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The Resistance Continues: a social movement in the 1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2016

Philip Cooke
Philip Cooke*
Affiliation:
Department of Modern Languages, University of Strathclyde, Richmond Street, Glasgow. Telephone: 1 44 (0)141 548 3415. E-mail: [email protected]
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Summary

In the 1970s a group of ex-partisans founded the Resistenza Continua social movement. This article traces the origins and history of the movement and explores its contacts with other similar neo-Resistance groups. Though Resistenza Continua was clearly not a movement of great consequence, an analysis of it sheds a useful light on the strengths and weaknesses of the Resistance tradition.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , November 2000 , pp. 161 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

1. I have treated the issue of the influence of the Resistance on 1970s' terrorism in more detail in my paper ‘A (ri)conquistare la rossa primavera: the neo-Resistance in the 1970s’, which was delivered at the conference, ’Italy in the 1970s’, University of Bath (20–21 November 1999).Google Scholar

2. See Drake, Richard, The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1989, p. 10. In his preface to his book, Drake comments that ‘expressly calling themselves the heirs to the Resistance, the Red Brigades describe Italy as an occupied country … In their minds the historical parallel, despite superficial differences, is exact in almost all of its essential points’ (p. xiv).Google Scholar

3. The primary source for this research has been the Resistenza Continua archive (hereafter ARC) in Florence, deposited in the city's Resistance Institute by one of the movement's founders, Angiolo Gracci. The archive is currently being catalogued and I am particularly grateful to Paolo Mencarelli and Laura Betossi for facilitating my access to it.Google Scholar

4. Bonfantini had been involved, as far back as 1966, in the formation of a short-lived Italian Union of Resistenza (UIR). For more details see the ‘lettera agli amici della Resistenza’ and the ‘Appello dell'assemble a dei promotori dell'UIR’, in ARC.Google Scholar

5. The full text of the motion can be found in the cyclostyled flyer, Morte al fascismo, NO al revisionismo! I compagni partigiani marxisti-leninisti smascherano il falso anti-fascismo dei dirigenti revisionisti, in ARC, as well as in Il perché delle stragi di stato, edited by the ‘linea rossa’ del PCDI(M–L) (Firenze, 1974, pp. 165–7). The flyer is a very useful document for understanding the nature of the attitude of this group of Marxist–Leninists towards the ANPI, and in particular Boldrini, during those years. For example, Boldrini is described as ‘for decades the obsequious and bureaucratic President of the ANPI’, and his speech is labelled as the ‘the most shameful of his political career’.Google Scholar

6. For details see Fallani, Athos, Note su quarant'anni di vita dell'ANPI provinciale di Firenze (ANPI, Firenze, 1985), as well as Serena Innamorati's history of the Florentine ANPI, Per l'unità della Resistenza: quarant'anni di vita dell'ANPI a Firenze e in Toscana 1945–1985, La Pietra, Milan, 1990. Fallani refers to a ‘violent clash’ over Gracci's ‘anti-unitary stance’. The incident is also described in Il Resto del Carlino (20 August 1968) and in Nuova Unità (21 October 1967).Google Scholar

7. I am grateful to Sarah Morgan for the information about Sartori's encounter with Bortoloso.Google Scholar

8. Seniga was a close confidant of Secchia's who absconded with an enormous quantity of party funds, apparently in protest at the direction the PCI was taking.Google Scholar

9. For further details of this episode see Dubla, Ferdinando, Secchia, il PCI e il '68, Datanews, Roma, 1998, p. 62.Google Scholar

10. For more details of this bizarre incident, see Whillan, Philip, Puppetmasters : The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, Constable, London, 1991, p. 199.Google Scholar

11. This information is gleaned from the preface to the ‘manifesto-programm a statuto del Movimento Militante Antimperialista-Antifascist a “la Resistenza Continua”’, in ARC.Google Scholar

12. Del Carria is best known for his Proletari senza rivoluzione, Samona-Savelli, Rome, 1975.Google Scholar

13. The notes are in ARC.Google Scholar

14. RC partisans participated in a debate at Sesto Fiorentino on Togliatti, attacking two ‘PCI professors’ (see RC, Milanese edition, 2 (1), March 1975, p. 2).Google Scholar

15. Battaglia, Roberto, Storia della Resistenza italiana, Einaudi, Turin, 1964.Google Scholar

16. The ‘Stella Rossa’ has received more extensive treatment in Anfossi, La resistenza spezzata, Prospettiva, Rome, 1995.Google Scholar

17. The poster appeared widely in 1977. One photo in the archive shows a number of copies affixed to the walls next to the photographs of the dead partisans in the central square in Bologna.Google Scholar

18. An article in the May–June 1975 number of RC emphasizes the importance of maintaining contacts: ‘with the Comitati Antifascisti-Antimperialisti, with Ora e sempre Resistenza … and with political movements such as Avanguardia Operaia, Lotta Continua, Avanguardia Comunista and various Marxist–Leninist movements, so that we are always present at every mass popular initiative’ (p. 7).Google Scholar

19. The letter is in ARC.Google Scholar