Excerpt of radio interview of Giancarlo Valente, an infantryman in the Italian Royal Army in 1926-1927, given to local radio station in 1938
(...)
INTERVIEWER: Would you tell us of how that day [September 21 1926] began? We understand you were an enlisted man in the XI. Guards Regiment at the time. When did you first hear of what was happening?
VALENTE: Thank you. [
a pause] How should I begin? We were stationed in Vienna, in Austria. That day began as any other, I think. We had just come back from the mess when we got orders that the Regiment was going to full readiness. Now that got us thinking, but we'd had plenty of smaller, uh, local revolts and riots and that sort of thing, by then, you understand. So we didn't think it would be anything bigger.
INTERVIEWER: Were you already a member of the PCI at this time?
VALENTE: I was, yes. So I'd heard, on the grapevine, that something big was being planned. Revolution, we assumed. But no-one knew just what that would look like. The Grey Coats [secret police of the royal period] had taught us to be secretive. So we didn't know what the Party central intended, or even who was a Socialist and who was not, outside our own small cell. So you could only test the waters best you could in your own unit. The regimental staff knew many of the men had revolutionary sympathies, I think, but they didn't want to rock the boat, you see? So everyone kept very quiet about what they maybe knew.
INTERVIEWER: So you didn't know who would join you.
VALENTE: Yes. I could hope, but in that situation, you can only be sure of yourself, you know? I was sure, of course. But I wasn't going to start anything before I got the Party's go-ahead.
INTERVIEWER: What happened then?
VALENTE: Well, it was the telegram office. We didn't have radios everywhere back then. It was very crude, in some ways. So it turns out the telegraphers' union went over to the Revolution all at once. And so they stopped sending anything useful to the government, only propaganda and, uh, calls to action. So that's how we first heard about it. The young man we had at the telegraph office, he came running in, the blaze of glory in his eyes, waving a telegram all around. I remember it very clearly. He'd folded up his regimental sash so it only showed the red [of the green-white-red of the Italian flag] and wore it as an armband. Crazy fool. I hadn't even known he was a comrade. So he runs around the barracks, screaming about rising up, and he says the Revolution has begun. And to prove it, he shows us the telegram, which is from the Party.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember what it said?
VALENTE: It was fairly matter-of-fact. "Soldiers of Italy, stand up or stand aside --- The Day of Change is here --- All proletarian soldiers to their rifles!" Of course there was going to be more, but the line from Verona office was cut shortly afterwards by the royalists, so we only got part of the message. But that was enough for us. I remember looking at the faces of my companions, trying to catch the subtle reactions, looking for signs of approval and, you know, understanding. A few I could discount right away. We had our share of reactionaries and fascists in the ranks. But I was surprised by many. All this while, they were looking at me the same way, trying to figure out who was with them and who was not.
INTERVIEWER: What then?
VALENTE: Then Major Bocchini arrived with the military police. They took the boy, the one with the telegram, they took him out back and I think they shot him there. And then they ordered us back into our quarters and locked down the barracks. The rifle cabinets we had in the hallways, they were put under guard. They were afraid, we could tell. And we got to talking. I felt I had to act, so I put my feelings and my loyalties out there for everyone in the room to hear, and hoped for the best. Around sixty, seventy percent of us were of like mind. The rest went along with it or stood aside out of fear, save for a few true believers we had to subdue.
INTERVIEWER: What was your plan?
VALENTE: We'd rush out and overwhelm the officers keeping guard. Of course, they were armed, we were not, so it would have been a slaughter. I'm glad it never came to that. One of the junior officers, a Lieutenant Venturi, he came in maybe half an hour later with some of his people, and he disarmed the guards at gunpoint. Then he brought us out and addressed us - and this was strange to hear - as comrades, and asked for our aid in seizing control of the regiment. So the gun cabinets were opened and we armed ourselves. And we couldn't know it, but the same things were happening all over the regiment, you know, as word spread. We captured Major Bocchini and shot him when he tried to run. That was a pity. I would have liked to see him on trial. But tempers were hot and we were driven by a kind of desperation. We had no idea what was going on in the outside world, so we could only hope that our comrades in other regiments were acting likewise.
INTERVIEWER: It must have been a heroic struggle.
