1)      Richard Pipes demolishes the communism; 

2)      The failure of the communism;

3)      Memory against utopia;

4)      Why does the moral duty of the anticommunism exist?  

5)      The denied history: the silence in Italy on the communist crimes;  

6)      The history of the communist idea in the '900: the interpretation of F. Furet ; 

7)      Left heroes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

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Max Bruschi 

Richard Pipes demolishes the communism 

drawn by The Newspaper March 10 th 2003. 

 

The idea of the possible constitution of a perfect society accompanies the western political thought since its formation. From her "Republic" of Plato, passing through some heresies medioevali, the "Utopia" of Thomas More and the elaborations of the enlightenment eighteenth-century, astute right-hand arrives in the hands of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Where it assumes, on the wake of the idealism hegeliano sprinkled of darwinism, even the scientific crisma of the inevitability. Staying, cammin doing, substantially unchanged in two essential lines. The first one, the abolition of the private ownership and the community property. The second, the installation of a totalitarian regime, appointed to the most narrow social control, price held acceptable for the construction of a new humanity. In thing the practical application of the two principles is translated, it is what it notices.  

 

Nevertheless, the ideal maintains today still its charm. The same resounding collapse of the regimes of over "iron curtain" you/he/she has not dragged completely with itself the communist theory that was the base of it. For the irreducible ones, the indisputable ones "human errors" I am note solo such, and don't invalidate the goodness of the principles. In front of such pretension, there is not list of crimes and corpses that holds.  

 

Richard Pipes, American historian specialized in Countries of the east, a "palmarès" enviable to the service of the American administration (from senior George Bush to Ronald Reagan), he/she takes paper, pen and calamaio and it shows that so it is not, that the actions of the men were somehow by-return to the principles. To do him/it, squaderna the word "communism" in his/her three aspects: an ideal, a program and a regime established for turning the ideal into reality. The all, in two hundred pages of bright prose that stings straight to the firm ground. "Communism. A history" (Rizzoli, pagg. 236, European 16) part note from the criticism to the ideal. If Karl Marx had employed 1400 pages of arduous technical prose to explain, in the "Capital", his/her theory, Pipes employs an about thirty of it to demolish her/it.  

 

First of all, the mythical age of the gold which good part of the utopians recalls him (beginning from Esiodo, chorister of an ancient society in which any man had moved "from the ashamed desire of profit"), you/he/she is neither more neither less that a legend, as you/he/she confirms the archaeology. You bubbola that the communism is a secular version and adjourned of the Christianity you/he/she is liquidated resorting to the Gospel (Jesus has never insisted on the poverty; it has him only recommended as mean to facilitate the street of the salvation) and to the fathers of the Church, unanimously pragmatici in to consider the ownership "moral if used with wisdom and for thin benevolent."  

 

As for the prophecy marxiana on the inevitable collapse of the capitalism, is to stretch well you above a veil. Not only: the communism, admitted and not granted that is a practicable street, it is by itself inhuman. Because the men, like or less, they naturally desire to possess. And because the installation of a communist society, foreseeing the dominion of the community on the single one, it cancels the inalienable natural rights of it, first among all that of the liberty of thought, of word, of action. As for the program and to his/her realization, in front of Pipes rubbles are introduced only. Devastated economies, proliferation of a privileged nomenclature (to the face of the equality), negation of the human rights.  

 

The attention of the professorial one in Harvard is not sharpened, however, exclusively on Josip Stalin. But it points out, for instance, the role of Lenin in the installation of the Soviet terror and the unconditional approval of Lev Trockij. The follies of Mao Tse-tung. The bath of Cambodian blood (as the holocaust was expression of the quintessence of the nazionalsocialismo, so the government of the red khmers represents the purest incarnation of the communism). The sottosviluppo of the third world. Even the Chilean democratic street to the communism of El Salvador Allende goes out from there with the broken bones (inflation to the 300 percent, halved food production...) and the cause of the following installation of the dictatorship becomes. When then the regime, as in China, palaces, him ago to the price of heavy concessions to the vituperated capitalism 

 

 

TOP DELLA PAGINA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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LOSURDO: I am Domenico Losurdo and I teach History of the philosophy to the university of Urbino. Today we discuss some end of the communism and we can begin with an introductory card that can stimulate the debate. 

The historical English Eric J. Hobsbawm attributes a paradoxical confirmation of the theses of Karl Marx to the exhaustion of the experience of the Soviet communism. "The productive forms - it said in fact Marx - they are turned into chains of the same production". Secondo this theory, when a productive system grows old, it traps the economy and it determines so the crisis of the social world, that was expression of that economic model. The crisis of the Soviet economy has produced the end of the communist world. "The communist attempt produced - he/she writes Hobsbawm - resulted notable, but to elevated and intolerable human costs and the price to build what at the end an economy is revealed without results and a political system on which some positive judgment cannot be expressed. The tragedy of the Revolution of October is in the fact that it could produce only that type of socialism: merciless, brutal, authoritarian. "In the failure of the communism you/he/she cannot be forgotten however - it still says Hobsbawm - that the Revolution of October produced the most formidable revolutionary movement organized of the modern history". You his/her world expansion doesn't have comparisons and, to find in the past a similar element, needs to go up again to the conquests realized by the Islam in the first century of its history. Hardly thirty or forty years after the arrival of Lenin to the station Finland of Pietrogrado, a bystander of the humanity was found to directly live under regimes parties from the ten days that upset the world. What has you/he/she been the communism for the Nine hundred then? Can the inheritance of a movement that has involved million of people to every latitude of the planet consist in the past of an illusion only? 

 

STUDENT:  How symbol of the transmission we have chosen the scythe and the hammer because mostly they represent and they describe what it was his/her ideal of a society without classes, without private ownership, in the hands of the proletariat. These are all theoretical principles because when the communism has taken the power you/he/she has known tools as the dictatorship, the weapons, the slaughter. According to You, is not you/he/she contradicted in the time? Or has not you/he/she been really this form of degeneration to bring its fall? 

 

LOSURDO: I believe that the communism has reached the power in Russia without choosing the conditions in which it was found to live, that is in reality the dictatorship there was already, there was a military dictatorship, there was the slaughter the slaughter of the First World war. And the communism has reached the power, in reality, during the struggle against this slaughter. Naturally it is clear then that the situation has been characterized by a state of permanent exception, and therefore I have to say - then the debate we can deepen him/it -, that a vision would be wrong manichea, for which there would be the communism from a side, synonymous of slaughter and, on the other side, a synonymous liberalism of liberty. The First World war, with the slaughters and the totalitarian system that it behaves, you/he/she was produced for the note by the liberal capitalistic system. 

 

STUDENT: In the Soviet union there proportionally was not the salary of the job to the quality and the quantity. This could not have brought the workers to undertake himself/herself/themselves less, to work few because they were sure to have a salary that was not able neither to increase neither to decrease, if not in least form? This could have brought to the paralysis of the whole system of the Soviet union and then to the economic undoing and then political is of the State that of the political party that governed him/it? 

 

LOSURDO: I fundamentally arrange with what says you, however meanwhile I have to say that I dissent from the formulation that we have seen to the beginnings of the great historian English. I don't believe that the economy has been the conclusive motive for the collapse of the Soviet union. You are enough to say that today in Russia he lives worse without doubt on the economic plan than it was the situation of the Soviet union. In certain countries, that were born from the dissolution of the Soviet union, for instance Georgia, the production is simply a small a least part of that that was to the time when there was the communism to the power. However, says this, it is sure that the communism has set too much the accent on the voluntary enthusiasm. And therefore from this point of view you/he/she has certainly neglected the necessity of the material incentives that you/they had to develop the production. You/he/she can be said that perhaps, making reference to this budget, in countries in which are today still to the power parties that are defined communist, for instance in China, in reality he extends to an organization of the economy type different. They speaks of socialism of market trying to combine government planning and economic and material incentives within the industry. 

 

STUDENT: Up to that point the aspects of the Soviet economy - and do I report me to the negative consequences that it brought the communism of war and the same NEP particularly (economic political New, sees note), that brought to a certain social differentiation, provoking the to resurface of the class of the richest farmers and the class of traffickers whose wealth opposed with the way of big part of the urban population - you/they have been able to contribute to the process of crumbling of the same Soviet communism? 

 

LOSURDO: I believe that the NEP has been instead a very positive element. And, to understand this positive element, we owe present tener that initially the revolution arouses always excessive enthusiasms. This is not worth only for the Revolution of October. From this point of view you/he/she could be said that every revolution, the French Revolution is thought to, curtains to present himself/herself/themselves as the end of the history as the end of all the contradictions. And so, initially has happened for the Soviet union. This has been the communism of war, partly imposed by the war, partly imposed in reality from a mechanical vision, Messianic rather, utopian. Here is the NEP instead under certain points of view it makes to think about the today's attempts of a sort of socialism of market. The tragedy if you/he/she has ever been that the system of the NEP has been abandoned soon enough. 

 

STUDENT: Also recalling myself one book of Yours, you have set the communism as the end of the racial, ethnic and social revolts. Do you believe that - using a paradox - is really because in a certain sense the communism is mostly the democratic expression that as political experience is had, till now that has caused its end, that is its too democracy? 

 

LOSURDO: I would say, always contrasting me to the great historian English, that is wrong to speak of failure of the communism. The category of the failure, according to me, it is always a misleading category, not only for the Revolution of October, but for all the revolutions. Because certainly, for instance, the Giacobinis in France wanted reintrodurre a sort of ancient polis, but you/they have produced something of radically different. Or we take the American Revolution. If we read Jefferson, one of the great protagonists of this Revolution, see that he/she thinks to a society without polarization of wealth and poverty, constituted by small agricultural producers, without permanent army, without strong central power. Today everything I am the United States, except that the society imagined by Jefferson. In reality the United States is characterized by a permanent army, professional, formidable, able to impose his/her wish in every angle of the world. Do we have to also speak of failure of the American Revolution? That's why I have chosen as symbolic object the Caravel of Christopher Columbus, because the story of Cristoforo Colombo, that goes to the search of Indies and it discovers America, is in reality a metaphor that the revolutionary trial can explain in how much such. There is always a discard among what you/they subjectively think about producing what it then springs of it. This same question we can set her/it for the communism. A first answer now I can give her/it, that is according to me nothing of the contemporary democracy cannot be included without the initiated story with the Revolution of October. you Think about the social democracy. But as the contribution you/he/she can be ignored that the communist movement has given to the realization of the social democracy? But we also think about the political democracy. I simply make a consideration: still in the years Fifty and Sixty of this century, in the South of the U.S.As. the blacks were deprived some political rights. If the race discrimination is fallen, or you/he/she has fundamentally fallen in the U.S.As. you/he/she has also been following this great challenge represented by the Revolution of October and by the movement of emancipation of the colonial people, that is initiated with the Revolution of October. 

 

STUDENT: Teacher, can that thing that is dead communism be defined? 

 

LOSURDO: Meanwhile I am not sure entirely that I/you/he/she am dead. It is a datum of fact what we have a country as China; whatever is the judgment that we want to formulate on this country, it represents a fifth of the humanity and you/he/she is directed by a party that still continuous to consider him communist. It certainly says to want to occur again himself/herself/themselves deeply. Here of this datum of done we owe tener account. As it regards the other aspect of Your question: what the political-social regime that is developed beginning from the Revolution of October was, we owe tener it foresees the indication of Marx, that the men make not the history in circumstances from them choices, but in circumstances that are objectively dates. And then, according to me, of an attempt is treated to build a post-capitalistic society. This attempt has happened in tragic circumstances, among errors and horrors, however we owe present tener that, in reality, every process of construction of a new society is also characterized by the phase of the learning. Perhaps, to this point, to clarify better this problem, can see a tape that can give us an idea of the problems that we are facing. 

"If I look behind the fifties - with the time and with the age the things are seen with greater clarity, I have to say that there was then a great enthusiasm. Young people that built roads in inaccessible places, intellectual that wanted to create things ever existed before. A new society, a new man. The building of the socialism meant the to come true some eternity dream of the humanity, that of Christ, of Spartaco, de You French Commune. And that enthusiasm, believes me, it was sincere." 

 

LOSURDO: You see therefore that the usual representations, according to which the communism would have been synonymous of oppression, of dictatorship and enough, they are simply ideological representations, they don't correspond to the reality. From this testimony we see a sincere enthusiasm, a choral enthusiasm in to produce a new society; certainly this enthusiasm was also born from the horror that the First World war had produced - the fascism, the Nazism and the Second World war -, then this enthusiasm has certainly gone as declining, up to disappear entirely. Why? Partly for the fact that in every revolution, as to say, to the poetic moment the prosaic phase happens, then in which needs to face concrete problems, profits to the daily life, partly because - we don't forget him/it - there has been a terrible cold war, that has done yes that the difficulties of that countries are increased - not simply for an inside dynamics, but also for a dynamics day-pupil. It is clear that the cold war also aimed to make more and more difficult, even impossible, the attempt of construction of a new society. 

 

STUDENT: the Revolution of October had brought to a preceding stadium to the dictatorship of the proletariat in how much anchor there was, in the government car of the Soviet union, a simulacro of State. This form of historical communism was well different from the thought that it had Marx I concern to the communism. I would like to know: how much in the opinion of the the end of the historical communism has dragged anymore also with itself the Marxist thought? 

 

LOSURDO: Today he sustains that, since in Marx there is the teorizzazione of a transitory phase of dictatorship of the proletariat, the collapse of the Soviet union would also mean the collapse of the theory of Marx. But You reflect on this fact: in reality a teorizzazione of a transitory dictatorship in a revolutionary phase, this is found in a whole series of other authors, for example Mazzini. Mazzini speaks of a transitory dictatorship up to the conclusion of the National Revolution. You replace with Revolution National Social Revolution and you will see that the formulation of Marx is not different. Then, in reality, the teorizzazione of a transitory dictatorship is not only found in Marx, it is found in Mazzini, but it is also found in the classical ones some liberal tradition. Well, says this, there is not what you/he/she has happened in Soviet Union, partly it has to do with Marx, in the sense that the revolution, initiated with October, it looked for of tener present certain ideal incorporated in the theses of Marx and Engels, partly naturally it doesn't have anything to whether to do. It doesn't have anything to whether to do for the fact that Marx could not foresee anything of that that has happened in the Nine hundred. But it would be wrong - I repeat - to assume a doctrinaire attitude towards any revolution. The giacobinis are called to Rousseau and us back we can ask there that relationship there is among the terror giacobino and Rousseau. And so we can set there the same question as it regards the Soviet union. But we never forget the objective circumstances, because, is forever once said, against the simplifications manichee - you reflect only on this fact - the concentration camp, during the Nine hundred you/he/she has not appeared only in the Soviet union or in Nazi Germany. For example, during the Second World war, Franklin Delano Roosevelt made to confine in concentration camps all the American citizens of Japanese origin, inclusive women and children. Then we certainly have to also have a merciless vision some initiated story with the Revolution of October, but the manicheismo simply serves to the winners, to the dominant ideology and it doesn't promise anything of good person. 

