushed abolition of the rationing of essential goods. As the 1948 elections approached, more detailed statistics were provided: these connected price movements with the rise in numbers of abandoned children and families reliant on charity, and with the reduction in the already meagre provision for relatives of the war dead. The April 1948 election results did not mark any clear break in continuity as regards the issues for debate. The activists of the Left continued to interpret government policy as profoundly negative for Italian society as a whole and favouring the wealthy minority; the economy’s difficulties were presented primarily in terms of a further worsening in the conditions of the poorest social strata. The Communist and Socialist communications offices devoted heightened attention to tragic news items related to poverty and need; particular coverage was given in 1949 and 1950 to a series of suicides by workers who had recently been made redundant.7 In addition, stories about stockbrokers taking their own lives were the cue for discussing a financial market that had ‘entered the suicide phase’, recalling events at other times of crisis.8 In January 1951, much of the statistical information and many of the news stories that L’Unità and Vie Nuove had used to paint such a bleak picture of Italy’s widespread poverty were collected, organised and integrated with fresh statistics in a special issue of Propaganda that was intended to come out just as the parliamentary enquiry into poverty in Italy was entering its early stages.9 This initiative, which took place between 1951 and 1954, had taken shape with the support of the government majority but was given limited coverage by the non-​party press and publications linked to the government coalition, probably because it offered a somewhat jarring contrast to the triumphalist accounts of the first five-​year period of post-​war reconstruction. By contrast, the problems emerging from the enquiry’s early work were presented in detail by the publication of the PCI’s Press and Propaganda Section. Its coverage included the living conditions in the Sassi di Matera (Matera’s cave dwellings); the average Italian calorie consumption, now lower than forty years earlier; and the appalling conditions in some parts of Rome and Naples, which were contrasted with tens of thousands of empty houses. The concluding pieces returned to some of the most striking cases of death or suicide linked to poverty, as well as the stories of some of the 800,000 illegal prostitutes who had been forced into selling themselves outside the system of ‘case chiuse’ (the officially recognised brothels). Over the following months, after all this material had appeared, the culture pages of L’Unità presented an increasing number of investigations that drew on the information to give context to particularly problematic local situations.

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Riccardo Longone, a respected correspondent for the newspaper’s Roman edition, started to give particular and regular attention to the Italian South, from Naples to Sicily; he also presented lengthy investigations into life in the capital, during both the campaign for Rome’s city council elections in 1952 and the general election campaign the following year. Longone reported on the fate of over 60,000 Romans living in ‘caverne’ (caves) without the most basic sanitation, to the disinterest of the DC city council which simply wanted to hide these problems from the residents of well-​to-​do neighbourhoods.10 During the first half of 1953 and leading up to the elections, Gaetano Tumiati produced similar articles for Avanti! on peasant life in the Po Valley and the Polesine area, which had experienced terrible flooding. In both newspapers, these investigations were then supplemented by shorter pieces that presented the further worsening of unemployment compared to the levels of 1951. As with the much-​used visual contrast between the rich capitalist and the poor proletarian, the stark contrast between the lives of the upper and lower classes was used in Socialist and Communist communication to make the conditions of poverty even more striking; from 1947 onwards, the activists of the Left worked hard at emphasising this. One of the local news stories dealing with the Roman population’s discontent, discussed earlier, commented that ‘behind the sports cars of the wealthy areas, there is an extended procession of poorly nourished workers and children and women who gather plants in the meadows of the city’s outskirts’.11 The message was further developed and given greater structure in a summary report for Propaganda that appeared at the end of 1948 and was used again, in part, on further occasions until at least the mid-​1950s. Under the heading ‘On the whim of a rich man is spent’, there was a list of items, including ‘15 million [lire] for a Rolls Royce’; ‘2 million for a fur coat’; ‘600,000 lire for 10 pairs of bespoke shoes a month’; and ‘3 billion for an aristocratic wedding’. A contrasting list, ‘From the hunger and poverty of the poor is taken away’, suggesting that luxury expenditure could only by achieved at the cost of sacrifices by others, included ‘2  million jackets for children’; ‘600,000 lire’s worth of hot soup for the poor’; and ‘3 billion of wages for the workers’.12 The stereotyped portrayals of wealthy businessmen that populated illustrations in the opposition’s posters and newspapers very quickly found their real-​life counterparts. ‘Italy is always oppressed by the Valletta, Marinotti, Costa, Falk, Pirelli families, and so on’, said Propaganda in March 1951, naming the great families that ran the Italian economy after years of the Communist leadership pointing out the ‘two hundred families’ of Rome who controlled the stakes in the capital’s businesses. One person who became the target of particularly intense attacks on various fronts, to the extent that he took on an exemplary role as a capitalist, was Gaetano Marzotto, a textile magnate from the Veneto. In the 1950s the editors of the main Italian periodicals, including

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Oggi and Epoca, focused on his charismatic personality; there was a particular interest in his ability to secure social harmony within his businesses by investing a proportion of the profits in promoting the moral, material and cultural life of his employees, with the construction of hospitals, nurseries, libraries and seaside resorts. As a result, some observers interpreted Marzotto’s system of relations with his employees as an alternative to social conflict; in particular, his arrangements were of considerable interest to Catholic circles because of his partnership with various religious bodies to ensure housing for the workers, and the agreement that monks and nuns could oversee their moral welfare.13 The need to discredit a conflict-​free model, which could become attractive to wider sectors of the labour movement, was probably the reason that the Communists began a major campaign attacking Marzotto. In June 1950, L’Unità published an article that strongly challenged the flattering assessments in circulation, with the explicit aim of ‘discrediting the tall stories that have blossomed across the country about the “social merits” of the gentleman of Valdagno’. This was the first in an extensive range of negative press campaigns by the Communist publications that were distributed in the areas where Marzotto’s company owned factories. What many had seen as attention to cultural and moral development was, for the author of the article, a set of obligations worthy of a ‘medieval domain’, in which priests and ‘madonne pellegrine’ worked hard ‘to appease resentments and curb the wrath of its “subjects” ’: Marzotto forbids his tenants to use the radio during specific hours of the day and evening, to play host to their relatives and friends, and ‘to loiter on the staircases, in passages and in other areas for shared use’ … As a feudal lord who knows his responsibilities, the Count fosters the financial interests of the clergy; they reward him by watching over his profits, which are actually sanctified by solemn religious celebrations.14

The Left’s alternative: ‘structural reforms’ As against a distinct hardening in the tenor of social criticism that followed the passage of the PCI and PSI from government to opposition, the framework for their constructive proposals for the economy remained, at least until the end of the 1950s, ‘the economic content of the “progressive democracy” ’ that had been formulated in the 1944–​45 period:  in other words, the set of measures referred to as ‘riforme di struttura’ (structural reforms).15 This expression had its origins in the European Left’s response to the great crisis of the early 1930s, but in reality had never achieved the sort of precision that would have permitted a clearer understanding of the nature of the intervention that it implied. In the Italy of the 1940s its meaning still remained vague, although over time the programme put forward by the Popular Front acquired better definition with

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the positions adopted as journalists and politicians addressed the actual socio-​ economic situation. First of all, an essential element on the programme of any election meeting during the campaign of 1948 was the issue of land reform. In February 1949 there was an emphatic return to this theme: to highlight Christian Democrat inertia, a special issue of Propaganda was distributed offering material that was intended to show the government’s particular wish to favour large landowners with advantageous contracts. Attention was given to De Gasperi’s refusal to implement a measure which ‘would have meant the destruction of one of the essential economic foundations for the old ruling classes, and therefore their political power’, and ‘would have constituted the end of American interference in our country’. When the centrist coalition started the process of redistributing land in some parts of the country in 1950, the Left’s rejection of government policy remained unaffected. From the outset, the government’s programme was described as ‘an upside-​down reform’.16 Presentation of governmental action as the opposite of ‘real’ land reform was then developed further. In June, the Press and Propaganda Section put out a special issue of Propaganda on the problems of agriculture, whose section headings were designed to point out the profound differences between actual events in Italy and a genuine land reform policy. The government, it said, was proposing ‘a reform that enriches the barons and chases the peasants off the lands made fertile by their work’, which could be contrasted with the ‘hundreds of thousands of hectares seized from the large estate-​owners by the great and heroic movement of southern peasants’:  the only real effort made to change financial and labour relations in the countryside. A  stark contrast was drawn between the Christian Democrat promises made prior to 1948 and the reality of the reform, especially the progressive reduction in the amount of land for redistribution. As usual there was no shortage of cartoons to express these ideas more vividly: one that was reused in posters had De Gasperi in front of the peasants in 1946 blowing up a huge balloon, representing the vast amount of land that was supposed to be redistributed, whose size then dramatically decreased every year thereafter. The election campaign of 1953, in particular, saw Communist publications promoting the ideas that had been set out and given structure in their bulletins for internal circulation; for this occasion, all the issues that could be used to attack the DC and its allies were energetically taken up again. Articles in L’Unità in April and May discussed the failure to keep promises regarding the Italian South, where reform should have been taking place with at least ten times the speed.17 On 24 May, the entire third page was dedicated to ‘the great deception of the peasants’: articles and illustrations brought together criticism of the ‘false’ reform and warnings about the danger of war, a phenomenon traditionally

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dreaded by peasants as the social class most often summoned to abandon their work and take up arms. During the same period, there were investigations and photographic features in Vie Nuove on the developments towards redistributing land in the Maremma, which naturally were depicted as unsatisfactory. For example, a journalist visited the dormitories housing the peasants as they waited for their lots, and described the accommodation as ‘reclusori’ (prisons) due to the absence of basic sanitation.18 A further proposal that was typically part of the set of ‘structural reforms’ was the nationalisation of businesses in strategic sectors of industrial production. The parties of the Left focused particular attention on the situation in the electrical industry. In June 1947, Vie Nuove presented the first extensive investigation into the distortions in prices and distribution that resulted from the essentially oligopolistic ownership arrangements. Subsequently, the topic was taken up in numerous articles, and especially in criticism of the Vatican’s involvement in the electricity company that supplied Rome. In 1952 Avanti! also began to publish investigations into the production and distribution of electricity; the terms started to be set for the debate that a decade later would lead the first centre-​left governments towards the industry’s nationalisation. Finally, one other aspect of the ‘structural reforms’ was the substantial change in work relationships, in favour of the employees. Immediately after Italy’s new Constitution had been approved, the parties of the Marxist Left had committed their activists for some months to a campaign aimed at ensuring implementation of the ‘consigli di gestione’ (management councils) as the best means of ensuring that workers had appropriate involvement in businesses’ decision-​ making processes.19 After the idea of the councils had largely been abandoned, the PCI, and especially its activists within CGIL, directed their attention to mobilisation for the Piano del lavoro (Employment Plan), the public investment programme to counter unemployment presented at the end of 1949 by CGIL’s leader Giuseppe Di Vittorio. This was promoted as a guarantee of greater prosperity for the subordinate classes, and the government’s lack of enthusiasm for it was interpreted as proof of its links with the interests of the ‘great landowning and industrial bourgeoisie’.20

The backdrop of Soviet utopia The declarations about ‘structural reforms’ that were developed in the political communication of the Marxist Left during the reconstruction period have often been rather peremptorily assessed as very similar to Keynesianism or the economic programmes of European social democracy. In actual fact, the essential distinction between the Communist programme and the proposals of traditional Socialist reformism had to be understood within a wider cultural

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position. In the campaign for structural reforms, the PCI identified a series of measures for immediate implementation: these would make it possible to lay the foundations for a complete re-​establishment of social relations, in contrast to ‘the premise of reformism [which] was not the practical impossibility … of carrying out a revolution … but rather the explicit and antagonistic opposition to the revolutionary path’.21 From this perspective, it is surely significant that all the criticisms of Italy’s social structure and all the proposals for reform had as their ultimate frame of reference the development model implemented in the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies: those societies whose image was the subject of a conscious attempt at myth construction in the post-​war period.22 The early news of the Red Army’s counterattack against German forces had given rise to a generally sympathetic attitude towards the Soviet Union amongst the Italian population; this was then strengthened by spontaneous early publicity work, done without central direction, by the Communist activists in liberated Italy. From the first publicity campaigns organised in 1946 and 1947, and especially after the formation of Cominform, the machinery used by the PCI and the Socialist movement to disseminate opinion was set to work to construct an image of the Communist world that could replace the vague utopia of socialist society in the collective imaginary, bringing together the appeal of a perfect world and the concrete nature of an apparently tangible social experiment.23 The tradition of tales of travel in the USSR by party leaders and activists, established for over twenty years in the Communist Parties that had not been outlawed between the wars, now also took a strong hold in Italy. Articles describing visits to the People’s Democracies and Russia, by those who had been able to see the reality of the revolution and its results with their own eyes, were published on an almost daily basis on the third page of L’Unità, occupying the space reserved in ‘bourgeois’ newspapers for the popular travel stories from around the world. These pieces were then collected and reorganised into books, so that light could be cast on every aspect of the mythical image of Soviet society from a range of different perspectives (a woman, a trade unionist, an artist, a factory worker, and so on).24 From the period of the Popular Front onwards, tales of socialist life in Eastern Europe developed largely by means of a comparison that was always evident, but often not made explicit. The writers proffered descriptions that made clear connections with the Italian reality that was so well known to their readers. ‘In three days I have already seen two reforms implemented’, wrote Marco Cesarini in the heading to an article published ten days before 18 April and sent from Czechoslovakia, where radical changes to the banking and education systems were being pushed through; his choice of words was clearly linked to the Popular Front’s programme, with the ‘new democracies’ being