VALENTE: It was, but there was very little action, only a lot of nervous waiting and trying to find out where anyone was and what they were doing. We seized most of the regimental staff and had the armory in our hands first thing, so that covered most of our bases. Lieutenant Venturi and the other Party-loyal officers - mostly lieutenants like him, a few captains, and the colonel turned out to care more for his life than the cause - rode out to make contact with other revolutionary soldiers and find out what the situation was outside our base. Meanwhile, I and a few more educated soldiers gathered up the men and explained to them the concept of soldiers' councils. And, well, the basic principles, how we should be organized. And you know, we had our first elections that very evening.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. You were the first entire unit to declare for the Revolution.
VALENTE: Yes, I've heard that. At the time we didn't think we were doing anything so special. We voted on it and that was that. But once that red flag went up over the HQ, I suppose there was no hiding our loyalties anymore. (...)
***
Excerpts from the 1965 memoirs of Habib Mokaddem, Tunisian-Maghrebi revolutionary leader and later nationalist hero
(...) Six years we had waited for the men in Firenze to finally judge that 'the time was right'. We were rightfully wary of empty Italian promises by this time. The Italian Revolutionary Socialists, Ascari foremost among them, had left us to die in our thousands in 1920 when we'd made a vast united front against imperialist oppression. Now they called upon us to act again, this time promising we would carry the day - side by side - to Revolution. It easy with the benefit of hindsight to judge us overtly cautious or even cowardly, but we had all cause to distrust our White 'comrades'. (...)
But in the end we voted to join the uprising. What else were we to do? And the humiliated masses of Africa and beyond rose up once more to cast out foreign tyranny. We brought out a fraction of the force that had been ready in 1920, but if our numbers had been greatly reduced, our army was far better prepared, organized and armed. Only days after we'd raised our banners, half of the Army of the Maghreb was in open mutiny and the rest too paralyzed by saboteurs and sympathizers to act. We seized the countryside, leaving them to occupy their bases, and everywhere we went the people embraced us and gave all that they could give to the Liberation. (...)
We of course feared that the risings in Italy itself would collapse, as they so often had, but we found to our pleased surprise that this was not the case. News arrived daily of more victories and more mutinies in the Army. The general strike seized even the conservative-reactionary unions in its grip. The momentum was with us. A 150,000 Italian soldiers stood just outside a besieged Firenze and refused to move in support of the government. When called upon to disperse strikers, local soldiers had instead stood aside as roses were planted within the barrels of their rifles by local women, in that much-propagandized symbol of a moment. (...) Of course there were royalist forces and defeats for the cause, but not where it mattered. The center was collapsing. (...) In October, the royal family and the government fled the city. The Revolutionaries wasted no time announcing the change in government. The proletariat was declared sovereign over Italy, with all institutions outside the revolutionary councils and the Revolutionary Armed Forces committee now illegitimate.
The Kingdom of Italy was dissolved, with its empire from that moment on liberated for its component peoples and workers. But consider the name of the new state. On October 25th, the Italian Union of Council Republics came into being. Even then, we recognized that the key word in that was still, and would always be, 'Italian'. (...)
***
Excerpts from 'The Rose Revolution: A New History', written by Angelina Rossi (Firenze: 1970)
(...) The proclamation of the new Union of Council Republics galvanized the remaining neutrals in the fight. The majority of the Social Democrats had declared for the government at the beginning of the uprising, but cracks had quickly appeared with the growing success of the Revolutionaries. Many local chapters and SD-controlled unions had gone over to the Revolution already by October. What was left of the party saw the way the wind was blowing. Together with an unsteady coalition of hopeful liberals and progressives, the Social Democrats declared for the new government and offered their services. With this change in tune, thousands of their militants joined the Revolutionary forces as new Liberty Brigades.
(...) These developments have been dismissed as craven opportunism in the orthodox historiography. While it is true that these 'Jacobins' came very late to the fight, it can be argued that the defection of so many 'salon socialists' and 'civilized' politicians to the Red cause put an end to immediate foreign plans for intervention. The base of support for the King and his government now seemed far too thin to support such an effort. (...) Regardless, the PCI-FSU saw and has always seen this support from these 'bourgeois elements' as unnecessary and even dangerous to the success of the Revolution, tarring them with a broad brush as reactionary saboteurs and secret-police plants. (...)
The King's abdication in January 1927 shocked the entire world. Much of Italy outside the heartland remained in royalist hands, guarded by parts of the Army far less sympathetic to the idea of a new Socialist regime than those in the North. It was expected that the royal family would rally support in the countryside and continue the fight from there. Now the autocratic system showed its last, fatal flaw. Despite assurances to the contrary, the King considered the situation lost and took the lack of visible royalist support in Toscana as a certain sign that he had been abandoned and that further resistance would be futile. Sinking into the depression that would in the end take his life, King Goffredo gave a short and disordered speech on January 4th in which he bid his guard to surrender, his ministers to resign and his family to leave him. Reportedly, as his demoralized audience then began to trickle out of the room, the King further cast down the crown from his brow and announced his abdication. (...)
