WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, FdCA, Il Cantiere #16: Our Roots GAAP militants in the Resistance - Paolo Papini (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Over forty militants of the Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action (GAAP), mostly

young workers, fought in the partisan struggle with the determination that the
revolution would spring from it. In the spirit of class unity, in many cases not
having yet matured the choice of anarchist militancy, they were present in the
Resistance in eight regions of Italy joining, not infrequently with command
functions, the formations constituted by the main anti-fascist parties: Garibaldi
Brigades (Italian Communist Party), Matteotti Brigades (Italian Socialist Party
of Proletarian Unity) and Justice and Freedom (Action Party); but also to
autonomous formations and other minor revolutionary orientations such as the Red
Flag (Communist Movement of Italy). Only in some cases did they take part in
partisan groups made up of anarchists, however framed in formations of other
political forces.
Exemplary are the partisan events of Arrigo Cervetto and Lorenzo Parodi, Ligurian
workers, founders and leaders of the GAAP until their dissolution in 1957.
The ground was prepared by the anti-fascist strikes against the war of 1943,
experienced as simple apprentices as soon as they entered the factory, and by the
stories of older workers: the myth of Russia, Soviet but also libertarian
communism, in two cities, Genoa and Savona , in which anarchism is historically
rooted in the labor movement. These are young people born and raised during the
twenty years of fascism, still without a well-defined political conscience.
Joining the Resistance occurs spontaneously, out of class instinct and youthful
rebellion, as a choice shared within a small circle of friends or in the
workplace, supported by the first self-taught readings. However, it is dictated
primarily by the need to escape the Nazi-fascist repression and the danger of
deportation to Germany. It is in any case a political initiation.
Arrigo Cervetto, ILVA steel worker, at seventeen years old squad commander in the
autonomous formations «Mauri», 1st Savona Brigade «Sguerso», battle name Stalin,
twice wounded in combat and awarded the War Merit Cross for partisan activity ,
recalls his baptism and that of his companions in Savona at the fall of fascism
in 1943: «It didn't take much for us to take to the streets on 25 July. From the
barracks of the fascist militia they shot us. One woman fell dead, others were
injured. A bullet pierced Guido's leg. It seemed that everything was over and yet
it still had to begin. We still handled flyers. Soon we would be handling weapons.
On 8 September the barracks were emptied; people ran to get blankets, uniforms,
boots, bags of pasta and sugar. They looked like ants. The Germans stood by and
some laughed. We got rifles and ammunition. We were happy as if we had found the
treasure of Mompracem» (1). Talking about himself, Cervetto would later write to
Pier Carlo Masini, during the Resistance, a very young member of the National
Liberation Committee of San Casciano Val di Pesa (Fi) and later also a manager of
the GAAP: «So the boy reads, gets help to his aspiration, he understands that
this aspiration of his is freedom, progress. He goes to the mountains, becomes a
partisan, suffers from hunger and cold, shoots, is wounded, sees danger, almost
touches death, would like to pray to a god at that moment but is unable, does not
know who to pray, almost prays to himself, stays only in front of the
responsibility of being him. It's not an odyssey. It is a chronicle of a young
man» (2).
The resistance experience seems to be lived with the courage typical of
adolescent recklessness, but it is the mature choice of those who already know
which side to take: «When I risked my life, in the city or in the mountains, I
was afraid but not despair. Then, as time went by, the fear subsided. It had
become a habit and I even got used to not being afraid. Man is an adaptive
animal. We had gotten used to being hunted down; we slept on it. He counted the
food, the shoe, the dress, as he always counts even if we don't realize it when
we have it[...]. He counted the cold, the rain, the snow, the sun as he counts
for cats. He counted life and that was life, nothing less and nothing more. In
those conditions, fear is the fear of not having food, of not having shoes,
blankets, warmth to sleep on. We had become accustomed to stalking others,
enemies. Before going into action we used to have a nice meal when it was
possible. We left singing. The worst moments I remember are precisely those of
hunger, cold, rain, snow, shoes that had broken, the lawn with friends scattered
like piles of rags» (3).