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presented as examples of the fulfilment of the very same ‘structural reforms’. After 18 April, when the impossibility of realising the Front’s economic programme had to be acknowledged in political communication, Italy and its economic defects were criticised and contrasted with the USSR and the People’s Democracies, which provided models of how a country ought to be once the social change proposed by the PCI had resolved every problem. While there had been a heated discussion of land reform within Italy, Communist and Socialist readers were made aware of the models inspiring the forces of the Left in their plan to base a profound change in society on initiatives in the countryside. In the summer of 1950, Vie Nuove published the measures on rural life that the new regime in China had taken in its early months, at much the same time as an article in Propaganda presented a range of positive observations on agricultural policy in China and elsewhere.25 In January of the following year, Saverio Tutino’s reflections on his travels in the Far East also focused on the rural world, where the most recent harvest had been the best in ten years and the standard of living of former wage labourers was similar to that of the affluent classes in Italian cities.26 In January 1953 a report on the People’s Republic of China in the culture pages of Avanti! presented its agricultural policies in an embarrassing comparison with measures taken by the DC government. An apparently even more striking contrast with the situation in Italy was provided by the social management of energy. Propaganda’s article of 1950 on the need to nationalise the electricity industry, mentioned earlier, was accompanied by a description of arrangements in the USSR, where the state management of energy had apparently led to the rapid completion of the distribution network and a 165 per cent increase in production. In the same year, during the campaign by the Partisans for Peace against the use of nuclear energy for military purposes, the Soviet Union was presented to Italians as the best example of peaceful and productive use of the most modern forms of energy production:  controlled nuclear explosions were facilitating the large-​scale irrigation works in the Siberian Taiga.27 These initiatives also allowed Libero Bigiaretti to see Siberia ‘blossoming’ during his travels.28 The political programme that was essentially the basis for the PCI’s proposals for Italy was, seemingly, being realised in the Communist world. This was described as the cause of a unique leap forward in the quality of life which was making Soviet citizens into real ‘new people’: the representatives of what Sidney and Beatrice Webb, years earlier, had described as ‘a new civilisation’. The more general and predictable descriptions of the abundance of consumer goods and the universally high standard of living would certainly have been an attraction to the Italians of the immediate post-​war period. In brief, the USSR was presented as a panacea of productive modernity and even widespread opulence, while in Italy broad swathes of the population were struggling

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just to survive.29 In the image offered to Italians, however, the new society was not simply distinguished by the quantitative increase in its prosperity. When it was observed, with a sense of wonder, that ‘in Bohemia electronic machines look after the washing’, the intention was not just to discuss a life that could match anything seen in American films, but to highlight a more general aspect of socialist social arrangements: in contrast to a modernisation geared exclusively to the profit of a few, Eastern Europe offered a model of technological development that was structurally oriented towards improving living standards for the whole of society.30 One of the writers in the anthology Noi siamo stati nell’URSS (We have been to the USSR), published in 1950, gave clear expression to this kind of idea: We can already see the day ahead when the huge practical and creative efforts of millions of human beings will have constructed such a technically efficient system that heavy manual labour will be reduced to the minimum.31

It was thus ‘a simple issue of technical development’ and resource management that allowed one third of humanity ‘to devote itself, with unrestricted ease, to the task of improving itself, studying, learning and thinking’, and that made it possible for millions of people to excel in every field without encountering any obstacles to the development of their abilities. The role of machines and technology in the creation of an ideal society had been a typical theme within utopian thinking since before Marx, and after him was revisited in the attempts to set out the potential consequences of the Socialist revolution. This was the essential element of the whole conceptual framework that encompassed the Soviet revolutionary experience.32 Humanity’s endeavour to bring nature to heel, and to make full use of all natural resources and energy in order to increase people’s material wellbeing and eliminate human suffering, was now in fact the plan of action for the USSR, replacing the battle for socialism that had already been won. The central ideological role that the struggle to conquer nature now played in the mythical image of the socialist world explained the interest that Italian Communist and Socialist journalists took in the large projects that engaged the Soviet production system in the five-​ year plans of the post-​war period. The articles describing construction of the large dams and hydroelectric installations on the Volga, ‘the largest in the world’, and discussing impressive irrigation and reclamation works for the marshes and steppes, ‘Herculean work never seen before’, should not to be understood just as overblown story-​telling aimed at impressing the readers. The great works of Soviet society were the central elements that ‘marked the transition from Socialism to Communism’, and were a demonstration of the almost supernatural potential of management of the economy and society ‘in the hands of the people’.33 From this perspective, pervaded by an exaggerated confidence in

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technological progress, the Italian Communists enthused over the cities built in the desert and the factories rising up in the most hostile of locations; these were presented as the symbols of how ‘the new man profoundly re-​ennobles, gives life to and humanises the dead body of expertise … to achieve this complete dominion over nature’.34 Also praised was the progress in medicine and botany, fields led by Soviet scientific research, due to its willingness to apply its findings to socially useful objectives.35 It was made clear in every description that the idyllic scenario outlined for the USSR of ‘revolution in progress’ could also easily be attained by an Italy in which the Communist socio-​economic programme became the structural background for government action, and it was emphasised that this path did not mean a stark choice between an absolute positive and an absolute negative that would involve losing all that was familiar in their environment:  instead, similarities were stressed and analogies employed.36 The message to be conveyed was that the construction of Socialism had appreciably improved people’s lives without bringing momentous change to their personal preferences or feelings, and that the social structure that was being built in the USSR and Eastern Europe only made it easier to achieve the goals that in every society every individual had, from the satisfaction of their primary needs to the right to pursue excellence in their activities. In the second part of his book Nell’unione sovietica si vive così, and in the answers to readers’ queries in Vie Nuove, Paolo Robotti set about describing a society that was familiar to readers, with the crucial difference that the privileges of the few had become the rights of all: in the USSR there were service staff, for instance, who were no one person’s employee but were provided by the state to wives and mothers in employment who had no time for household chores. He explained that people exchanged gifts on major anniversaries and enjoyed going to cinemas, theatres, bars and restaurants, which were open to all citizens and not just the affluent. All families, not only those of the celebrities who populated the summer stories in Oggi, spent their holidays at resorts; women loved clothes, make-​up and perfume, which were easily obtainable. The descriptive framework of travel experiences in the Soviet Union was normally such that an atmosphere of general serenity and tranquillity would emerge from the sketches of life and work; very often these used an insistently positive range of adjectives, suggesting on an emotional level that the path towards revolution went smoothly forward towards a life that was already familiar: Albanian women … enthusiastically contribute to the construction of Socialism in their country; the face of a young woman in [East] Germany is fresh, while a typical folk dance is given a joyous interpretation … [and] Moscow is a city dominated by an atmosphere of ‘serene ease’, ‘friendly simplicity’ and ‘genuine high spirits’.37

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The treatment of Soviet sport provides the clearest example of how the absolute difference and the total resemblance to readers’ everyday experiences were reconciled in the way that the image of the USSR was constructed. Sport was certainly a secondary theme when compared to widespread prosperity or the harnessing of nature, but was still often used in the publicity material that emanated from the PCI. First, it was well known that some sports, such as football, were topics of general interest among Italians and could easily draw in many readers. In 1950, Communist activists in Pisa began to publish the results and short reports from the Soviet football league in their provincial newspaper Il Lavoratore, probably seeing this initiative as the beginning of an unconventional path towards interest in Russia. Alongside news on the Pisa and Empoli teams, sports enthusiasts could encounter the world of the USSR in a context that they found especially comfortable, and an interest in a new ‘ideal fatherland’ might be kindled by their favourite pastime. Second, despite its apparent superficiality, sporting activity was a particularly suitable theme for illustrating the outstanding results that humanity could achieve in a country where the satisfaction of every need and the harmonious development of every social element enabled the cultivation and improvement of people’s individual talents. From 1952 onwards, with the USSR’s participation in the Olympic Games, sport provided the arena for perhaps the most striking clashes of the entire Cold War, and the Italian Communist and Socialist press played a role in maintaining the public’s interest and offering food for thought that went beyond the pure and simple technical results.38 The astonishing performances of the Czechoslovak long-​distance runner Emil Zatopek at the Helsinki Olympics, for example, were preceded by an intense press campaign intended to make him famous before his predictable triumph. Two years earlier, he was introduced to the readers of L’Unità as the author of a series of very positive reflections on his trip to Russia to train; then, in the spring before the Games, an article in Avanti! presented him as the product of a well-​organised sports policy, aimed at the rational use of resources for the identification and fostering of people’s talents. In this context, it concluded, ‘the Czechoslovak people’s government has created the conditions for there to be four, ten, or twenty Zatopeks in a few years’ time’.39 In relation to the Italian passion for football, the legendary exploits of the Hungarian national side in the 1950s were identified as the ideal material for extolling socialist society’s capacity to produce something exceptional. The team was presented in the spring of 1953 in articles in Vie Nuove, which alternated explanations of the Hungarian manager’s revolutionary interpretation of the ‘WM’ system with enthusiastic reports on the universal presence and ‘egalitarian’ nature of the youth football movement in the Communist world.40 To summarise, the period of Italian Communism’s harshest clashes with its opponents in the government was also the time when it discovered the full

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ideological potential of the Soviet ‘myth’, and when it engaged in creating an image of the USSR and the People’s Democracies that served to help present and explain the party’s economic and social programme. As Stalinism’s rigid constraints on Western Communism came to an end, Communist publicity substantially toned down some aspects of the ‘myth’ of the Soviet Union, particularly those connected to the Herculean dimensions of revolutionary achievement and the citizens’ barely credible prosperity. Even after 1956, however, the positive image of the social system in the USSR and the ‘new democracies’ continued to be presented as a valid alternative to capitalist economic development that was both egalitarian and free of social costs. At the national Festa dell’Unità in Milan in 1958, held two years after the Communist Party’s Twentieth Congress in Moscow and events in Hungary, the organisers still felt compelled to use one of the main pavilions to stage a photographic exhibition on some of the major economic and scientific achievements by Communist governments, from the launch of Sputnik 1 to the establishment of Czechoslovakia and East Germany among Europe’s major economic powers.41

Anti-​Communism and the legitimation of prosperity Rejection of the Soviet model and exaltation of Western productivity The 1930s had seen the development of an attitude of interest and admiration for the Soviet model of development and production, which was apparently immune to the severe crisis of Western capitalism; this occurred within political and cultural circles that were not close to Communism, and even in the cultural debate on corporatism that developed in Fascist Italy.42 But as Donald Sassoon has said, ‘[i]‌mages cannot be constructed in a vacuum’.43 In the cultural circles in which the PCI’s influence was weaker, the news that filtered through from the USSR confirmed the abject failure of its economic modernisation. From early 1948, the reports sent to the non-​ party newspapers from correspondents in Washington, Vienna and Bonn supplied information about the obstacles and increasing difficulties of economic planning, while the American information services started to send the editors of Italian newspapers material on the ‘weakest points of the Soviet production process’ at regular intervals.44 Reporting from behind the Iron Curtain, in turn, began to offer descriptions in which the numbers and dimensions displayed in the American statistics came to life in realistic sketches of ordinary living. The starting points were often similar, but the analysis developed according to positions that were very different. In the early 1950s, newspaper reports by Vittorio Rossi, above all, systematically established the clichés about the difficulties that Soviet citizens had to face just to get by; his assessments, with the vitality of live reporting but without adding

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any further detail to what was already known, presented Italian readers with a critique of the unwieldy and labyrinthine bureaucracy required for economic planning; pictures of poorly stocked shops selling inferior goods; the impression made by the long queues outside shops, which had also struck André Gide in 1936 and Corrado Alvaro a few years later; the general poverty of clothing; and the dramatic housing shortage that forced whole families to live together in just a few rooms.45 The portrayal of Socialist society offered by Rossi and the other travellers took up the clichés that had already been conveyed to the Western public between the wars by Gide and Victor Serge, and had been repeated by Kravchenko and Barmine after 1945. By exploiting the reports and images that had already circulated widely amongst the public, a picture was created that provided a total inversion of the positive ‘myth’ developed by the Left; this then became the basis for a fiercely ironic and scathing verdict on the naive mythical representation that the Left had created. The past masters of this derision were the editors of Candido including, of course, Guareschi. With a taste for simple stories that made his prose so entertaining, the Emilian writer used his column ‘La cortina di latta’ (The Tin Curtain) to comment on some of the more absurd news stories emerging from the Soviet Union, such as the proud report on the Soviet workers’ annual holidays that were to take place in Siberia, or the enthusiasm of L’Unità’s journalists for the Czechoslovak national football team that was so exaggerated that its decisive defeat by Italy went unnoticed.46 Guareschi’s imagination was especially gripped by the report from Gian Carlo Pajetta entitled ‘10.000 km attraverso l’URSS’ (10,000 km across the USSR), which was published in September 1950 in the Roman edition of L’Unità and then widely circulated as a pamphlet by the Press and Propaganda Section run by Pajetta himself. In one passage he had bombastically described the speed at which pre-​fabricated houses were built in the Soviet Union, explaining how these buildings could even be moved a hundred metres to make room for new roads.47 In the issue of Candido that immediately followed the publication of Pajetta’s article, Guareschi took these claims to their absurd conclusion: It would seem that a special road is under construction where the skyscrapers will be able to take their daily stroll in order to stretch their foundations. Naturally we will soon have the ‘Stakhano-​skyscraper’, which will set important records in track and road races.48

Over the following weeks the theme was taken up again in numerous cartoons that represented Pajetta recounting his experiences to a host of uncritical acolytes with increasingly distorted features, talking about mobile houses he had seen that had become attached to him and followed him around like puppies.