With the King's surrender, the White front in Italy collapsed. On January 7th, 1927, the Italian Revolution was complete. Goffredo and his retinue found their way into the safety of Britain. The rest of the royal family scattered across the face of the globe in a peculiar royal diaspora. (...) In Firenze, the new provisional Revolutionary Convention of the Italian Union convened to assume complete control over the state. Thousands of new councils established across Italy's cities, Army units, Navy ships, workplaces, unions and rural communes now began the arduous task of holding free, direct socialist elections - the first such triumph of popular will and democratic socialism in the history of Italy.
It was far from perfect. The PCI declared that 'bourgeois elements' could not stand for or vote in the elections as a guarantee against 'backsliding' into Reaction. This broad category disenfranchised millions of Italians and was interpreted as including the membership of the social democratic and liberal parties. The Jacobins considered this, quite truthfully, an assault on their liberties. Their agitation and demands to be included in government offered the PCI the excuse needed to move against them. (...) Despite some protests from the FSU, the Revolutionary Armed Forces committee was on January 15th sent orders to disarm and dissolve the 'Liberty Brigades' of the Jacobin cause. Their small forces were crushed without question by the most zealous of the Revolutionary Army in what was the first purge of the Union's history. It would not be the last.
(...) In the Crown Colony of Nicaragua, the news of the Italian Revolution were received with glee. The small socialist movement in the agrarian Central American state could not offer a credible alternative to the imperialist royal government, however. Instead, the Royal Crown Governor offered his resignation to nationalist forces and bid them to form a new government. The long-suppressed underground Partito Nazionale now found the reins of power thrust into its lap. The new government wasted no time. On January 20th, they proclaimed the nation's independence and renaming as Costa Ricca. The new name served to make a clean break with the past and the pan-Italian sentiments of the colonial elite, which had considered Nicaragua a mere overseas part of the nation.
The new regime in Italy was recognized by the Socialist Internationale by the end of January, but few nations outside it joined them. The embarrassing collapse of the legitimate government, as the international community saw it, made difficult to recognize a successor to the Kingdom, however. A dozen different claimants arose in the chaotic days of the Winter of 1927. Italy's ambassadors at large floundered, some choosing to recognize the authority of the Union, others picking and choosing new masters to answer to, and some simply embezzling the wealth of their embassies and disappearing. (...) What is certain was that the Italian Empire no longer existed to honor its agreements and alliances. The Continental System was long dead by this point, but now the threat of Italian intervention was gone completely.
Czechoslovakia was the first to pounce. The weaker Polish state had weathered the past two Czechoslovak-Polish wars with Italian assistance. The sudden collapse of their most important ally spelled the end of these 'Years Without Fear'. On January 18, Czechoslovak forces mobilized and invaded Poland with the same aim as before - the annexation of Polish West Galicia. This time, they would not be deterred. (...)
Iberia would be the next to mobilize. On January 27th, the Bejan-Catalonian wars resumed with the invasion of Beja by the latter. Bereft of its Italian patron, the Bejan military was broken in three months of warfare and the state forced to give up its eastern provinces to Catalonia. (...) The remaining states of the peninsula observed the conflict with concern. Would this be the beginning of a new Union War, the first step in unification of Iberia under one flag? If so, whose flag would it be? (...)
Now began the work of dismantling the Empire. Italy's colonies had not waited patiently to be handed their freedom - they had been eager participants in Revolution. Local councils had seized power across Africa and the East Indies. Their representatives to the Supreme Council made clear that they were now independent peoples and expected immediate recognition of this fact by the government in Italy. (...) In Java, de facto rule by socialist militias had been in effect since 1901; the Rose Revolution had merely banished the Italian Navy from the island's shores and allowed for the capture of the final bastions of imperial occupation. In contrast, Italian Brunei and Malaysia had remained in the hands of the colonial administration until now and had a far more difficult project before them. (...)
This goes to explain the differences in their post-Revolution situation. Whereas Italian involvement in the Javan Council Republic was light, constituting only material and technological aid, the new 'Malay Union' was essentially built up from nothing by Italian party 'experts' and advisors, with Malaysian policy dictated to a great degree from Firenze. (...)