 

STUDENT: Well, to the light than he/she affirms Engels, that that is many movements and political heads have had in the history a well different objective function from that that I/you/they are prefigured to subjective level, then how much I weigh you/he/she could have had the fact that the bolscevichis have not been aware of the real nature of their real role, in the sense that while you/they have been trying to create a society of equal, in motion toward the self-government, they have instead then created a State, a society of strongly hierarchized, authoritarian and however centralized. 

 

LOSURDO: As I said before: we always owe tener it foresees the objective conditions. If we consider the historical period that has gone since 1917 - year of the Revolution of October - to 1953 - year of the death of Stalin -, we see that the life of the U.R.S.S. you/he/she is characterized by a state of permanent exception. There are four, five wars - if we consider together well her all -, two revolutions there are that of October and then the forced collectivization of the agriculture. These revolutions are followed then by civil wars. It is clear that there is a state of permanent exception. The question we can re-phrase her/it in this other way now: because, after 1953 or in the seventies the Soviet union has not succeeded in passing from a State of exception to the normalcy? Then certainly in this case the subjective aspect to which you made reference counts a lot. I believe that you have made very well to recall Engels, that exactly enunciates a rule of general character. It says: because a revolution - he/she thinks about the French Revolution or English - achieves the objectives that somehow historically you/he/she has called to achieve, in a certain sense for a certain time period it does him some illusions that go a lot beyond the objectives then achieved. Here has also happened this way for the initiated story with the Revolution of October, that is for a few times you/he/she is thought to a society, not only without classes, but without States, without national conflicts, without religions, without market. You/he/she is thought, in last analysis, to a sort of end of the history. This is a Messianic illusion but a Messianic illusion that it is born from the same development of the revolutionary dialectics. And the further development that we can see is note when the revolution overcomes this Messianic stadium, that is somehow inevitable, and he/she succeeds in calibrating in more realistic way the objectives to pursue. 

 

STUDENT: We said that there is always difference between the projects of a revolution and that that then he succeeds to effect. I believe - and this I think that don't concern only the communism, but you concern all the types of revolutions, above all all the political parties and the political ideologies - there is always a clean difference, not among what you/they then succeed in effecting, but among to think about a common society as the case of the communism, and then to have the power. That is in the sense that power wears out the minds. This is well-known. Doesn't he/she think that I/you/he/she am really this the point, that is that it is difficult, not to effect a communist society, but is it difficult to govern a communist society? 

 

LOSURDO: You do well to lift the matter of the power. Power contaminates and, from this point of view, the theory sprung by Marx for which there would have been the extinction of the State with the end of the capitalism, has played an ill-omened role, because if the State is destined to extinguish him there is not the worry to build a democratic State anymore, there is not the worry to produce a limitation of the power anymore. Then, from this point of view, the weakness of the theory of Marx have certainly played a negative role in the historical story. However not assolutizzerei this element. I said that we cannot understand the contemporary democracy without the contribution sprung by the Revolution of October. you Think qual'era the situation about the eve of the Revolution of October: we had the planet simply dominated by a fist of great powers, that, within the colonies, they didn't realize certain democracy, imposed rather native local forms of job to the population compulsory, servile or semiservili. And the story of the decolonization is initiated in 1917. The story of the end of the racism is initiated in 1917, because he/she anchors at that time, racism had even sometimes a positive connotation, that is the term "racism" you/he/she was used even with a positive connotation. We can ask even there if the democracy, as you/he/she is realized in the Nine hundred, can withstand the venir less than the challenge constituted by the Revolution of October and by the countries that they recalled him to the Revolution of October. That is I believe that it is assisted indeed to a sort of ricolonizzazione of the Third World, of the Balkans. Today we am perhaps assisting to the Second great Colonial War, that is developed after 1991, after the triumph of the United States during the Cold War. And the First Colonial War has been the War of the Gulf. According to me the Second great Colonial War is that in action in the Balkans. And from this point of view I wonder me if indeed we don't assist to a crisis of the democracy, if for democracy we also intend the equality among the nations that constitute the world. 

 

STUDENT: If the communism is what you say, as we can explain therefore the Stalinism and the fact that on the plan of the foreign politics Russia continued a politics type imperialist however, do we say as that some czarist period, with the invasion of near territories? 

 

LOSURDO: Meanwhile we owe present tener that the communists have gone to the power in a country note as Russia, that any democratic and liberal tradition to the shoulders didn't have. The Communist Party in Russia has gone to the power in a tragic situation, as I has already said. Then the objective circumstances must not be forgotten. However I don't believe in the utility to apply the category of imperialism to the foreign politics of the Soviet union. Does he/she know why? Because, if You reflect, for example, on that that today the American executives say speaking of Cuba, they say that Cuba is fallen in crisis because you/he/she has come the help of the Soviet union to miss. The help of the Soviet union is not a politics type imperialistic, while instead the Soviet union has certainly conducted with Stalin, but also after Stalin, up to the end of its days, you/he/she has conducted a chauvinistic politics and of great power. And there for a toward in effects, it is true, you/he/she has inherited the czarist tradition in Oriental Europe, there is no doubt. For another verse you/he/she has played once more a negative role the Messianic illusion that with the communism all the national conflicts would have disappeared. Instead the national conflicts ripresentatis are him. Before Yugoslavia in 1948 has broken with the Soviet union, there has been then the invasion of Hungary the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The national conflicts existed and the illusion that you/they had disappeared, has not certainly contributed to treat these national conflicts in suitable way. 

 

STUDENT: The communism has been considered from many one ideal. And as such you/he/she has been brought ahead by many young people. According to You how come there is not anymore today this appointment and this passion? 

 

LOSURDO: For the fact that those people who are opposed to the communism, have achieved a strategic victory. There is no doubt, you/they have achieved a strategic victory. However we owe us us to question if indeed this strategic victory has a meaning positive univocamente, if it doesn't also have instead a negative meaning. We assist to the attempts of dismantlement of the social state. An author as Friedrich August von Hayek, Nobel Prize of the economy, has been also the economic expert of the American President Regan, it expressly declares that the economic and social rights enacted by the O.N.U. I am the result of the ruinous existence - so it considers her/it - of the Russian Marxist Revolution. And therefore, from this point of view, we find us in a radically new situation. We have to attend the developments of the history and not to consider the history already ended. 

 

STUDENT: The relationship between Marx and the revolution owes to be taken with the dropper however, in how much Marx from his/her song didn't admit that way of doing revolution, as note has happened in Russia, considering that a democrat-liberal phase and a development of the capitalism in Russia there had not been thin after all. In fact the society Russian Marx if as Asian society considered her/it not a capitalistic society. For Marx the same revolution owed note to unwind himself/herself/themselves in operation of a mass in crisis of the capitalistic system. Then for many aspects Marx and the revolution are not very compatible among them; I think that it needs to see up to that point this relationship can coexist. 

 

LOSURDO: There is no doubt that Marx has not thought to a revolution as that that is developed in Russia, because he thought, in particular way, to the advanced capitalistic countries and he didn't even think to a revolution that would be developed during a total war, of a terrible war, of a slaughter, as you/he/she has been the First World war. However I would also be careful to not assolutizzare this aspect. In reality in Marx they are also there oscillations. We could say that there are two theories of the revolution Marx. One is that delivered of it The capital, where it says that all of a sudden in the advanced capitalistic countries, with the process of capitalistic concentration, everything assembles him in the hands of few great monopolists and "it plays - so it is expressed - the time of the expropriation of the espropriatoris". Here, therefore, from this point of view, the revolution is as a mechanical trial, that mechanically comes down from the same process of monopolistic, capitalistic and monopolistic concentration. However, if You have it foresees The manifesto of the Communist Party, there Marx develops a different theory of the revolution. Just at the end de The manifesto Marx says: "The communists assemble their look especially in Germany". And because? Not because Germany is particularly developed. No, contrarily - they say Marx and Engels - for the fact that Germany is here still to the of of the democrat-bourgeois revolution, and under conditions of developed proletariat - I am always reciting The manifesto - this democrat-bourgeois revolution can qualitatively turn into something of different, because proletariat can proceed then to a further development of the revolution. Here, according to me, something of the kind in reality is occurred, not in Europe, but in the great colonial countries, you think, for example, to China. The Communist Party has directed an anti-feudal and anti-colonial revolution, however in the wave of this anti-feudal and anti-colonial revolution you/he/she has thought of reality to achieve objective further, that go also beyond some capitalistic system. 

 

STUDENT: Up to that point thinks that the principles on which the First Russian Constitution founded him, were principles that belonged to the communist ideology, correct, and up to that point and because these principles have not been realized then, true tant'è that the same constitution was modified? 

 

LOSURDO: As I mentioned before, I don't like the category of failure of the revolution, and not only for the Revolution of October. Another category that I don't like is the category of betrayal. While, according to me, to understand the great revolutions, all of us owe tener it foresees a different category, that is that of the learning. That is for a verse he/she is known what he/she is wanted to demolish; he/she is wanted to demolish the ancient regime, an arrangement that is considered intolerable. For another verse he proceeds gropingly, in the attempt to build a new society. And then, from this point of view, there is no doubt that the first constitutional texts of Soviet Russia are permeated by a whole series of illusions. There is this Messianic vision of the revolution, which I have made reference, that up to the end the Soviet union has not succeeded in overcoming. And from this point of view - I repeat - this has clearly weighed in the defeat of the Soviet union. However I still want to recall the attention that to understand the great revolutions, we owe tener present colons: the difference between subjective project and objective results, difference that also explains him with the concrete historical situation. And the category of the learning. This is also worth for the French Revolution. For example: when it is that the French Revolution is expressed indeed with a parliamentary democracy? Only after the end de You Common of Paris, after 1871, with the so-called Third Republic. The French Revolution, to produce his/her political regime, in a certain sense you/he/she has almost put us one century, that has gone since 1879 to 1871. 

 

STUDENT: We am here for asking us how come the communism is bankrupt, an ideology that has tried to transform the economy, the ancient czarist formulation, perhaps asking to the people for something that goes against the same nature of the man. Perhaps it is unthinkable to think that of the farmers, of the workers, can work for other people's good, drawing few of it, without not even being able to have the aspiration, a tomorrow, to be able to manage a proper firm to grow. I for example know, that the farmers had a piece of ground of earth on which you/they worked for the country for the Russian people and another piece of ground on which you/they worked for them. What happened? What to the farmer it was worthwhile to work on the really small piece of ground where it drew the nourishment, more than to work and to get tired himself/herself/themselves on the great piece of ground destined to the public, from which would have been able then to draw little of it. I become me account that a new method was looked for, but it perhaps went against the same human nature, that is some selfish of the type,: "Now first I eat me and then I make to eat the others". I Think that also for this is fallen the communism. 

 

LOSURDO: On this I arrange with you. I said that indeed initially the revolutionary trial - in this case the communist revolutionary trial - introduces him as a Messianic position. And the Messianic position qual'è? we Make to disappear every form of private ownership, so much more than had the regime founded upon the private ownership produced the horror of the First World war. There is no doubt, the capitalism had developed a decisive role in the scatenamento of the war. And here, in this tragic situation, that indeed the same theses of Marx are subsequently radicalized. It has to disappear the private ownership every form of private ownership. The thesis of Marx of the extinction of the State is radicalized also. Because? The First World war had shown in concrete way that the State worked as a moloch, he/she forced million and million of citizens to die and to kill. Here then that, indeed, the Messianic position is subsequently strengthened, end also of the State. Naturally this whole Messianic position, if initially you/he/she has also produced the enthusiasm, you/he/she has worked then as a drug. Ended the effect of this drug, in reality there is a sort of relaxation a sort of weariness. This has happened. From this point of view I arrange with you. He certainly treated in reality to combine different forms of ownership. As I said it is an attempt, that has been brought ahead then with the NEP the combination of different forms of ownership. Today countries that it sticks recall him to the socialism - I made the example of China - they look for, also them, to combine different types of ownership. But there is not doubt that this Messianic position, that it made every material incentive to miss, you/he/she has clearly played a negative role. 

 

STUDENT: His/her fathers' project founders it was what you/he/she is ended with the collapse of the Soviet union? 

 

LOSURDO: "Fathers founders" it is an expression that you/they use above all the Americans to speak, note, of the protagonists of their revolution. Here, as I said before, among his/her/their fathers founders of the American Revolution there is Jefferson, but today's United States doesn't certainly resemble not at all to America to which he/she thought Jefferson. That is "Fathers founders" it is an expression that clearly recalls the religion. That is the text of Marx and Engels is not a Gospel. The text of Marx and Engels is born in one determined historical constellation, it intends to answer to determined problems. In the meantime, the world is clear you/he/she is developed. I believe that those people who are recalled to Marx and Engels would make a blame proper to Marx and Engels if assolutizzasero their doctrine. Certainly, for example, - Marx and Engels have declared more times to have learned a lot from her Common of Paris. I believe that those people who are recalled to Marx and Engels - I believe to be among these - they have the assignment to also think of depth the whole history that is initiated with 1917, without assuming neither an uncritical attitude, but not even the attitude of demonizzazione, that is really of the dominant ideology. 

 

STUDENT: On Internet we have found a site on Marx, really to recall us his/her work, The capital, in which the author didn't delineate the new face of the society, however you/he/she pointed out some ideas you/he/she drives that however they understood the abolition of the private ownership, the abolition of the division of the society in classes. Only that the centralizing totalitarian State, that had to represent a phase of passage, became the last goal of the revolution. There was not anymore then accordingly the abolition of the State, that Marx prefigured in his/her work. 

 

LOSURDO: Of the illusion of the extinction of the State of Marx, I have already said that you/he/she has dealt with an illusion that has developed a role without negative doubt. However we are careful once more to the histories manichee, as if the history of the communism were identifiable with that of the totalitarianism. I have already said, in reality, that the totalitarian universe is also manifested in the United States during the Second World war and I could conclude - and I conclude - with a question: but are we sure, for instance, that the embargo is not an it forms post-modern of concentration camp? What in reality there is no more need to close a whole people in a concentration camp, but that you are enough to cut the influx of provisions, of medicines, above all if then a war has destroyed the civil infrastructures of this country? Then I repeat, tener is correct it foresees the turn that is verified in 1991, but also on the historical plan we have to beware us of to applaud, in uncritical way, the ideology of the winners. 

 

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Pierluigi Battista 

Memory against utopia (You end of the innocence. Utopia, totalitarianism and communism; interview of Pine cone Baglioni) 

drawn by Traces, year XXVII, May 2000 

 

A book that incessantly sets, in almost obsessive way, questions. Pierluigi Battista has written him, editorialista de You Press and author of many wise man. What they try to splinter some "dogmas" granite of the cultural mentality of our Country. A loyal use of the reason.  

