Since the first period of spontaneous emigration, when press freedom still existed in Italy, numerous and various anti-fascist periodicals began to appear abroad. Voce Socialista was published only in Paris; Claim (anarchist); Riscossa (communist); Flock bells (communist); there were also, in the main emigration centers, local subversive newspapers, supported by the means of the colonies that emigrated at the time of the exceptional laws of Crispi or Pelloux; such as the anarchists Awakening of Geneva, Gathering of Refractories and Hammer of New York, the Socialists The Word of New York and Corriere del Popolo of San Francisco, etc. At first in 1926 an “aventiniano” newspaper was attempted, in which Carlo Prato, tìiuseppe Donati, Oddino Morgari, Mario Pistocchi. The newspaper, which had short and ephemeral popularity due to the same attacks to which the fascist press made it, was not supported by adequate moral means or materials and was suppressed by the French government after it had fallen into the hands of Fascist police officers.
To the emigration which took place before 1926 of individual personalities (FS Nitti, C. Sforza, Don L. Sturzo, G. Amendola, G. Donati, P. Gobetti, G. Salvemini, A. Tarchiani, A. De Ambris, etc.) followed by that of entire party states (autumn 1926 and early 1927: F. Turati, C. Treves, B. Buozzi, P. Nenni, Coccia, G. Saragat, E. Modigliani socialisti; C. Facchinetti, E. Chiesa, F. Schiavetti republicans), with the establishment of the totalitarian dictatorship. The anti-fascist emigration therefore began to form its own political organization. Parties are reconstituted abroad (maximalist socialist, unitary socialist, republican; we will discuss the communists separately); they reach a certain number of members, which for the most part is around ten thousand units; is formed, according to the French model, a “league of human rights” which protects political emigrants, even independent ones, against the authorities. All these entities organized, in 1927, in Nérac (Lot-et-Garonne), a convention, in which the “anti-fascist concentration” was founded, whose organ, La Libertà, came out on 1 May 1927. The anti-fascist concentration is, in a certain sense, the continuation of the Aventine. It lacks the popular party which is represented abroad only by some personalities (Sturzo, Donati, E. Ferrari) but which the organizations of Catholic emigrants and moderate liberal parties do not belong to. The concentration is extremely cautious and takes a position on the institutional problem in favor of the republic only since 1928. in 1927, in Nérac (Lot-et-Garonne), a convention, in which the “anti-fascist concentration” was founded, whose organ, La Libertà, came out on 1 May 1927. The anti-fascist concentration is, in a certain sense, the continuation of the Aventine. It lacks the popular party which is represented abroad only by some personalities (Sturzo, Donati, E. Ferrari) but which the organizations of Catholic emigrants and moderate liberal parties do not belong to. The concentration is extremely cautious and takes a position on the institutional problem in favor of the republic only since 1928. in 1927, in Nérac (Lot-et-Garonne), a convention, in which the “anti-fascist concentration” was founded, whose organ, La Libertà, came out on 1 May 1927. The anti-fascist concentration is, in a certain sense, the continuation of the Aventine. It lacks the popular party which is represented abroad only by some personalities (Sturzo, Donati, E. Ferrari) but which the organizations of Catholic emigrants and moderate liberal parties do not belong to. The concentration is extremely cautious and takes a position on the institutional problem in favor of the republic only since 1928. It lacks the popular party which is represented abroad only by some personalities (Sturzo, Donati, E. Ferrari) but which the organizations of Catholic emigrants and moderate liberal parties do not belong to. The concentration is extremely cautious and takes a position on the institutional problem in favor of the republic only since 1928. It lacks the popular party which is represented abroad only by some personalities (Sturzo, Donati, E. Ferrari) but which the organizations of Catholic emigrants and moderate liberal parties do not belong to. The concentration is extremely cautious and takes a position on the institutional problem in favor of the republic only since 1928.
The concentration, to which the fascist police attributed the blame for all the attacks, for all the arrests that took place in Italy, was on the other hand extraneous, in general, to the actions organized here; its merit was to bring back abroad an echo of that democratic life that had died out within the nation and to maintain, so to speak, the rights of the suppressed organizations: its establishment also had a stabilizing function towards the confusing antecedent situation. From 1927 to May 1934, the date on which the organism was dissolved, the concentration represented, through the usual polemics of the exiles, the point of reference for the whole political life of democratic emigration and gave it a common ground of organization and understanding..
Meanwhile, in 1929 Giustizia e Libertà was born, and connected with the concentration to which it joined by undertaking not to set up its own organization abroad and in exchange assuming the representation of the action in Italy of the parties adhering to the concentration itself. This is a period of stability in the anti-fascist organization, also due to the formation of mass emigration following the world crisis.
Apart from some subsidies from international organizations (such as the trade union international, the ITF, transport organization), the means of emigration come from workers’ economic organizations (labor cooperatives, road construction companies in France, the Italian company of Winterthur in Switzerland., New York tailors trade union) or by the direct contributions of emigrants, through cards, season tickets, subscriptions. This makes it possible to give a limited livelihood to a limited managerial staff: some richer emigrants themselves finance the struggle (Chiesa, Rosselli); many others live in poorer professions; the ancient profession of language teacher of the Risorgimento society is no longer useful and most of the intellectual professions are forbidden by modern laws to foreigners. This is the economic life of political emigration, on the whole very dignified: some early emigrants do not resist the economic and moral hardship and return to Italy, or even pass into the service of the government; on the whole secondary figures and without great political importance.
In constant controversy with the world of “Aventinian” exiles, the Communist Party lived until 1935-36, that is, until the victory of the Popular Front in France. The Italian Communist Party constitutes an entirely clandestine apparatus abroad. Its leaders (P. Togliatti, R. Grieco, Di Gennaro, G. Di Vittorio, M. Montagnana, G. Berti; later E. Sereni, Leone, Pirelli, V. Spano; among the “heretics” expelled Italy Silone and F. Tasca) take pseudonyms instead of real surnames; they live in illegality almost everywhere, except in the Soviet Union where however only some of them stay, and not permanently. The communist working mass in France lives organized in the “Italian-speaking group” of the French Communist Party; with respect to the “exile that awaits” they (like Justice and Liberty later) take a critical position. However, it is in France, in Lyon, that the III Congress of the Italian Communist Party takes place. The violence of the conflict between Communists and concentration was expressed, as well as in numerous disturbances of the latter’s committees, in a violent eruption, in the autumn of 1931, within the headquarters of the concentration during a party in favor of the General Confederation of Labor, by communist aggressors.
In May 1934 the evolution of Justice and Freedom into an autonomous political movement led to the dissolution of the concentration. Meanwhile, the creation of the Popular Front in France also had its influence on Italian emigration; the socialist party (unified in 1930, except for an extreme maximalist nucleus united around the Avanti! of Paris) free from commitments with the republican and democratic part of anti-fascism, after laborious negotiations, contracts a pact of unity of action with the Party communist who prepares his future political evolution; the alignment of emigration changes and the character of communist emigration also changes, which also takes on a less clandestine aspect. All Italian political emigration (except Arturo Labriola, who returns to Italy, and Mario Bergamo) take sides against the Ethiopian adventure.
