Avanti!

History

Foundation

In the mid-1890s, the Italian Socialist Party owned numerous newspapers and periodical journals published in various parts of the Italian Kingdom, but those had limited runs, and they were funded by the same militants of the Party. However, PSI (the Italian-language abbreviation of the Italian Socialist Party) obtained an important standing in the elections of 1895, and during the IVth Socialist Congress of Florence in July 1896, programs for the editorial development were promoted along with the origination of a nationwide newspaper.

The first number of Avanti! was published on 25 December 1896, on Christmas, because the new newspaper sought to represent Italian socialism as intended as "a new voice that does not descend from the airy high sky, but it lifts up from workshops and fields and predicts the peace to men of good will" or their own rendition of what they considered a "holy birth". After all, Jesus Christ was referred to as the "first socialist in history" in the contemporary socialist iconography.

The first director was Leonida Bissolati, with Ivanoe Bonomi, Walter Mocchi, Alessandro Schiavi, Oddino Morgari and Gabriele Galantara as editors. The last one was a designer and satirical cartoonist who drew the logo for the newspapers, characterized by an italic font and the exclamation point at the end with the typical liberty style of the end of the 19th century. Along with Guido Podrecca, Galantara was also the founder in 1892 of L'Asino, an important satirical journal.

Avanti! was inspired by the newspaper of the Social Democratic Party of Germany called Vorwärts.

Previously, other newspapers had been founded with the same title: on 30 April 1881 Andrea Costa founded the Avanti! and philosopher Antonio Labriola launched Avanti (without exclamation mark) in May 1896, on which the libertarian socialist Francesco Saverio Merlino wrote.

Di qui si passa

In the editorial of published in the first number of Avanti!, director Bissolati wrote an ideal and political manifest of the identity of the new newspaper, challenging the contemporary order.

Addressing directly to the Italian Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Antonio Starabba, Marchese di Rudinì, who had warned the PSI leaders and subscribed with the intimation "di qui non-si passa" ('Do not pass from here'), Bissolati answered "di qui si passa" ('From here we pass'), manifesting the faith and "scientific" certainty in the affirmations of socialist reasons and in the conquest of power by workers:

And now today this gentlemen instead—who does not act on his whim but obeys to instincts of the colourful conservatory party which stays behind him—does not find he can do anything better against us than retake, with less noise and more hypocrisy, the methodic of the suicide of Crispi.

So, after solemnly declaring in Parliament that hoping to suppress socialism is madness because the attempt to suppress the thought would be so much worthy; after recognizing that every violent attempt against socialism and thought is an attempt against the modern civilization, Starabba is precisely going to suppress the civilization, to choke thought.

And just for this reason, Mr. Starabba, that we pass despite your prohibitions.

We pass to exercise that influence we deserve in public fights, in the economical life, in the moral development; we pass despite you, as we passed despite Crispi; and we have the force to pass, winning your resistances, because arresting socialism is not possible without arresting that immense movement of transformation which operates into the society and has an impact in consciences.

Socialism, Mr. Starabba, is not a chimera of deludes who want to remould the world accordingly their dream, but it is the clear and precise consciousness of the imperious necessities which are urgently needed, in the practice of life, by the majority of men. (...)

Format, prize and headquarters

The socialist daily newspaper was formed by four broadsheet pages. One copy cost 5 cents of lira, the annual subscription 15 lire, the six-monthly one 7.50 lire, the quarterly one 3 lire and the monthly one 1.25 lire.

The headquarters was located in Rome, in Palazzo Sciarra-Colonna of Via delle Muratte. In 1911, on the initiative of Turati, the headquarters of the newspaper was moved from Rome (where an office for parliamentary chronicle remained) to Milan, in Via San Damiano.

The number of pages became six, including news of Milan.

Repression of 1898

From January to May 1898, several popular protests blew up in almost all the Italian peninsula, for bread, work and against taxes, but the government suppressed the revolts. On 7 May in Milan, the government declared the state of siege and gave full powers to general Fiorenzo Bava-Beccaris, who ordered to open fire against the crowd. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands were injured. The exact number of victims has not never been clarified.

