history of the escort of the communist leader- time.news

by time news
from ANTONIO CARIOTI

One hundred years after the birth of the secretary who led the PCI from 1972 to 1984, Luca Telese tells the story of the men in charge of ensuring their safety for Solferino

There is politics, but above all there is a lot of humanity in Luca Telese’s book Enrico’s escort (Solferino). Happy or difficult childhoods, the hunger and hardships of poor Italy, the partisan struggle, a hard worker apprenticeship. This and much more can be found in the biographies of the men who took care of Enrico Berlinguer’s security, deputy secretary and then secretary of the Communist Party for a long stretch of the history of republican Italy. A popular leader, in some ways an icon, whose centenary of his birth is celebrated today. Telese has delved into the lives of those who accompanied him for many years and gives us detailed portraits that he frames in the context of dramatic times, marked by the blows of black and red terrorism.

At the center of all the authority – one would almost say the sacredness – of the party, a central point of reference in those lives dedicated to the cause of socialism. A PCI organized almost militarily, like a fortress besieged in enemy territory, and at the same time vibrant with deep feelings, lived as a community in which we are called to trials and sacrifices in the name of hope in a future, if not really salvific, certainly permeated with a strong sense of social justice. A way of practicing all-encompassing politics, with dogmatic features, but certainly dignified. And light years away from the decidedly mediocre spectacle, in some cases really ramshackle, that our present offers.

So let’s quickly review Berlinguer’s guardian angels, borrowing the words of Telese himself. First of all Alberto Menichelli, the Roman from Rome, the gruff son of the apparatus that governs everyone with his irony subtle, creates the group and guides it. Then Dante Franceschini the good giant, outgoing, talkative, a former partisan who took part in the liberation of Florence. Another who made the Resistance: Lauro Righi, from Modena who comes from a family of artisans and politically persecuted. Pietro Alessandrelli, a Roman from the Quarto Miglio hamlet, a very human militant, capable of surprising intuitions. Roberto Bertuzzi, a foundling who suffered a lot as a child and became the adopted son of the party. The other Modenese Otto (actually called Torquato) Grassi, an experienced billiard player (Otto, the abbreviation of the nickname Filotto), son of an old Stalinist who distrusts the Sardinian Berlinguer. The third from Modena, Alberto Marani, a man with golden hands, incomparable in all sorts of work with tools.

Loaded with anecdotes – including the sex strike, style Lisistrata of Aristophanes, carried out by the wives of the employees of a Venetian agricultural estate – the book of Telese too an episodic account of Berlinguer’s political careerwith the Sassari beginnings, the transfer to Rome, the progressive rise favored by a Palmiro Togliatti, undisputed leader of the PCI, who identifies in the Sardinian official, soon promoted to secretary of the young communists, the stuff needed for a prominent political leader.

Central to the whole affair was the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviets in 1968, with the suffocation of that socialism with a human face by Alexander Dubcek in which even the PCI had placed many hopes. Then the first explicit conflict between Moscow and Botteghe Oscure takes place. Berlinguer will manage the consequences, because the stroke that strikes shortly after the secretary Luigi Longo projects him to the top of the PCI. While other communist parties, after criticizing the military intervention in Prague, will pull back, the PCI remains firm on its original position. Perhaps even the strange incident (Telese convinced it was an attack) that Berlinguer was the victim of in Bulgaria, in 1973, has to do with this courageous intransigence.

Certainly the strategy devised by Berlinguer includes both the cautious and progressive removal from Moscow and, on the level of internal politics, the hypothesis of an agreement between the major popular forces to mitigate the ideological polarization of the Italian political system. This last project of the historical compromise, in full continuity with Togliatti’s teaching, derives from another terrible lesson coming from abroad, the bloody Chilean coup of 1973 against the socialist president Salvador Allende. Berlinguer is well aware of international ties and hence his choice to accept Italy’s position in NATO.

The referendum on divorce, which sees the Communist secretary in the role of a strong defender of the secular state, opens the way to the extraordinary Communist electoral successes of the mid-1970s. Then comes the difficult phase of national solidarity, with support (initially not distrust) to the Andreotti governments, which transforms the PCI into a target for the anger of left-wing extremists, exploded in 1977 with the expulsion of the secretary of the CGIL Luciano Lama from the University of Rome. This is followed by the controversial choice of the democratic alternative in the name of the moral question, of which Berlinguer is proclaiming himself with determination. And the no holds barred confrontation with Bettino Craxi’s PSI.

Telese’s report it expresses admiration and harmony towards a leader with great human qualities, perhaps neglecting his limits and mistakes. But once the point of view of Berlinguer’s escort, men who were fond of him to the point of devotion, had been chosen as a privileged point of view, it could not be otherwise.

May 25, 2022 (change May 26, 2022 | 18:56)

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