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The socio-​economic problems of the Communist world seemed even more significant when discussed in the context of a jarring comparison with the West, and especially with ‘Atlantic’ Europe which in the second half of the 1940s started to experience its ‘golden age’, a driving development in production that was to characterise a thirty-​year period. Journalists working for publications with an anti-​Communist stance took every opportunity to refer to this unfavourable contrast; this happened every April, for example, in coverage of the Milan Trade Fair, an event which allowed interested readers to compare the development of the world’s different countries. Moreover, stylistic devices were developed around the comparison between East and West that were repeatedly reused at every level of publicity whenever circumstances allowed. At the beginning of 1948, the Italian public learned about a comparative issue that was to have such wide and persistent circulation that it became a commonplace of anti-​Communist polemics:  United Press International published calculations of the cost of living in the USSR and the United States, drawn up by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, in which the cost of items was expressed in terms of the hours of work their purchase required rather than their nominal price. This research showed that what could be bought in New York with twenty minutes of work would require several hours in Moscow or Leningrad, while goods that were not basic necessities were available to the American worker with relative ease but required a Soviet worker to save all their wages for months. The calculations were immediately published by the Italian newspapers closest to the USIS such as Critica Sociale, the journal of the Partito socialista dei lavoratori italiani (subsequently the Partito Social-​Democratico Italiano) which at the time was financed by Washington, and Il Messaggero.49 During the campaign for the April 1948 election, this statistical report had such an impact that the ‘Press and Propaganda’ sections of the Popular Front supplemented the customary material about the frequent reductions in the cost of living in Eastern Europe with a table using the same format as the American one but based on other computations, which purported to show that the number of hours that had to be worked in Italy to purchase each product was at least three times higher than in Russia.50 In subsequent years, the material from these surveys was reused on various occasions and circulated in different ways:  the Civic Committees produced leaflets that reported the American figures, often mildly modified and updated, and introduced figures for Italy into the comparison, while SPES activists included it in pamphlets that described Soviet life in more of a narrative style. During the 1953 election campaign, one of the most popular displays in the famous Mostra dell’aldilà was a collection of everyday objects purchased behind the Iron Curtain, each labelled with the original price and the number of hours of work needed to make the purchase.

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A favoured terrain for this kind of comparison proved to be Germany, a European country split into two with governments from opposite sides of the political spectrum, whose main city, Berlin, could be seen as an illustration of the divergent results achieved by the two administrations.51 Italian journalists, like those from the rest of the world, used accounts of their journeys to Berlin as the best device for representing the striking contrast between the West, with economic growth in full swing, and the stagnant Communist East. The beginning of the 1950s was a crucial moment in the construction of this widely held image of the former German capital, because at that point the number of refugees heading towards West Berlin started to increase sharply. At the beginning of 1953 the count of those who had reached the Western zone passed 300,000, and mounting tension in the East finally overflowed in the ‘People’s Uprising’ of 17 June.52 In response, the SPES magazine Traguardo offered its activists increasingly frequent information from Germany, while the main Italian newspapers took part in the coverage from Berlin, often sending additional journalists to support their correspondents so that updates could be provided almost daily. For Corriere della Sera, at the end of 1952, Gaetano Baldacci and Giorgio Sansa were sending dispatches on the position of the refugees; Sansa reported that people coming from the Soviet zone could be recognised ‘instantly by their mode of dress’, which was poor and shabby, and ‘by their sickly appearance’.53 In the spring of 1953, their places were taken by Virgilio Lilli and Piero Solari, whose coverage for the newspaper included the events of 17 June and the West Berlin administration’s distribution of food parcels to the ‘depressing processions of poor and undernourished people who had travelled hundreds of kilometres’ to get this.54 A special focus on the enormous contrast between living conditions in Berlin’s two zones, thanks in particular to its presentation of interviews and statements by many refugees, was provided by Gino De Sanctis’ reporting for Il  Messaggero; his pieces were published in mid-​1953 as Una città, due mondi (One City, Two Worlds).

The ideological weakness and pervasive strength of a development model The travel writing from the Soviet Union that appeared in Italy’s conservative press had incorporated ideas and critical thinking borrowed from fugitives such as Barmine and Kravchenko, whose anti-​Stalinism was anti-​capitalist and of the Left. This led to the widespread use of expressions such as ‘state capitalism’, which had been developed in Socialist circles, and accusations that the Soviet establishment had ‘betrayed’ the egalitarian principles of Marxist doctrine. Vittorio Rossi, for example, sardonically wrote that ‘Marx over there in Russia was … like the cow for the Hindus’; anything to do with him was ‘sacred … but when Marx got in their way, then they no longer gave a damn about him’.55

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From this perspective, the story of Capitalismo e comunismo, a book published in 1951 by the Socialist parliamentary deputy Carlo Matteotti, was emblematic.56 Starting with an ideal model of the democratic state characterised by established social equality, the absolute independence of political power from forms of ideological or religious belief, and the equal distribution of national income, Matteotti drew the conclusion that while the regimes with capitalist and Communist orientation certainly had marked differences in their average standard of living, they were equally detached from their political and social models of reference and in fact had rather similar limitations and distortions. Despite the fact that the book’s clearly negative assessment of claims to democracy and egalitarianism also applied to regimes in the West, following the evaluative norms of traditional socialism, it was given a warm reception and was widely circulated in anti-​Communist circles. Reviews in the ‘bourgeois’ newspapers57 and the quotations and summaries that Traguardo offered to campaigners focused on the parts of the book that were more obviously critical of Soviet society, and as a result of these assessments Matteotti was expelled from the PSI for giving anti-​Marxist attackers such an important weapon. Among the criticisms of the USSR that Capitalismo e comunismo introduced into Italian political debate, it was the issue of ‘lavoro forzato’ (forced labour), a theme often addressed in the anti-​Soviet thinking of the Left, which had the greatest impact on DC and moderate or conservative anti-​Communism. In the immediate post-​war period, the writer who drew attention to the presence of labour camps in the USSR was David Dallin, an intellectual with a Menshevik background, who in 1944 published The Real Soviet Russia in the United States.58 This book particularly drew on official Soviet sources, including articles in the Penal Code and bulletins from ministries and government bodies; it showed that within these circles there was an open acknowledgement of the presence of camps for ‘compulsory corrective work’, and even that some form of organisational framework was disclosed. As with Kravchenko’s memoirs, the success of Dallin’s work was determined by changes in attitudes towards the Soviet Union: initially the book went almost unnoticed, but in its second edition of 1947 it sold very well. In that same year, various translations were published across the world, Italy included. It was immediately promoted by Oggi, which like the book itself was published by Rizzoli; subsequently, other publications also gave space to Dallin’s revelations, especially when in 1949 a further volume, expressly dedicated to forced labour, was published in an Italian translation.59 Straight after the launch of the second book, the SPES management published an article in Traguardo that offered their activists a selection of the material the Russian writer had used, so that the phenomenon of forced labour could be subjected to more substantial criticism than just a fleeting reference.60

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During 1950, the debate on forced labour was kept alive across Europe by David Rousset, a writer with Trotskyist sympathies, who after surviving the Nazi camps had suggested the establishment of a commission to verify the presence of ‘labour camps’ in Soviet territory. Following allegations by the journal Les Lettres Françaises, Rousset initiated libel proceedings in which the pattern of the Kravchenko trial was repeated. He emerged victorious, and the event had a moderate international impact due in part to the involvement of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in disseminating the main statements from survivors of the Soviet camps.61 In the wake of the success of Dallin’s books and the uproar around the Rousset case, interest grew in the approach to forced labour in Communist countries taken by Matteotti in 1951. The Italian author did not offer any previously unpublished material, referring primarily to the books by Dallin and earlier contributions from Souvarine and French anti-​Stalinism; in particular, he took from Dallin’s second book a map of the probable sites of concentration camps in the USSR, which made a big impression on his readers. These brief examples of the rapid exchange of points for debate between broadly socialist cultural circles and moderate or conservative communication media show how, in relation to effective ways for the various elements of Italian anti-​Communism to promote their own socio-​economic programmes, the Soviet ‘anti-​ myth’ became a favoured meeting point between cultures characterised by very different ideals. The economic policy pursued by the government from 1947 onwards was also characterised not so much by ideological coherence and incisiveness, but more by the need to reconcile the laissez-​faire position typical of those close to Luigi Einaudi, the economist and Minister of Finance representing the Liberal Party, with the demands from trade union groups close to the government, from Social Democrats attempting to carve out a space for dialogue with the workers, and from Catholic economists inspired by the Church’s organicist doctrine of social harmony and collaboration. This latter cultural domain undoubtedly had the best chance of influencing the government coalition’s language and political communication, but the publicity of both organised Catholicism and Christian Democracy avoided any stance that was too markedly distinctive. In 1948, in visual terms, the Civic Committees reiterated the mistrust that Catholic teaching had traditionally shown towards capitalism’s mode of production and the individualism and promotion of inequality that were its consequences:  in one of their posters, ‘the Christian worker’ was killing two equally threatening snakes, representing capitalism and Communism. However, these ideas were not further developed; after the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum, Catholic culture adopted a spirit of inter-​class solidarity that derived from the idea of fraternal collaboration between people with different social roles, and increasingly its journalism presented this in a way that could accommodate an economic model based on private enterprise, property

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ownership and encouragement for individual prosperity, especially in contrast to a strictly collectivist system.62 The ‘Press and Propaganda’ sections thus settled on criticism of the Communist opposition’s approach and alternative proposals as an effective tool in this respect. ‘Solo il governo De Gasperi tutela gli interessi dei lavoratori’ (Only De Gasperi’s government protects the workers’ interests), ran the heading for one of the first articles to appear in Traguardo in 1948:  this was intended to illustrate the government’s work on restoring employment during the winter crisis, and bemoaned the fact that many wage disputes ‘had been transformed, due to Communist agitators, into battles and strikes of a political nature’.63 In subsequent years, especially after splits within the union movement had helped to identify CGIL as the Communist leadership’s instrument for direct action in the world of work, this interpretative approach remained unchanged, and was usually expressed by describing political strikes explicitly as ‘sabotaggi’ in relation to the policy of Italy’s rapid reconstruction led by the centrist government’s action. The sabotaggi ‘socialcommunisti’ were contrasted with the general but easily understandable semantic fields of ‘prosperità’, ‘benessere’ (wellbeing or prosperity) and ‘disponibilità di beni di consumo’ (availability of consumer goods). Alongside these were presented and discussed the general increases in production, trade and consumption: in short, the reconstruction and revitalisation of the capitalist economy in the post-​war period, seen as the principal achievement of the government’s economic policy. From the campaign for the April 1948 election onwards, and even more so from 1949, the collective results of reconstruction came to be identified, simply and directly, with the government’s interventions in the economy, as if the results, presented as unreservedly positive, were themselves the theoretical, conceptual and planning justification that gave the measures under way the coherence and structure that they lacked. In 1949, with a tailor-​made article in July, SPES launched its celebration of Italy’s reconstruction by highlighting the government’s success in ending the rationing of essential goods ahead of all the richest European countries.64 This was followed in subsequent issues by reminders to activists using seemingly passing references to the theme, which continued until the end of the year. Any sense of the inflationary danger of rapid removal of this important tool for price control was brushed aside, in view of the great symbolic value of ending a practice that was generally seen as strongly related to the world war; in 1950 all the SPES newspaper-​style wall posters addressing economic issues took up the slogan ‘L’Europa è tesserata, l’Italia no!’ (Europe is rationed, but not Italy!), making this central to an assessment of the government’s merits.65 It was in 1950 that of reconstruction really became a distinguishing theme of Christian Democrat publicity, which was achieved by an overall organisation of

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Figure 9  Poster by the Italian Bureau for Tourism advertising the Mostra della Ricostruzione

all the relevant issues. Particular use was made of special sections of Traguardo, ‘Dizionario della ricostruzione’ and ‘Fotocronaca della ricostruzione’, which acted as repositories of statistics and images that were circulated ahead of the ‘Mostra della ricostruzione’; this exhibition ran from May to October and was the culmination of the government’s public relations endeavours, thanks in particular to the detailed coverage ensured by newsreels produced by INCOM and documentaries

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from the Istituto Luce. During the local and national election campaigns across the 1951–​53 period, the discourse developed earlier was taken up in a series of posters illustrating the main infrastructural achievements, all presented with the slogan ‘The reconstruction of Italy has a name: Christian Democracy’. During the same period, the Civic Committees used similar subject matter in their posters, formulating their message along more explicitly anti-​Communist lines by observing that the most impressive results were also achieved ‘without forced labour’.

