Today:
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I: PREAMBLE – REGARDING THE WAR ITSELF
The latter half of Extra Credits’ series covers the period of fighting from 1839-42. Now, if you’re going to spend half of your series talking about the war itself, you’d better make a good case for why it is important to go into the detail that you do. Lovell uses the war as an exposé of China’s instability by looking at the behaviour of individuals and groups on the Chinese side in reaction to the invasion. Andrade uses it to illustrate the degree to which Chinese military capabilities had lagged behind that of the West. Elleman uses it to demonstrate the beginnings of the breakdown of the Qing Dynasty’s structures of social control.
I cannot for the life of me find Extra Credits’ angle. It’s a real shame because, as noted, there’s a lot of interesting things to say, but in the end they just go for a bog-standard narration of the course of the war. And by not taking an angle, it becomes very hard to understand the rationale behind omissions and inclusions. The end result is that the audience will not only get little analysis, but also an incomplete narrative, and that is what I hope to go some way towards correcting (although to be honest it would be even better to read through my bibliography.)
Week 38
There are various solid reasons to conclude that, while large portions of the Italian political world had been brought by the aftermath of Caporetto to a sort of mindless frenzy – and even the most conscious forces (those busy with the battle over the issue of the oppressed nationalities of Austri-Hungary for instance) oscillated between spurs of energy and bouts of disillusionment – Benito Mussolini had taken the months of his return to full activity as chief editor of his Popolo d'Italia as a (very active) reflection pause. A good chance to reassess his political position within the varying landscape, an opportunity to find an ideological collocation that went beyond that of interventionism; a patent of honor that one could only stretch so far into the future with the War going on for over three years already.
In fact, by Mussolini's own admission, he would find none. But that does not mean that he didn't try. The substantial lack of ideological content of Fascism, its relying more on a mishmash of ideas than on one self contained, well structured system of beliefs, has been noted many times; to the point where it comes close to be an organic feature of Italian fascism, a result of its natural manner of growth.
It is also – pending the question of how much of that feature was “intentional”, in the manner a political system can be – a result of Mussolini's personality and his way of approaching matters. But, what was Mussolini reflecting on? What matters was he trying to approach?
By this time, we have reached a point where Mussolini's role in Italian politics keeps growing in prominence essentially without interruption. I suppose it should come to no one's surprise that we will deal with this role more and more frequently.
In the Summer of 1918 though, there was another major personality who had climbed to the grand stage of history in a somewhat unexpected manner: Lenin.
The indirect relations between these two figures has been the subject of a recent inquiry by historian Emilio Gentile, who has thoroughly analyzed Mussolini's reaction to Lenin's rise, as testified mostly by the pages of Mussolini's Popolo d'Italia (something I took large advantage of), in his recent Mussolini contro Lenin.
There is no doubt that, in this attempt, Gentile has not forgotten one of the most questioned points [for a brief overview of the literature on Mussolini's "turn to the right" see for instance the introduction of P. O'Brien's “Mussolini in the First World War"] of De Felice's conclusion on Mussolini's ideological and personal mindset during the last year of the Great War. This observation especially, that I have referenced before comes to mind. According to De Felice, (in Mussolini's mind) fascism would be the revolutionary position, of Marxist origin, in the form it had to assume after taking into account the results of the criticism of abstract Marxism done in Italy during the 1880-1900 [from Spaventa to Croce], of which actualism could be considered the philosophical product. Of course, such a definition would not address but the form, which in itself is not enough to explain its practical realization. The latter, obviously, would not have taken place without a series of historical events: the world war, the way the Italian intervention took place, Caporetto, the transfiguration of the battle of Vittorio Veneto into the myth of the mutilated victory, the Russian revolution, the red biennium of 1919-21, etc. Under this point of view [fascism] must be seen as alternative to Leninism […] but the term alternative could be taken under two extremes: that of absolute opposite or that of actual and true realization. [It is in the latter sense] that Mussolini conceived fascism; and here lays the difference between fascism and nazism. Around 1920, two men contested to each other the claim of being the true revolutionary: Lenin and Mussolini. And in this claim, one must admit, Mussolini was sincere. […] The observation that fascism failed as a revolution does not equate with the statement that it should be considered a reactionary movement, nor justifies the judgments according to which Mussolini would have deliberately deceived since the beginnings, making use of a revolutionary language as a disguise.