In Italian Africa, the multitudes of colonized peoples and the arbitrary nature of borders drawn up by the imperial powers in the Scramble for Africa guaranteed a troublesome reorganization. The Revolutionary Convention recognized three federal African Unions in 1927. The first was formed out of Italian possessions in the South-West and recognized ethnic republics of Khoisans, Namas, Hereros, Ovambos and other significant local peoples, with the decentralized and bottom-up system of councils meant to ensure representation and autonomy for all tribes and ethnic groups. The transition to socialism would naturally wash away such differences and tensions in time, or so the dogma went. (...)
The second Union was carved out of Italian Equatorial Africa and encompassed a staggering variety of peoples, many of whom were illiterate and uneducated, with little idea of what the new government offered them. (...) The third became the so-called Nigerian Union, formed out of Italian West Africa, with Akans, Hausans, Igbos, Mossis and many other peoples represented. (...)
These pan-African dreams were incredibly idealistic, but 1927 seemed a year for dreams. Certainly many African Socialists believed in proletarian brotherhood surpassing all lines of race, language and origin. But proletarian internationalism and socialist ethos had not penetrated deep enough into Africa to offset centuries of Italian-fueled ethnic conflicts and sectarian violence. Local power soon fell into the hands of the largest and most influential groups. Lawlessness and rule by warlords spread in outlying territories. (...) By 1928, the internal conflicts within each of the three Unions had led to political deadlock and widespread instability. Italian advisors carried news of this to the Revolutionary Convention. The PCI concluded in the spring of 1928 that the African Unions could not be allowed to go on 'without guidance'; within the year, all power in Africa had been concentrated in the hands of local PCI chapters - in essence, a series of coups - which soon began to rely on force and state oppression as part of its campaign for 'Socialist Education in Africa'. (...)
The old colonies of the Empire had been promised independence and equality; at most, with the exception of Java, they had gained limited autonomy. But what of the Maghreb? The North African coast had been part of the Italian Empire for hundreds of years. Nationalist propaganda had instilled in the minds of all Italians that the Maghreb was an integral part of the Italian nation. Large populations of white Italians lived in the Maghreb and considered it their homeland. The native Arab and Berber populations had not fought for existence as an Italian province, however. In March 1928, the 'Maghrebi National Council' - an assembly of indigenous revolutionary leaders in the Maghreb - demanded that the Convention clarify what was to become of the Homeland. (...)
In the 'February Betrayal', the Convention declared the Maghreb a territory of the Italian Union, to be governed as part of Italy. Language rights and local councils would guarantee the freedoms of ethnic Berbers and Arabs; however, these assemblies would vote representatives into the Italian Supreme Council like those in Italy proper, which by definition would hold a majority of ethnic Italians and hold its sessions in the Italian tongue. (...) The PCI, generally atheistic, also denied any protections for religion in the Maghreb. The FSU minority offered platitudes at most; suspicion towards Islam as opposed to 'proto-socialist' Waldensian Christianity made FSU representatives indifferent to the fears of Muslim comrades. (...)
The National Council condemned this resolution in the harshest of terms. In response, the PCI declared the 'nationalist-reactionary' organization illegal and moved to suppress it. The long history of Maghrebi resistance against Italian rule had not, in fact, come to its end. The February Betrayal merely opened a new chapter within it, and revealed that the New Socialist Man was, perhaps, not quite above the prejudice and pride of his predecessor. (...)
Negotiations with the Internationale bore fruit very quickly in February. The Tripartite Pact between Italy, Ceylon and the Netherlands came into being on the 2nd of February, tying the three foremost Socialist nations in a pact of mutual defense. (...) Foreign observers reacted with horror, assuming the alliance to be a pretext for a general war by the Socialist bloc against the rest of the world. The Revolutionary Convention was far more concerned with internal affairs at this time, but these were not unrealistic fears. Already in 1927, the representatives of the Internationale held a secret session in which the prospect of a truly global Liberation War was discussed. (...) But for now, the Italian Union knew well it would have to be on the defensive. Intervention by the agents of global Capital and Tyranny could not be too far away. (...)
Excerpt of radio interview of Giancarlo Valente, an infantryman in the Italian Royal Army in 1926-1927, given to local radio station in 1938
(...)
INTERVIEWER: That's a rapid rise in the ranks. Impossible in the old order, but the new democratic and meritocratic system served you well, yes? So you were made Captain.