 

 

 

In this last book, You end of the innocence. Utopia, totalitarianism and communism (Marsilio, p. 154, L. 22.000) Baptist ripercorre the theoretical bases of the conception utopian and perfettistiche of the XX century, dissezionando above all You city of the sun of Thomas Campanella. Paradigm, according to the author, of all that totalitarian regimes that have pretended to build the heaven in earth, spying, massacring whoever tried to oppose himself/herself/themselves to that project purificazionista. What it doesn't foresee, they would say the Christians, sinned original. Because then who is directly stained or indirectly of that crimes it is considered still innocent? The history has condemned that regimes, but nobody allows him to condemn the protagonists.  

 

A practically lost cause in departure, his. How does it do him to totally eradicate from the heart of the men the nostalgia of another? And' comprehensible, then, that look him to those people that directly or indirectly they have been the protagonists of it, with attitude of respect and not of sentence.  

Yes, culturally mine is a lost cause. Perhaps the chronicle of a lost occasion. However I would like to clarify that I totally am not immune to the charm of a world other. Esiodo, Humerus, Virgilio, Ovidio, Rabelais, Voltaire has magnificently dreamt and described not so much one perfect world, how much a fantastically happy world. What I find repugnant is a certain thought that has given birth to real states of police, dominated by jails, concentration camps, exterminations of mass, decimation of whole people and social groups. Society obsessed by the myth of the cleaning up. It needs to separate the desire of a world other, that certain it is not lost forever from the conceitedness to build the perfect society.  

 

Where is the problem? The Urss is dead and Fidel Castro is not so much good.  

The problem is represented by the fact that what has gone lost forever it is a feeling of shame and reproach of whom, in name of the Good, you/he/she has allowed that they were finished incalculable iniquities. Rather, despite the historical criticism has recorded the failure of the real socialism, the persons responsible keep on declaring himself/herself/themselves innocent. Innocent because the idea, the utopian thought they were good and correct. The great mystification is to keep on dissociating the goodness of an idea from the wickedness of a realization. To whom would come never to mind to distinguish the ideal nazionalsocialista from the real nazionalsocialismo? In this case there is a total identification between native project and historical realization. The Nazism is justly considered the historical inveramento of an Evil Absolute present is in the theory that in the routine. The communism no: how ironizza Alain De Benoist, the communism is "a beautiful idea gone to badly". Here, to think that today the matter is still resolved in this way, it makes indignant me deeply.  

 

Thanks to which done, which meetings, which readings, also her one day is discovered not more "innocent" in comparison to that utopian thought?  

I have been a young boy of the '68. But there has been a moment in which I have felt that the libertarian position was so sharp, antiautoritaria, of revolt towards the authority constituted that it animated me, young boy of the time, in comparison to that ideology of reference, so mournful, mortuary, incarnate in dreadful states of police, that denied whatever liberty not some liberties,: the liberty to go out of their Countries, to say, to express him. In short I have warned this awful contradiction. And year after year, you/he/she has been more and more gradually clear me, the demand to abandon that parrocchietta to put me for my account. I had consumed a very strong symbolic patricide towards my father, a man expressly of right. I also have to say that later, however, I have never spit, as you/he/she has happened to many on the Sessantotto. I hold her one it covers important: thanks to that extraordinary moment I have put in discussion a series of values that then I have learned to reconsider. Together with few friends. But what I intend to affirm is that I am not innocent in comparison to that experience. Nobody is him/it.  

 

Because it feels so strongly for itself and for the others this demand to declare himself/herself/themselves guilty towards a world that is liquefied?  

Because it was enough little to realize that he was consuming a tragedy unprecedented. And not to have done it is him/it guilty. Some curiosity, to read some book. Because paradoxically those that monopolists of the culture are held, that are held still such, they are ignorant. Who has been communist after the Sessantotto it is ignorant, it doesn't have any curiosity, it doesn't have any liking for descriptions that its prejudice doesn't confirm. They read only what the cultural fashions impose. This people have not even grazed Archipelago Gulag of Alexander Solzenicyn. Who has not read this book you/he/she has not understood anything of the twentieth century. From boy, all of a sudden I have thought, that to make up for to the Soviet disasters the communism antiautoritario of China would have arrived. For then to discover that in China there had been no hundreds of thousand of corpses. But million and million of corpses: in the fields of re-education, or thanks to gangs of teen-agers that went to torture the elderly ones in their houses.  

 

Does this book of his, represent also therefore an action of justice, an attempt not to make to forget that corpses, considered dead of serious B in comparison to the victims of the Nazism?  

This book tries to get off a conceitedness of innocence. Is not there then any Spielberg that a Soviet Schindler does? Yet it would be material of it of disposition. Have we ever asked there, are we ever imagined as that eighty million of men there they are dead? With that revolvers planted on the head that shoots, and does it shoot, and does it shoot? The gas chamber of the Nazi, the crematory ovens give us the idea of the to melt himself/herself/themselves of that bodies. But have we ever asked as these others there they are dead? Because they must not be cry, done remember, because for them there is not any day of the memory? Because who that corpses you/he/she has provoked them or justified it doesn't make action of repentance? All this also produces consequences of political nature, today.  

 

For example?  

For example the Heider case in Austria. Only the suspicious one, attention, not that Heider can refer the same things that you/he/she has made Hitler but the suspicion of an attitude of indulgence in comparison to those things there, by itself it justifies the general ostracism towards Heider, ostracism decreed by the direct contribution of ex communist. Nobody would dream him to treat to the same way Cossutta and Bertinotti. They makes tenderness, they arouse respect. Would it make tenderness an old nazistone, that has not committed any crime in his/her life? No, it would make horror. The others two, are considered instead innocent.  

 

An innocence derived by an idea that he is not able not to hold correct. That of the equality. it is Perhaps right Norberto Bobbio: it damages equal equality, right liberty and cult of the wealth. She is not worthier and respectable before?  

No. I rebel me to this hierarchy of values. That idea has given birth to death and it is fallen in the dishonor. It is not fallen in the dishonor who or you/he/she has materially completed certain crimes or you/he/she has ideologically approved them because judged necessary to the construction of a perfect world. And' what I call the utopian matter: in short I strive him/it of this book, it is that to try to explain as it was all contained in the good intention the criminal potentiality, that is historically occurred then in Soviet Union, to Cuba, in Cambogia, in China. Everywhere, in short. What makes fear it is the common line that finds again him both in the Nazism and in the communism: the sterminazionismo as ideology. And' the idea that on the base of a project of racial or social purification whole groups had to be eliminated: type biological in a case, type social in the other. And that this thing included the necessity to strike not the single. Because there is no more individual guilt. The guilt is that you are, that exist. And that you must be eliminates for the solo fact to exist. You are a bourgeois, worths the death. You are a Hebrew, worths the death. And they come you to look for anywhere, to rouse. In this obsession of theirs of purification. As the exterminators go to look for the bugs. Well, when it comes me to say: don't forget. Very well: rather when it is that he starts to remember? To remember all however. To remember, for example, that the gulags in Bulgaria have existed up to the sixties. Well, very well. Has the holocaust been an incomparable tragedy? Of accord: I ask to Furio Colombo that, at least once, in the Day of the Memory three minutes and a half are devoted to the million of corpses of the good communist idea. 

 

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Why does the moral duty of the anticommunism exist? 

 

of Gianni Baget Bozzo - June 1 st 2000 

 

Because the communism is not dead with the end of the Soviet empire.  

How totalitarian violence is ended in Europe, while it is still existing in fullness in China, in Vietnam in Laos, Cuba Korea of the North. How lie, fully exists in Italy. And its lie consists of saying that the communists there are not anymore. As always the lie is evident.  

The managing whole Ds come from the Pci. And they has never said: the Pci has been wrong, the anticommunist ones have always been right. They say: the Pci has always been antisovietico. And everybody knows that this is not true.  

Yet as much it is the demoniac power of seduction of the communism, that all believe in this evident lie. This is the true diabolic ability of the communism: it makes to lie against the known truth. Not by chance in the encyclical Dominum et Vificantem (1985), Giovanni Paolo according to you/he/she has pointed out in the communism the sin against the Spirit Saint of which Jesus has said "you/he/she won't be put again neither in this century neither in the future." 

 

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Paul CAROTENUTO 

The denied history: the silence in Italy on the communist crimes 

drawn by Crooked Wood 

 

The communists will exist until it won't be made full light on their hidden crimes  

 

 

You/he/she has received a great share of I publish the conference that is held in Naples on the crimes denied of the communism in Italy organized by the Foundation Campi Flegrei. Thanks also to chairmen of absolute level, present journalists of the caliber of Dario Fertilio and Giancarlo Lehner, besides appreciates him De Simone and Nardiello of the daily paper The Rome, volumes of great value I/you/they have been introduced you turn to remove that non casual silence that is lowered today still on pages unexplored of our history. In substance it doesn't deal with rewriting the history through an action revisionist, but it deals with discovering events how thin to today they have been hidden volutamente, manipulated and counterfeit. But who is that you/he/she has undertaken this scientific and methodological action of removal of the past? And' the question to which is tried to give an answer is. First of all with Dario Fertilio, journalist of the Corriere della Sera and author de You red death (I edit from the Marsilio), for which pseudo-truth is said for hiding the reality and the essence of the facts. If to the word lager corresponds the definition of military field for military training, if to the word foiba corresponds the meaning of hollow deeper carsica produced by the current waters, to that of gulag the corresponding translation is attributed of "field of re-education."  

Two are the objectives pursued in this way. To forget, to relegate "among parenthesis" experiences that even a tomorrow you/they can allow to take back a discourse left dormant; to deny, because in front of the negation of the crimes of the communism, it is simpler to raise symbols and flags of Lenin or of What Guevara or symbols of death and humiliation of the fundamental rights of the man and his/her dignity.  

 

The communism has acted in very similar way in all the Countries in which you/he/she has reached the power, from the Soviet union to Yugoslavia, from the countries of Europe of the east in Albania, from those of Soviet Asia to those of Latin America, and you/he/she has almost always reproduced the same fools that within few years they have ended for hand of the regimes nazionalsocialisti. But the difference that has countersigned the communism from the nazionalsocialismo is in the background lie of which the communism is painted, that also maintaining its identical destructive strength, it disguised him from redeemer. For this the communist genocides must have remembered and not forgotten or hidden as you/he/she is done thin to today. To the dates of January 27 and now of on February 10, that you/they leave often space to the rhetoric that accompanies the memory, it is rightful to raise to the same rank that of November 7, anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution and that you/he/she has been proposed as Day of the memory of the communist victims (Reminder Gulag) thanks to the stubborn appointment of the Committees for the Liberties (www.libertates.org), of which the same Fertilio is president and founder.  

 

To who holds the anticommunism as a broken disk, you/he/she has replied Armando De Simone, author with Vincent Nardiello of the appreciated volume of search Clipboard for a black book of the Italian communism (and. Countercurrent), that has remembered what the scandal is that you/he/she is perpetrated thin to today. The true betrayal of the intellectuals is testified really from a conference as that of Naples, where to speak of a similar matter they have been four "journalists" and not historical or studious. Any teacher has told us of 200 million dead people, anybody you/he/she has documented this that is a denied history. And it is permissible to investigate on the reasons for which who knew you/he/she has preferred to keep silent.  

 

Thin to today some trial you/he/she has not been finished to the Italian communist Party and this theme yet it is not set today even it, one period in which rhetorically he does often call to the duty of the memory. But to which memory he appeals and because this must be pilots, circumscribed? For this we don't need liars professionals, but of true communists, those as Massimo Di Alema that in Soviet Union there has been 47 times; we have need of the Fassinos, that has been secretary of the greatest Italian communist federation, that of Turin, and that today riformista is simply defined because to the congress of the Ds you/he/she has remembered the figure of Bettino Craxi as one of the greatest of the European socialism. And we want to know where the contained plans of insurrection are ended in 5 suitcases in green skin, whereas even Sweet you/he/she has admitted that these plans were organized up to the end of the years '80. we are talking of attacks to the constitution, imprescriptible crimes, on which any judge has wanted to investigate. As everything this you/he/she has been possible?  

 

This time it is Vincent Nardiello that the enterprise tries to give an explanation, underlining as the history has been put to service of a political project, considering that here it doesn't speak of done interpreted badly, not known or correctly sets, but of pages that was been expelled completely from the historical debate. Pages that any historian is picked up he intrigues her/it to tell, as that that he saw Palmiro Togliatti invite to welcome the titinis as liberators and to realize an exchange between Gorizia and Trieste.  

Because all this? A first answer is rinvenibile in the fact that a part of the historians was of fact executives or communist exponents. But alone these were not enough to bring this impressive work to conclusion mistificatoria. And here it comes us in help Ernesto Galli of the Loggia that has recently admitted how much the historians and the moderate intellectuals are folded up to the will of the communists that you/they didn't ask him to be communist, but simply not to be anticommunist.  

You imagine what you/he/she would be happened, for instance, if an agent of the CIA had followed Aldo Moro, the secretary of the biggest Italian party, up to the day before its sequestration. And' happened, instead, that has been tagged after by an agent of the Kgb as they show the official documents coming from the files of the Soviet union. Not medals but written tests, official actions, dramatically puzzling on which continuous to flutter a silence that does more and more him deafening.  

 

Do sense has reread the history in the attempt to purify her/it from these unacceptable conditionings that have done therefore today yes that some truths didn't come to the light? And do sense has declare he/she anchors him anticommunist, today that the Wall in Berlin has collapsed and the Soviet regime is dissolved?  

Well yes, a similar behavior is everything a duty, because, as he/she remembers us Giancarlo Lehner, author de You Tragedy of the Italian communists, the victims of the Pci in Soviet Union (I edit for the necklace the Wakes of the Mondadori), to be against the communism is not a political contingency, but it is a principle and a moral duty. And he/she also remembers that the communism is not fought him/it with the howled anticommunism but simply telling the facts and seeking the truth.  

After all all it takes is bringing some present sweet in the book of the journalist and historian, manager de The Fair trial, to become himself/herself/themselves account than the job of dissimulation has been enormous produced thin to today: in a letter sent to his/her command signed by George Bocca, to the epoch partisan activist, is possible to read his/her disconcertment for some excesses of communist partisan as those of a commander partisan named Fortress "specialized to personally kill the fascist prisoners quartering them to hits of shovel". A Mouth astounded she asked him up to that point was permissible to arrive. This brave partisan, has not obviously had some problem for his/her actions, if not a gold medal.  

 

But if once were paid for disinformare, today teachers are signalled to the left for their embarrassing ignorance. And' of few days ago an article published on the daily paper her Republic of Tabucchi, as author in fashion and pumped by the intelligentsia of left, that quietly the luxury is taken to declare that Gramsci was dead in the jail.  

And' evident that in front of similar mystifications he/she is also understood because is cleverly kept silent by these "professionals of the lie" the true essence of the pact Molotov-Ribbentrop that in 1939 you/he/she has enacted the birth of the nazi-communist axle and that it started Hitler for the elimination of the Hebrews. It was that breaker that Stalin, in sign of harmony, it allowed him to offer in "gift" to Hitler all the interned Hebrews in the gulags. This is a historical datum, tried, incontestable: the persecution of the Hebrews departed with the approval of Stalin some communists. Undeniable to the point that in the books of history there is no mention some. To the epoch, besides, Hitler didn't owe of certain to appear as a monster from the "red conformists", considering that an ashamed wise man of Palmiro Togliatti exists for which the pact was the consequence of the aggression against Germany completed from France and Great Britain.  

