On April 25, the Italians will celebrate Liberation Day. It is right that the whole country recognizes itself in this anniversary which commemorates the beginning of our democratic path. Unfortunately, the custodians of that memory – the Anpi – have stood out for many years for their sectarian attitude towards other political formations or personalities without the anti-fascism license that only they feel authorized to issue.
As for theattitude of the PNA on the war in Ukraine, even the honorary president Carlo Smuraglia felt the need to dissociate himself. We'll see how events go this year. Whether the representatives of the Jewish Brigade will be booed and more generally what the topics of the speeches will be. Meanwhile, in the celebratory manifesto of the Anpi, the colors of the flag have been placed sideways, as in the Hungarian one. There was talk of a chart error; in truth there is the hypothesis that it was a gesture of solidarity with Viktor Orban, the European leader who ''grandly rejected'' the condemnation of Russia for the aggression against Ukraine.
April 18, 1948: the first free elections
But in April there is another date that deserves to be remembered. Seventy-four years ago (on April 18, 1948) the coalition of democratic parties won the first political elections in free Italy, defeating the Popular Front in which the unnatural alliance between PSI socialists and communists was consummated. It was a fundamental event for the life of the country, which conditioned its political alliances and inscribed the choices of post-war reconstruction, after the degradation of the fascist period, within the ambit of democratic systems and economic freedoms, also thanks to the contribution for the reconstruction established by the Marshall Plan.
Probably, the Yalta agreements would have left Italy with no other possibilities. The geopolitical location also determined (fortunately) the reasons for belonging in a world split in two under the banner of the renewed principle of "cuis regio eius religio".
Ma the Italians knew how to choose well on their behalf, with the weapon of the vote, avoiding any kind of adventure, while neighboring Greece - abandoned to itself by Stalin - paid the price of a ferocious civil war that heavily conditioned its political and social life for a few decades.
If April 25, 1945 had marked the victory against the Nazi-fascist totalitarianisms and the end of the war, theApril 18 three years later was in fact a Second Liberation. The DC and its centrist allies saved not only the country but also the left from itself. The day of April 18 deserves to be proclaimed a national holiday or at least to receive one honorable mention testifying to the breakthrough that took place and the dangers that were thwarted.
An Italy divided in two
Unfortunately, in Italy, even the history of the country has undergone conditioning - which continues even after death - by the PCI. Only the events that personally involved that political formation, which has always been included in the so-called constitutional arc, are thus common heritage, even when it was excluded from the possibility of governing. for decades, Italy was divided in two like Germany; only that here the Wall was invisible, but it equally crossed politics, society, communities, even families. And this Wall fell only when the other collapsed, the one built in reinforced concrete that crossed Berlin.
Why is the date of April 18, 1948 remembered with suffering, as if a negative event had then taken place? The history textbooks served up at school to the innocent kids – like dozens of films and books – have represented and still represent the result of those elections (from which modern Italy began) as a negative fact: as the beginning of the “capitalist restoration” or as the "betrayal of the ideals of the Resistance".
In essence, according to the current of thought that has been prevalent in the left (and in the country), the consultation of 1948 rbrought Italy back, to the old balances of the traditional ruling classes. After all, the theme of the "revolution betrayed" is part of the trend that starts from groups of "non-renunciate" ex-partisans of the immediate post-war period, passes through the parallel formations of "self-defense" and arrives at the BR of the 70s and 80s and, tragically, to this day. So much so that even a reactionary like Vladimir Putin finds ''understanding'' because, according to the phony vulgate of history, the real enemies are nestled in NATO.
The ex-communists changed the name of the party, before erasing its memory as if they were suffering from total amnesia; but they are careful not to apologize, to admit that they were wrong. Take it the case of Giuseppe Saragat. For decades he was addressed (even by the socialists, to be honest) the worst epithets. Then he was compensated with the election as president of the Republic with the decisive votes of the PCI. But no one (only Craxi did it) has ever explicitly stated that in 1947, with the division of Palazzo Barberini, he had saved Italy. Hostile adversaries of the DC, fate would have it that the former Communists ended up in a party led by the former Christian Democrats.