VALENTE: It was a close election. Many other worthy comrades were nominated. But of course I accepted. We consider it a duty in the service, to take on that role, if you are elected. And of course then we had the right of recall, so a poor leader would not stay in his position for long. I was pretty hard on the men, I admit - drilling and training them - and I know some grumbled and wanted to see me out of the job. But most of them knew it wasn't for nothing. We were all expecting war soon enough. Men will go to extremes when they know it's for a worthy cause, you understand?
INTERVIEWER: You did not have to wait for long.
VALENTE: No. So it was February, late February, 1927. We'd returned to our old base near Vienna again and set up as we had before. I can't go into too much detail about our order of battle, can I? Well, suffice to say, we were there to watch the North. So we were right in the thick of it from the start. I remember it started in the early hours, on the 17th. It was still half-dark when the air raid sirens started to scream. We all scrambled out of bed to get to our positions. We didn't have any AA there, not then, but Hell if we didn't climb up into the towers with our rifles and MGs to watch the skies. And they arrived pretty promptly. I recognized them from my studies, of course; Federation Gotha-III's, bomber planes. I suppose they had informants in the area, because they had our coordinates fixed pretty damn well.
INTERVIEWER: Did you realize you were at war?
VALENTE: They flew pretty low, so we could see the German markings. But we didn't know the scale of it then.
(...)
INTERVIEWER: We can't discuss operational matters in too much detail, you understand.
VALENTE: Of course. I'll just give a general overview, yes? So by midday we knew the Germans were invading. And that we were also at war with the British, the Sorbs and the Wallachians. All the forces of international capitalism arrayed against us, it felt like. We received orders to withdraw to the Judenburg-Maribor line and dig in there. It didn't feel right to give up territory, but we knew the odds. We didn't have the numbers to hold the border as it was. But we made a damn quick march of it, and reinforcements came in pretty quick. And we were all ready to fight for it.
INTERVIEWER: The odds were certainly not in our favor.
VALENTE: We were on the defensive from the start, yes. But the Alps make a pretty damn tough wall to breach, so we could focus our forces in Austria, where we knew the heaviest blow would fall. And we had good communications set up, so we knew fresh forces were coming up to support us. But we knew the Germans wanted Austria most of all; so we didn't want to give it up entirely without a fight.
INTERVIEWER: Did you hear of the other fronts at all?
VALENTE: Only a while later. The Navy went out to the Aegean and destroyed the Wallachian Navy, and set up a blockade. And in the north, the Dutch answered our call, but they had an impossible task before them. But every Dutchman I've talked to has told me the same thing: they gave their lives willingly for their comrades and for the dream. We would have done the same. And they fought damn well, when you consider the numbers they faced, on two fronts.
INTERVIEWER: Right. So, you mentioned you fought at Judenburg.
VALENTE: Yes. The Germans pushed hard from the start there. Artillery day and night, turning the earth into a liquid muck; bombers in the air, sappers under the ground; dozens of tanks, and better ones than our old landships. But we gave it as hard as we got. And we had bigger, better guns - it was an artillery fight most of all. So we just let them come at us and bled them pretty bad there. And for every man we lost, ten more came in to replace him. Women, too, from the militias, and that was a bit of a shock for many of us.
INTERVIEWER: And you had the gas.
VALENTE: Ah, we can...? Yes, we tried the gas weapon there, and then in the south, at Klagenfurt. It's... something else. The poor bastards - the Germans and the Wallachians - didn't have any protection against it. No masks, no nothing. We found hundreds of them with wet rags around their mouths afterwards, which they'd put up to try and... well. At Klagenfurt the Sorbs charged right into the cloud as it rolled down, mouths open, roaring their war cries, nothing in the way. 50,000 men dead in one attack, didn't even reach our lines. It was butchery. But who could fault us? We were under attack. A cowardly, unprovoked attack, seeking to break the power of the workers, you understand? We used what weapons we had.
INTERVIEWER: It was a struggle for survival.
VALENTE: At that time, it truly was. The French granted free passage to the enemy and so they began to come in across the French border, where we had little troops ready to face them. And the Wallachians were arriving in force to Croatia. It looked like we were going to lose Austria after all; if we could even hold the rest of the country after that. But we were making it a pretty expensive endeavor for them. That's not something to be happy about: those we killed should have been comrades, you understand? But their damned governments had thrust them to be killed for no reason at all. And we'd killed 200,000 of them by that point. Now, that's a rate of attrition that no army can sustain. We could see it in the faces of the enemy. I saw that same desperation in the mirror in the days before the Revolution. They didn't want to be here. But we thought, were their leaders going to see that in time, or would the homefront in Germany break first? (...)