 

We can continue remembering the history of Mr. Pietro Leoni that it returned in Italy after being him fact 10 years of gulag accused of a crime that in the union of the Soviet Socialist Republics it was absolutely forbidden: possession relationships with the Vatican. Certainly that for a priest you/he/she would have been tiresome not to have of it but the tragedy for this man indeed it materialized him with his/her return in his/her country native, Bologna. Here it started to tell his/her experience, the truth on USSR and on as him he/she lived. Stuff to be made to go crazy the Pci, so much that the "companions" Italian they came to say that the true priest was dead, that what spoke was only an impostor or a double. And did thing make Sacred Roman Church? He/she thought well about sending him/it in Canada because "it was disfunzionale to the strategy of the dialogue" undertaken by the good pope.  

 

But there is a historical document that is worth more than thousand other told histories, that definitely nails Palmiro Togliatti to his/her responsibilities. They are departed 50 years of debates, reflections and clashes among the historians in to establish if Togliatti had or less fact something for the arrested communist Italians, persecuted and slaughtered in the USSR. In reality you/he/she has dealt with a forgery problem, because the true dilemma is to establish how many Italians have been directly delivered by Togliatti to the Soviets.  

In a document dated 25 December 1936, listed as "secret", to the third paragraph there is a list of thirteen communist Italians, among which Vincent Baccalà, stamped as "negative elements". close to the names of Lipsticks (pseudonym of Dried cod) and of Modugno, there is a note: "troskista, to deport", And after all to the text, the writing: "Soglasen" ("they Agree"), signed "Ercoli", or the name in code of Togliatti. To notice a spine-chilling detail: "Soglasen" it was the formula of ratification of the entrusted of the Nkvd that he/she took vision of the arrest warrants and the orders of search. Togliatti, therefore, also in the lexicon, the narrow code of the executioners, all one appears with the Soviet secret police. After all, as was it able not to agree, considering that the first reports against that poor companions of base had departed really from the executives "vigilantes" of the PCd'I?  

 

But do the communists exist in still Italy? The sigles are perhaps changed, but in the facts also the most anticommunist (his/her declaration) of the communists of the Italian history, Walter Veltroni, has suffered often the culture and the methodologies of it. All it takes is taking back the unity directed by the actual mayor of Rome of November 11 th 1993, to page 10, where a paragraph appears in which the death of the companion Penco communicates him, and he/she is read "old communist activist, persecuted political for his/her ideas of liberty and socialism". Sinned that Veltroni has forgotten to add a detail: Penco was yes a persecuted political, but it was him/it from his/her companions also making himself/herself/itself 14 years in the Soviet gulags. Certainly, a derisive detail for the one who is grown in the culture of the lie.  

 

Well him, the communists still exist and they still condition the search of the historical truth if it is true that among the advisors of the parliamentary Committee on the dossier Mitrokhin there is also Giulietto Chiesa, correspondent of the unity from the 80 to the 88 that you/he/she was not paid by his/her newspaper, but from the Committee of the crescent and Soviet red cross. Paid in substance by Breznev. Well, Church that three times were paid more than the manager of the Pravda, with house, automobile, spent for the trips, guaranteed vacations, all to load of the brave one been Soviet, were the Italian journalist that had to inform about the Soviet things.  

Ahead in a so illuminating scenery, we hold to be able to close observing the message that Giancarlo Lehner has launched: the serious job of the historian is not that to use adjectives or invectives, but to look for data, documents and facts. This is the principle to follow for the one who wants to make justice to the truth and the history of our country and that 60 years of republican history have not been enough to guarantee. 

 

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Francesco ROSSIGNOLI 

The history of the communist idea in the '900: the interpretation of F. Furet 

drawn by Line Time, March 1998, p. 69s., 107s. 

 

1. introduction  

It is very discussed, in consequence of the change of the programs of history, on the teaching of the history of the XX century. They have been shown the difficulties that derive from the fact that those people who have to teach her/it them same they belong, even if still for few, to this century; they would not be therefore able, or they would be him/it with a lot of work and notable risks, to complete those syntheses essential, done of hierarchies and of choices, in which big part of their job of teachers of history consists in non university circle, there where the manual remains always also necessary tool if he/she is wanted to give an idea of the whole the to become historical. The proximity of the time of the facts of which to speak would make not only such difficult synthesis, but also - according to some, above all - arbitrary, easily conditioned by options type ideological and political, such however to have to depend in excessive measure on a soggettivismo that it would not help certain the formation of the peculiar attitude of the historian, that is that of the search of the objectivity.  

On the subject the debate has been ample and it is away from the possession reached definitive conclusions. Me however I intend to show another aspect of difficulty, and that is that the Nine hundred are not easy to also be taught in our schools for motives for different character from those chronological and methodological. The Nine hundred are not easy to be taught because the facts and the ideas that belong him reveal a historical oneness and an enormousness on the plan of the consequences (of all the types) that they make him/it to the unintelligible fund in lack of a suitable interpretative key. We go to talk to our students of one century that the wars have seen more devastantis, the most oppressive regimes, the most aberrant ideas of the whole history, and, let's tell at the same time them of an epoch of unexpected developments, of new people that become protagonists, of amazing discoveries, of finished globalization. What to give to everything this sense? And' possible to retrieve a sense or does it owe us to be satisfied with to examine separate matters according to an analytical approach that the part exalts but it makes to lose sight the everything? Is there, in other words, a horizon critically founded in which to put the different objects that we go to treat?  

I believe that a negative answer would condemn us to a situation of empasse that would not delay to make to feel its effects on the plan of the didactics. And' also clear, however, that a positive answer cannot be neither hasty neither approximate. It would not be able, for example, simply to confine himself/herself/themselves to recycle criterions of reading employed for other historical moments, even if readapted. Hobsbawn begins his/her brief Century in very explicit way: "Nobody can write the history of the XX century equally in which would write the history of any other epoch". He first of all attributes this difference to the fact that his/her life with the period in matter. But its observation is also valid from another point of view: that of 900 is peculiar history because in it they become protagonists new strengths, that sink certain their roots in the preceding ages, but that they show their alone face in this period. Which are these strengths? Because and as they manifest him? I believe that the teaching of the history in the last year of the secondary school is not able whether to build him around these questions, not to give default answers or ultimative, but not to abdicate the assignment to make object of understanding and reflection historical once.  

The history of the communist idea, served as François Furet of it The past of an illusion [PdU], that is theme of this relationship, it is - to my notice - of great interest first of all because it exactly goes to the direction of a general look to one of the Nine hundred history fundamental elements, what she is "life" of the communist idea. And' well to specify that when I say of great interest, I intend to primarily put me on the plan of the contributions that such work can offer to my job of teacher of High school, and not to formulate and to develop on it a specific critical judgment and deepened, that would require very more than I intend me to do. I hold, in other words, that Furet offers concepts and interpretations that, naturally they are able, and you/they must be criticize and discussed, but from which cannot be put aside in the moment in which we want to talk of history of this century to our students. It is not only the guarantee of absolute quality of the historical job of Furet to found this affirmation. And' also the courage that he has had in to write a great work of synthesis; and a work of synthesis on such a crucial matter as "burning", still object of political passions and load of lived personal of many. He/she annotated Renzo de Felice a few times after the publication de The past of an illusion: "For many verses, [the volume of Furet] the more remarkable and more meaningful historical work of the last decade can be considered and surely one of the fundamental works of this century... You Italian historical culture has not accustomed for the time of Cross anymore and above all of Fox to works of great breath. The fragmentation of the to know historical and of the search in thin segments more and more determined by the degeneration of the historiography of the Annaleses that a lot of diffusion has had in Italy, you/he/she has substantially prevented that the historians were devoted to general works of long period. Instead Furet has given back to us the taste of a great fresco, of a serious and documented investigation that he/she embraces the last two centuries always fortified by a clear interpretative element and "Cartesian", that constitutes a strength budget of the history and the illusions from the French Revolution all fallen of the wall in Berlin. Also this aspect, only apparently structural, but in such reality to be invested fundamental aspects, he/she explains the suspicious attitude of a lot of Italian criticism towards the volume of Furet that, objectively you/he/she has not had the comparison that deserved, neither near the great public neither, so much less, in the environment of the employees."  

This relative silence fallen on the work of Furet is a further reason to propose her/it. The "courage" of F. concerns then both the methodological approach and that contenutistico. Such methodological approach is - we have seen - irrinunciabile proper to the level of middle teaching, always that I/you/he/she am wanted to go out of the preponderance of the particular analysis e/o of the hasty chronicle of journalistic cut. It needs, in a certain sense, to have the same courage.  

And from the point of view of the content? I have said before the touched matter is burning. Easily, when you/he/she has put to theme, object of serene and objective treatment is not made and they has the tendency to prevail the slogans, the invectives, the done sentences, the rhetoric. Just this test that on it you/he/she has been you (and perhaps in some case there is still) a - use expressions of F. - psychological investment of enormous course. But it needs that the past footsteps. And' by now essential that the historical matters are made object of historical discourses, and not political and so much less judicial. If it is not possible to face in this way all the stories of our century (also those tied up to the communist idea and the fascisms), it simply is not possible to do of it and to teach its history.  

We now have somehow to realize to the students, from the historical-philosophical point of view, of the motives that are at the base of a fact of absolute importance: the fact that this century has seen the affirmation of ideologies - fascism and communism - that you/they have created systems able to practice an oppressive power on a boundless number of men, a power that doesn't have precedents. In effects they are comparable, if nothing else (but we will see that there is some other), the tragic consequences that two ideologies have involved on million of people. Yet - and arrival to the point using me a quotation from a letter of the same F. to Ernst Nolte of December 1996 - "the fascism and the communism don't suffer from a comparable disrepute". And' here clear that the word disrepute must be intended as point of arrival of a historical judgment that, as such, it doesn't derive from different presuppositions from the analysis of the nature of the two phenomenons in matters. How come this objective difference of treatment there is? What origin does it have? Does it depend on what? If the "disrepute" you/he/she is justly strengthened for the fascisms, does it owe or no to also understand the communism? There is in short need of historical analysis of the communist experience historical analysis that has actually been to these last years carente for various motives.  

The same Furet, in that letter, it gives a trace of answer affirming that the explanation must first of all be found in the different characters of the two types of ideology. And' therefore never evident the necessity of a history of the ideologies in 900 and particularly of the communist ideology that is that that has lasted for a longer time and that you/he/she has involved an enormous number of people on the whole planet, over whether to have constituted the base of the power in numerous states.  

900 is the century of the ideologies; it is more precisely the century when ideologies are made history and they make the history, and in this sense they interest the historian. And' true that is not only the century of the ideologies. And nevertheless the ideological dimension is preponderant until over the ¾s of it because it is what it moves the politics and the masses. And' therefore justified the affirmation of August of the Walnut-tree according to which "the radically new character of the contemporary history is to be philosophical history". The philosophical elaboration of the preceding century, or the elaboration of the philosophy of the routine finds better, in 900 the men and the circumstances to become incarnate himself/herself/themselves some history.  

And' for this reason that a book on the history of the communist idea it is not a book on the theoretical Marxism and his/her inside differentiations, and not even a history of States communist. And' a book on a system of thought, but it is more correct to say a faith, that has made some history his/her term last of action and of verification and that in the history you/he/she has put his/her an end and you/he/she has found his/her end.  

 

2. the entry of the illusion in the history  

The communist idea, that had in the history his/her only beta bench, an illusion is revealed. The sentence doesn't grant appeals, because it is the same imputed not to recognize a further appeal. It is not had however to conceive a similar affirmation as the end of a discourse; it would be superficial and unfair. It is owed her rather to conceive as the beginning of a reflection on the ability of attraction of an ideology that, besides involving and to mobilize, masses and personality, are shown more resistant to the denials that since the beginning the same history has not missed to pronounce, than the simple word "illusion" you normally allow to imagine. It would come to say that, among the illusions, it was that that less he allowed to insert in the category, or also that it was that illusion that seemed to have the best chances not to be such. But when you/he/she has come at the end of his/her parable, you/he/she is seen that its strength was exactly the strength of the illusion. Osserva Furet that "the illusion doesn't accompany the communist history: it is constitutive of it" [PdU, p. 6]. The why some strength of attraction of this illusion is the true theme of the work and also its originality. It immediately needs to say, however, that the illusion is not an exclusive of the communism. It is a dimension inside which also stirs the 900 other great ideology the fascism. He/she writes Furet that "the fascism, before venir by his/her own crimes, you/he/she has been a hope. You/he/she has not only seduced million of men, but also many intellectuals" [PdU, p. 9]. The illusion in the XX century ago his/her entry in the history and him ago from absolute protagonist and not from comprimario. The political sphere is almost in full occupied by the strength of political mythologies, becoming so totalizzante. It doesn't recognize social and individual circle that escapes his/her taking and therefore it inserts the methods that you/he/she has matured in the modern age, and that Machiavelli has magistrally enucleated, in a new context that strengthens them and it transfigures them. Political activity becomes that is routine soteriologica. Seem me - I observe of escaped - that this Machiavellism brought to the extreme flows in the negation of the lesson of the Florentine secretary: the releasing of the politics from the ethic, that arouses perplexity and reserves to reason, is able also in positive as unavailability to be translated to the absorption of the ethic from the politics, in as for this it belongs the theme of the power not that of the salvation. What it is really what doesn't happen in the totalitarian systems, power and salvation or rather State and realization of the human one, are where in inextricable symbiosis.  

Colons emerge then key: to) qual is the historical trial - philosophical that brings the ideologies and therefore the illusions to the rank of protagonists of the XX century?; b) because communist idea has had a charm and a credit superior and lasting?  

 

The answer to the first question is retrieved by Furet in the relationship among French Revolution and that that he defines "900 revolutionary passion". answers per second her question it develops him around a category of primary importance, that I intend to exploit as I spin conductor to synthetically take back the discourse of Furet: it is the category of the universal one.  

 

3. The revolution: the man's invention from himself  

The origin of the conceptual universe in which it stirs the Nine hundred history, over that that of the eight hundred, is the French Revolution. The communism doesn't make exception; contrarily it draws from it the legitimation to I handed as guide of the history. Does Furet speak of an imaginary devoluzione for which France delivers the witness of pilot of the human progress, had conquered since 1789, to Russia of the revolution of October. But then what he/she confers to the French revolution the licence of archetype, of matrix of every historical development from two centuries to this part? From thing its intrascendibilità is given?  