On 9 May, general Bava-Beccaris, with the support of the government, dismantled associations and clubs considered subversives and arrested thousands of people belonging to socialist, republican and anarchical organizations, including some parliamentarians: among others, they were Filippo Turati (with his partner Anna Kuliscioff), Andrea Costa, Leonida Bissolati, Carlo Romussi (radical) and Paolo Valera.

All anti-government journals and newspapers were banned and on 12 May the entire redaction of Avanti! was arrested in Rome.

Avanti! and the Red Week

On 7 June 1914, in Ancona, an antimilitarist meeting was held in the local headquarter of the Italian Republican Party, organized by Pietro Nenni, a republican leader at the time and director of the local journal Lucifero, along with the anarchist Errico Malatesta. At the end, Carabinieri opened fire on the participants while they were leaving the hall, killing two republicans and an anarchist. As a reaction, The Chamber of Work declared a general strike and various revolts occurred. On 9 June, a great crowd took part to the funerals of the three killed which crossed the whole city. The news about the slaughter spread throughout all Italy and provoked demonstrations, parades and spontaneous strikes.

In particular, souls were inflamed by the calls of Benito Mussolini, socialist at the time and director of Avanti!, who had caught in Ancona, during the XIV Congress of PSI from 26 to 28 April 1914, an important personal success, with plaudits for the results of dissemination and sells of the party newspaper, granted to him personally by congress members.

On the number of 8 June 1914 of the socialist newspaper, Mussolini wrote:

In cities and in fields the answer to the provocation will raise spontaneous. We do not go through the events, neither we feel authorized to track the course, but we have the duty to second and flank them.[..] And we hope that with their action the Italian workers will be able to say that it is the time to make it end.

With his articles, Mussolini, by leveraging on his popularity inside the socialist movement and on the great diffusion of the newspaper, forced the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGdL) to declare a general strike, an instrument which stopped every activity in the country and that the labour union believed it had to be used only in exceptional circumstances. Mussolini exploited the popular revolts for political purposes within the socialist movement: leadership of PSI was in the hands of revolutionary maximalists after the congress of Ancona, but reformist were still the majority in the parliamentary group and in CGdL.

On 10 June 1914, a political rally was held in the Arena di Milano in front of 60,000 people, while the rest of Italy was struggling and paralysed, Romagna and Marche were insurgent and rail workers finally announced to join to the general strike. After reformists of all parties said that the strike was not the revolution but only a manifestation against the massacre of Ancona, and that they would not be dragged into a useless carnage, Filippo Corridoni and Mussolini intervened. The latter exalted the revolt and his speech was reported and published by Avanti! on the following day:

Avanti! during WWI

In 1914–1915, Avanti! supported an important campaign for the absolute neutrality towards the opposite sides in WWI.

After maintaining that position, decided by the vast majority of PSI, Benito Mussolini pushed the socialist newspaper into an interventionist campaign with his articles as director. Thanks to his retinue within the party, Mussolini asked to the national direction of PSI to endorse his new line or otherwise he would resign, as he did in the following day.

The new interventionist newspaper of Mussolini, Il Popolo d'Italia, would be published on 15 November 1914, with syndicalists and dissidents from the Socialist Party.

On 23 November, Mussolini was expelled from the Socialist Party and the satirical cartoonist of Avanti!, Giuseppe Scalarini, drew the cartoon Giuda for the newspaper, representing Mussolini, with a dagger and the money of betrayal, approaching silently to hit Christ (the socialism) in the back.

Giacinto Menotti Serrati was appointed as new director of Avanti! during all the WWI, and he will be one of the leaders of the maximalist side of PSI and he will adhere in 1924 to the diktat of Lenin and Trotsky, joining the Communist Party of Italy.

Five squadrist assaults against Avanti!