"I was eighteen when, after twelve months of partisanship, I returned home," he
wrote again to Masini. After a brief militancy, contrary to the class
collaboration line of the "Salerno turning point", he will abandon the PCI in
1946 to join anarchism together with Nino Bogliani and Piero Parisotto, fraternal
friends who are also partisans, soon recognizing himself in the communist
tendency libertarian who would give birth to GAAP in 1951.
Lorenzo Parodi, metallurgical worker at Ansaldo Meccanico in Genoa, then eighteen
years old, team commander in the Libertarian Communist Detachment of the SAP
«Crosa» Brigade, battle name Rezzi, thus reconstructs his passage to the
Resistance: «After "8 September" we find ourselves between the anvil of the
American bombings, responsible for the death of various workmates, including at
the Mechanic, and the hammer of the German "roundups" that raid manpower. One day
in spring 1944, having arrived in Sampierdarena for the shift from 2 to 10 pm,
the writer is advised by friends that a "roundup" is underway at the Mechanic to
transfer the workforce to Germany. Instant decision: take the tram back to Nervi
and give yourself "alla
stain"» (4).
«In the new condition» of clandestinity, Parodi resumes elsewhere, «he meets
comrades who have had to make a political choice and joins them. The clandestine
cell they created refuses to follow the line of national collaboration and the
compromise with the monarchy imposed by Togliatti as soon as he arrived in
Salerno. It is the refusal of the first "historic compromise" that will affect an
entire generation and the choice becomes libertarian and internationalist
communism, as opposed to that of Stalinist observance. In Genoa there is a
libertarian and anarcho-syndicalist tradition that dates back to the process of
formation of the workers' movement, to the peculiarities of the First
International in Italy, to the spontaneous reactions provoked by the rottenness
of the Second International,
therefore to the characteristics of the first red post-war period when an
important Chamber of Labor such as that of Sestri Ponente was anarcho-syndicalist
in direction. The individual choice, surrounded by aspirations and ideal
attitudes typical of youth, conforms to a collective choice, certainly linked to
that tradition, but above all as an affirmation of the refusal of Togliatti's
opportunism. It is expressed as a need and a still confused way of saving what
can be salvaged in the face of the opportunistic wave that will end up blocking
and submerging the class movement resulting from the fight against fascism» (5).
Parodi will then be in the GAAP with Pietro Pagano, Agostino and Enrico Sessarego
and Virgilio Uberti, his companions in the Resistance.
Parodi rightly states that the militants of the GAAP were «the expression of the
new working class and anti-fascist levers emerging from the experience of
1945[...]a generation that had experienced a moment of historical rupture and had
seen that which he had considered a revolutionary opportunity» (6). An
opportunity that they will continue to seek with equal courage in the 1950s, in a
completely changed and very difficult political framework, dominated by the Cold
War, by Stalinist hegemony over the class movement, by capitalist restructuring
and by the anti-working class reaction of centrist governments.

Note:
(1) Arrigo Cervetto, Quaderni 1981-82, in ID., Opere, vol. 29, Chronology of life
and works. Notebooks and Notebooks. Indexes, Lotta Comunista, Sesto San Giovanni,
2020, p. 403. See also ID., Studies on the history of the Savonese Resistance, in
ID., Research and writings. Worker Savona from the struggles of the steel
industry to the Resistance, Lotta Comunista, Milan, 2005.
(2) Letter from Arrigo Cervetto to Pier Carlo Masini, 1948, cit. in Guido La
Barbera, Communist Struggle. The original group. 19431952, Lotta Comunista,
Milan, 2015, p. 54.
(3) Arrigo Cervetto, Quaderni 1981-82, cit., pp. 403-404.
(4) Lorenzo Parodi, The fortunate life of Lorenzo Parodi, «Lotta Comunista», nos.
491-492, July-August 2011, cit. in La Barbera, op. cit., p. 39.
(5) Lorenzo Parodi, Workers' Chronicles, Communist Struggle, Milan, 1988, pp. 11-12.
(6) Lorenzo Parodi, Critique of the reformist union, Lotta Comunista, Milan,
1987, p. 17.
See Central State Archive, Ministry of Defence, Office for the recognition of
qualifications and rewards for partisans, Lazio Commission for the recognition of
partisan and patriot qualifications, ff. Cardone Marcello, Leoni Spartaco,
Sbriccoli Renzo, Trombetti Ferruccio; Ligurian Commission for the recognition of
the qualification of partisan, ff. Baldo Giovanni, Bogliani Antonio, Boni
Antonio, Cassinelli Luigi, Cervetto Arrigo, Crivelli Giovanni, De Ferrari Luigi,
Di Stefano Vincenzo,

Ferrari Adriano, Gazza Piero, Pagano Pietro, Parisotto Piero, Parodi Lorenzo,
Perdoni Giuseppe, Sessarego Agostino, Uberti Virgilio, Vonarti Pietro; Piedmont
Regional Commission for the assessment of partisan qualifications, ff. Braga
Cesare, Ferrario Achille, Ratti Sergio; Emilia Romagna regional commission
recognition of partisan qualification, ff. Cesti Pietro, Matteuzzi Gianfranco;
Tuscany Regional Commission Recognition of Partisan Qualification, f. Giovanni
Ciancianaini; Triveneta Regional Commission for the Recognition of Partisan
Qualification, ff. Bazzanella Fabio, Busellato Eliseo, Caberlotto Giovanni,
Cavaliere Antonio; Lombardy Partisan Qualifications Recognition Commission,
f. Zanetti Carlo Bernardo.
See also Guido Barroero, I Figli dell'Officina. The Anarchist Groups of
Proletarian Action (1949-1957), Franco Salomone Documentation Center, Fano, 2013;
Franco Bertolucci (edited by), Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action. The ideas,
the militants, the organization, vol. 3, The militants: the biographies, BFS,
Pisa/Pantarei, Milan, 2019.
On the role of anarchists in the Resistance cf. Gaetano Manfredonia et al., The
Unknown Resistance. Anarchists and the fight against fascism, Zero in Condotta,
Milan, 2005; Claudio Silingardi, Anarchists in the Resistance, "Political
Growth", n. 1, April 1978.

photographic documents:
1. Arrigo Cervetto, standing in the center (Arrigo Cervetto Archive, Savona);
2. Achille Ferrario (Franco Serantini Library Archive, Pisa); 3. Piero Parisotto
(Franco Serantini Library Archive, Pisa).

We thank the Franco Serantini Library, the Institute of Studies on Capitalism and
the Historical Institute of the Resistance and the Contemporary Age of the
Province of Vicenza for the documents kindly made available.

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