The success and limitations of the American myth Disseminating the image of the United States Regular political communication from the government camp contrasting the failures of Communist planning with the successes of Italian economic recovery was accompanied by attempts to encourage wider enthusiasm for the aid from the United States supporting reconstruction. In Il Quotidiano in October 1947, there were still mistrustful comments about the American aid programmes and their underpinning theoretical approach, related to the concern that they ‘would transmit, in the long term, a sense of euphoria that did not correspond, for now, to either the reality of today or the probable circumstances of tomorrow’.66 In a matter of months, however, these tones had given way to total approval both in Catholic circles and in the secular press. At the beginning of 1948, Corriere della Sera published the reflections of Augusto Guerriero on the Marshall Plan, which was to get under way in the second half of the year, and in Il Messaggero Gino De Sanctis reported on the arrival of US contributions to support Italians; meanwhile, Il Popolo and Il Quotidiano published leading articles and summaries of speeches and rallies by the leaders of the government in which the American contribution to economic reconstruction was presented with enthusiasm. In 1950, the political staff who oversaw the staging of the Mostra della ricostruzione, mainly from the DC, paid tribute to the Marshall Plan by giving it its own pavilion. The whole supply of information on the flow of aid that reached Europe from the United States between 1948 and 1952 was the product of an intense and costly campaign organised by the Marshall Plan’s publicity offices in Paris; in parallel with the distribution of economic and financial contributions, this aimed to present a development model that was essentially based on the principle that a general rise in productivity would have positive effects on the standard of living across all social strata. Because of its particularly worrying political situation, Italy became the central point in the dissemination of information on the Marshall Plan, which the Americans wanted to use to tell the Europeans that ‘you too can be like us’; their intention was to change the whole perception of economic relations, by replacing the ‘war between reactionary

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capitalists and revolutionary workers’ with ‘a dynamic relationship between enlightened producers and satisfied consumers’.67 These practices were simply the most developed and conspicuous examples of the efforts that the US State Department made through the USIS office staff to promote a positive and appealing image of the American way of life. However, the bodies directly controlled by Washington surely had more impact by constructing a network for news distribution involving the friendly Italian press than they did by developing content that would serve to communicate this American image. It was in fact thanks to the friendly relations that the USIS fostered with the Italian press, and thanks to the good working conditions guaranteed to correspondents in the United States, that Italian publications could employ an impressive number of editorial staff to manage news from America.68 Official output, in contrast, was believed even by experts in the field to be too naive, and the sense of admiration that it was intended to foster was seen as too unqualified and unrealistic. The contribution that best represented this belief, to the extent that it became a point of reference for the State Department’s internal circulars and other communication, was a piece written for Public Opinion Quarterly by the Hollywood producer Walter Wanger on his return from a trip to Europe. In 1950 he intervened in the debate on government attempts to interfere with the screenplays of films destined for the international market, which had provoked this prestigious review’s correspondents: the government’s intention was to promote traditional American values such as liberty, respect for the individual and admiration for the capacity of self-​fulfilment, and also to avoid references to the violent world of gangsters and to issues of race that might represent a threat to the image of American society. Wanger unreservedly condemned these attempts as totally ineffective: in his view, the opportunity to freely and authentically express all the many facets of American society was a truly important element of the attraction that this representation had for the rest of the world, to the extent that the films deemed unsuitable for providing a positive image of the United States were actually the ones that were banned behind the Iron Curtain.69 As regards the introduction of stylistic features that belonged to the American myth into the linguistic and lexical baggage of Italian politics, it seems true that ‘[i]‌f one wanted to … assess the extent of the process mainly using political and ideological criteria … much of the phenomenon of Americanisation would entirely slip away. It used unconventional means of penetration, beginning with culture and consumption’.70 In Il Popolo and the newspaper-​style wall posters, the adjective ‘americano’, whether applied to statistical reports on production in the USSR or to the latest scientific discoveries, came to be a kind of synonym for ‘efficient’, ‘state-​of-​the-​art’ and ‘up-​to-​ date’; in many posters produced by SPES for the 1958 election, it was deemed

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Figure 10  Poster by Christian Democracy for the general elections of 1953

appropriate to portray the social and civil progress that the DC had brought to Italy in visual terms by using a stylised image reminiscent of the Manhattan skyline. All this was not so much a sign of the conscious adoption of any officially sponsored image, but rather an indication of the infiltration of a set of ideas and stylistic features that came from areas well away from formal politics. The cinema of soaring skyscrapers, gangsters and beautiful actresses,

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the literature of consumption, the advertising of American products such as Colgate toothpaste and Palmolive soap that had invaded the newspapers and city walls of the city: these were the primary sources for the idea of America that spread amongst the general public.71

Pro-​Americanism and ‘critical attraction’ In her discussion of the memoirs of Luigi Barzini Junior, the journalist son of a journalist father who had lived for years in New York and recounted his American experience to the Italian public, Enrica Bricchetto observes that in his presentation of American society ‘one can sense … an attraction, sometimes critical, embedded in the memory’.72 This idea provides a starting point for describing the attitude towards the idea of ‘America’ that was widely held among the Italian public; the concept of ‘critical attraction’ corresponds better to reality than the rigid distinction between ‘pro-​Americanism’ and ‘anti-​Americanism’ that characterised early analysis of this topic.73 Just as the travel stories in L’Unità and the reports on foreign customs in Vie Nuove have provided the best ground for assessing the political reach of the ‘myth’ of the USSR, journalism on American society and reportage from the United States for the non-​party press offer a lens for assessing the contradictions and uncertainties of general attitudes towards the United States. Within this, the articles written for Corriere della Sera by Guido Piovene in 1950 and 1951 stand out. This kind of writing, in which aspects of the image of the United States were collected and reworked within sketches depicting real life, fully explains how these representations did not correspond to the ideological necessities of either unconditional admiration or total disapproval. Instead, each writer’s reflections included the aspects that were most difficult to defend; however, these were not treated as elements that degraded the country, but often became integral parts of the attraction that the United States had for the public, and examples of the greatness that a civilisation expressed even in its most debatable aspects. This kind of approach could be seen in operation with regard to the aspect of American life that drew the most admiration across the West:  the high standard of living generated by rapid developments in production. Piovene, who reported from a wide variety of locations in the United States, did not hold back on his criticisms and bewilderment in response to the poverty that was still widespread, or in reaction to the dehumanising experience of the big cities that had now become ‘asphalt jungles’. These reservations, however, melted away in the face of the enormously attractive opportunities for enrichment and enjoyment offered by the biggest cities in the world, within a society that was still predominantly rural. ‘Guadagnano più di noi ma più grande è l’affanno’ (Their earnings are higher than ours but so is their anxiety), ran the heading to an

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article in which high American wages appeared far less appealing than at first sight, because of the vast expenses that everyone had to meet to live in a country where ‘one pays for everything’, and where there were limited opportunities to save a few dollars at the end of the month.74 However, these doubts faded in the imaginary of the Italian public when they read the story of the ‘old Italian emigrant’ who ‘would go to work in his yacht’, or tales from the life of Giuseppe Di Giorgio, a poor worker who had become one of the most powerful landowning magnates in the world and the personification of the dream of all immigrants seeking their fortune.75 Over time, even the most puzzling aspects of the American pressure to consume, which initially was almost incomprehensible, came to be perceived as essentially features of a society that had overcome the need to meet its members’ basic needs and was working towards creating an even more impressive opulence. In one of his articles for Il Messaggero, Amerigo Ruggiero sought to sketch a disapproving picture of the tendency towards waste in American society, but the lifestyle he described might also have seemed alluring: Two weeks do not go by without one girl or the other appearing with a new hat … During the year, towers of hats, mountains of shoes, and bales of clothes that will never be used again pile up in the wardrobes, which are often as big as a small room … The girls rely so much on dry cleaning that they can no longer sew on a button or mend a tear.76

Similarly, Piovene, an old-school liberal intellectual, seemed bewildered and almost disturbed by his visits to cities where there were more cars than households, although he pointed out the undoubted significance of this in relation to the continuous general improvement in the standard of living.77 Similarly, when discussing the widespread use of tinned foods he stressed how different these were in taste and quality from authentic rural Italian produce, but he also saw how they created the opportunity for everyone ‘to enjoy … foods that are essentially good, rich in ingredients and hygienic’, prompting the thought that this ‘socialist’ objective had been achieved by the practical application of science rather than ideology.78 In March 1953 it was the turn of Indro Montanelli, the new correspondent for Corriere della Sera, to show the same apparently ambivalent attitude when addressing a picture of everyday life that almost seemed to have been taken from a Hollywood film: In Levittown a house, meaning a chalet with a garage and garden, costs eleven thousand dollars, and an Italian multimillionaire would not be ashamed to live in it. Here, instead, live the workers, who … each have their own car for travelling into town to their job. A house … contains an electric refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner, radio and television sets, a toaster, and, in brief, the comfort that over in Italy is the luxury of the well-​off … Perched on high stools at the

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bar counter, beneath the rosy-​cheeked faces of girls enriched by vitamins who look down at you from billboards that promise every happiness, the youngsters of Levittown line up on Sundays.79

This kind of perspective on those aspects of American life that were very far from the usual Italian cultural landscape was even more evident in the approach to issues that had traditionally been perceived as meriting censure: the spread of alcoholism, organised crime and racial discrimination. These themes were frequently covered by correspondents and commentators, often in tones of criticism or concern for tragedies that were apparently unknown to Italian society. Nevertheless, behind many articles there lay an attempt to understand a different world, if not absolve it. Roberto Lopez, a correspondent for Oggi in New York in 1947, complained that American liberty was granted to everyone, regardless of their skin colour, ‘as long as it is not black’, but his concluding observation was that the rise in crime on the part of the black community was not making a positive contribution to the complete emancipation of the ‘negri’ (negroes).80 Just a few years later, Gino Gullace tried to further downplay concerns regarding the life of black people in America by reporting on new opportunities for their financial betterment:  these were apparently no longer limited to boxing and jazz, but included the cosmetics trade, banks aimed at black clients, and the Baptist preaching business.81 A  piece of reportage by Piovene on this issue demonstrated that the approach of Italian culture towards issues of race was not free from prejudice. In his view ‘il negro’, especially if he had made money, ‘was not very democratic’, and ‘most of the people of colour were instinctively … in favour of clear segregation, from which they could gain many advantages’. Among these he highlighted access to universities specifically for black people, where the few with above-​average intelligence could gain an education and set themselves apart; the majority, he reported, had by contrast ‘an infantile brain, as educational tests have shown’.82 Piovene, again, appeared convinced that some ‘vizi’ (vices or flaws) that were particularly widespread in the United States could actually be understood as the other side of the very same cultural traits that had allowed Americans to achieve the results for which they were so admired the world over. On the one hand, the spread of gambling was worrying, especially because of the part that its organisation played in organised crime, but on the other it was an expression of the adventurous and risk-​taking spirit that had characterised frontier culture.83 Even the spread of criminal groups that had given rise to gangsterism, regarded as the twentieth century’s clearest example of American society’s defects in terms of security and the rule of law, was perceived as the violent explosion of a physical vitality: a pounding energy that pervaded social life. These ideas allowed Piovene to bring together the ‘monstrous features’ that he had heard about in some parts of Chicago and the ‘overall impression of vibrant good sense,

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physical health, tranquillity and intellectual clarity’ that the city gave the visitor right from the start.84 The area where there was the clearest tendency to address the differences between the United States and the Italian cultural model without concealing them, but without being overly judgemental, was that of romantic and sexual behaviour. The first volume of the Kinsey Reports on sexual behaviour came out in the United States in 1948. When the research by the group at the University of Indiana was translated into Italian in the 1950s, there was a critical response from the more conservative part of the public, with condemnation of American attitudes towards sex that were seen as unacceptable in ‘good families’ in Italy.85 Between 1948 and 1950, however, while early discussion of the Kinsey findings was filtering through to Italy in news reports and features on American customs, the attitude of correspondents based in the United States was somewhat different to the reaction of later years. The journalists reporting on American life tended to play down the evident contrast between the principles widely espoused in Italy and the American way of life. Piovene, for example, urged his readers not to judge the behaviour of American girls by the rules of conduct that would have been valid in Italy. The Americans could even ‘fare qualcosa’ (fool around) with a young man, whom they might in fact marry in due course, but this was not, apparently, the traumatic experience it might have been for Italian adolescent girls; it was no coincidence that these things often happened on a Friday night, when the girls were drunk and not fully aware of their actions.86 The clearest signs of this trend were seen in the illustrated magazines, and especially in Oggi, a weekly aimed at a very conservative readership, whose leading articles and ‘Letters to the editor’ page usually reflected opposition to any attempt to understand sexuality that was non-​normative and any move towards divorce. When discussing the United States, however, behaviour that would have been flatly condemned in Italy was interpreted more as an element of exotic curiosity from a distant society, whose intellectual liveliness brought with it moral imperfections which in that context could be tolerated. There was a similar response to news of the surveys of sexual behaviour, although this dealt with topics that journalists were sometimes too embarrassed to translate. In 1948 it was revealed, for example, that 62 per cent of American women had lost their virginity prior to marriage, and this news was reported by Amerigo Ruggiero under the heading ‘Le ragazze americane scivolano sempre di più’ (American girls slip up more and more), in which the metaphorical use of ‘scivolare’, without its customary inverted commas, left the article’s content ambiguous.87 This trend was not presented as a symptom of moral decadence, but as a normal effect of the socio-​economic change that was leading to women having considerable financial independence, and thus showing greater enterprise. Two years later, reports returned to these rather delicate issues, picking out various details from