And' it notices the importance of the studies and the interpretations of Furet on the French revolution (cfr. Criticism of the French Revolution, Laterza, 2 ^ and. 1989). on one side he takes back the analysis of Tocqueville, that he/she reads the Revolution in continuity with the past being after all the conclusion of it,: its result is the consolidation and the conclusion of the process of concentration of the power undertaken by the monarchy according to the models of the absolutism. You revolution is not a sudden breakup, because it doesn't do what the predominance of the administrative power to make even more strong on the civil society. It if it resolves him with the absorption of the society in the state: it is the tradition absolutist that revives to another level in the moment in which it comes, in the intentions of the actors of the revolutionary event, denied. On the other side Furet it doesn't intend at all to deny the value of historical cesura of the revolution; rather it intends to determine him/it in all of his/her ampleness. Only that it must be retrieved on the plan of the routine and the historical conscience. That is he wonders: because the process of continuity among the Ancien regime and the new one - shown, note, from Tocqueville - you/he/she has taken the road of the revolution? Because in the void of power, in which road is made new strengths, it surfaces the true element of novelty: the ideology or rather a conceptual system and valoriale that it imagines a radically new socialità and that it moves the action of the historical subjects in sight of his/her realization. Ideology sinks its roots in a political reality that you/he/she has been seeing for the times of Luigi XIV interrupted the traditional channels of communication between society and state and that therefore you/he/she has found in the intellectual dimension the space of the liberty. And' however - and you/he/she cannot be otherwise - an abstract liberty: he/she lives in a world founded upon the opinion. The Enlightenment ones produce opinion not action. But the circumstances that prepare and they conduct to the 89, particularly the struggles for the election of the deputies to States General, they settle action opinion, producing the revolutionary ideology. The term ideology comes therefore to point out a deep novelty in the self-awareness of the historical subjects; it in fact it comes to mean that "all the individual problems and all the moral or intellectual matters are become politics and that there is no human bad luck that cannot have a political solution"; and that "the action is everything one with the doctrine and the ethic" [ibidem, p. 32]. You politics becomes the sphere of the truth and the forgery of the good and of the evil. The illusion of the politics is born. The opinion becomes power and becomes him/it in how much united is to the people, it represents him/it or it is the appeal of it, the voice (to second that prevails the representative model or the model of direct democracy). In fact, the central idea of this opinion translated in action is the equality, which well soon national idea is accompanied. With the illusion of the politics, it is us in a radically new historical universe. The politics assumes a dimension totalizzante and therefore it asks for the whole disposition energies; physics give to the intellectuals and the spiritual ones. It becomes laicized religious circle and as such it intends to rewrite ex novo the social contract and to create a new man. The French revolution has invented a Messianic conception of the politics. This way Furet explains the essential character of every revolution and, at the same time, the motive for which the French revolution is paradigm of every revolution.  

 

4. from the revolution to the revolution  

As in the religious attitude there is a constant awareness of the enemy, that is the evil, that finds in Satan his/her precise origin and contemporarily mysterious, so it is fundamental for the new imaginary political the figure of the enemy, of the traitor, of the agent of the controrivoluzione. For the French revolutionary ideology it is the aristocratic plot. The figure of the enemy produces the revolutionary energy, and it is so necessary that is not able not to be us. Also, the religious attitude, for definition, it asks for a God. Now, treating himself/herself/itself of a laicized religion and therefore in clean opposition to the Christianity (the French revolution, in his/her various phases, does it try to eliminate or to subdue the Church, quantomeno in the measure in which this was not assimilable to the revolutionary ideal), that God will give? Which will this secular God be? The cult of the supreme corporate body is not certain a lasting answer: it is not after all consistent with the premises, are a juxtaposition, a heritage of the enlightenment deism more than integral part of the ideology.  

And' the XIX century to give form and figure to the God of the revolution and his/her enemy. Furet speaks very more of the according to whether of the first one, because you/he/she is felt as more concrete; nevertheless we are able to reason to believe that the first one has, on the philosophical plan, the most greater importance. God is the history, the enemy is the bourgeois. Furet doesn't detain him on the way according to which the history takes the place of God. You treats however, evidently, of the process of immanentizzazione operated by the idealism which is added, hand by hand that the century advances, God's death. To this point, wanting to avoid the nihilistic results prophesied by Nietzsche (and what the following century will show instead inevitable), the history has to also call to harvest the other sphere in which human activity seems to disclose him to the routine trasformatrice and to the omnipotence of the humanity: the science. And' exactly the operation that Marxism puts still the announcement nietzschiano into effect: to innervate the contained Messianic promises in the revolutionary ideology of the certainty and the objectivity brought in dowry by the science. The history is the only space in which the destiny of the man plays him. In it the man is able with his/her will and his to act to escape to the past, and together, it is not the kingdom of the accidental one, but you/he/she follows a law that has strength of scientificità. In this difficulty match between wish and science Marxism finds its enormous ability of charm and, to once, its aching point, origin of its inside heresies. He is not able however to deny that, cleared away the field by the Christianity, any stronger ideal impetus it was to disposition.  

The XIX century - it was said - it also gives full life to the enemy of which the revolution, every revolution, has need. The enemy of an universal event has to be an universal enemy. Dialectically it always has to accompany the revolution having antithetical characteristics, just as the evil it opposes him to the good, allowing him nevertheless to triumph. A great too assignment for the aristocracy. An enemy of this kind can spring only from an event of absolute historical course. The event epocale of the industrial revolution has in itself the historical subject that can dress again that role. And' the transformation most radical and universal of the history and it is therefore clear that the social class that is protagonist of it, the middle class, it is the only one in degree to create a world "to his/her image and similarity". And him ago through the exploitation of the proletariat, that is of the only other universal historical subject been born by the capitalistic economy. And' therefore once more the Marxism to give development to the idea of revolution, individualizing with clearness the enemy. But - according to Furet - that the true enemy pits the bourgeois had already been somehow preoperating - extreme paradox - from the revolution "bourgeois". He writes: "The 1793 French giacobinis, held the initiators of the kingdom of the middle class, they offer the first thick example of bourgeoises that you/they detest the bourgeoises in name of bourgeois principles" [PdU, p.25]. it shows up her some bourgeois it suffers in fact of a form of schizophrenia: from a side, curtains to the equality, from the other one you/he/she is determined by the individualism. it fights her against the middle class it is always born inside the middle class and he/she doesn't remain prerogative of the Marxism. Totally every attempt of construction of a new socialità won't be able not to see in the bourgeois egoism the fundamental obstacle to that a sum of individuals becomes body organism. In this they don't differ fascism and communism.  

But in the 800 it misses the historical circumstance that can give outlet to this revolutionary passion. Contrarily, the disappointing results of the nineteenth-century revolutions and, for converges, the progress that the bourgeois systems, also among innumerable contradictions, they realize and that they start with work to have some positive rebound on the inferior classes, they cool the revolutionary impetus and they open the road to hypothesis gradualiste and riformiste. The revolution is always to the agenda; yet it appears more distant from the reality. The real history seems to recover himself/herself/themselves a sort of revenge on the form revolutionary mentis, which is more active than never, but curtains to resemble to the dog that more he/she barks less he/she succeeds in. Of the two great ideal consecrated by the French revolution, the equality and the nation, often in dialectics among them, 800 States they do really the second, but not according to the revolutionary formalities, on the contrary using him/it in sense controrivoluzionario. It becomes nationalism, that is negation of the universal one in name of the particular one: nation and revolution separate him. But same States they don't understand that, really through the nationalism, the universal one and therefore the revolution they are destined to take him the revenge. The nationalism, in fact, contributes in essential way, to determine that event the Great war, that brings on the scene of the history the revolution.  

You understands then because, also for Furet, that doesn't also affirm expressly it, the Nine hundred - at least in a certain sense - it starts with the First world war. And' a war fought in name of the particularism but it concerns and it involves everybody. He speaks as of it of the "first democratic war of the history", in how much it strikes the universality of the citizens. It is continuous: "Enlisting under his/her flags all the valid men, demanding from the whole supreme sacrifice, the 1914 war has made each of this men, also the humblest, judge of the social contract" [PdU, p72]. You war produces to his/her way a democratic conscience, a sense of equality, of affiliation to a commune destiny. You/he/she has annulled the differences, you/he/she has torn all from their identity and you/he/she has thrown them in the great mechanism of the State, which to give the life. Who returns home it won't be able and he/she won't want to return back anymore; he/she will want to keep on feeling himself/herself/themselves part and whole collective protagonist. Its place is the mass. What the Revolution of October bursts thanks to this war and in this context, ago yes that the idea of revolution bossily returns to the footlight: the October assumes the inheritance of the French Revolution and adding to it new lines badges that nientemenos will make her/it that "mythological moment for excellence of the history."  

 

5. the myth of October  

And' only the revolution of October that puts an end to the French revolution. Already in the first part of the Criticism of the French revolution, meaningfully entitled "You French revolution is ended", Furet annotated that for the Marxist historiography it is only the Bolshevism to have full dignity of heir and not the Third republic. In the second part it observed then that 1917 definitely consecrates the French revolution as mother of a real event liberator. These reflections are developed and deepen The past of an illusion of it. it seems Me that the thread conductor that connects her is - as above I said - the category of the universal one, that in fact you/he/she contains the whole ideal baggage that the revolution French delivery in Europe.  

We can start then to synthesize how much it tells Furet the purpose to individualize per second an answer set question. The charm of the victorious Bolshevism is alive and powerful from immediately not so much for a real knowledge of what it is, on the contrary for the fact that it, in the imaginary one of the intellectuals and of the masses of left, it completes the promise of universal regeneration of the contained humanity in the event revolution from 1789 in then.  

But it doesn't limit him to this. Its universality is - for so to say - increased and course to a superior level from its revolt against the war, besides from his to present himself/herself/themselves greasy of all the crismis of the scientificità. Science and peace damage to October the lighthouse promotion and hope of the human kind. The first one is his/her nineteenth-century root, the second is its fruit novecentesco. Science and peace are what the French revolution it didn't possess. You understands then the strange paradox for which Russia - country defined more than every other as "behind" - it suddenly completes the big avant-garde leap rearguard of the humanity. And also the other paradox, for which the idea Leninist, really in the moment in which hands to the breakup of the Constituent one and it establishes the power of the unique party, it also purchases a certain credibility in who is not communist (one "bourgeois credibility") and it becomes a symbol. It in fact you/he/she is read and it makes him read as a finished giacobinismo and therefore as a doctrine and a routine that have full citizen in the European democratic tradition.  

It has beginning in this way that strange dualism, that will last, few or so much, actually at the end of the parable of States communist, for which to speak of Soviet Russia was not after all never to speak of men and real facts, but always of what that men said of itself or of what the ideology it allowed to say of that facts. And' perhaps the most greater worth of the work of Furet the given possession a global explanation and founded of this enormous distance among real sovietismo and imaginary sovietismo that you/he/she has characterized the historical culture to western politics. Russia of Lenin is from immediately a symbol, which more it appears as event of real and historical liberation, more it results untouchable from the reality and from the history. It enjoys of a sort of historical impunity: there is and there will be always a justification to his/her actions, also to the more inconfessabilis. The halo of universalismo that surrounds her/it is a pre-emptive guarantee on the goodness of its future history, a so strong guarantee to make her/it worthy of a boundless credit. For this Furet you/he/she can write that the Russian revolution is less universal, but more universalizzabiles of the French revolution; and what to be communist by now doesn't mean so much Marxist being, whether to believe in the Marxism represented from USSR.  

 

6. the new relationship of the communist idea with the universal one: Stalin  

The incontestable test of this intoccabilità of the idea communist become history is what you/he/she has been Stalin in the mind of the admirers of USSR; it is in the way in which has been perceived and actually lived its power to the secret relationship of Kruscev.  

The role of guide in the process of liberation of the humanity, delivered not to the Bolshevism from the real history but from the history that you/he/she is made God in the world of the ideology, universal role for excellence, doesn't come less when Stalin proclaims the "socialism in an only country". Rather, from such program the universalismo is subsequently increased. And' enough to contrive the opportune hypotheses to hoc, that is not born however from the anything, but you/they can be formulated drawing to the boundless conceptual universe of the French revolution. Enough - it observes Furet - to return to the mental scheme giacobino of the country elected by the history, bridegroom secular Israel. This way a first element that goes to increase the universal meaning of the real communism is really at first sight what seems to deny him/it: his/her limitation in Russia, that squeezes the eye to the secular panslavismo. Indeed amazing this ability of the communist idea appears to welcome in its breast and to transfigure everything; portentous it is her/it "virtue" of the ideology that he/she knows how to put in his/her context those that first they were raw demands of power and mere Reason of state. Lenin, to the more, it admitted some strategic retreat; Stalin, not even that.  

To universalismo made of peace and science, Stalin adds the idea of chosen nation completing a logical-historical miracle,: to strengthen of fact the particular one to ideologically strengthen the universal one. The party is by now an atheistic theocracy and the parties in West I am alone its longa manus. But it doesn't limit him to this. From the repertoire giacobino also emerges the cult of the almighty wish, able to transform the man and the world. In this the collectivization of the countries and the quinquennial plans find their ideal base, that makes them operations worthy of respectful admiration. Certainly - it will feel him often say then - they have their human costs, but which great renewing work of the human wish doesn't it have them? Rather, such costs reenter in the rationality of the court of the history, because the history is not able that to make plaza cleaning up of whom opposes to its conquests. And the enemy of the history - figure, as we know, essential for the ideology - it is there, well identifiable: Trotzsky before, the kulakis then; or better, the trotskysmo and the allied kulakis in an only conspiracy in attended that Hitler becomes part of the company, that naturally has a collective name: capitalism.  

A mixture springs of it made of peace, science, nation, wish and hate of the enemy. An intoxicating mixture, made still stronger from the due depression to the big crash of Wall street. A formidable cocktail, that makes to lose lucidity to the brains, that he/she anesthetizes them making them incapable of judgment.  

The terrible years thirty, the years of the Terror stalinianos, are prepared to become formidable years for the communist idea.  

 

7. the last ingredient: the antifascismo  

If the attraction of the communism is obviously motto and invincible for the activist, and if its ingredients also make hit on the intellectuals that cultivate one some form of socialism humanist, it is not however he/she anchors able to get one flood of his "bourgeois credibility". Not that - we know him/it - is totally of it deprived (you/he/she has not perhaps been delivered her by the culture of it damages the witness of the French revolution?), but does it still miss a grip in the concreteness of the history that constitutes incontestable test. It owes another ideological miracle to happen that allows the enemy juror of the capitalism and that superstructure of the capitalism that is the democracy (bourgeois, beninteso), to be recognized as allied and even defender of the capitalism and the democracy. And' a great too miracle and out of the course of any ideological stunt; to realize need of the history is had, that true, and of the two maximum terrestrial divinities of the history: Stalin and Hitler. In other words, the communism receives from the fascism (and it is clear that for the time being it doesn't distinguish him between fascism and Nazism) a new cultural dimension and politics, that it definitely consecrates the universality of it. Among the many crimes of the fascism - it suggests us Furet - there is also that to have given the licence of defender of the liberty to a regime that nothing had to envy him in terms of illibertà.  