Between 1919 and 1922, Avanti! was attacked and devastated by five squadrist assaults:

The Avanti! is the symbol and the flag of anti-fascism. It is its more efficient fight instrument. But since that the fight is a bloody civil war, the daily newspaper is also at the centre of the war itself: it is a blockhouse to be sieged, intimidated and conquered according to the squadrismo. There is more: a strong emotive charge. Because if Avanti! is the idol of socialists, for Mussolini it is personally the object of a great love which have been transformed, after the traumatic clash of 1914, into envy and inner hate. The newspaper had been besieged and put on fire five times between 1919 and 1922. And every time it rises from the ashes: even in 1921, ro be moved in a new, huge headquarter. Around its rotary presses and linotype machines, there are shootings, stabbings, beatings, clashes between redactors and fascists, between soldiers and squadrists, fire of machine guns, dead and injured.

Journalists, employees, typographers live in tension and peril.

There are revolvers in drawers. The telephone is used also to call for help the comrades. All the assaults have the same story, the same comments, the same mechanics, the same consequences: a script similar, more in general, to the civil war one. Every time that political circumstances suggest it or allow it, fascism attack. The aggressors are militarily organized, while defenders are not. Squadrists prepare themselves with pickaxes and incendiary bombs because the goal is already the devastation of the newspaper to prevent the publication of it. The defence of Avanti! is passive, like in all the other episodes of the civil war. In a more or less open way, assailants are almost always protected [...] by forces of the State. In the aftermath of the assaults, the newspaper preaches caution, suggests to not fall into the trap of provocations.

The reaction to the squadrist violence is indeed exclusively political and propagandistic: huge strikes and solidarity parades. Along with an extraordinary subscription to support the newspaper, repair the damages and relaunch it. It is the way of socialists, absolutely loser. But maybe obliged, considering that the force is on the side of squadrismo, because it has a now growing supply of money, thanks to the support of agrarians and industrials, and mostly because it has a coverage of the State power which becomes complete over time.

Pietro Nenni at Avanti!

On 19 April 1921, Nenni signed his first article for the socialist newspaper under the title of "The failure of Versaglia policy".

In Paris, Nenni subscribed to PSI and began a path which, in around two years, would lead him to the leadership of the autonomist side of the Party. During the Congress of Milan in 1923, it was in favour of the merger between PSI and the Communist Party of Italy, as imposed by the Soviets and supported by Serrati and the Party secretary Costantino Lazzari. The congress appointed Nenni as new director of Avanti!.

Since then, during the whole exile in France and the period of underground in Italy, the relationship between Pietro Nenni and Avanti! had become stronger until 1948.

On 31 December 1925, the Mussolini Cabinet made the law n. 2037 on press passed by the Chamber of the Deputies and on 31 October 1926 the newly established fascist regime closed all the publications issued by the opposition. Avanti!, like all the other antifascist newspapers, was obliged to interrupt their prints in Italy but continued to be published in exile, under the impulse of Nenni, in Paris and Zürich every week.

Fall of fascism and 1946 referendum

The socialist newspaper reappeared in Italy in hiding on 11 January 1943: a publication named Avanti!, without using the historical header with an italic type in liberty style, was distributed as the giornale del Movimento di Unità Proletaria per la repubblica socialista ("newspaper of the Movement of Proletarian Unity for the socialist republic").

After the establishment of the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity (PSIUP) on 22 August 1943 (with the merger between the Italian Socialist Party and the Movement of Proletarian Unity), Avanti! began to use again the traditional header of Galantara, proclaiming itself as the giornale del Partito Socialista Italiano di Unità Proletaria ("newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity").

Giving the news of the stipulation of the Armistice of Cassibile, the issue n. 2 of the 47th year, published on 9 (incorrectly printed as 3) September 1943, was entitled La guerra fascista è finita ("The fascist war is over"), while the subheading said La lotta dei lavoratori continua ("The struggle of workers continues") mocking the Badoglio Proclamation of 25 July (la guerra continua, "The war continues").

Avanti! of 16 March 1944, printed and distributed illegally in the territories of the Italian Social Republic and whose occupied by Nazi Germany, proclaimed: La classe operaia in prima fila nella lotta per l'indipendenza e per la libertà ("The workers' class in the front row in the fight for independence and freedom"), with the sub-header: Lo sciopero generale nell'Italia Settentrionale contro la coscrizione, le deportazioni e le decimazioni ("The general strike in Northern Italy against conscription, deportations and decimations").