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the statistical data and demonstrating even more clearly how difficult it was to use explicit language to convey issues that Italian society regarded as completely alien. The extent of homosexual relationships between American women was presented as the number of ‘amicizie particolari’ (special friendships), while the practice of ‘petting’, which was very common between young people before marriage, was rendered in Italian as ‘civetteria’ (‘coquetry’ or ‘flirtatiousness’), a euphemism that was well-​nigh impenetrable.88 It was significant, however, that there was an attempt, albeit awkward, to avoid overt condemnation in the illustration of aspects of American life that would have been completely unmentionable if they had concerned Italy. There were numerous articles about American society that attempted to explain the typically American practice of ‘dating’ to the Italian public: this involved boys and girls who were twelve or thirteen years old, an age at which any relationship with the opposite sex would have been unthinkable in Italy, especially for the girls. ‘Dates’ were described in light-​hearted terms, such as ‘curious mixtures of friendship, love and sex’, which ‘had neither the seriousness of trysts for love, nor the innocence of encounters between children’; the boy was supposed to go as far as possible so that he could boast to his friends, while the girl had to learn the skill of rationing her concessions so that she seemed neither too strict nor too ‘facile’ (easy). In this case too, the moral judgement that would have included great alarm in an Italian case was suspended; ‘dating’ was principally presented as a useful exercise for everyone to learn their role in society, in a country where children spent too much time with their mothers and their behaviour tended to be feminised.89

Anti-​Americanism and American attraction in Leftist culture In the debate on the Soviet Union, the description promoted in Communist circles, which aimed at the highest exaltation of Soviet society and the complete elimination of all its negative aspects, had as its counterpart a clearly contrasting image in which any social problems were highlighted to the maximum degree. Among the more favourable stances on American society there was an absence of political networks promoting total and unconditional admiration; by virtue of an apparent paradox, this made it harder for the publicity machinery in the opposite camp to structure a discourse based on the radical rejection of the American way of life. According to the first lines of argument that the editors of Propaganda offered to Communist activists, during the election campaign of 1948, the United States was located at the centre of the universe of negative symbols for the Marxist Left. In an application of the criteria of class struggle to the arena of international relations, the United States was seen as the model of a mature capitalist society

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in which were revealed all the limitations of a socio-​economic system destined to be replaced by socialism, including, above all, the continued worsening of social inequalities. Communist newspapers and periodicals that dealt with the United States often contrasted the figures of the ‘re della repubblica stellata’ (kings of the starred republic), such as Henry Ford and the industrial tycoons and press barons, with life in the slums, which before the great construction revival of the 1960s covered a large part of Manhattan.90 In America, however, class inequality was deeply inter-​related with friction between ethnic groups and the problems of racial discrimination. At the end of 1947, L’Unità addressed these issues in a series of articles that implied that the Ku Klux Klan was present at the highest level; there was even discussion of President Truman’s supposed membership of the organisation. This attack culminated in an implausible piece of photomontage, published on the front page with the caption, ‘Un dirigente del Ku-​Klux-​Klan esce dalla Casa Bianca: chi sarà?’ (A Ku Klux Klan leader leaves the White House: who is it?).91 These themes were subsequently taken up in a less sensationalist manner, especially in photographic features and articles in Vie Nuove, a magazine which in principle opposed the Americanising language of the major weekly magazines weeklies and increasingly often published anti-​American criticism:  this led to the publication, in 1951, of the supplement Epoca Americana, a compilation of the most reprehensible aspects of American life presented in a parody of Epoca. First, hooded men ready to carry out a lynching appeared in various cartoons, for example lamenting with Truman the fact that weapons like the hydrogen bomb would wipe out human beings regardless of their race; then, the photographs available of Ku Klux Klan meetings were put next to crude images of hanged and beaten black people, with text noting that the Klan was a legal body in the United States, and that its misdeeds aroused limited interest from the public; finally, the Klan’s position, including its opposition in 1953 to the end of segregation in schools in the American South, became the focal point for showing readers the extent to which racist attitudes were ingrained in the United States, violent episodes being only the aspect with the greatest international impact.92 At the same time, there were many references to cultural discrimination against other ethnic groups, especially Italian-​Americans: stereotyping regarding their lack of honesty was a feature of numerous films.93 The degeneration of American capitalism was also conveyed by showing the spread of the underworld and organised crime. At the end of 1947, during the campaign against Truman, it was suggested that he was in contact with the Black Hand, a powerful criminal organisation, as well as belonging to the Ku Klux Klan. These ideas were revived in 1949 in the Communist press, especially by Ezio Taddei, who carried out an investigation into American organised crime that was published in April in Pattuglia, the PCI’s youth magazine. In

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particular, he focused on the group controlled by Tom Pendergast:  this was active in Missouri, Truman’s home state, and according to Taddei had a major role in the control of the vote. The alleged friendship between Pendergast and Truman was subsequently the subject of Taddei’s articles for L’Unità, in which Pendergast’s criminal activity was linked to the killing of members of groups that opposed the President.94 Taddei’s conclusions levelled an accusation at an entire social system that was hopelessly corrupt: Gangsterism is a dominant theme in American cinema simply because it is also a dominant theme in American reality … In every town, there is a gang. Or, rather, a ‘machine’. These are large criminal structures, each placed under the protection of a politician whom the ‘machine’ itself helped to elect. Add to all this the connivance of the police, which is almost always corrupt and for hire, and the evident protection of the large trusts and the banking and industrial coalitions.95

The anti-​American discourse that pervaded the PCI and PSI also developed along more complex lines of anti-​capitalist invective; it came to adopt positions and arguments from a range of origins, which were characterised by a conservative distrust for the harmful effects of American economic and social dynamism.96 In the press of the Left in the early 1950s, there was increasingly frequent criticism of the moral irresponsibility that pervaded the United States:  this followed from the fundamental idea, rooted in the culture and behavioural world of the Communist grass roots, that deviation from commonly accepted morality was a symptom of the degeneration of capitalist society. There was certainly plenty of critical comment on the superficial respectability that seemed so widespread in the United States, which resulted in absolute condemnation of the extramarital union between Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman from the same people who applauded the lynching of black people. In general, the tones indicated much less comprehension of unconventional behaviour than was shown by writers with a liberal background. In 1949, for example, Il Calendario del Popolo published pictures of a competition in the United States in which models in bikinis had to eat as much spaghetti as possible without using their hands; the most disdainful captions commented on ‘the suction force and jaw action of the dainty winner’, and the scantily clad contestants were captured from behind, ‘illustrating American culture from a retrospective point of view’.97 Vie Nuove, once again, published the most articles expressing condemnation: many discussed the problems of a society that was characterised by easy divorce and tolerance of marital infidelity, and the conclusion reached was that capitalist individualism, taken to its extremes in America, would lead people to follow every physical impulse for their own pleasure. These pieces were often complemented by cartoons, one example showing a ten-​year-​old American boy abandoning his toys to lift up the maid’s skirt, or by photographs that showed the excessive ease with

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which young people could experience physical contact, as in the contest in which girls and boys tried to spend the longest time possible gazing into each other’s eyes without kissing.98 In Epoca americana in 1951, there was some especially critical coverage of life at university, which was portrayed as a licentious environment. A major attraction at student parties was apparently the ‘kissometer’, a tool that supposedly measured a couple’s passion by the quality of their kissing; at other times, pairs of students went on trips in the country, where they often ended up rolling around in the hay with no fear of being immortalised by photographers. In subsequent years articles in the same vein were published: examples featured pictures of the most popular activities in nightclubs, such as mud wrestling and fights between semi-​naked women, accompanied by a commentary that traced both the obsession for gratuitous violence and the passion for pictures of explicit nudity back to boredom and the loss of enthusiasm for the simple life. Finally, much the same approach was taken by articles in the culture section of Avanti!, including the piece that described the American tradition of the ‘panty hunt’ in which male college students set off in search of their girlfriends’ underwear. Curiously, the tones of condemnation were accompanied by an appreciation of how seldom these customs had been adopted in the universities of the American South, almost as if, at least in this respect, Italian socialist culture identified more with America’s more strongly conservative cultural environments.99 The feature that became probably the most common and enduring symbol of the supposed incompatibility of American capitalism’s socio-​ economic model and what the Communists wanted for Italy, and evoked the rejection of all forms of penetration by the corrupt American lifestyle, was the drink Coca-​Cola. This had been distributed outside the United States from the 1930s onwards, but it was only during the post-​war period, as a result of the direct contact between the European populations and American soldiers, that a strong market was established in Western Europe. Its success was such that local drinks producers began to feel anxious. Where the Communist Party was strong, its branches supported the complaints of Italian wine and orange traders about competition that was argued to be not just catastrophic for an important sector of the market, but also unfair because it was supported by advertising originally intended for the Marshall Plan.100 Moreover, the press of the Left helped to spread claims about the health problems that might be linked to Coca-​Cola consumption. The expression ‘coca-​colonizzazione’ was first used in these articles in the Communist press, although it did not really take hold in Italy.101 In spite of all these attempts to construct an American ‘anti-​myth’ for consumption and use by the Socialist and Communist public, some aspects of the attractions of the American way of life and its associated stylistic features were received favourably despite the hostile environment. There was a significant heightening of engagement with the appeal of the United States by the

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Communist electoral base from the second half of the 1950s with the introduction of television, which was hugely popular, and in response to a lessening in political conflict, which gradually lost its significance as an all-​encompassing life choice.102 However, there had also been attempts in the preceding period to offer a portrayal of the United States that was more complex than the image put forward in the simplistic models of publicity, with the aim of assisting a readership that seemed anything but indifferent to the sketches of American life circulating in Italy. The deputy editor of Vie Nuove, Michele Pellicani, offered an explanation to a particularly traditional reader who objected to these concessions: As Marxists we fight capitalist society, but, as long as this is the society in which we live, we have to be aware of its laws and its customs and certain requirements that follow from these. We cannot remove ourselves from reality … Can we ignore the fact that the workers drink Coca-​Cola, and that ninety out of a hundred films shown in Italy are American?103

During the war effort, Communist propaganda in the USSR and across the world had already seen the figure of the American president Roosevelt and his policies as a positive counterpart to the capitalist and inherently conservative nature of the United States. After his death and the Truman administration’s anti-​Soviet shift, the politician whom the Communist media saw as representing a continuing friendly attitude towards the USSR was Henry Wallace, the former vice-​president to Roosevelt and Progressive Party candidate in the presidential election of 1948.104 During the campaign for the April 1948 election in Italy, the editors of L’Unità published various leading articles written by Wallace for the American magazine New Republic that were strongly critical of the policy Truman was pursuing towards Europe. The articles had their more intensely hostile parts on Soviet international politics removed for their Italian appearance, and L’Unità had to stop their publication after protests from the United States over these modifications.105 After the elections, pro-​Communist publications looked for a less directly political arena in which they could present readers with positive references within the image of America. They too focused on the socio-​cultural area in which curiosity about the United States could most easily be fostered:  a diametrical opposition to America’s dominant model of society, in short, became a starting point from which observers who were hostile to the United States began to feel a renewed interest in this country that they so disliked. Every description of American social injustice was accompanied by particular sympathy for their victims, whether immigrants, black Americans or native Americans, to the extent that a copy of Vie Nuove became a way of learning about the cultural traits of the ‘other’ America: that of black music and literature, minority ethnic cultures, and the films of Elia Kazan and Charlie Chaplin, directors