And' to this point of the analysis that Furet is inserted in that fundamental seam storiografico that could be defined "comparativista", in how much it intends to read in parallel the ideological aspects and the historical developments of the great illiberal systems of the first halves the Nine hundred. And' an approach that has a history of decades in the non Italian culture, but that from us it substantially appears new and fundamentally unknown. A recent article of the Corriere della Sera remembered the delay in the translation or even her not publication of some fundamental works of this seam, besides the hostility with which you/they were welcomed. The censorship of the key concept of totalitarianism or his/her manipulation (everything more al could be spoken to the postwar period, after the non communist antifascismo had been largely marginalized, of fascist totalitarianism and Christian Democratic totalitarianism) it is eloquent sign of the cultural distorsion that is to the origin of many historical studies and also of many manuals, and from which are not immune yet. The same article commented with an affirmation that would be obvious even if it didn't reassume what has been a real scandal for the clergymen of the ideology for many years: "The comparative study of the totalitarian regimes - and of their apparatuses of terror - it is essential to the 900 understanding."  

And' this one key point also in didactic terms and it is therefore another element that the volume of Furet makes for the teacher of history extremely interesting.  

Also Furet considers irrinunciabile the concept of totalitarianism and shows that it among the two wars is employed already for pointing out a type of regime ever seen before, even if it doesn't have the precision that will give her the Arendt and the others on his/her wake. It is in short already you the perception that is seen there something with fascism and communism of radically new, inexplicable with the traditional categories storiografiche. The power of a despot but the power of a State it is not alone that checks every aspect of the individual and in partnership life. But is qual the method to follow for effecting this comparative analysis and therefore to determine with precision this novelty that unites the two contrasted systems? Furet believes that "the genealogical approach is more interesting than the structural comparison", because he/she remains more tied to the circumstances in which the regimes in matter are developed, allowing so to show the relationship between their nature and such circumstances. It sets therefore a lot of attention to the chronological datum, without however that it turns him into causal datum. This is what it differentiates in rather clean way the comparativismo of Furet from that of Nolte.  

Consequently to such formulation, Furet individualizes an origin, a mother of these brothers or stepbrothers that are the totalitarianisms. And' the Great war: "Bolshevism and fascism are born from the same ground the war. They move to the politics the teaching had in trench: the habit to the violence, the simplicity of the deep passions, the individual's subjugation to the collective, finally the bitterness of the useless sacrifices and betrayed" [PdU, p. 192]. From here it is possible to continue in the comparison taking in examination two couples: Lenin and Mussolini before, Stalin and Hitler then.  

Mussolini and Lenin are both rooted ones in the revolutionary socialism; the revolution is theirs I believe and it is him/it in its form more radical, to the point to be been able to not at all speak of neoblanquismo of the first Mussolini away from the Bolshevism. Furet doesn't read then the sudden passage of the same Mussolini from the pacifism to the interventismo as a denial of the revolutionary idea; contrarily he/she sees him/it, how the attempt of the future leader to introduce him in the furrow of the revolutionary tide of the Risorgimento, wanting so to conjugate revolution and national idea. This match, lowered in the war and from it forged it produces the fascism. And' therefore clear that Furet places to full title in that position storiografica, whose principal exponent is Renzo De Felice, that the fascism considers not as a reactionary, on the contrary revolutionary phenomenon. Also the enemy of the fascism I am the parliamentarism, the plutocratic democracies, the middle class; also for the fascism the history is made of conflicts, from strength's relationships between collective subjects and the state by law it is a coverage of the power. The war has taught to the fascism to interpret the politics as it fights without boundaries against the enemy and to cultivate the cult of the violence. What it wants to realize it is not at all a some return to the past, but - as the Bolshevism - the new man: it is everything projected to the future. He/she writes Furet: "The passions aroused by the fascist activist are not the same that it invokes the Bolshevism, but they are of the same nature. To the place of the social equality there is the country reinventata as a community utopia... As for the means, the recommended ones or used by the fascist movement they are already present in the Bolshevik arsenal: if they serve to the cause, they are all good ones" [PdU, p. 203]. The fascism, in other words, he/she wants to put not the revolution to the service of the universal one, but of the particular one, the nation; hands in gift to the right the revolution. This creation of a revolutionary right is what he/she explains the oneness of the fascism and whole what it connects him/it to the Leninism: their common faith is through the transformation of the world the action. more: the fascism, at least in the reading gentiliana, is set as a further revolution to that Marxist; more complete revolution, in how much more in degree to realize the coincidence between theory and routine, thought and action. What then the regime is imposed thanks to the parties "bourgeois" and has not succeeded in effecting a finished totalitarianism, seeking alliances and compromises, this is explainable with the specificity of the Italian situation. For what it concerns our discourse he/she remains that faith in the effectiveness "redeeming" of the revolution.  

But what Lenin and Mussolini preannounce is suited to conclusion by Stalin and by Hitler. A certain antifascismo doesn't know how to explain because these two men, and these two men, have created only such a repressive system to be caused the death of million of people. Not that the fact is fully explainable; he/she remains always also a puzzling demonstration of the mystery of the evil. He/she knows only how to stop himself/herself/themselves on how much it concerns Hitler remaining more clearly in embarrassment in front of Stalin. Yet the first one given by this point of view, and that is the homicide of mass, is given common, as they is in good part common the means with which you/he/she has been perpetrated. The 1984 of Orwell is reality many decades before.  

Both ideologies promise the salvation in the history. Hitler is - in the vision of Furet - "pure ideologist": it says and he/she writes from immediately what will do. The fact is that million of people give him their consent, because he/she knows them to represent in their fears and in their need to have an enemy. Also him as Mussolini, exalt the particular one; but its nationalism has something in more, the race, that becomes the latch to make the universal detail. The destruction of the omnipresent Jewish conspiracy and the predominance on the inferior races found, in the perspective nazionalsocialista, the universal role of the Aryan man. The racist universalismo ripercorre the schemes of the Bolshevik universalismo of class (stamping him as Jewish creation, as much as the western capitalism) and more it is contrasted to it, more it resembles him. They have a same enemy: the western democracies and their purposes last is determined by the ideology. You notion that more it opposes him to the universal one, the race, it becomes away toward an aberrant universal. This way Nazism and Bolshevism are trained to practice that attraction that only the universal one gives. In to contrast him, they feed him. But to go out victorious will be the communist idea of it.  

You now deals with understanding as. The crisis of the capitalism determined by the collapse of Wall contemporary street to the forced industrialization of the quinquennial plans of Stalin, had given already a certain advantage to the communist system. And' perhaps this the only moment in which he believes indeed that the collectivism is tightly also superior to the economy of market on the economic plan. But the latch that opens the doors to Stalin in the democratic world is the antifascismo. You opposition with Hitler is played in fact from him, tool the Comintern, cleverly combining two different interpretations of the Nazism and the fascism. The first one is that - we say - orthodox, that sees that is the fascism as a superstructure of the middle class, the actual form of the dominion of the middle class in some European countries; the second, less orthodox but a great deal more profit, is that that has the tendency to distinguish, in the non communist universe, diversified political subjectivity; in other words to otherwise judge the states capitalistic democrats and the fascist capitalistic states. And' clear that this last set problems of theoretical order all anything else other than negligible. But, being more correspondent to the reality, was lent better to the Realpolitik. And' therefore the passage to this from that to constitute a decisive historical turn. And' a passage determined by the international demands of USSR. Stalin has understood better than anyone else Hitler, you/he/she has understood that the Mein Kampf is a threat for the Soviet union. You/he/she can defend us pointing out him/it as I bombard principal or granting himself/herself/itself. From 1933 to 1939 it prevails the first line. On the other hand the antifascismo that distinguishes among fascist and not fascist profit returns to all the parties of the international one since it allows them to also assume the role of defenders of the country, really in the moment in which I/you/they are never organizations to the service of a foreign State. Not only: such vision of the antifascismo doesn't exclude that orthodox, in the sense that, also putting her/it in second floor, he/she doesn't abolish her/it. To it needs her/it, her he will always be able rispolverare. Here then the turn of the world VII Congresso of the international communist of August 1935: the politics of the popular Fronts is born. The illusion mantles him of nobility really when in its country the scythe epuratrice of the Great Guide instigates him.  

Only the racism hitleriano could add something, for contrast, to the pretension of democratic universalismo of the communist idea. You/he/she has opened the road that conducts to believe synonymous antifascismo and democracy. He/she writes Furet: "Thanks to the antifascismo the communists have purchased merit democratic without after all nothing to abandon of their convictions... You Russian revolution, thanks to the Nazism, you/he/she has found again the way to enrich his/her own universality really when it is more Asian that never" [PdU, pp. 258-259]. two pigeons with a fava: the acquisition of a democratic credibility ("demonizzando the communism and designating him/it as the enemy for excellence, Hitler it signals him/it to the friendship of the democrats; Hitler pushes USSR in the field of the liberties: it is a revolutionary democracy" [PdU, p. 272]) and a sort of coverage for his/her crimes: is not the struggle justified against perhaps the enemies of the revolution, against the hitlero-trotzskismo? you/he/she has not consecrated once and for all perhaps her Robespierre? The war of Spain gives substance to this new dimension of the communist idea; with it the "socialism in an only country" it is never internationalistic; the greatest repressive system of the world is the greatest strength of liberation; the fiercest enemy of the capitalistic bourgeois democracy purchases in it right of citizen.  

I want to again underline the ability of Furet to know how to explain, in way I believe unpublished or however with a rare esaustività, if not only, this extraordinary dowry of the communism to know how to present not himself/herself/themselves for what is, on the contrary for what says to be, and the anchor most unbelievable ability to make himself/herself/themselves believe from million of people. He/she succeeds in this eccentric coincidentia oppositorum because alive in two dimensions: over that in the real world, alive in the world of the ideas. And' real, but he/she wants to stay an utopia. It has then to hide his/her reality. The game succeeds in the best some ways, also helped to combine him some historical events. The ideological nature of the contemporary history is more evident than never. The society that derives from the philosophy of the routine is that that has more need of every other of the separation between theory and practice. Foreground exponents of the culture of French left have the opportunity, invited, to complete trips to the USSR to halves the years 30 and they return proclaiming that the 1789 torch has been taken by that great country. The people admirably conducted by Stalin is the state-of-the-art one of the humanity.  

Of all the ingredients of the Bolshevik universalismo the antifascismo is that preponderant now. It allows to maintain and to strengthen the communist identity and, at the same time, to furnish her/it of a democratic substance. This makes the measure than it has been put in danger by the accord Molotov-Ribbentrop of the '39. In an only time they risk to disappear two of his/her essential elements above listed, the peace and the same flag of the antifascismo. Not that the risk is not calculated and it doesn't even deal with an absolute novelty. The struggle against Europe of Versailles was 1933 anterior Stalinist repertoire part and Weimar it was also fallen for the struggle against the Social Democracy from the communists. And' also always, nevertheless, a traumatic event highly for the communist idea. And a problem is very more for Stalin that for Hitler. In this moment the reality of the relationships of strength seems to unmask every ideological superstructure; the particular one (the Reason of state) it seems to overwhelm the universal one; years of struggle receive a scorching denial. But it doesn't need to ever underestimate the immense resources of the greatest atheistic faith appearance on the face of the earth. There is disbandment, disorientation in the western communists; it doesn't stay theirs that to minimize the fact. It also tries us because he/she is not known about the existence of the secret protocol yet, real pact of division of Poland and the east. the verb of the Great Guide Finally arrives. Furet takes back here documents riguardanti the relationships among the PCF and USSR published only in 1993. Stalin doesn't do what the interpretation to exhume that we have defined orthodox of the fascism: the war is a war among capitalistic countries and therefore door to their weakening; insofar Hitler objectively favors the Soviet revolution. The universalismo is reestablished, faith is safe. He/she writes Furet: "Yet nothing gives the idea of the extraordinary discipline, indeed only in the history of the humanity, of a political movement so multinational as the communism, better of the way in which in few weeks the things that Stalin had told Dimitrov on September 7 have become the universal breviary of the movement. In the immediate adhesion of a so vast militant army to an opposite politics to that of once there is something that riempie the imagination of a sense of greatness and terror. The communist parties record all over the world the directive of the Comintern of September 9 against the imperialistic war, putting her/it into effect" [PdU, p. 368]. Also after the division of the east, faith is safe the believers. But in the "sympathizers" he/she is shaken. The democratic credibility conquered to hits of antifascismo is lost. The apparatus of the international communism withstands, the movement staggers, the well prepared first public opinion comes, even if with some regret, less.  

Now two great totalitarianisms are also symmetrical in the time and in the space. He/she knows something Poland, where the massacres west Nazi are contemporary to those communist to east. For the time being, story they are sustained to in the destruction of Europe of Versailles. Stalin is in an ambiguous and difficult position however, because he knows that the Mein Kampf is not for Hitler an exercise of bad rhetoric and because the surrender of France has modified the equilibriums. Nevertheless, as the operation is known Barbarossa it gathers him/it so of surprised to make him/it incapable to psychologically react, first still that militarily, for different days. What, if crowned by success, you/he/she would have been able to decree the death of the communist idea for the defeat of his/her generating center, the Soviet union, it becomes what the ridàs an unexpected vigor and a renewed credibility. June 22 nd 1941, the beginning of a boundless tragedy for the Russian people, is, for tragic irony of the history, the day of the resurrection of the idea. How much starts in August of the '39 are only now an ugly parenthesis to forget as soon as possible; and in fact soon you/he/she will be forgotten or made to forget. The weariness universality that had succeeded in maintaining in the "hard and pure", he reinvigorates, it returns - we say - to be "true". what had brought her in dowry the antifascismo, and that it irremediably seemed lost, it is, without the least effort (it says Furet: "without even not having need to want him/it") again to disposition. "You/he/she has thought about all Hitler" [PdU, p. 380]. You war nazionalsocialista assumes an universal dimension; who is him against, for choice or for necessity, it has to put on to the same level. Stalin, without realizing of it, it is again found by the part of the democracy, from the part of the enemies and the victims, when you/he/she had been up to the day friend and executioner before.  

What, after all, reality is stronger than the ideology, you/he/she is shown by the fact that the ideological virginity, repurchased really thanks to that lover that had so brutally made her lose, show not to have way out if not contaminating himself/herself/itself with a feeling that can twist her/it because part of the old repertoire prerivoluzionario: the nationalism. The particular one, in the famous appeal to the country of Stalin of July 3, it goes to help of the universal one. Only the depth Russian patriotism can give the energies to save the country; and ideology is safe only if the country saves him. The "double channel" on which stirs the communist idea you/he/she is restored and the contrary ones can keep on subsisting without succumbs what has existence solo theoretical; rather, the ideological channel decants in itself what is able from the channel of the historical reality; and what is not able does him/it disappear. The fact is that it is able very more this time risucchiare than you/he/she could not do before. The sacrifice is enormous, Stalingrado is event of decisive importance for the fates of the war, the contribution to the defeat of the Nazism it is fundamental.  