The Roman edition of clandestine Avanti! was edited by Eugenio Colorni and Mario Fioretti, as Sandro Pertini remembered:

[...] I remember how Colorni, my unforgettable brother of election, did all what he could to ensure the regular publication of Avanti!. He personally, taking every kind of risks, not only wrote main articles but he also cared for printing and distribution, helped in that by Mario Fioretti, flaming soul and generous apostle of Socialism. For this task to which he had a particular feel because of his preparation and mental ability, Colorni dedicated all himself, without however leaving also the most modest assignments in the political and militar organization of our Party. He loved deeply the newspaper and dreamed to direct our editorial staff after the Liberation and only if was not taken away by the fascist ferocity, he would be the first editor-in-chief of Avanti! in the freed Rome and today he would be its director, supported in this task not only by his strong genius and his wide culture, but also by his deep honesty and that sense of justice which had always guided his actions. For his work and the one of Mario Fioretti, Avanti! was, among the clandestine newspapers, the one with more mordant and it was capable to explain more clearly the problems regarding working masses. His publication was waited anxiously and not only by us, but also by many members of other parties, who saw their interest better represented on Avanti!

Second post-war period

During the second post-war period, Avanti! had not reached the same circulation and influence obtained between the two wars but it became a witness, through its titles, of the rebuilding of Italy and its democratic evolution.

The newspaper gave more emphasis on the creation of the first Italian center-left government with the direct participation of socialists after 16 years of opposition along with communist. On 6 December 1963, on the occasion of the oath of Moro I Cabinet with Antonio Segni as President of Italy, the front-page of Avanti! was entitled: DA OGGI OGNUNO È PIÙ LIBERO – I lavoratori rappresentati nel governo del Paese ("FROM TODAY EVERYONE IS MORE FREE – workers are represented in the government of the Country").

Avanti! continued to report the results of the reformative activity made by socialists within the center-left side of the government.

The number of 15 May 1970 was entitled LO STATUTO DEI LAVORATORI È LEGGE ("WORKERS' STATUTE IS NOW A LAW"), announcing the approval of law n. 300 promulgated on 22 May 1970, and the subheading stated: IL PROVVEDIMENTO VOLUTO DAL COMPAGNO GIACOMO BRODOLINI È STATO DEFINITIVAMENTE APPROVATO DALLA CAMERA ("The provision wanted by comrade Giacomo Brodolini has been definitely approved by the Chamber)". The newspaper remembered the role of the then socialist Minister of Labour, dead on 11 July 1969 and considered as the real "political father" of the Workers' Statute, and attacks "the attitude of communists, ambiguous and clearly electoral" which determined the Italian Communist Party (PCI) to prefer the abstention on the provision. The editorial proclaimed La Costituzione entra in fabbrica ("Constitution comes in factory"), underlining "the explicit recognition of a new reality which, after the great fall struggles, in the heart of struggles for social reforms, sees the working class at the offensive, engaged in the construction a more democratic society".

The similar title of the Avanti! issued on 1 December 1970 was IL DIVORZIO È LEGGE – Vittoriosa conclusione di una giusta battaglia ("DIVORCE IS LAW – Victorious conclusion of a right battle"), and it underlined the approval of the new Fortuna-Baslini Law, a result of the combination between the law proposal of socialist Loris Fortuna and another one of liberal Antonio Baslini. The Fortuna project was of 1965 and it was stubbornly repurposed by the socialist deputy at the beginning of every legislature in which Fortuna was elected.

After 1994

With the dismantling of PSI, the newspaper fell under liquidation, as other assets of the party. The last congress, held in Rome on 12 November 1994, appointed a liquidator commissioner, Michele Zoppo, to whom was given Avanti among with other assets.

