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The tale of San Vittore: prisons, politics, crime and Fascism in Milan, 1943–19461

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

John Foot
John Foot*
Affiliation:
Department of Italian, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK. E-mail: j.foot@ucl.ac.uk
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Summary

The prison system under Fascism was used to house both common and political prisoners. After 25 July 1943, the prisons were opened, only to be closed once again in occupied Italy as the Nazis took over the system. San Vittore prison in Milan was theatre to a series of changes over the period from 1943 to 1946, culminating in the famous riots of April 1946. This article analyses the changes in the prison system, the mix of prisoners inside the institution and the continuation of the civil war inside San Vittore after liberation. This micro-focus allows reflections on a number of key issues regarding the post-war state: legitimacy, legality, repression and amnesty. The post-liberation regime's failure to keep order both inside and outside of the prison system was a key test of its legitimacy among those who had gone along with Fascism and were worried about what was to come: The article centres on the extraordinary and contested events surrounding the ‘revolt’ of 1946 in San Vittore and argues that accounts thus far provided are neither accurate nor particularly insightful about this key post-war moment. The amnesty of 1946, so long attributed to Togliatti's personal sense of responsibility was, in reality, forced upon the justice minister by the chaos in the prisons right across the peninsula.

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Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 25 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

2. Cited in Di Bella, F., Italia ‘nera’, Sugarco, Milan, 1960, p. 83.Google Scholar

3. Space permits me to refer only to Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1979, pp. 213–340 and Ignatieff, M., A Just Measure of Pain. The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850, Macmillan, London, 1978, chapter 1 and pp. 109–13 for the history of the Panopticon design. For San Vittore, see di Milano, Comune, Facoltà di Architettura del Politecnico di Milano, Guida di Archittetura, Umberto Allcmandi, Milan, 1990, p. 162.Google Scholar

4. By 1945 there were 63, 000 prisoners in Italy, a record. In 1946 this figure fell to 50, 000, and by 1955 there were only 21, 000 being held in Italian prisons, Neppi Modona, G., ‘Togliatti guardasigilli’, in Agosti, Aldo (ed.), Togliatti e la fondazione dello stato democratico. Franco Angeli, Milan, 1986, pp. 285–321, p. 300.Google Scholar

5. Chiodi, Pietro, Banditi, 2nd edn, Panfilo, Cuneo, 1961, p. 104.Google Scholar

6. Ferro, G., Milano capitale dell'antifascismo, Mursia, Milan, 1985, pp. 184–5 and ‘Le manifestazioni del 26 Luglio’, L'Unità, 27 July 1943. For the Fascist administration of the prison system, see Gallo, E. and Ruggiero, V., Il carcere in Europe, Bertani, Verona, 1983, pp. 100–3.Google Scholar

7. ‘Alle carceri di San Vittore’, L'Unità, 27 July 1943.Google Scholar

8. See the reports in Secchia, P. (ed.), Il Partita comunista italiano e la guerra di liberazione 1943–1945, Annali, Istituto Feltrinelli, XIII, 1971, Milan, 1973, p. 313; various authors, L'Italia dei quarantacinque giorni, INSMLI, Milan, 1969, pp. 37, 244; Montanelli, I. and Cervi, M., Milano Ventesimo secolo, Rizzoli, Milan, 1990, p. 122; Vitali, G., Una città nella bufera. Milano 25 luglio 1943–25 aprile 1945, Mursia, Milan, 1980, pp. 7, 21. It was not until 30 July that the riot was finally defeated by the prison authorities, and some prisoners went without food for four days. The Communist Party was anxious to distinguish the ‘common’ from the ‘political’ prisoners at San Vittore, in line with a strong trend within the Resistance against any association with banditism (which I discuss in more detail below): see the PCI leaflet issued on 26 July 1943, reprinted in ISRMO, Milano nella Resistenza. Bibliografia e cronologia: marzo 1943/maggio 1945, Vangelista, Milan, 1975, p. 59.Google Scholar

9. ‘Communists and Anarchists’ were specifically excluded from release by the Badoglio decree.Google Scholar

10. See Borgomaneri, L., Due inverni un'estate e la rossa primavera. Le Brigate Garibaldi a Milano e Provincia, 1943–1945, 2nd edn. Franco Angeli, Milan, 1995, for a listing of some of these organizations, which the author numbers as high as 30 (including special spy and information agencies), pp. 373, 435–7. I am grateful to Michele Dean, archivist at the Milanese Archivio di Stato, for this information.Google Scholar