A world war had created the conditions for the victory of the Bolshevism; another world war brings him/it to the footlight of the history. And' now stronger than never, ideologically and politically. And' strong and the luxury allows him to represent the liberty, just now that the power of Stalin is still more absolute. Russian people has saved himself and Europe from the Nazism but not from the communism. Contrarily it is, so increased the power of the Soviet union by to allow to compete her with USA. And if the comparison cannot hold up in material terms, it is instead to advantage of USSR in ideal terms. 

What has of good person, and is not the antifascismo, represented that is already to the pure state by the communist idea? He/she returns with a strength of persuasion enormously the identification, that doesn't have historical comparison in the war stories increased, true antifascismo=comunismo, and that is the approach true democracy-communism. If for well twice in the turn of about ten years one of the most repressive systems ever existed the licence of democrat or quantomeno are earned of I don't cross to the democracy, and if this has happened thanks to the opposition to a system with which shared as after all he/she was thought, it needs that, for the communist idea, the fascism continues in one some way to exist for being able to live of it of income. It needs to do a permanent danger of it, a constant enemy, almost a wicked metaphysical essence, the quintessence of the evil of the history, which after all to also attribute his/her own crimes, as if his were not enough. That that had been a secular faith for many, in way entirely analogous to the faith in the communism, becomes also taboo for the historical treatment: there is not more nothing to be said of different from the official historiography, if he/she is not wanted to be stamped of criptofascismo. The history is already writing.  

But the fact is that the end of the fascism is not (unfortunately) the end of the secular faiths. One have remained of it, only triumphant. The history, perhaps for the first time, it seems to confirm the ideology that already from one century it knew the meaning and the direction of it. Thin to you/he/she had now persisted (the history) not to obey to his/her laws. Now it finally appears convinced. You delay better that never. The charm of the idea, that is a pendulum that oscillates between the affirmation of the wish and the necessity of the science, turns toward the necessity.  

 

8. the decline  

The avenue of the sunset starts before the expectation for the triumphant idea. You/he/she has known how to unite, winning the Nazism, nation and revolution, particular and universal, that is - it confirms Furet - the two great political passions of the democracy of the XX century. But really victory brings with itself the germs of a new and sharp contrast between idea and reality. Simplifying, you/he/she can be said that the idea, more and more universal and attractive, it establishes him in western Europe, while reality shows its hard face in oriental Europe.  

The west begins to recover himself/herself/themselves and is prepared to flourish with the money and the American protection; yet a wide slice of the intellectual world doesn't marry the American dream, that also has one ability of his of attraction and one universalismo of his. It is not alone - as him it is few above noticed - for the refusal of the capitalism. Furet adds another reason that the punishment is worth to underline, and that is the fact that American idealism is, despite everything, too soaked with Christianity to be approved from the children of a revolution, what that French is, that wants to replace the Christian faith with the faith "democratic". You American democracy has a different genetic code, certain not radically different, but enough not to arouse the same enthusiasms "religious" that it arouses the politics instead as you/he/she is thought and lived beginning from the French revolution. The politics, in the horizon mental and psychological U.S. citizen, is more, for so to say, to his/her place, you/he/she is not everything, you/he/she has not performed Messianic. Communist idea has all the requisite instead to be depositary of the French revolutionary inheritance.  

The problem is that its universality is concretized in the creation of an empire. For which motive it is a problem? Because in an universal and national empire they are not more compatible; or I am better it for the one who he/she doesn't live in the empire and you/he/she can keep then on flying in the sky of the idea,; they are not able however to be him/it for the one whom is yes communist, but in the empire us alive. The universality gotten with the weapons doesn't fit with the universality of the idea. In this sense - according to Furet - the tear of Tito, strong of the results gotten on the ground against the Nazism, it has a great symbolic value: idea doesn't have an only country anymore. And' a capital event, because it marks the beginning of the pressure of the reality on the idea. it doesn't need nevertheless to forget that the clash happens in name of the idea: "The discourse antisovietico in Soviet language will constitute after Tito a real kind in the repertoire of the revolutionary passion" [PdU, p. 456].  

If in the empire idea starts to go against herself and is difficult to reconcile the incompatible one more and more, out of the empire it, really because you/he/she is not applied, alive years of shine, confirming that the best of itself gives how much more it is distant from its realization. In France and in Italy you/he/she has culturally monopolized the democratic field: who is hostile to the communism you/he/she cannot be a sincere democrat and a sincere antifascist. More: aversion to the communism means hostility nientemeno that to the course of the history; and as you/he/she can be been indulgent with whom opposes to the History? Doesn't such a tall goal perhaps justify the use of every mean? Doesn't it make him/it moral rather? This way the violences and the repressions are justified, also those that still have to be orders. The revolution is good for essence. Little cares that who experiments the existence of it doesn't see the goodness of it. The cold war doesn't notch the integrity of the idea. Rather, in that context the cruciform maccartista strengthens her/it, in how much it makes to pass for instrumental every critical position. That that I have called "pressure of the reality on the idea" it does more and more him heavy and it records a decisive turn with the death of Stalin. Furet immediately shows the paradox of a system that scientifically introduces him as founded, and that therefore you/he/she cannot depend on an individual, and that nevertheless it warns to have suffered only an irreparable impairment with the loss of a man. Esemplificativo is the I dismay of the young Gorbacev the day of the death of Stalin confessed to Arrigo Levi in the recent telecast. Stalin has not predisposed his/her succession. Are The struggles to get already her/it by itself "a hard hit to the Soviet mythology". But as this inheritance you/he/she can be picked up remaining bolscevichi? How an action termidoriana can be taken place without resulting in a Termidoro? This seems indeed the quadrature of the circle. The poliformità of the idea cannot bear so much. And it starts to scricchiolare. The '53 become - to notice of Furet - prefigurazione of the collapse of trentasei years later: the report of the errors weakens the authority of the parties brothers and the power on them of that Soviet.  

But it is the secret relationship of Kruscev that upsets the status of the idea. And' together however the extreme attempt to save her/it. It upsets her, because the report originates from the heart of the communist world and not from him "imperialists"; it saves her/it (or it tries to do him/it) because, acting in contropiede, it makes still the more universal idea in how much the critical monopoly attributes even her: the criticism of the idea can be only self-criticism. Stalin, with the "cult of the personality", you/he/she has betrayed Lenin; wish has suffocated the science. The return to Lenin, maintaining the structures of the regime staliniano, a stunt it appears destined to be successful. The serious fact, however, is that the ingredients of the idea, until now miraculously integrated, they begin to appear incompatible. He/she writes Furet: "Stalin has been too much to the center of the communist movement because is simply possible to clear him of it... his/her heirs, companions or you give birth unfaithful, you/they cannot kill him/it without making himself/herself/themselves some evil" [PdU, p. 506]. to Strike the man without striking the idea is lately an impossible operation. The distance among idea and reality, that it is the key of the success of the communism, is annulled in the report of Stalin; the category of the "cult of the personality", over how fragile, it is incapable to welcome everything the negative for which has been coined. Is it perhaps able the people leader of the History to fall victim of an any tyrant?  

Idea starts to slowly melt himself/herself/themselves: he/she doesn't succeed in holding him distant from the reality anymore. It tries to recycle him with a new ingredient, the destalinizzazione, but it gets the opposite effect: from the outskirts of the empire the rebellions and the insurrections start. Its universality progressively comes less: Budapest shows that self-criticism is not autoriforma. The communist world, in name of the idea, he divides. For how much in West you persist him to believe her/it vital it is an as a dead hand walking, walking still for many years and in a lot of minds, but also always dead.  

The relationship Kruscev doesn't upset the system but the idea; to maintain a Stalinist system goes against the Stalinism. There are not therefore deep breakups in the Soviet politics. Some opposition but the solo fact is not born to put an end to the terror of mass it arouses the sense that a new season he is opening. Furet pushes him to say that Soviet power is less totalitarian, because the destalinizzazione needs a small opening of liberty for the intelligentsia. it doesn't mean certain that there am freedom of speech - it testifies him/it to it "scandal Pasternak" -, but, if nothing else, Pasternak is still alive, and it is not a meaningless progress. It begins the movement - all anything else other than unitary and compact - of the dissidents. The same word tells him/it: those people who have different ideas. Just what idea cannot bear. This way, not having the right anymore to the pre-emptive justification of all of this that is taken place in his/her name, the ideology it becomes the coverage to the power of a caste (the apparatus); and more it strengthens him/it, less it is able of to be still convincing. We are to the age of Breznev. It concludes Furet: "It begins in West the funeral of the communist idea, that will last thirty years. Sarà followed by an immense crowd in tears. To the procession they will participate even the young generations, looking for here and there of to make to appear him/it as a rebirth" [PdU, p. 542].  

Communist idea would need new air, to release himself/herself/themselves from the Russian territory, his/her fortune, but now his/her cemetery. It tries to recycle him as it conceives universal through the process of decolonization, but in so distant and complex situations it waters his/her identity; it seems to rejuvenate with Mao, but the Maoism succeeds to the more to seduce only clasped student circles (it is a "I tread antisovietico of the sovietismo", a' "illusion on the illusion" [PdU, p. 545]); a Latin face is given with Castro and the "That", but it loses in purity and austerity to offer utopias pauperistiche to the children of the rich westerners. Nothing of this will succeed to resuscitarla. The student confrontation contains all these versions of the idea, but "the imagination to the power" tool of report of the way of bourgeois life makes only her; you/he/she cannot be positive model anymore.  

The communist parties try to save the savable one: it opens the phase of the I distinguish, of the "it is true, but", of the "however Russia has made giant footsteps with the inevitable distorsions", of the "positive budget globally", etc. he/she wants you to give the message that the communism is reformable, that a human face can have. The level of the utopia lowers, in how much it jeopardizes him with principles "bourgeois": the communism can be amended. What is inadmissible, for a true democrat, it is to be anticommunist. Furet doesn't speak of it but the 1981 Henry Berlinguer affirmation that it declared "exhausted the inclined propulsiva of the revolution of October" it plays, from a part as funeral prayer of the idea, but, from the other as reaffirmation of the sense of the history, what you/he/she has been pointed out by that fact however. And' this that Furet means: the things have gone as they have gone and the trust in the realizzabilità of the idea comes less with the sclerosis of its country of election; but it doesn't come I lead the certainty that the meaning of the history has been from it, also with betrayals and errors, disclosed. Who doesn't recognize him/it nientemeno it is set that against the History.  

You/he/she can be said that to this point it knows a new possibility of universality, embodied by many heirs of the '68; that constituted by the prohibition to be anticommunist, as the communism - by now anything means - it points out the direction of the progress. This condition allows - last (perhaps) "miracle" ideological-historical - to be from the part of the revolution and at the same time perfectly integrated in the system. He/she writes Furet: "The most consistent inheritance of the facts happened to the Sorbona, to the free university in Berlin, to the superior normal School in Pisa or to Oxford, it is not neither the Maoism, neither the castrate-guevarismo, ephemeral stars of one day but a new bourgeois progressivism. The ex sessantottinis have immediately reconciled with the market, with the publicity, with the society of the consumptions in which as fishes often swim in the sea, as if you/they had reported the tare of it to adapt better himself/herself/themselves. But also in their social insertion they intend to preserve the intellectual benefits of the idea of revolution" [PdU, p. 550]. Once mores idea can become universal estranging himself/herself/itself from the reality. Reduced to that only prescription to be able to continue to point out the sense of the history, hardly she recognizes him and he transforms, with the time, in "progressivism". This makes possible, in the meantime, the soft scaricamento of the Soviet myth and the possibility of new versions of the revolution, more incompatible with the human rights. And', this last, a difficult operation rather, because it deals with defending through the idea what it has always stamped as bourgeois lies. Gorbacev is the emblem of such difficulty, that discloses well soon him as impossibility. The human communism seems to install him in the country of October; Gorbacev doesn't want to bury the idea, but to give her new life. It however, able to survive and also to flourish in an unbelievable number of historical situations, cannot really cohabit with the liberty. If it tries to do him/it, of it doesn't remain "other if not what has destroyed" [PdU, p. 558]: the communism dies for inside decomposition. From the revolution to the involution. And' a death dessert, if compared at the traumatic end of the other totalitarian ideologies of this century.  

It concludes Furet: "And' as him same to ever close him the greatest open road in fact of social happiness to the imagination of the modern man" [PdU, p. 559]. But it adds, immediately later, that this failure doesn't concern only the believers or the sympathizers of the idea. it Concerns somehow everybody because it sets in discussion the existence of an immanent sense of the history. Someone comes even to speak of end of the history. The fact is that - as above noticed - in the XIX century the history had taken the place of God. Done die with the ideologies this idol, what does he/she remain? Furet doesn't believe that can be borne for a long time this situation. It belongs to the democracy the demand of a different society. Communist idea could also return in different forms. The fact remains that in this epoch ideological post only dominant ideology is the nihilism.  

 

 

 

UNDERLINES FOR THE DIDACTICS IT IS THE PLANNING  

" If "nobody can write the history of the XX century equally in which would write the history of any other epoch", then nobody can teach the history of the XX century equally in which would teach the history of any other epoch. For two motives: 1) the chronological proximity personally involves: this, that can be a danger (of ideological distorsion), you/he/she can become a resource. You can profitably make lever, to arouse interest or to introduce a matter, on the memory (of the elderly ones, of whom has had the opportunity of living in first person done recent, etc.), valorizing in such way the dimension of the testimony; documentary material of different nature can be employed (the daily paper, the magazines, the photos, the tapes...); 2) the history of our century has one oneness of his: it is not legible if not through a new and deep ermeneutica.  

" The necessary job of analysis doesn't have to exhaust the teaching; it is as many necessary the synthesis. The student has to be able to understand what the carrying lines of the history of the XX are century and its connections with the preceding centuries.  

" "The radically new character of the contemporary history is to be philosophical history". In to teach the Nine hundred history it is essential the reference to the philosophy. From Hegel in before the history it is more than the history: it is the to make himself/herself/themselves of the absolute one. Her totalitarian ideologies are somehow debtors of the hegelismo. What is unique in the history of the XX century it is not the need of salvation of the man but the based routine on the idea that the answer to it is the history; particularly, the subject prince of the history: the State.  

" The comparative approach to the two (or three) great totalitarian systems you/he/she is historically founded and more exhaustive than other approaches. The category of totalitarianism is by now irrinunciabile. The comparison can be type genetic structural e/o. This approach has the advantage both of the analysis and of the synthesis.  

The dialectics between totalitarianism and democracy must " also be focused, to avoid both the indifferentismo (the two doesn't have in fact the same nature) both it "schematismo astorico" (also in the democratic system you/they can be present the germs of the totalitarianism, even in unpublished forms;   possible perci - the history shows him/it - the passage from the democracy to the totalitarianism). In this way the student becomes aware of the value and of the risks of the democracy.  