After that date, three different periodical appeared in news stands that, though all of them recalled to the historical socialist newspaper, were completely different politically aligned:

In 1996, the clone newspaper L'Avanti! (with the "L") was published by the International Press of Valter Lavitola and directed by Sergio De Gregorio, founder in 2000 of the political movement Italians in the World and elected as senator with Italy of Values in 2006 and then with The People of Freedom in 2008. This newspaper ceased its publication after a few months and reappeared in 2003. Lavitola made of his periodical an instrument for political movements that had nothing in common with the editorial line of the original socialist newspaper. Furthermore, L'Avanti was close to the center-right premier Silvio Berlusconi. Lavitola and De Gregorio were investigated by prosecutor of Naples for criminal association aimed to fraud against the State: Lavitola, as de facto owner and co-administrator of International Press, and De Gregorio, as effective partner since 1997 and hidden co-administrator of the same company, along with other ten defendants, declared that the publisher of L'Avanti! had the requirements for obtaining the funds provided by the law for publishing, cashing illegally a total of €23,200,000 received between 1997 and 2009. For this crimes, Lavitola and De Gregorio suffered a preventive seizure of assets for €9 million in July 2012. On 9 November 2012 Lavitola negotiated a sentence of 3 years and 8 months in front of the Judge for preliminary investigations of the Court of Naples, while the process of De Gregorio, whom sentence was reduced to house arrest in his Roman apartment of Parioli following a failed re-election during the political election of 2013, was still in progress on 4 June 2015, with the request of plea bargaining by the former parliamentarian. Court of Accounts of Lazio, with sentence n. 24/2015 of 11 March 2015, condemned Valter Lavitola and Sergio De Gregorio to give back €23,879,000 to the State for the publishing funds obtained illegally by L'Avanti between 1997 and 2009.

In 1998, Avanti! della domenica began to be published weekly as the body of Italian Democratic Socialists (SDI), sided on center-left, and it directly referred to the Sunday supplement of the historical Avanti!, issued between January 1903 and March 1907. After ceasing the publications in 2006, the weekly was issued again since 7 February 2010 (with Dario Alberto Caprio as editor-in-chief) as the official body of the new PSI (heir of SDI), member of Socialist International and the European Socialist Party. In this occasion, Ugo Intini, former director of Avanti!, greeted the new release of the socialist weekly with an editorial entitled Di qui si passa, quoting the title of the inaugural editorial wrote by Leonida Bissolati in 1896;

Headquarters

Rome, Palazzo Sciarra, Via delle Muratte (National headquarter: 1896 – 1897);

Via del Corso 397 (National headquarter: 1897 – 1898);

Via di Propaganda Fide 16 (National headquarter: 1898 – 1911);

Milan, Via S. Damiano 16 (National headquarter: 9 October 1911 – 15 April 1919);

Rome, Via del Seminario 86 (Roman edition: administration);

Via della Pilotta 11 (Roman edition: direction and typography);

Milan, Via Ludovico da Settala 22 (National headquarter: 1921 – 1926);

Paris, Rue de Picpus 126, 12th arrondissement (in exile, from 12 December 1926);

Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne 16, at Giorgio Salvi (9th arrondissement), (in exile, 1930);

Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, 103 (10th arrondissement), (Nuovo Avanti! in exile, since 1934);

Milan, Via Solferino 28 (in the headquarter of Corriere della Sera occupied on 25 April 1945);

Via Senato 38, corner of Piazza Cavour, 2 (former headquarter of Il Popolo d'Italia. Milan edition: since 13 May 1945);

Rome, Corso Umberto I 476 (National headquarter: 1945);

Via IV Novembre 145 (National headquarter: 1946);

Directors

First generation

Leonida Bissolati (1896–1903)

Enrico Ferri (1903–1908)

Oddino Morgari (1908–1909)

Claudio Treves (1910–1912)

Giovanni Bacci (July 1912 – October 1912)

Benito Mussolini (1 December 1912 – October 1914)

Giacinto Menotti Serrati (October 1914 – 1922)

Pietro Nenni (1922–1926)

Exile

Ugo Coccia (issued in exile in Paris, 12 December 1926 to 1928)

