Fabrizio Cicchitto tells ‘The socialist odyssey’ from Nenni to Craxi

Fabrizio Cicchitto, in “The socialist odyssey” gives the reader a long stretch of the second half of the Italian twentieth century by interweaving scientific analysis and personal memory. It is a volume that brings to light a century of Italian political history with a rare narrative and documentary strength that presents previously unpublished elements of knowledge.

The book rigorously retraces the entire path of Italian socialism. From the wounds of the first post-war period to the contradictions of the Popular Front, from the Stalinist frost to the difficult path of autonomy, from the reformist season to the transformations of the 1980s, Cicchitto reconstructs the epic of Italian socialism, its battles and conquests, the most exhilarating victories and the bitter defeats. It is a reconstruction based on historical sources – conference proceedings, documents and analyzes – enriched, in some significant passages, by the direct testimony of the author, who joined the PSI at the end of the 1950s and went through the crucial passages of almost half a century from the inside.

Alongside the great history, the volume highlights little-known episodes that illuminate the socialist and republican story from new angles. Among these, the story of Riccardo Lombardi’s clandestinity in 1944: ill and hiding on the outskirts of Milan, he discovered only after the Liberation that the fascists had identified his refuge and that Mussolini, convinced that he was dying, had avoided a blitz so as not to turn him into a martyr. Similarly striking is Nenni’s return from confinement in 1943, when, faced with the data provided by Romita, he understood that the PSI no longer existed as an organization but survived only in the widespread memory of the country. A paradox that makes the success of 1946 even more surprising, unexpected even for its leaders.

Cicchitto’s book also reconstructs internal dynamics that are often removed: from the clashes between Nenni and Saragat at the 1946 congress to the methods of the Morandi apparatus in the following years; from the “double card” system used to influence internal votes to the tensions that affected the Italian left in the Cold War. Everything is told with precision and without emphasis, showing how political life is also made up of fragile balances, subtle maneuvers and difficult choices.

Particularly relevant are the pages dedicated to 1956, the Khrushchev report and the Soviet repression in Hungary, a fracture destined to change the face of European socialism. And among the most intense episodes stands out that of Giuseppe Di Vittorio, who initially condemned the Soviet intervention before being recalled by his own party.

Alongside all this, Cicchitto’s volume addresses the season of the new socialist course, focusing on even the most controversial issues: from the financing of politics to the change in the relationship between politics and the judiciary, up to the crisis of the nineties, read not as a sudden collapse but as the result of tensions accumulated over time. The book ends on a symbolic and powerfully evocative passage: not with the dissolution of the PSI in 1993, but with the death of Bettino Craxi in exile, almost marking the end not only of a political parable, but of the entire socialist experience organized in Italy.

Through these details, large and small, “The Socialist Odyssey” provides a complete and engaging picture of the Italian twentieth century. The result is a work capable of speaking to scholars, but also to anyone who really wants to understand how the country’s political, cultural and social structures were formed.

But, above all, it is not just a book about the past. It is an invitation to look at Italy’s recent history with greater depth, aware that many of the questions that still question us today have roots that this volume helps to recognize and understand