" The treatment and the understanding of the history of the idea and the communist regimes it is late objectively. Without filling him/it the Nine hundred teaching it is monco and deformed. Communist idea has also conditioned in depth our national culture and our historical self-awareness. 

 

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LEFT HEROES 

dollied of comunist characters  more known object of unjustified cult 

  

  

ERNESTO "CHE" GUEVARA 

Ernesto Guevara is said the "CHE", for his habit to pronounce this brief word in mean to every discourse of his, a kind of that is. 

Should The history be objective you don't believe? In reality some aspects of the contemporary History come for a long time distorted and suited for the ideological convictions of whom treats them. In a country as ours that is defined Antifascist (but not evidently Anticommunist...) certain aspects "uncomfortable" of the Communism they are ignored for a long time. The History is full of it: the massacres of the Foibes, the massacres of the 20.000 Italian soldiers in the Gulags Sovietici on order of Togliatti etc. 

I want to begin the treatment of these events from what is me more darling: the myth of the "CHE". You history of Ernesto Guevara perhaps represents the greatest historical forgery ever verified him. All know the history "official" of Guevara. Who has felt never to speak of the "revolutionary poet? " Of the "physician idealist"? But who of you it knows the real deeds of this "hero?"  

In the 1956 Guevara it knows Castro in Mexico and it decides to unite himself to his group of escaped Cuban to upset the government of Batiste. Named commander of a column it immediately makes him notice for his hardness: a boy, guerrillero of his unity, was immediately shot for having stolen food. 

Once upset the government of Batiste, which would like to impose from immediately a communist revolution, but it ends with to authentically encounter himself/herself/themselves with some companions of his of weapons democrats. Theater submitted him the I entrust of attorney in the jail of the Cabana and it is him to decide the questions of grace. Under his/her control that jail became theater of numerous executions, ex-companions of weapons democrats. 

Not everybody knows that the "field of job" of Guahana (during the second world war they had other names...) you/he/she was founded on express train desire that That.  Doesn't it seem you to see in Ernesto CHE Guevara the same hate that there was in characters as Himmler? 

 To make to understand you what "good" feelings animated this symbol with which to decorate the shirts and flags quotes its will in which he praises " l 'hate that the man makes an effectiveness, violent, selective and cold car to kill."  

Are they these the words of an idealist? Of a friend of the people? If him, which people? Only who was of accord with him? 

Whether not to remember that one of the friends and students of which has been Dèsirè Kabila, actual dictator of Congo, more times accused for the massacre of Civilians! Don't speak of the hypocrisy proper of Guevara (as after all of many others as him...). While the mouth of beautiful words was filled on as him broke up the money, lived in a district residential de you Havana! And' easy to ask to the people to make sacrifices when him for first it didn't do them. 

I now ask you: how does it do him to take as example a person this way? Possible that there are thousand of person (probably unaware of the truth) that they show off shirts with his face???? In those flags and shirts there is an only corrected thing: the color. Red as the blood that has been shed for his/her guilt. All these facts are drawn by the "black Book of the communism." 

  

  

LENIN NIKOLAY 

  

GUILTY OF GENOCIDE. 

Idol, one of the fathers of the communism, still today osannato from the red. ASSASSIN! 

Since 1920 his "decosacchizzazione" it broadly corresponds to the definition of genocide: a whole population to strong territorial base, the cosacchis, were exterminated in how much such, the men were shot, the women, the old ones and the deported children, the countries shaved to the ground or delivered not cosacchi to new occupants. 

August 10 th 1918. Telegram of Lenin to the executive Committee of the Soviet of Penza. 

"Companions! The insurrection of the kulaks in your districts has to be smothered without pity. The affairs of the whole revolution demand him/it, because by now the final battle starts against everywhere the kulaks. It needs to give an example. 1) to hang (and I say to hang so that all sees) not less than 1000 kulak, ricconi, known succhiasague 2) to Publish its names 3) to Appropriate some wheat. You do so so that all sees him/it and trembles and thinks: these kill and they will continue to kill the kulaks. You telegraph that you have received and performed these instructions. Your Lenin. 

  

  

  STALIN JOSIF 

GUILTY OF GENOCIDE  

The example to be followed for years, then slowly disowned but from some anchor loved. ASSASSIN!!  

The creator of the greatest concentration camps of every time, the GULAGs, greater brothers of the lagers. Provisional budget and surely too limited of the various aspects of the repressive activity of this tyrant:  

" 6 million corpses following the 32-33 famine, an imputable catastrophe to the politics of forced collettivazione and robbery of the picked colcosianis from the State  

" 720.000 executions, of which over 680.000 only in the years 37-38, definite at the end of a parody of trial from a special juridical organism of the GPU-NKVD  

" 300.000 deaths attested in the fields among the '34 and the '40, without counting the period '30 - '33 and the number of how much they died among the moment of the I arrest and that of the registration in the fields  

" around 600.000 deaths attested among deported, "dispersed" and special farmers  

" around 2.200.000 displaced persons and evacuees  

" among the '34 and the '41 a total provisional of entries in the gulags of 7 million people  

they " miss data around the repressions on German soldiers, Italians and Polish  

Stalin, signature personally the list of the thousand of people to be shot. Under the great Terror in 14 months 1.800.000 people are arrested and 690.000 murder.  

  

  

MAO 

GUILTY OF GENOCIDE  

The founder of the communist dictators in the East, great symbol of "good government" for the red followers. ASSASSIN!!  

Testimony of a Chinese student around a 26-07-66 episode  

"Some classmates raced verse of us howling: "And' begun the struggle! - I threw Me next to the scholastic building, I saw some teachers, 40 or 50 in everything, prepared in file, the head and the face sprinkled of black ink. I hung to the neck they brought some poster with writings type - reactionary academic authority -, - hostile of class -, - supporting of the capitalistic street -, - corrupt ringleader -. Every poster was marked with a red cross, which it gave the air of prisoners to the teachers death row inmates waiting for the execution. they also Had them suspended around the neck of the buckets filled with stones. They started begging Mao of "to forgive their crimes". You scene left me without breath and I felt me to turn pale. They followed barrel and tortures. I had not seen before never similar tortures: they was given by to eat bugs; electric shake were submitted to; he/she was forced them to put on in knee on the broken glasses. The first ones to grab some batons and to torture they were of the brutes of the school: children of the pictures of the Party and officers of the army. Emboldened by the provokers, the other students howled to them it turns: - Beat you them -. And they jumped I set to the teachers leading fists and kicks. The hit + hard for me it was teacher Chen Kuteh's murder, for which I fed affection and respect. The teacher Chen, that had + of 60 years and it suffered from hypertension, you/he/she was left for 3 hours under the sun in summer and then dragged again to the close-up of a scholastic building and then under and during the journey you/he/she was taken to fists and stricken with the handle of a broom. They took some bamboo poles with which you/they kept on striking him/it; the teacher fainted + turned but they made him gain back the senses throwing him some frozen water in face. He/she didn't succeed in stirring and he/she asked to be killed. They went on for 6 hours, you/he/she was sodomized, tortured and crushed more times. Then it died. The physician of the school came. It declared that it was dead following tortures. After numerous tortures, warnings and beatings the doctor ended up writing on the certificate of death that the death was due to a sudden attack of hypertension caused by the big heat."  

Testimony of a red Watch, then quattordicenne, around that period:  

"We were young and fanatical. We believed that the president Mao was great, that had the truth, that pits the truth. I believed in what said Mao. And I believed that there were some reasons in the cultural Revolution. We thought about being of the renovators and that we would have been able to resolve whatever problem all the problems of the society. We have mistaken all, we have killed, tortured and stolen for something useless and empty. We have done something terrible. 

  

  

I CASTRATE FIDEL 

GUILTY OF FEROCIOUS IT IS SYSTEMATIC ASSASSINS.   

The hardness of the penitentiary regime of Cuba is not verifiable from any part. Political adversaries and held common they live (if this is life!) under conditions to a little horrible dir, without possibility of liberty in the future.  

Here is a story of a watch of the penitentiary building of the Cabana.  

"The violence of the penitentiary regime struck both the political prisoners is those convicts for common crimes. You began with the endless questionings conducted by the "Departemento technical de investigaciones (DTI) ", the sections entrusted of the investigations. The DTI resorted to the isolation and exploited the phobias of the prisoners: a woman that was afraid of the bugs was for example, confined in a cell infested of cockroaches. The DTI made violent physical pressures: there were imprisoned forced to climb the staircases putting on shoes ballasted of lead and, once in top, you/they were thrown again down. To the physical torture that psychological was added, often follows also from a medical point of view; to hold wake the prisoners us keepers used the pentothal and other drugs. In the hospital of Mazzora the electroshocks were practised to repressive purpose without any limit. The keepers used the dogs of watch and they improvised pretenses executions; in the disciplinary cells there were neither water nor electricity; if he/she was wanted to depersonalize a prisoner it was held him/it confined in the cell of isolation. "  

Since to Cuba responsibility is considered collective, the punishment it is him/it the same. You has so another type of pressure: the relatives of the pagan prisoner socially his/her political appointment; their children cannot access the university and their joined pardon the job.  

From 1959 to today over 100.000 Cubans you/they have experimented the fields of job, the jails or the open fronts and you have been been shot since 15.000 to the 17.000 people.  

Castro, a tyrant that seems out of the time, in front of the failures of his/her regime and to the difficulties that he/she meets Cuba, still in 1994 it declared to prefer the death rather than to abdicate the revolution. Which price will you/they still have to pay the Cubans to satisfy his/her pride?  

  

  

Tito 

Josip Broz (Kumrovec, Croazia 1892 - Lubiana 1980) better known with the nickname of Marshal Tito, is the principal person responsible of the genocide of million of people! Yet, today you/he/she is remembered as a patriot as a person by to imitate. In 1980, to his/her funerals, besides the Italian authorities, there were the tallest positions of the countries middle world. This man, after being him stained of horrendous crimes, you/he/she has been interred with all the possible honors spettanti to a head of State. Unfortunately you/he/she is not remembered for what has been in reality: a criminal of war!  

From May 3 rd 1945, for three days and three nights, marshal Tito's troops, avid of blood, they instigated him, with unheard of violence, against those people that, for a long time you/they had shown feelings of italianità. To Field of Mars, to Cosala, to Tersatto, along the benches of the I bring, in Oberdan plaza, in avenue Italy, the dead bodies were piled up and they didn't have burial. In the jails towns and in the stanzonis of the old Police headquarters, in the schools of Cambieri plaza, hundreds of imprisoned they attended to know his/her own fate, without some worried him about to cover it shouts her of the questioned in the offices of Police, turned to rooms of torture. Other hundred men and women, of every class and of every age, they simply faded away in the nothing. Forever. They were the "desaparecidos". The adversaries immediately to be put to silence are individualized in the autonomists, that is those people who dreamt a free State; to the furious attacks of press conducted by her/it "Voice of the People" a hard persecution was accompanied, that already in the night between 3 and on May 4 it brought the killing of Matteo Biasich and Joseph Sincich, foreground characters of the old movement zanelliano, already 1921 Constituent flood members. Together with the autonomists, in the same days and then still in the months that will come, they also found the death to River some exponents of the CLN and other members of the Italian Resistance, among which the known antifascist Angel Adam, mazziniano, legionary from the confinement of Ventotene and from the Nazi lager of Dachau according to a guideline that also finds comparison to Trieste and Gorizia, where to venir aimed at by the Yugoslav political Police, they are particularly the men of the Committee of national liberation. The choice appears entirely consequent, from the moment that on the political plan the CLN is directly a competitive organization in comparison to those official, of which it is well able to contest the exclusive rappresentatività of the Italian antifascists. Insofar, for the titinis, it appears as the most dangerous adversary, both because potentially in degree to become the point of reference of the population of Italian feelings, both as the possible acceptance of his/her pretensions of recognition, what legitimate expression of the Italian Resistance, would make to fall one of the principal pillars on which the building of the popular powers holds up him. But the fury instigated him with ferocity towards the exponents of the italianità town. The two senators of River, Riccardo Gigante and Icilio Bacci and hundreds of men and women were killed, immediately of every class and of every age, they simply died for the solo fact to be Italian. Over five hundred fiumani you/they were hung, shot, strangled, drowned. Others incarcerated. Of the displaced persons he/she was not known anything. They immediately looked for the ex legionaries dannunziani, the irredentists of the first world war, the cripples, the officers, the decorated ones and the ex fighters. Adolfo Landriani was the custodian of the garden of Verdi plaza it was not Fiumano, but you/he/she had come to River with the Game ones and for his/her small stature all they called him/it "maresciallino". they closed him/it in a cell and they jumped him I set in four or five, imposing to shout him with them "Yugoslavia Lives! ". Him, also so small, it was straightened on the point of the feet, it lifted the head in that heap of beasts, and it howled with the whole breath that had in body: "Italy lives! ". they lifted him/it, as a doll of roll, beat then it against the ceiling, more times, with wild violence and him every time: "Italy lives! Italy Lives! " more and more weak, more and more out, until the cry it didn't become a whisper, until the full mouth of blood he/she was not closed forever him. Someone died more simply, to have furled in Dante plaza the Yugoslav flag. The 16 October of 1945, a boy, Joseph Librio, gave all of his/her diciott'annis, also to remove the symbol of a painful conquest. They found later it the day, among the ruins of the dock Rapier, killed with different hits of gun. In the jail of River, October 9 th 1945, Stephen Petris wrote his/her will on the white sheets of the "Imitation of Christ."   

This is the will of a man, death row inmate from the Slavic communists because was fierce to be Italian!  

... Not to cry for me. I have not felt so strongly never as in this night of attended, that is the last of my life. You know that I die for Italy. we are thousand of Italians, thrown in the foibes, slaughtered and massacred, deported in Croazia daily mowed by the hate, from the hunger, from the illnesses, with the throat cut iniquitously. Opens the eyes Italians and dot their looks toward this tortured earth istriana that is and it will be Italian. If the Tricolor of Italy will return, as I hopes, to also wave on my Cherso, kiss him/it for me, together with my children. Tomorrow they will kill me. They won't kill my spirit, neither my faith. I will serenely go to the death and as my last thought it will be turned to God that will welcome me and to you, that I leave, so my cry, strong, stronger than the gusts of the machine guns, it will be: Italy lives! ".  

To none of these heroes, simple and unknown, Italy will grant a medal to the memory. 

  

The fifties to Trieste. 

While the students went down in plaza for Italian Trieste to the beginning of the fifties, it gave the life for the Country the last of the unredeemed fiumanis: Leonardo Manzi.  

Leonardo Manzi as other young people as him, had had to abandon River. It died from fugitive to Trieste November 6 th 1953, killed by the civil Police (paid by the English) on the church square of the church of S. Antonio. In his/her hands it tightened strong a Tricolor. In his/her pockets they found, reddened of blood, it enrolls her/it of the "Young Italy."   

 

 

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SOURCES: 

" Internet (* * *) 

Black " book Of the Communism (* * * * *) 

" digilander.libero.it/zagorjr/orroricomunismo.htm (* * * *) 

" Other sites internet