Angelica Balabanoff (Paris, 1928 – 1930 and 1930 – 1940 under the maximalist Italian Socialist Party)

Pietro Nenni (published by PSI – Labour and Socialist International Section in exile in Zürich, for a certain time as a supplement of L'Avvenire dei Lavoratori: 1930 – May 1934)

Pietro Nenni (published by PSI – Labour and Socialist International Section in exile in Paris with the title of Il Nuovo Avanti: May 1934 – 1939)

Giuseppe Saragat, Oddino Morgari and Angelo Tasca (collegiate management but de facto managed by Saragat: published by PSI – Labour and Socialist International Section in exile in Paris with the title of Il Nuovo Avanti: 1939 – 1940)

Pietro Nenni (printed in clandestinity in Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales, in the Vichy France: October 1941 – January 1943)

Return in Italy

Eugenio Colorni (illegally in Rome: 22 August 1943 – May 1944)

Andrea Lorenzetti (illegally in Milan: September 1943 – May 1944)

Guido Mazzali (illegally in Milan: May 1944 – April 1945)

Pietro Nenni, with director Giuseppe Saragat (issued in Rome after its liberation: June 1944 – January 1945)

Guido Mazzali (Milan edition: April 1945 – 1951)

Ignazio Silone (Roman edition: 1945 – 1946)

Sandro Pertini (Roman edition: 1946 – 1947)

Riccardo Lombardi (Roman edition: 1948 – 1949)

Sandro Pertini (Roman edition: 1949 – 1951)

Tullio Vecchietti (1951–1957)

Tullio Vecchietti as political director, Carlo Bonetti as editor-in-chief (1957–1960)

Giovanni Pieraccini as political director, Franco Gerardi as editor-in-chief (1960–1963)

Riccardo Lombardi (12 December 1963 – 21 July 1964)

Francesco De Martino (30 July 1964 – 13 November 1965)

Franco Gerardi (14 November 1965 – 17 November 1966)

Gaetano Arfé and Flavio Orlandi as political directors, Franco Gerardi as editor-in-chief (18 November 1966 – 21 January 1969)

Still existing newspapers

The title of the newspaper is contended by two subjects:

The newly formed PSI of Riccardo Nencini: Michele Zoppo, late bankruptcy trustee of Avanti! and the former PSI, had already gave the original symbols and marks of the historical PSI ti the Italian Socialists formation, then become Italian Democratic Socialists in 1998 and Italian Socialist Party in 2007/2009. On 4 November 2011, the new bankruptcy trustee Francesco Spitoni definitively gave the property of the Avanti! original trademark to the PSI (with Riccardo Nencini as secretary) through the party treasurer Oreste Pastorelli. According to Spitoni, it is necessary "to guarantee the political and ideal meaning that newspaper Avanti! has in the Italian history, and in the history of the proletarian movement in particular", remembering that "this newspaper was founded by Andrea Costa, first socialist deputy in 1891, and it had been an official body of PSI since 1896". Spitoni then established to give "irrecovably and in an exclusive way, also moral, including the denomination, also partialially as well as the graphic layout, of the journalistic newspaper Avanti!". The assignation occurred free of charge because it had "the specific purpose to ensure that the historical newspaper of PSI, official body of the party since 1896, continues to represent the secular tradition of the Italian socialist movement". Therefore, Avanti! online has been online since the 5 Jangennaio 2012, with journalist Giampiero Marazzo (brother of journalist and politician Piero Marazzo) as editor-in-chief, replaced in September 2013 by former socialist deputy Mauro Del Bue. The newspaper is published by PSI through the Società Nuova Editrice "Mondoperaio" s.r.l.;

Critica sociale, a company which publishes the homonymous periodical, registered Avanti! in 1994, one year after the cessation of the publications, according to the Italian law on press. The ownership was disputed, as for the other Avanti!, by the new PSI, given that the trademark was in the only availability of the bankruptcy trustee. The dispute was thwarted by the copyright attribution of the trademark and name of Avanti! to the ownership of Critica Sociale by the Trademarks and Patents office of the Department of Productive Activities of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development in 2012.