Bruno Fortichiari Papers 1945-1978

International Institute of Social History Cruquiusweg 31 1019 AT Amsterdam The Netherlands

hdl:10622/ARCH02406

Table of contents

Bruno Fortichiari Papers...... 3 Context...... 3 Content and Structure...... 4 Access and Use...... 5 Allied Materials...... 5 LIST...... 6 Connections with the Partito Comunista Italiano...... 6 Azione Comunista...... 6

International Institute of Social History 2 Bruno Fortichiari Papers 1945-1978

Bruno Fortichiari Papers

Collection ID ARCH02406 Creator Fortichiari, Bruno Period 1945-1978 Extent 0.02 meters archival material, 863.68 MB digital material (1294 files) 0.02 Meters 863.68 Megabytes, 1294 Files Language list English Language of Material Italian

Context

Biographical Note Short version: Born in Luzzara, Italy 8 February 1892, died in Milan 4 January 1981; socialist activist and communist; active in socialist youth organisations and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI); after the First World War co-founder of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) in 1920; responsible for the illegal activities of the party for which he often was arrested; expelled from the PCI in 1929, readmitted in 1945; active in the cooperative movement affiliated tot the PCI 1945-1950; publisher of the newspaper Azione Comunista 1956-1965. In 1965 Fortichiari, over seventy years old and with health problems, thought of withdrawing from political activity. But in 1970, he broke this decision, beginning to publish his open letters to comrades of the Communist Left and collaborating with a group of young people who, in 1972, gave life to the bulletin Iniziativa Comunista. Bollettino per la sinistra comunista. Attentive to the events of the seventies, he took part in debates and conferences organized by the Circolo La Comune and by Lotta Comunista. Extended version: Bruno Fortichiari was born in 1892 in Luzzara near the river Po in the region of Emilia Romagna . His father was a relatively well-to-do butcher and founder of a local branch of the socialist party. In 1907 Bruno founded a socialist youth club in Luzzara and started writing articles. Until the outbreak of World War I he became increasingly active in the youth league of the Partito Socialista Italiano ( PSI ). In 1912 he arrived in Milan where reorganized the socialist federation. In November 1914, after the national congress of the PSI, he took the initiative to expell Benito Mussolini from the Milanese section of the party. In Milan he organized several anti-war demonstrations. For printing and distributing the Zimmerwald Manifesto he was arrested and imprisoned in 1915. His conditional release did not refrain him from conducting radical actions. After the war he was together with Bordiga and Gramsci active in establishing a radical, communist section within the PSI , which gave a stronger support to the Russian Revolution than the more social democrat mainstream of the party. This led eventually in november 1920 to the decision of establishing the Partito Comunista d'Italia ( PCd'I , later PCI ), that was founded the 21th of January 1921 in Livorno . Fortichiari was elected in the first executive committee. He became responsible for the illegal activities of the party. From 1923 onwards his activities for both the communist party and the Third International got an increasingly illegal character. In 1924 however he was elected member of parliament. At the same time a turmoil aroused within the party about the right political course which led in 1925 to serious problems with the mainstream of the party. For the fascist authorities he was still considered dangerous and was arrested under the extraordinary laws of October 31, 1926. After a while he was conditionally released for health reasons, but was strictly controlled by the police. In 1929 he was expelled from the PCI.

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Cut off from the party until 1941 he managed to stay in contact with some of the comrades. It was however not until 1945 before he was readmitted to the party after an elaborate justification of his activities. During the first postwar administrative elections he participated with great success. The leadership of the PCI however refrained him from being candidate to the Constitutional Assembly. Instead he was charged with the task of reorganizing the cooperative movement affiliated to the Communist Party until 1950. From 1956-1965 he published the newspaper Azione Comunista for which he again was expelled from the PCI. After that he refrained from political activities until 1970, when he started an attempt to assemble all Italian Communist Left organizations. In 1972 he published ftlinethe first number of Iniziativa Comunista – Livorno '21 , a bulletin inside the Communist Left, and started a new period of political activity, attending many debates and conferences, till 1980. In 1981 he died in Milan at the age of 89.

Acquisition Gift Simonetta di Sieno 1999

Content and Structure

Content Paper material: typescript 'Date significative nella vita di Bruno Fortichiari' p. 7-14, n.d.; typescript 'Vita e idee di Bruno Fortichiari' p. 1-49, n.d.; photocopy of the brochure Comunismo e revisionismo in Italia. Testimonianza di un militante rivoluzionario by Bruno Fortichiari (Torino, 1978). Paper material (received in 1998): (photocopies of) five open letters, from Bruno Fortichiari to the comrades of the Communist Left (lettere aperte ai compagni della Sinistra Comunista) 1970-1972; two leaflets from the Iniziativa Comunista n.d.; photocopy of the report 'Note sulla politica estera cinese a cura del collettivo di Iniziativa Comunista 1972. Digitized papers of Bruno Fortichiari; documents concerning the problems around his readmission to the PCI 1944-1945, the cooperative movement 1947-1951, contacts with the PCI in Milan, Rome and het Emilia and Mantua regions 1945-1977, Azione Comunista 1954-1961. Digital material: periodicals.