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who were even more respected when they became the victims of McCarthy’s investigations. Accusations by Americans themselves directed at the political and economic leadership of the United States as an integral part of a corrupt system frequently allowed journalists to observe that not all the society’s grassroots were involved in the degeneration. Issues of Vie Nuove, again, help us to understand how other aspects of the American way of life threaded their way into the fabric of existence as a Communist, not all of which could be determined by the party leadership and influential journalists. The magazine had in fact evolved in clear opposition to the purely escapist illustrated periodicals:  lighter articles were accompanied by pieces on the cost of living that solemnly presented the most alarming information and statistics, while the excessive interest paid to the life of Hollywood stars and their films was repeatedly criticised as an attempt to distract attention from essential issues, perhaps by focusing on the bare flesh of the most beautiful women. However, there was not that much less discussion of the cinema of American consumption in this Communist weekly than in other publications, and plenty of space was devoted to photographs of America’s most famous celebrities, perhaps in bathing costumes if they were young women; for a while, until criticism arrived directly from Moscow, the editors of PCI publications observed the custom of publishing pictures of attractive models in swimwear or alluring outfits, often completely extraneous to the accompanying article. Similarly, the American tradition of beauty contests was regarded with ambivalence:  emblematic of this was a cover picture for Epoca americana that featured the image of a ‘Miss Tomato Juice’, satirising American consumption, only for her to be recycled in the competition for ‘Miss Vie Nuove’. In conclusion, in the Italy of the post-​war period the influence of the positive ‘myth’ of the USSR was one of the most obvious distinguishing features of a particular political culture and a clearly identifiable network of ideas, while the attraction exerted by the United States was entirely different. First, it had the power to surmount ideological barriers and to establish an area of common ground in Italian mass culture, albeit in a rather problematic manner; second, unconditional acceptance of the United States and its culture was not a distinguishing feature of any specific Italian political and cultural circle. The importing of the American way of life into Italy, while disruptive, was in reality only partial, and was related more to the external features of a language synonymous with modernity than to the internalisation of new values. In particular, the socio-​cultural circles that adopted reference to the United States as the endorsement of a Western cultural perspective and a shared opposition to Communism saw this as an affirmation of the quest for ‘benessere’, but ‘the sense of risk, initiative and individual responsibility’, the values which could have had an ‘original and vital’ impact if imported from the American way of life, remained essentially alien despite the admiration that was expressed for them.106

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Notes 1 For the general approach, see the speeches by Togliatti, ‘La politica di unità nazionale dei comunisti’ and ‘Per la libertà d’Italia’. 2 For an interesting collection of material, see L. Barca, F. Botta and A. Zevi (eds), I comunisti e l’economia italiana, 1944–​1974:  Antologia di scritti e documenti (Bari: De Donato, 1975). 3 Some relevant publicity material is conserved in ACS, DGPS, Affari generali riservati, 1947–​1948, boxes 29–​30. 4 See R. Philippe, Political Graphics: Art as a Weapon (Oxford: Phaidon, 1982). 5 See V. E. Bonnell, Iconography of Power:  Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 6 See Pisano, Il paradiso socialista. 7 One worker suicide even featured on the cover of Vie Nuove (5 June 1949). 8 Avanti! (16 May 1950). 9 On this investigation, see P. Braghin (ed.), Inchiesta sulla miseria in Italia (1951–​1952): Materiali della Commissione parlamentare (Turin: Einaudi, 1978). 10 See ‘Un quarto degli abitanti di Roma sono privi di un proprio alloggio’, L’Unità (19 April 1952); ‘Rebecchini non ha mai visto le caverne sotto il Campidoglio’, L’Unità (6 May 1953). 11 M. Cesarini, ‘Chi paga le “fuori serie” del Parioli?’, L’Unità (7 December 1947). 12 Propaganda (30 December 1948). 13 See Lanaro, ‘Società civile, mondo cattolico e Democrazia cristiana’, pp. 43–​5. 14 G. Ingrascì, ‘I contratti di Marzotto impediscono di ascoltare la radio’, L’Unità (6 June 1950). 15 L. Cafagna, Le riforme di struttura, in G. Belardelli, L.  Cafagna, E.  Galli della Loggia and G. Sabbatucci, Miti e storia dell’Italia Unita (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), p. 175. 16 R. Grieco, ‘Saggezza democristiana’, L’Unità (27 April 1950). 17 See, for example, ‘Faremo del Mezzogiorno la California d’Italia’, L’Unità (22 April 1953). 18 Vie Nuove (19 April 1953). 19 See suggestions to militants on this topic in Propaganda (December 1947). 20 See Propaganda (January 1951). 21 L. Cafagna, C’era una volta … Riflessioni sul comunismo italiano (Venice: Marsilio, 1991), pp. 133–​6. 22 Among the many general discussions of the ‘Soviet myth’ and its presence in Italian culture, see especially M. Flores, L’immagine dell’URSS: L’Occidente e la Russia di Stalin (1927–​1956) (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1990), and the comprehensive reconstruction in S. Galante, ‘I comunisti italiani e il mito sovietico nel secondo dopoguerra:  tra “emotional russophilia” e organizzazione’, Annali della Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini e della Fondazione di Studi Storici Filippo Turati, 3 (1991: special issue, L’URSS il mito le masse), 407–​71. 23 On the process of ‘technicisation’ of the Soviet myth, see A. Riosa, ‘I miti di massa dello stalinismo’, Annali della Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini e della Fondazione di Studi Storici Filippo Turati, 3 (1991: special issue, L’URSS il mito le masse), 23–​32.

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24 On the experiences of Western travellers in the Soviet Union and the construction of their often positive impressions, see F. Kupferman, Au pays des Soviets:  Le voyage français en Union soviétique, 1917–​1939 (Paris: Gallimard, 1979); S. Coeuré, La grande lueur à l’Est:  Les Français et l’Union soviétique, 1917–​1939 (Paris:  Seuil, 1999); P. Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society (New Brunswick:  Transaction, 4th edn, 1997). For the specific experience of Italian intellectuals, see L. Di Nucci, ‘I pellegrinaggi politici degli intellettuali italiani’, a final chapter in P. Hollander, Pellegrini politici: Intellettuali occidentali in Unione sovietica, Cina e Cuba (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989), pp. 621–​77. 25 See, for example, ‘La buona terra senza i mandarini’, Vie Nuove (31 July 1950). 26 Vie Nuove (7 January 1951). 27 Propaganda (March 1950). 28 L. Bigiaretti, ‘Estate siberiana’, in Associazione Italia-​URSS (ed.), Noi siamo stati nell’URSS (Florence: Macchia, 1950), pp. 21–​32. 29 See B. Pischedda, Due modernità:  Le pagine culturali dell’Unità, 1945–​1956 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1995), especially pp. 162–​4. 30 L’Unità (18 April 1950). 31 C. Mussa, ‘L’Università di Mosca’, in Associazione Italia-​URSS (ed.), Noi siamo stati nell’URSS (Florence: Macchia, 1950), p. 18. 32 See R. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); F. Spufford, Red Plenty: Inside the Fifties’ Soviet Dream (London: Faber & Faber, 2010). 33 See, for example, G.  Piovano, ‘Il Volga significherà immense ricchezze’, L’Unità (16 June 1950); ‘Daranno grano e cotone i deserti dell’Asia centrale’, Vie Nuove (1 October 1950). 34 M. Cesarini, ‘Il migliore operaio di Pernik è famoso come Fausto Coppi’, L’Unità (28 February 1948). 35 See ‘Col trapianto di cornea i ciechi vedranno di nuovo’, L’Unità (17 March 1951), and the series of articles by V. Korach on ‘Principi elementari di biologia miciuriniana’, published in Vie Nuove in 1952 and 1953. 36 Andreucci, Falce e martello, p. 149. 37 Ibid., p. 145. The italics are Andreucci’s. 38 For a general discussion, see D. Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 39 ‘La disfatta del cronometro’, Avanti! (2 April 1952). 40 See, for example, ‘Diecimila vivai per undici atleti’, Vie Nuove (1 March 1953). For further information on the publicity war generated by Hungary’s visit to Italy for a friendly match in the new Olympic Stadium in Rome in May 1953, see F. Archambault, Le contrôle du ballon: Les catholiques, les communistes et le football en Italie (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2012), pp. 246–​60. 41 See Novelli, C’era una volta il PCI, pp. 108–​15; M. Fincardi, C’era una volta il mondo nuovo: La metafora sovietica nello sviluppo emiliano (Rome: Carocci, 2007). 42 For a general discussion, see J. Barber, ‘The Plan’s social effects:  expectations and reality, 1928–​1940’, in M. Flores and F. Gori (eds), Il mito dell’URSS: la cultura occidentale e l’Unione sovietica (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990), pp. 139–​55; P. R. Gregory and A. Markevich, ‘Creating Soviet industry:  the house that Stalin built’, Slavic Review, 61 (2002), 787–​814.

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43 D. Sassoon, ‘Italian images of Russia, 1945–​56’, in C. Duggan and C. Wagstaff (eds), Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society, 1948–​58 (Oxford: Berg, 1995), p. 190. 44 Il Popolo (29 May 1949). 45 The specific articles by V.  G. Rossi referred to, all in Corriere della Sera, are ‘Gli archivi del Gosplan’ (6 September 1951); ‘I negozi di Mosca’ (26 June 1951); ‘Come si vestono’ (22 June 1951); ‘Le case che i russi abitano’ (15 August 1951). 46 Candido (4 May 1952; 28 December 1947). 47 G. C. Pajetta, ‘Mosca 1950’, L’Unità (17 September 1950). 48 Candido (1 October 1950). 49 A. Ruggiero, ‘Operai in Russia e negli Stati Uniti’, Il Messaggero (11 January 1948). For discussion of Critica Sociale see D.  Pipitone, ‘Le riviste della “Terza forza” ’, Quaderno di Storia Contemporanea, 38 (2006), pp. 68–​9. 50 Some material is conserved in APC reel # 0186 0764. 51 For discussion, see P. Dogliani, ‘Berlino capitale’, Storica, 6 (2000), 12–​18. 52 See V. Ingimundarson, ‘Cold-​War misperceptions: the Communist and Western responses to the East German refugee crisis in 1953’, Journal of Contemporary History, 29 (1994), 463–​81. 53 ‘Oggi sono i proletari che fuggono dalla Berlino rossa’, Corriere della Sera (12 August 1952). 54 P. Solari, ‘I pacchi-​dono attirano a Berlino gente denutrita da tutta la zona Est’, Corriere della Sera (7 August 1953). 55 V. G. Rossi, ‘Quanto guadagnano gli operai’, Corriere della Sera (17 July 1951). 56 C. Matteotti, Capitalismo e comunismo:  Fatti e documentazioni al di là della polemica (Milan: Garzanti, 1951). 57 M. Maffii, ‘La Russia sovietica com’è nella realtà in un libro del deputato Carlo Matteotti’, Il Messaggero (3 March 1951). 58 D. J. Dallin, The Real Soviet Russia, trans. J. Shaplen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944; published in Italian as La vera Russia dei sovieti, Milan: Rizzoli, 1947). 59 D. J. Dallin and B. I. Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947; published in Italian as Il lavoro forzato nella Russia sovietica, Rome: Jandi Sapi, 1949). 60 Traguardo (15–​31 March 1949). 61 On the trial, see D. Rousset, Pour la vérité sur les camps de concentration (Paris: Le Pavois, 1951). 62 A. Ventrone, ‘L’avventura americana della classe dirigente cattolica’, in P. P. D’Attorre (ed.), Nemici per la pelle:  Sogno americano e mito sovietico nell’Italia contemporanea (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1991), pp. 141–​60. 63 Traguardo (1 February 1948). 64 Traguardo (31 July 1949). 65 For an assessment of the potential consequences of these measures, see M. De Cecco, ‘Economic policy in the Reconstruction period, 1945–​51’, in S. J. Woolf (ed.), The Rebirth of Italy, 1943–​50 (London: Longman, 1972), pp. 156–​80. 66 Il Quotidiano (1 October 1947). 67 D. W. Ellwood, ‘La propaganda del piano Marshall in Italia’, Passato e Presente, 4:9 (1985), 161. 68 Il Messaggero, for example, had three correspondents:  Leo Rea oversaw political updates from Washington; Amerigo Ruggiero, along with Luigi Cavallo after

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1950, covered American culture and everyday life from New York; and after 1950 Milo Caudana followed the news on cinema and show business from Los Angeles. Corriere della Sera had Ugo Stille as its political correspondent in Washington, while other noted writers, including Indro Montanelli and Guido Piovene, had shorter stays in the United States. Il Tempo’s network of foreign correspondents was much less developed, but even in this case a respected writer, Giuseppe Prezzolini, managed the news coverage from America. Weekly magazines like Oggi and Epoca often purchased articles and pictures of American life and show business stars from freelance journalists and international press agencies. 69 W. F. Wanger, ‘Donald Duck and diplomacy’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 14:3 (1950), 443–​52. 70 E. Scarpellini, ‘Le reazioni alla diffusione dell’American way of life nell’Italia del miracolo economico’, in P. Craveri and G. Quagliariello (eds), L’antiamericanismo in Italia e in Europa nel secondo dopoguerra (Soveria Mannelli:  Rubbettino, 2004), pp. 353–​4. 71 Amongst the extensive critical writing on the ways that the ‘American dream’ penetrated European culture, the most up-​ to-​ date and important work is V. De Grazia, Irresistible Empire:  America’s Advance through Twentieth-​ Century Europe (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2005). For particular discussion of Italy, see also R. Campari, ‘I grattacieli e il pellerossa’, in P. P. D’Attorre (ed.), Nemici per la pelle: Sogno americano e mito sovietico nell’Italia contemporanea (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1991), pp. 363–​8. 72 E. Bricchetto, La verità della propaganda:  Il Corriere della Sera e la guerra d’Etiopia (Milan: Unicopli, 2004), p. 176. A similar approach is expressed in some of the best analyses of Europe’s Americanisation; see, for example, R. F. Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 73 See for example M. Nacci, L’antiamericanismo in Italia negli anni Trenta (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1989). 74 Corriere della Sera (17 December 1950). 75 ‘Va al lavoro col suo yacht il vecchio emigrante italiano’, Corriere della Sera (4 February 1951); ‘Un “grande” italiano d’America ha creato e dato il nome a una città’, Corriere della Sera (1 August 1951). 76 ‘Quello che spreca una famiglia americana’, Il Messaggero (28 September 1947). 77 ‘Più automobili che famiglie a San Francisco’, Corriere della Sera (25 August 1951). 78 ‘Come il castello delle streghe il nuovo albergo di Cincinnati’, Corriere della Sera (28 April 1951). 79 ‘Levittown, perfetta città creata da una ditta in tre anni’, Corriere della Sera (15 March 1953). 80 ‘Libertà della pelle, purché non sia nera’, Oggi (3 August 1947). 81 ‘La fede e le creme di bellezza procurano milioni ai negri d’America’, Oggi (4 December 1952). 82 ‘Sono buoni col negro se ammette la sua inferiorità’, Corriere della Sera (29 May 1951). 83 ‘Nell’incredibile Texas i miliardi sono nell’aria’, Corriere della Sera (12 June 1951). 84 ‘Nell’iperbolica Chicago “città di terrore e di luce”  ’, Corriere della Sera (10 April 1951).