Accepting this point of view, one would conclude that Mussolini's take was to create somehow an alternative to the Bolshevik evolution of the Russian revolution. Unfortunately, a parallel like this would require some more substance than what is actually available to us; and the aforementioned lack of ideological content does not help at all. It is perhaps possible to conclude that the events of the Russian revolution worked for Mussolini as a suggestion, an ideal background for a personal evolution that was more environmental than rational.
It is difficult to wager Mussolini's mindset from the pages of his newspaper in an immediate manner: the Popolo d'Italia was an active interventionist newspaper in a time of war, and it had to talk to the events at least as much as it could talk of the events. Opinion pieces were not, and could not be neutral.
When the February revolution had forced the Tzar's abdication, most of the Italian press had accepted the view that – despite dissenting voices and constant rumors – the Russians were going to continue the war. Even more, that they would have been much more effective in their new democratic, or socialist, or communist incarnation. On April 14^th the Popolo d'Italia expressed its approval and encouragement of the new revolutionary government, on the way to “truly revolutionary reforms” such as giving land to the peasantry and granting “more rights to the working classes”; but “for the reforms to prove lasting and effective, there was a necessary precondition; that the war was conducted with energy by the Russians, in agreement with their allies and [Italy], until victory”. And certainly it could not be otherwise, as it was not possible “for a new regime [to begin] with a similar betrayal of its allies without automatically placing itself outside of the numbers of respectable nations. […] But [the author expressed] their belief that the Russian revolutionaries were going to prove themselves worthy of defend both their freedom and that of Europe […] from the last European autocracy: the German one”.
For the forces of the Italian interventionism, the reassurances of the new government also served the purpose of offering ground to attack the official socialists and the Avanti!, accused of being responsible of the Caporetto defeat with their propaganda in favor of a negotiated peace, by pointing out that even the Russian socialists were against a peace settlement.
Of course, Mussolini's paper did not refuse that there were some “extremist elements - it was yet to be seen, which extreme they belonged to!” In other words, the Popolo d'Italia was “far from claiming that all of those extremists were... German agents. Some might be. […] But it was positive that the great majority was acting in good faith and was driven by excessive idealism away from reality and everyday life.”
Rather than taking a stance against the Russian extremists, Mussolini choose the more prudent path of reclaiming the not really well understood phenomenon to his own line: to appeal to them, not as opponents, but as revolutionaries, as interventionists, as patriots. And on the 16^th , under a large headline “The new Russia, born of revolution, will continue the war.”, he would even “welcome communism” because “the more revolutionary the results of the Russian unrest would prove to be, the stronger the need to continue the war! Since then Russia would have had not only its threatened frontiers to defend, but also its new life – as a crimson flower sprung from blood – to secure and expand.”
“The Russian extremists” - added Mussolini - “when honest in their goals, had the best interest not to dash the holy anti Teutonic alliance. […] But a certain group of Russian revolutionaries, exiles from Switzerland” - the Popolo d'Italia informed its readers - “was going to ask their government to open some sort of talks so that Germany allowed transit to the exiles through its territory.”
On that very day, April 16^th 1917 Lenin made his triumphal return to St. Petersburg. The event appeared at first far from the momentous turn it would eventually prove to be for Russian and World history alike: the first mention of him in the Popolo d'Italia was on the 19^th – spelled the French way Lenine (but that was not really uncommon back then) - and then again on the 20^th noting how “with regards to the return to Russia of the political exile Lenine, who had been authorized for this specific purpose by the government of Berlin to cross German lands with any conceivable facilitation, various newspapers had vehemently criticized his proclamations about peace and the Russian revolution”.
The following days, more details appeared on Lenin's travel – as well as unflattering comparisons to the old Tzar's Minister Boris Stürmer, suspect at the time, especially if one choose the German spelling, of being a covert German agent.