11. For the Muti see Bocca, , La Repubblica di Mussolini, Mondadori, Milan, 1994, pp. 192–5; and for the Banda Koch, ibid., pp. 195–9. See also Processo alla Muti, Avanti!, Roma, 1947; Pestalozza, L., Il processo alla Muti, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1956; Vitali, Una città, pp. 17–18; Borgomaneri, Due inverni, pp. 190–1, 194; and Soresina, M., ‘Gli arditi della Legione autonoma mobile Ettore Muti. Materiali per uno studio sociologico’, in Annali. Studi e strumenti di storia metropolitana milanese, 2, Franco Angeli, Milan, 1993, pp. 325–46. Some of the activities of the Muti (and other police forces) at Milan are documented in Archivio di Milano, Gabinetto Prefettura, II serie, b. 365. The description of a ‘revenge’ attack, carried out by the Muti, in a place called Robecco sul Naviglio, is particularly chilling, and led to protests on behalf of the local authorities. Interestingly, the archive shows how fine the line was between police work, repression and criminality in Milan in this period.Google Scholar

12. Klinkhammer, L., L'occupazione tedesca in Italia. 1943–1945, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 1993, p. 569. Klinkhammer also describes the situation as ‘institutional chaos’ and writes of ‘a multiplicity of autonomist groups’. ‘These groups’, he adds, ‘who took on the tasks of police organization were mostly composed of people of an ambiguous nature, who carried out terrorist-type activities, blackmail and torture, and kept the population in a state of anxiety and terror’, p. 313.Google Scholar

13. Liggeri, P., Triangolo Rosso, 4th edn, Istituto ‘La Casa’, Milan, 1963 and Mandel, Roberto, San Vittore. Inferno Nazi fascism, Società Libraria Lombarda, Milan, 1945. On the occasions when revenge was meted out by the Germans for partisan attacks, prisoners were taken from San Vittore and shot. This pattern of using prisons and non-prisons also occurred in other cities. For a famous representation of Nazi torture in a non-prison environment, see Rossellini's Roma, città aperta (1944). There is a vast body of literature relating to the imprisonment of Italians (as soldiers or political prisoners) during Fascism and the Second World Wan see Istituto Storico della Resistenza in Piemonte, , Una storia di tutti: prigionieri, internati, deportati italiani nella seconda guerra mondiale. Franco Angeli, Milan, 1989; and Bedeschi, G. (ed.), Prigionia. C'ero anche io, 3 vols, Mursia, Milan, 1992.Google Scholar

14. See Picciotto Fargion, L., Gli ebrei in provincia di Milano: 1943–1945; persecuzione e deportazione, Provincia di Milano, Milan, 1992.Google Scholar

15. Archivio di Milano, Gabinetto Prefettura, II serie, b. 365. Other important prisoners at San Vittore included: Ferruccio Parri, future Prime Minister of Italy; partisan leader Alessandro Trabucchi; journalist Indro Montanelli; and the 15 ‘martyrs of Piazzale Loreto’ who were taken from San Vittore and left, dead, at Piazzale Loreto. This event led directly, in April 1945, to the display of the bodies of Mussolini and other Fascist leaders in the same piazza. Bizzarely, even the (future) popular television host, Mike Bongiomo spent 64 days in San Vittore during 1944, di Milano, Comune, ‘Nelle grandi serate di Lascia o Raddoppia facevo diminuire gli incidenti stradeli’, Oggi, 30 April 1959, pp. 36–7.Google Scholar

16. See De Martino, G., Dal carcere di San Vittore al ‘Lager’ Tedeschi, 2nd edn, La Propra, Milan, 1955.Google Scholar

17. Bocca, , Storia dell'Italia partigiana, Oscar Mondadori, Milan, 1996, p. 483.Google Scholar

18. Mandel, , San Vittore.Google Scholar

19. For the ‘insurrection’, see Vitali, , Una città, p. 225 and Solmi, S., ‘Epilogo a San Vittore’, in Historia, February 1963, n. 63, pp. 30–2. See also the account in Pesce, G., Quando cessarono gli spari. 23 aprile–6 maggio 1945: la liberazione di Milano, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1977, pp. 44–8.Google Scholar

20. ‘Cronaca di due memorabili giomate milanesi’, Avanti!, 27 April 1945; Solmi, , ‘Epilogo’, p. 30; and ‘Epilogo’, L'Illustrazione Italiana, 17, 28 April 1946, p. 277. According to Avanti!, 27 April 1945, some relatives of political prisoners ‘invaded’ the prison.Google Scholar