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85 See P. Morris, ‘Let’s not talk about Italian sex: the reception of the Kinsey Reports in Italy’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 18:1 (2013), 17–​32. 86 ‘Alcool e amore le sere del venerdì’, Corriere della Sera (20 December 1950). 87 Oggi (29 February 1948). 88 G. Maugeri, ‘In America entro il 1960 superflui i fiori d’arancio’, Oggi (23 March 1950). 89 G. Gullace, ‘Cominciano a dieci anni a dare appuntamenti alle ragazze’, Oggi (8 November 1951). 90 See Epoca Americana, supplement to Vie Nuove (29 January 1951). 91 L’Unità (15 October 1947). 92 Vie Nuove (4 January 1953). 93 Vie Nuove (8 January 1950). 94 ‘Truman dedicò la sua foto al “camerata e consigliere Pandergast” ’, L’Unità (11 April 1950). 95 ‘Elezioni di Sangue’, Pattuglia (8 April 1949). 96 For further discussion of the agreement and exchange of images and opinions on the United States between critics from liberal, conservative and radical ‘political families’, see P. Roger, L’ennemi américain: Généalogie de l’antiaméricanisme français (Paris:  Seuil, 2002), and, more specifically focused on Italy, M. Nacci, ‘Contro la civiltà dell’abbondanza:  L’antiamericanismo del PCI’, in E. Aga-​Rossi and G. Quagliariello (eds), L’altra faccia della luna: I rapporti tra PCI, PCF e Unione Sovietica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), pp. 242–​3. 97 Calendario del Popolo (August 1949). 98 S. Bensasson, ‘Ecco la “civiltà americana” ’, Vie Nuove (27 August 1950). 99 ‘Le sabine d’America si chiamano mutande’, Avanti! (21 May 1952). 100 G. Doria, ‘Vino e arance battuti dal coca-​cola’, Vie Nuove (12 February 1950); F.  Funghi, ‘Il generale Marshall sferra l’offensiva del coca-​ col’, Vie Nuove (21 March 1948). 101 The term would later be used in studies such as R. Wagnleitner, Coca-​Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War, trans. D. Wolf (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994; originally published in German, 1991). 102 On this process, see S. Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943–​ 1991 (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press, 2000). 103 Vie Nuove (21 January 1949). 104 See also R. Lieberman, The Strangest Dream:  Communism, Anticommunism, and the U. S. Peace Movement, 1945–​1963 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000). 105 See A. Gambino, Storia del dopoguerra:  Dalla Liberazione al potere DC (Rome–​ Bari: Laterza, 2nd edn, 1978). 106 P. Scoppola, ‘Le trasformazioni culturali e l’irrompere dell’American way of life’, in Chiesa e progetto educativo nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra (1945–​1958) (Brescia: La Scuola, 1999), p. 491. A similar judgement is also expressed by D. W. Ellwood, ‘Containing modernity, domesticating America in Italy’, in A. Stephan (ed.), The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-​Americanism after 1945 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2005), pp. 253–​76.

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247

 248

Index

Acerbo, Giacomo 86–​7 Alessandrini, Ada 77, 175 Alessandrini, Federico 32, 184–​5 Alvaro, Corrado 209 Andreotti, Giulio 68, 89 Angiolillo, Renato 24, 122, 162 Anthony the Abbot 144 API see Associazione Pionieri d’Italia Arata, Rodolfo 42, 90, 121 Aron, Raymond 23 Asino, L’ 57 Associazione Pionieri d’Italia (API) 60–​2 Attardi, Ugo 159 Avanti! 24, 50, 54–​5, 57, 76–​7, 82, 83–​4, 87, 119, 135, 138–​9, 145, 153, 169, 199, 202, 204, 207, 226 Avvenire d’Italia, L’ 62 Baldacci, Gaetano 211 Barca, Luciano 13 Barmine, Alexander 98, 209, 211 Bartali, Gino 144, 161 Barzini, Luigi 99 Barzini, Luigi Junior 219 Basso, Lelio 53, 76, 85 Battisti, Cesare 163–​5 Bedeschi, Lorenzo 62 Bergman, Ingrid 225 Beria, Lavrentiy 108 Berlinguer, Enrico 14, 89 Berlinguer, Mario 84

Berlusconi, Silvio 9 Bernardino of Siena 146 Berstein, Serge 4 Bigiaretti, Libero 204 Bobbio, Norberto 179 Bosco, Giovanni 146 Bottazzi, Giuseppe ‘Peppone’ (fictional character) 132–​3 Bracci, Mario 114, 169 Bricchetto, Enrica 219 Bruno, Giordano 141 Cabrini, Francesca S. 146 Calamandrei, Piero 118 Calendario del Popolo, Il 63, 119, 137, 141, 225 Candido 26, 47, 93, 95, 102, 108, 110–​11, 123, 142–​5, 162, 209 see also Guareschi, Giovanni Cantimori, Delio 91–​2 Capa, Robert 100 capitalism (in socialist and communist ideology) 4–​5, 197–​200, 208, 211–​12, 217 Cappi, Giuseppe 107 Carli-​Ballola, Renato 119 castellated personification of Italy 160–​1 Catherine of Siena 146 Catholic Action 17, 19, 32, 34–​6, 44, 46, 53, 60–​1, 181 see also Civic Committees; Quotidiano, Il

 249

Index

Catholic Church 4, 16–​17, 59, 80, 89, 137, 141, 146–​7, 184–​7, 213, 216 and Communism 2, 5, 7–​8, 30–​6, 56–​9 see also Catholic Action; Civiltà Cattolica, La Cattaneo, Carlo 135 Caudana, Mino 98 Cavalieri, Luigi 174 Cavour, Camillo 138, 140–​1, 144 Cesarini, Marco 203 CGIL see Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro Chaplin, Charlie 227 Charlemagne 141 Chiaromonte, Nicola 23, 91 Christian Democracy (DC) 6–​7, 11, 15–​16, 24, 25, 46–​7, 53, 55, 64–​8, 77–​8, 80–​5, 87, 90, 93–​6, 107, 113, 118, 120–​1, 137, 140–​1, 147, 153–​8, 161, 163, 175, 182–​3, 199, 201, 204, 212–​13, 216, 218 see also De Gasperi, Alcide; Popolo, Il; Servizi Propaganda e Stampa (SPES); Traguardo Cimabue 89 cinema (and political communication) 20, 23, 132–​3 Cingolani, Mario 65 Cippico, Edoardo 53–​5, 65 Civic Committees 18–​19, 34, 36, 38, 55, 101–​7, 112, 146, 148, 152, 159, 161, 164, 179–​80, 210, 213, 216 see also Gedda, Luigi Civiltà Cattolica, La 32–​3, 37, 41–​5, 60, 146 see also Lener, Salvatore s.j.; Lombardi, Riccardo s.j.; Mondrone, Domenico s.j. Clare of Assisi 146 Columbus, Christopher 144 Cominform 4, 75, 149, 168 Comintern 79, 143 Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL) 159, 202, 214 Congress for Cultural Freedom 23, 91, 213 Constituent Assembly 12, 78, 93, 113, 161 Constitution of 1948 85, 113–​22 see also Constituent Assembly Coppi, Fausto 144, 161 Corriere della Sera 24, 39, 45, 97–​9, 162, 181–​2, 187, 216, 219

Cossutta, Armando 169 Cottolengo, Giuseppe 146 Crisafulli, Vezio 116 Critica Sociale 48, 197, 210 Crociata del grande ritorno 36, 40 Crociata per un mondo migliore 37–​8, 40 Crucillà, Luigi 99 Cucchi, Aldo 105 Dallin, David 212 D’Andrea, Ugo 95 David, Max 97 DC see Christian Democracy De Gasperi, Alcide 15, 67, 78, 80–​2, 84–​9, 105, 120, 135, 145, 151, 156–​9, 161–​6, 178, 180–​3, 197, 201 De Gasperi, Augusto 164 De Sanctis, Gino 211, 216 democracy 4, 74, 90, 93–​4, 114, 117–​21 and communist ideology 75–​8, 197 Democratic Popular Front 5, 18, 24, 34–​6, 50, 54–​6, 76–​7, 81–​2, 104, 106, 113, 133, 136–​8, 143, 146, 149, 161, 168, 200, 203–​4, 210 Deutscher, Isaac 100, 109 Di Giorgio, Giuseppe 220 Di Vittorio, Giuseppe 202 Dichter, Ernest 11 Dimitrov, Georgi 79, 81, 114 Diocletian (emperor) 44 Don Basilio, 26, 50, 53, 54, 64, 80–​1, 141, 153, 163 Don Camillo (fictional character) 132–​3 D’Onofrio, Edoardo 140, 148 Dossetti, Giuseppe 15 Dozza, Giuseppe 93 EDC see European Defense Community Einaudi, Luigi 162, 213 Einaudi, Giulio 162 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 158–​9, 177 elections of 1948 5, 15, 22, 24, 33, 35, 39, 41, 45, 50, 56, 58, 62, 64, 90, 95, 98, 106, 114, 133, 135, 141–​9, 154, 174, 197–​8, 214 see also Civic Committees; Democratic Popular Front

249

 250

 2

250

Index

elections of 1953 14, 46, 94, 112, 210, 216 see also Legge truffa Emanuel, Guglielmo 24, 187 Engels, Friedrich 136, 143 Enoch, Kenneth 173 Epoca, 25, 111–​12, 148, 200, 224 European Defense Community (EDC) 155–​6, 159 Excommunication of communists in 1949 14, 40, 46, 56 Facchi, Paolo 74 Fanfani, Amintore 15 Farge, Yves 173–​4 Fascism 74, 78, 91–​3, 139–​40, 146, 157–​9, 165–​6 and communist ideology 3–​4, 79–​89, 171, 197 see also Hitler, Adolf; Mussolini, Benito Fenoaltea, Giorgio 139 Ferrara, Mario 24 First World War 21, 132, 163–​5, 169 Ford, Henry 224 Francis of Assisi 51, 146 Franz Joseph of Austria (emperor) 163 French Revolution 45, 48, 160 Fucci, Franco 96–​7 Galilei, Galileo 141 Gallone, Carmine 132 Garibaldi, Clelia 142–​3 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 6, 110, 133–​8, 141–​6 Gedda, Luigi 18–​19, 36–​7, 44, 161 Gentile, Panfilo 24 Gide, André 7, 209 Gioberti, Vincenzo 137 Giordani, Igino 34, 44, 57, 90, 143, 150–​1, 165, 182–​3 Giotto 89 Giovannini, Alberto 122 Giustizia e Libertà 139 Gobetti, Piero 138 Gonzaga, Luigi 146 Gordey, Michel 99–​100, 110 Gorresio, Vittorio 133 Gottwald, Klement 96 Gramsci, Antonio 138–​40 Graziani, Rodolfo 89

