On May 1, 1900, Ignazio Silone was born in Pescina, singer of the desperate life of the peasants of Fontamara and of a pauperistic Christianity The adventure of a poor Christian. The city of Pescina celebrates the 124th anniversary of his birth on May 1st with the reading of passages from his works by students from all over Abruzzo. As a young communist, in 1927 in Moscow, Silone dared to challenge Stalin alone on the condemnation of Trotsky
Moscow, May 1927. A young man Ignazio Silone enters a small room, in the company of Palmiro Togliatti, at a crowded meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist International chaired by Stalin. Agenda: the liquidation of Trotsky and Zinoviev. They enter late, of course: Togliatti came from Paris and Silone from Italy; they had met in Berlin and from there continued together to Moscow. It was a rather private meeting, but Togliatti had insisted that Silone, head of the clandestine structure of the communist party, be present at that delicate moment. Only ten years had passed since the seventeen-year-old from Marsican, then Secondino Tranquilli, was already regional secretary of the Peasants’ League, in Pisceswhere he was born. He organized meetings with the poor workers of the area and, to encourage them to become socially aware, he read and commented with them on stories by Tolstoy, in a room where a Christ the Redeemer dressed in red hung and the inscription “Blessed are those who thirst for justice ”. Cafoni, literature, Christ: it was all already there Silone. This child prodigy Abruzzo native was already trying to understand if a literary work could help the robbed, as he said, robbed of everything, of speech, of dignity, of life to shake off the pitiful state in which they were forced to live. After leaving school, in 1921 he participated in the founding of the Communist Party and between 1921 and 1927, as a member of the party leadership, he carried out various missions in Russia and other European countries, including imprisonment in Spain and France.
So, Moscow 1927. Ernst Thälmann, general secretary of the Communist Party of Germany, chaired the meeting and at that moment was reading a resolution about the measures to be taken against Trotsky, who had written a document harshly criticizing the Russian Communist Party. Thälmann asked if everyone agreed; the Finnish Kuusinen stood up saying that the condemnation should be even more explicit. Nobody dared to speak anymore. Only Silone, having consulted Togliatti, took the floor a little timidly, and apologizing for the delay, regretted not having been able to see the document to be condemned. “To tell the truth, we didn’t see it either,” Thälmann replied candidly. The response stunned Silone, who reformulated the objection: “It may well be that Trotsky’s document is to be condemned, but I cannot condemn it before having seen it.” “Neither have we,” Thälmann retorted in German, “not even most of the delegates have read it. Except the Russians.” Now German was translated into Russian for Stalin and French for the Italians. The incredulous Silone thought he was faced with a translation error and again asked for the translator to intervene. At this point Stalin decided to intervene. Until that moment he had remained standing in the corner of the room and was the only one who had remained calm. “The Political Bureau of the Communist Party,” Stalin said imperturbably, “considered it inappropriate to translate and disseminate Trotsky’s text to the other delegates because of some allusions regarding the policy of the Soviet Union.” The text in question would later be published by Trotsky himself, known by the title of The problems of the Chinese revolution. Silone was not satisfied with the answer given by Stalin himself. “I don’t dispute the right of the Political Bureau to keep some documents confidential,” he insisted, “but I don’t understand how anyone can ask for them to be condemned.” At that point the indignation against the two Italians exploded, given that Togliatti seemed to support him. Kuusinen, red in the face, considered the presence in the party of two petty bourgeois – he said with an expression of disgust and mockery – like them inconceivable. In the general turmoil, only Stalin continued to remain calm: “If even a single delegate is against the resolution, it cannot be presented,” he said firmly. “Perhaps our Italian comrades are not well aware of the international political situation. I propose that the session be suspended until tomorrow and I will ask one of those present to explain to them how things are.” The thankless task was entrusted to Kolarov, who would later become Prime Minister of Bulgaria. “My dear Italians, I know that Italy is the classic country of academies, but here we are not at university”, Kolarov addressed them that evening tactfully, but frankly, over a cup of tea. “Even if Trotsky himself brought me the text, I would not read it. This is not a question of documents, but we are in the midst of a power struggle between two factions of the Directory. Whatever comes from the minority, I stand with the majority. I’m not interested in documents. I’ve been clear?”. “Yes,” Silone replied. “And have I convinced you?”. “No”, was the response of the young man from Abruzzo, who added: “I should explain to you why I am against fascism”. Togliatti, in a more moderate way, shared the position of his Italian comrade. Kolarov accompanied the two to the door: “You are too young to understand how politics works.”