21. On 1 May, the new prefect, Riccardo Lombardi of the Action Party, issued a decree calling for the end of summary executions and for the transportation of all prisoners to San Vittore, Vitali, Una città, p. 232. By 1946 there were 40, 000 Fascists in prisons across Italy, Murgia, P. G., Il vento del Nord: Storia e cronaca del fascismo dopo la Resistenza (1945–50), Sugarco, Milan, 1975, p. 150.Google Scholar

22. See Di Bella's rather colourful but mainly accurate account, Italia ‘nera’, p. 11; and Solmi, , ‘Epilogo’. Writing about 1945, Solmi notes the cells were open, and the prisoners could move freely within the wing … in January a prisoner had removed the locks on his door, and in time he was copied by prisoners from the other cells … the authorities, after protesting at first, accepted the new state of affairs. However, there had already been a shift away from a normal prison regime to a type of closed concentration camp in 1944, where on the fourth wing, Jewish prisoners were only locked in their cells at night, Fargion, Gli ebrei. Google Scholar

23. Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, p. 12. Togliatti issued a circular in the light of the riots in Rome prisons in August 1945, which called for an end to the ‘open door’ policy of allowing prisoners to circulate (as a result of the intense heat inside their cells), Modona, Neppi, ‘Togliatti’, p. 300. Togliatti also urged prison directors to apply the Fascist rules governing prisons with more severity! Google Scholar

24. Modona, Neppi, ‘Togliatti’, pp.289, 300. Neppi Modona points out that prison guards had not been through a purging process. The militarization of the guards in 1945 also seems to have been an attempt to prevent links between guards and Fascist revolts, p. 301.Google Scholar

25. For October, see Neppi Modona, G., Carcere e Società Civile , in Storia d'Italia, vol. 5, I documenti, II, Einaudi, Turin, 1973, p. 1981; and Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, p. 11 for March when the inmates revolted after a prisoner was shot dead by a guard for appearing to talk to people in the street below. See: ‘Ammutinamento a San Vittore’, Il Popolo, 16 March 1946; 'Rivolta a San Vittore, Il Mattino, 16 March 1946; ‘Sangue e ribellione a San Vittore’, Avanti!, 16 March 1946; and Vento, Salvatore, ‘Milano’, in Rugafiori, P. et al. (eds), Il triangolo industrial tra ricostruzione e lotta di classe, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1974, pp. 105–220, pp. 171–2. There was also a mass escape of partisans ‘all in for regular crimes’ in May 1946, see Wilson, E., Europe without Baedeker. Sketches among the Ruins of Italy, Greece, and England, together with Notes from a European Diary: 1963–1964, Rupert-Hart-Davis, London, 1967, p. 226.Google Scholar

26. Wilson, , Europe, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

27. Crainz, G., ‘Il conflitto e la memoria. “Guerra civile” e “triangolo della morte’”, Meridiana, 1992, 13, pp. 17–55, p. 31. For the famous ‘fatti di Schio’ see the entry in Enciclopedia dell'antifascismo e della Resistenza, V., R–-S, La Pietra, Milan, 1987. Togliatti criticized the ‘exaltation’ of the ‘fatti di Schio’ because, ‘they did not kill the ones who should have been killed, but rather women and children and you cannot praise something of this type’, Martinelli, R. and Righi, M. L. (eds), La politico del Partito comunista italiano nel periodo costituente. I verbali della direzione tra il V e il VI Congresso 1946–1948, Editori Riuniti, Annali 1990, Fondazione Istituto Gramsci, Rome, 1992, p. 149 (emphasis mine).Google Scholar

28. The riots are not mentioned in any of the best histories of post-war Italy. The fullest account we have is still Modona, Neppi, Carcere, pp. 1978–86. For a recent study of prison riots, see Adams, R., Prison Riots in Britain and the USA, Macmillan, London, 1992.Google Scholar

29. Modona, Neppi, Carcere, pp. 1978–86; Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, p. 56; Murgia, Il vento, pp. 126–7 (for Rome); and Storchi, M., Uscire della guerra. Ordine pubblico e forze politiche. Modena, 1945–1946, Franco Angeli, Milan, 1995, p. 93 (for Modena). The anger directed against prison administrators during the Fascist period spilled over dramatically at Rome during the trial of Caruso, the ex-director of Regina Coeli in 1945, when another official was beaten up by an angry crowd and thrown into the Tiber, where he drowned, see Ranzato, G., Il linciaggio di Caretta, Il Saggiatore, Milan, 1997. This event was captured on film by Visconti, Luchino, Giorni di gloria, 1945. Caruso was executed by a firing squad soon afterwards.Google Scholar