Gregory XVI (pope) 141 Grieco, Ruggero 152–​3 Gronchi, Giovanni 86, 103 Guareschi, Giovanni 26, 47, 66, 94, 97, 100, 103, 106–​8, 110, 122–​3, 133, 144–​7, 151–​2, 160, 162, 180, 197, 209 see also Candido Guerriero, Augusto 24, 25, 181, 187, 216 Guglielmone, Teresio 65–​7 Guizzardi, Gustavo 45 Gullace, Gino 221 Guttuso, Renato 158–​9 Herod I the Great (king) 42 Hitler, Adolf 80, 88, 157–​8, 170, 174 Hobsbawm, Eric J. 196 Holy Year of 1950 19, 20, 42 see also Crociata del grande ritorno Ingrao, Pietro 137, 163 Innocent XI (pope) 39 Iotti, Nilde 68 Italian Communist Party (PCI) 2–​7, 9, 12–​16, 19, 24–​6, 32, 34, 46–​8, 50, 53, 55–​6, 60–​8, 74–​9, 83, 93–​6, 103–​6, 110–​19, 121, 123, 133–​4, 138–​49, 152–​6, 159, 162, 165–​8, 171, 176–​8, 181, 196–​204, 207–​8, 224–​6 see also Calendario del Popolo, Il; Propaganda; Quaderno del Propagandista; Quaderno dell’Attivista; Rinascita; Taccuino del Propagandista; Togliatti, Palmiro; Unità, L’; Vie Nuove Italian Popular Party (PPI) 17, 86, 165 Italian Republican Party (PRI) 142–​3 Italian Social Movement (MSI) 74, 94 Italian Socialist Party (PSI) 3, 15–​16, 24, 26, 47–​9, 53, 65, 68, 76, 78, 82, 113–​16, 119, 121, 135, 138–​9, 143–​4, 152, 156, 166, 197, 200, 225 see also Avanti!; Nenni, Pietro Jacovitti, Benito 26, 103, 179 Jesus Christ 38, 40, 43, 44 in socialist and communist imagery 48–​51, 53, 144

 251

Index

Kazan, Elia 227 Kim Il-​Sung 172 Kinsey Reports 222 Koestler, Arthur 23, 100 Kolarz, Walter 98 Korean war 8, 62, 139, 151–​2, 156, 158, 171–​7, 186 Kravchenko, Victor 7, 98, 101, 109, 209, 211–​12 Kriegel, Annie 79 Labriola, Arturo 24 land reform of 1950 5, 13, 47, 114, 201–​2 Lasswell, Harold D. 21 Lavoratore, Il 207 Ledit, Joseph H. s.j. 31, 33–​4, 47, 59, 104 Ledóchowski, Wlodimir s.j. 31 legge truffa 3, 40, 67–​8, 77, 86, 108, 117, 122–​3 see also elections of 1953 Lener, Salvatore s.j. 42 Lenin, Vladimir 105, 144, 168 Lepanto, Battle of 39 Lettres de Rome sur l’Athéisme Moderne 31, 59 see also Ledit, Joseph H. s.j. Lettres Françaises, Les 98, 213 Levi, Carlo 1 Lilli, Virgilio 211 Lincoln, Abraham 143 Lombardi, Riccardo s.j. 32–​4, 37, 46–​7, 60, 146 Longo, Luigi 25, 81 Longo, Rosetta 175 Longone, Riccardo 199 Lopez, Roberto 221 Lupinacci, Manlio 180 Luzzatti, Ivo 187 MacArthur, Douglas 158, 173 McCarthy, Joseph 228 Maccari, Raffaele 26 Madonna Pellegrina 33, 200 Mafai, Mario 159 Magnani, Valdo 105 Malaparte, Curzio 96–​7, 155 Malenkov, Georgy 68, 108, 112, 157, 162 Marianne 160 Marshall Plan 20, 22, 154–​5, 216, 226

Marx, Karl 59, 136, 143–​4, 205, 211 Marxism-​Leninism 132, 167–​8, 172 Catholic criticism to it 31–​4 and Italian Communism 4, 139, 143, 196–​7 Marzotto, Gaetano 199–​200 Mastrocinque, Camillo 155 Matteotti, Carlo 212–​13 Matteotti, Giacomo 144 Mazzini, Giuseppe 135, 138, 141, 143 Merzagora, Cesare 65 Messaggero, Il 24, 45–​7, 96, 98–​9, 106, 143, 151–​2, 162, 182, 210–​11, 216, 220 Messe, Giovanni 148, 187 Mieli, Renato 156 Mindszenty, Józef 42, 44, 46, 106, 186 Missiroli, Mario 24, 152 Molotov, Vyacheslav 108 Mondo, Il 25, 39, 91 Mondrone, Domenico s.j. 33, 39 Monnerot, Jules 39 Montanelli, Indro 220–​1 Mortati, Costantino 118 Mosca, Oreste 106, 145 Mostra dell’Aldilà 20, 97, 101, 210 Mostra della Ricostruzione 20, 215–​16 MSI see Italian Social Movement Muckermann, Friedrich s.j. 34 Mussolini, Benito 24, 47, 80, 82, 84, 88–​9, 93, 165 Negarville, Celeste 144 Negro, Silvio 181 Nenni, Pietro, 68, 116, 157, 162 Noi Donne 16, 175 North Atlantic Treaty 98, 155–​8, 181–​3, 187 opposition to it 6, 14, 16, 168 Office of War Information (OWI) 21 Oggi 24–​5, 46, 56, 112, 148, 158, 187, 200, 206, 221–​3 see also Rusconi, Edilio Oriani, Alfredo 138 Orwell, George 23 Osservatore Romano, L’ 24, 41, 46, 54–​5, 154 OWI see Office of War Information

251

 25

252

Index

Pacciardi, Randolfo 187 Paese, Il 24, 54–​7, 84, 88, 114–​15, 117, 139, 155, 164, 172, 174, 178 Pajetta, Gian Carlo 13, 66, 77–​8, 103, 164, 209 Partisans for Peace 16, 161, 166–​79, 185–​6, 204 see also Peace Movements Pastore, Ottavio 84 Pattuglia 224–​5 Pavone, Claudio 134 peace movements 4, 68, 132, 175 see also Partisans for Peace Pella, Giuseppe 82 Pellicani, Michele 227 Pellizzi, Camillo 92 Pendergast, Tom 225 Pepe, Gabriele 87 Pertici, Roberto 90, 188 Pertini, Sandro 113, 156–​7, 172 Petkov, Nikola 95, 104, 107 Picasso, Pablo 176, 179–​80 Piccioni, Attilio 1 Piovene, Guido 24, 98, 219–​22 Pintor, Luigi 14 Pisacane, Carlo 138 Pius V (pope) 146 Pius IX (pope) 144 Pius XI (pope) 17, 31 Pius XII (pope) 14, 31–​2, 37–​43, 53, 90, 137, 185–​6 Platone, Felice 138, 153 Pocock, J.G.A. 2 Podrecca, Guido 57 Pollastrelli, Giovanni 65 Popolo, Il 24, 41, 42, 44, 95–​8, 101, 104, 108, 120–​1, 138, 143, 147–​53, 182–​3, 186–​7, 216 Post-​war reconstruction 198, 214–​17 see also Mostra della Ricostruzione PPI see Italian Popular Party Prampolini, Camillo 48 PRI see Italian Republican Party propaganda 12–​13 and political communication 2, 11 Propaganda (PCI periodical publication) 13, 50–​2, 56, 64–​5, 78, 82, 88, 117, 154–​5, 158, 169–​70, 177, 198–​201, 204, 223

PSI see Italian Socialist Party Purificato, Domenico 159 Quaderno del Propagandista 13 Quaderno dell’Attivista 13–​14, 113, 169 Quinn, John 173 Quotidiano, Il 32, 35, 37, 41, 44, 46, 56–​7, 61, 111–​12, 150, 179–​81, 184–​6 Rajk, László 100 Reader’s Digest 22–​3 Rèpaci, Leonida 24 resistance 78, 83, 134, 139–​40, 171–​3 and Italian democracy 1, 92–​3 Rinascita, 83, 155, 169 Ripka, Hubert 98 Risorgimento 2, 57, 143, 146, 163–​6 in socialist and communist ideology 134–​41, 156 Risorgimento Liberale, Il 91 Robotti, Paolo 110–​11, 170, 206 Romani, Bruno 98 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 227 Röpke, Wilhelm 39, 91 Rousset, David 213 Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel 112 Rossellini, Roberto 225 Rossi, Edoardo 82 Rossi, Maria Maddalena 175 Rossi, Vittorio Guido 99–​100, 110, 208–​9, 211 Ruggiero, Amerigo 220 Rusconi, Edilio 25, 46, 112, 158, 181 Saini, Ezio 148 Sala, Giuseppe 149, 153 Salvemini, Gaetano 138 Sansa, Giorgio 211 Sassoon, Donald 208 Scarpelli, Furio 26 Scattolini, Virgilio 55 Scelba, Mario 80, 82, 84, 86–​9, 120, 159 Scoccimarro, Mario 76, 83, 196 Secchia, Pietro 115, 118–​19, 136, 158 Second World War 21–​2, 91, 134, 156, 173, 176–​7, 185 see also Resistance Seme, Il 48 Sereni, Emilio 1, 166

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Index

Serge, Victor 209 Servizi Propaganda e Stampa (SPES) 15, 20, 68, 102, 104, 107–​8, 112, 143–​8, 158–​9, 161, 165, 179, 181–​3, 210–​14, 217 see also Traguardo Sforza, Carlo 182 Silone, Ignazio 23 Sixtus IV (pope) 57 Sixtus V (pope) 57 Slanski, Rudolf 100, 108 Smith, Tomaso 24 Solari, Piero 211 Solaro della Margarita, Clemente 141 Soldani, Simonetta 136–​7 Souvarine, Boris 109, 213 Soviet Revolution 15, 30, 40–​1, 59–​60, 96, 122, 169 Soviet Union (USSR) 5–​6, 56, 59, 62, 91, 94, 97–​103, 106, 109–​11, 146–​52, 157, 161–​2, 168–​72, 180–​2, 196, 203–​13, 217, 219, 223, 227–​8 see also Lenin, Vladimir; Soviet Revolution; Stalin, Joseph Spanish Civil War 16, 134, 151 Spaventa, Silvio 138 SPES see Servizi Propaganda e Stampa sport (and political communication) 106, 206–​7 Spriano, Paolo 138 Stalin, Joseph 3, 47, 68, 100, 103, 107–​12, 140, 144–​5, 157, 162, 179–​80 Stato Operaio, Lo 134 Stepinac, Aloysius 41 Stevens, Edmund 99–​100 Studium 44 Sturzo, Luigi 37, 89 Sulner, Laszlo 46 Syngman Rhee 172 Taccuino del Propagandista 14–​15, 67, 86–​7, 117–​19, 169, 175 Taddei, Ezio 224–​5 Tagliacozzo, Enzo 91 Taparelli d’Azeglio, Luigi 141 Taviani, Paolo Emilio 120, 181 Tempo, Il 24, 46, 95, 98, 122, 149, 153, 162, 180, 187 Terracini, Umberto 25

Thorèz, Maurice 47 Tito (Josif Broz) 147 Togliatti, Palmiro 47, 51–​4, 68, 74–​7, 79, 83, 86, 93, 106, 110–​11, 114–​18, 134, 140–​1, 146, 149, 154–​7, 161–​2, 165–​6, 171, 196 Togni, Giuseppe 65, 82 totalitarianism 85–​6, 90–​4, 119, 143 Traguardo 15, 62, 97, 101, 103, 107, 111, 143, 145, 148, 157–​8, 183, 187, 211–​15 Trevisani, Giulio 75–​6, 119, 153 tricolour (Italian national flag) 122, 159–​60 Truman, Harry S. 90, 137, 145, 157–​9, 169, 178, 224–​7 Tumiati, Gaetano 199 Tupini, Giorgio 15, 20, 104 Turati, Filippo 144 Tutino, Saverio 204 UDI see Unione Donne Italiane Unione Donne Italiane (UDI) 16, 175–​6 see also Noi Donne Unità, L’ 13, 23, 52, 54, 55, 62, 64–​6, 81, 84, 88–​9, 104, 111, 114, 115, 117, 119, 134–​41, 153, 156, 158, 161–​5, 169–​73, 176–​7, 198–​203, 207–​9, 219, 224–​7 United States of America 8, 35, 177–​8, 185–​6, 196, 212, 216–​28 and communist ideology 5, 137–​8, 153–​9, 162, 165–​6, 170–​4 see also Marshall Plan; Office of War Information (OWI); Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Truman, Harry S.; United States Information Service (USIS) United States Information Service (USIS) 21–​2, 210, 217 Uomo Qualunque, Fronte dell’ 93 USIS see United States Information Service USSR see Soviet Union Vanni, Ettore 157 Vatican State 19, 35, 186 in communist propaganda 51–​6, 165, 202

253

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254

Index

Ventrone, Angelo 2 Veronese, Vittorino 19 Victor Emmanuel II (king) 140 Vie Nuove 25, 63, 76, 88, 138, 198, 202, 204, 206–​7, 217, 224–​8 Villabruna, Bruno 141 Vinciguerra, Mario 24 Viola, Ettore 64–​5

Wallace, Henry 227 Wanger, Walter 217 Webb, Sidney and Beatrice 204 Windecke, Christian 108–​9 Wyszyński, Stefan  44 Zac, Pino (Giuseppe Zaccaria) 26 Zatopek, Emil 206 Zhdanov, Andrei 4, 75, 77, 168, 170