Arrangement The most interesting part of the papers of Bruno Fortichiari was arranged and digitized by Simonetta di Sieno in Milan. The list reflects this arrangement. It contains correspondence, newsletters, leaflets and documentation concerning the PCI , the cooperative movement related to the PCI and the Azione Comunista in the period 1944-1965. Earlier documents belonging tot Bruno Fortichiari concerning his youth, the militant period in the Partito Socialista Italiana , PSI ), the anti-war actions during World War I, the founding of the Communist Party of Italy and his activities in the Third International were probably lost during his frequent removals and imprisonments. So far it was impossible to retrace any of these documents. In addition to the papers two other documents in Acrobat PDF- format can be found on CD I: the book Antologia di Scritti by Bruno Fortichiari, which appeared in 1992 (document ant0l.pdf) and contains, among other things, Fortichiari's notes about the Milanese workers' movement and Socialist Left origins and Fortichiari's autobiography from 1892 to 1945. The second document is an interview with Fortichiari registered in 1977 by Luigi Cortesi (document interv.pdf) about the history of the Communist Party and the communist movement. In total the papers consist of two CD-ROMs and some articles about Fortichiari on paper. The documents have been digitized as images in JPEG-format. They can be viewed with the program

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Infolio, which can be installed from CD I. The order of the papers appear in the index of the program. The codes of the subdivisions can also be found in the list below, the arrangement of which differs for technical reasons from the sequence on the CD-ROMs.

Processing Information List made by Bernard Mantel in 2001.

Subjects

Geographic Names Italy

Organizations Azione Comunista Communist Party of Italy (PCI) Iniziativa Comunista

Themes Communist movements and parties Press/Journalism

Material Type Archival material

Access and Use

Access Not restricted

Restrictions on Use Direct access to digital material is currently not possible, please contact the reading room of the IISH: [email protected]

Preferred Citation Bruno Fortichiari Papers, inventory number ..., International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam

Allied Materials

Alternate Form of Material 2 CD-ROM's (1999)

Location of Originals

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Originals in possession of Simonetta di Sieno, Milan

LIST

Connections with the Partito Comunista Italiano

1 Documents concerning the problems around his readmission to the PCI . 1944-1945 CPCI1_1 (CD I) 2 Documents concerning the cooperative movement. 1947- 1951 2a Documents related to cooperations. 1947-1951. CPCI2_2A (CD II). 2b Copies of L'Azione Cooperativa . 1947- 1950. CPCI2_2B (CD II). 2c Letters from the board of the Federazione Provinciale Cooperative e Mutue . 1946, 1950 CPCI2_2C (CD II) 3 Documents concerning contacts with the PCI in Milan and Rome . 1945- 1952. 3a 1945. CPCI3_3A (CD I). 3b 1946. CPCI3_3B (CD I). 3c 1947. CPCI3_3C (CD I). 3d 1948. CPCI3_3D (CD I). 3e 1950. CPCI3_3E (CD I). 3f 1951. CPCI3_3F (CD I). 3g 1952. CPCI3_3G (CD I). 3h s.a. CPCI3_3H (CD I). 4 Documents concerning contacts with the PCI in the Emilia and Mantua regions. 1945-1977 4a 1945. CPCI4_4A (CD I). 4b 1946. CPCI4_4B (CD I). 4c 1947. CPCI4_4C (CD I). 4d 1948. CPCI4_4D (CD I). 4e 1949. CPCI4_4E (CD I). 4f 1950. CPCI4_4F (CD I). 4g 1951. CPCI4_4G (CD I). 4h 1952. CPCI4_4H (CD I). 4i 1955. CPCI4_4I (CD I). 4l 1956. CPCI4_4L (CD I). 4m Various documents. 1974-1977. CPCI4_4M (CD I). 4n Copies of Il Luccio , supplement of La Verità appearing in Luzzara . 1950, 1952. CPCI4_4N (CD I).

Azione Comunista

1 Documents and leaflets. 1954-1961. CAC1_1 (CD I)

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2 Documents related to the Movimento della Sinistra Comunista . 1957-1964. CAC2_2 (CD I) 3 Internal bulletin of the Movement of the Communist Left. 1958. CAC3_3 (CD I) 4 Correspondence. 1955-1965. CAC4_4 (CD I) 5 Correspondence with Seniga , Masini , Resaz , Cervetto , Parodi and Raimondi . 1956-1964. CAC5_5 (CD I)

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