The next day the small room filled up again. An atmosphere of nervousness ran through people. “If even one delegate,” Stalin recalled, “is against the resolution, it will not pass. So, are our Italian comrades in favor?”. This time too Silone spoke: “Before taking the resolution into consideration, we must examine the document in question.” The Frenchman Treint and the Swiss Humbert-Droz also agreed. “The proposal is withdrawn,” Stalin replied dryly. The small room was thrown into chaos. Thälmann inveighed against the scandalous attitude of Togliatti and Silone and said that, if Italy was so linked to fascism, the responsibility also lay with the Italian petty-bourgeois communists and that the Italian Communist Party should be put through the sieve. Which then happened. Silone emerged greatly discouraged. “Did everyone who is in prison, who is already dead, sacrifice their lives for this? The life we are living – we live like exiles and almost like vagabonds – what are we doing it for?”. Shortly before leaving, an Italian worker came to visit Silone, complaining about the harsh working conditions to which workers in Russia were subjected. Worse than in capitalist countries! Those much vaunted rights of the working class were empty words. A few days later in Berlin, where Silone was waiting for his false documents, he learned from the newspapers the news of Trotsky’s condemnation by the Comintern. “It can’t be true,” Silone protested. He then went to Thälmann: the Presidium of the Comintern could adopt any resolution in an emergency. “This is what communist discipline means.” Unsettling. Shortly afterwards Togliatti backtracked: historical reasons required accepting the Russian line, even if it was not the most satisfactory solution. After all, what could they have done to change things? Nothing. Silone, however, left the party in 1930 and took his path, suffering. “I come from a country where the mourning dress is worn longer than elsewhere”.
Silone knew Trotzky personally from his time in the Italian Communist Party. As soon as his masterpiece came out Fontamara, the novel immediately took hold in literary circles. Trotzky, already in exile, was among the first to read the work and was deeply impressed by it. Thus the Russian exile wrote on 17 July 1933 to the thirty-three-year-old Silone: “In Fontamara the passion rises to such heights as to make it an authentic work of art. The book deserves to be distributed in millions of copies.” The prophecy was fulfilled, because Fontamara, translated into twenty-seven languages, has sold over one and a half million copies. Silone never accepted Trotsky’s invitation to a meeting, even though the native of Pescara had been practically the only one to defend him in Moscow in 1927; he judged his ideological dogmatism to be a decisive obstacle to a possible political agreement. The exiled Russian leader had a notable influence on political and cultural life in the West for a while, arousing interest and lively debates among intellectuals. Stalin could not stand by for long. After various movements, Trotsky found refuge in Mexico, where he was killed in August 1940. “What struck me in the Russian communists, even in truly exceptional personalities like Lenin and Trotsky,” Silone wrote in 1949 in The God who failed, “was the absolute inability to fairly discuss opinions contrary to one’s own. The dissenter, for the simple fact that he dared to contradict, was undoubtedly an opportunist, if not downright a traitor and a sellout. A bona fide adversary seemed inconceivable to the Russian communists.”
The troubled journey that Ignazio Silone took along three quarters of the difficult century that has just passed came to an end on 22 August 1978 in Geneva, Switzerland. A brain crisis had struck him four days earlier, while he was writing Severina, the last unfinished novel. His ashes were brought, as he expressly wished, to Pescina for two days. The main street of the town is dedicated to Quinto Poppedio Silone, one of the leaders of the Italian rebels at the time of the Social War against Rome. Silone had chosen this battle name, Christianizing it with the addition of Ignazio. The cemetery was soon filled with wreaths: they came to honor him from all over Abruzzo and Rome. In the front row the crown of Sandro Pertini, late President of the Republic, who described Silone as “a man with a pure heart, an honest intellectual. There is a phrase from Silone that I heard recently: The shouts of the crowd cannot silence the voice of conscience. Here, all Silone is in the sentence”.
Goodbye Silone. Your conscience as an eternal boy from Abruzzo had accustomed you to calling a spade a spade, wine for wine, salt for salt, that is, the truth. Writing became for you an imperative need to testify to your love for freedom, your civil passion, to affirm the meaning and limits of a painful but definitive breakup. And perhaps of a more sincere loyalty to your fight for the truth.