30. Togliatti wrote that ‘the insufficient food rightly provokes protests by the prisoners and often forms the main reason for acts of indiscipline’, Ministro di Grazia e Giustizia: Direzione Generate Istituti Prevenzione e Pena, Roma, 6 June 1946 (document reprinted in Conti, S., La repressione antipartigiana. Il ‘triangolo della morte’, 1947–1953, Istituto Rodolfo Morandi, Ricerche, 1, Bologna, 1979, appendix.Google Scholar

31. For Di Bella gangs of prisoners ‘moved freely, noisily and with arrogance’ from one wing to another, Italia ‘nera’, p. 11. It may well have also been a policy decision to allow prisoners to move around the wing, especially in hot weather.Google Scholar

32. Evans, R., The Fabrication of Virtue: Prison Architecture 1750–1840, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982, p. 198.Google Scholar

33. Modona, Neppi, ‘Togliatti’, p. 301.Google Scholar

34. L'Unità often praised the use of force to suppress riots, as with the March uprising, when three prisoners were shot by guards, 16 March 1946. Neppi Modona places the blame for the riots across Italy with ‘Fascist political prisoners’, ‘Togliatti’, p. 289. One article from 1946 quotes Togliatti himself as claiming that the revolt had been ‘prepared by groups of Fascist criminals’. Togliatti promised to increase the number of guards and their weapons, ‘Dichiarazioni di Togliatti’, Corriere d'Informazione, 25–26 April 1946.Google Scholar

35. Interior Minister Romita attributed the revolt to ‘common criminals … Fascist criminals and some ex-partisans’, ‘Il corpo di Mussolini riapparirebbe a Roma?’, Milano-Sera, 24–25 April 1946. We can also note the presence of maverick partisan leader Giuseppe ‘Vera’ Marozin during negotiations with the rioters (Di Bella, Italia ‘nera’, p. 14); Bocca, Storia dell'Italia partigiana, pp. 384–5. For the incredible story of Marozin and his ‘band’ see his Odissea partigiana. ‘I 19 della Pasubio’, Edizioni Azione Comune, Milan, 1965 and a critical account in Pesce, Quando cessarono, pp. 160–2, 199. At one point during the April ‘revolt’ of 1946, ‘Marino’ was described as ‘the leader of the rioters’ by the Corriere Lombardo (24–25 April 1946). A certain Marino De Matteis was brought to trial in May, but absolved after complaining that he had been mistaken for Galbiati. Galbiati had been a (SAP) partisan commander in the city of Milan (Brigata Garibaldi 116a, for some information see Borgomaneri, Due inverni) who later headed an armed gang at Milan. He shot his way out of the Palazzo di Giustizia at Milan in 1945 (injuring a guard), and escaped again from a hospital in 1947. He was finally captured near Rome in 1949, when the Corriere della Sera still described him as ‘amongst the leaders’ of the 1946 revolt, ‘Il “capitano Marino“ sorpreso e arrestato a Rome’, 27 April 1949. See also ‘Arrestata col bimbo al seno la’‘morta’ ‘Maria Pestellini’, Corriere Lombardo, 27–28 April 1949, where Galbiati is dubbed ‘the most wanted man of the post-war period’; ‘Il “capitano Marino” arrestato nella capitale’, L'Unità, 27 April 1949 which talks about ‘numerous bandit-type actions’ after the liberation and neglects to mention his partisan activities; and ‘Rapida fuga fulminea cattura’, Avanti!, 15 March 1946.Google Scholar

36. Modona, Neppi, ‘Togliatti’, p. 301.Google Scholar

37. For Basile see Il Popolo, 16 March 1946. Basile was to make an impact on Italian history in 1960, when his promised appearance at a MSI conference (as President of the Congress) at Genova helped to provoke the ‘fatti di Luglio’ (riots in the streets of the city) and the fall of the Tambroni government. See Ginsborg, P., A History of Contemporary Italy. Society and Politics 1943–1988, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1990, p. 257. For Caradonna, who had been a squadrist leader in the early days of Fascism, and was vice-president of the lower house from 1934–9, see Dizionario Biografico degli italiani, 19, Treccani, Rome, 1976, pp. 468–70. Caradonna has often been named as one of the leaders of the revolt of San Vittore, despite the near-total lack of evidence pointing his way and the fact that he was not charged with any crimes linked to these events. He was released under the amnesty of August 1946 Google Scholar

38. As for numbers, we have little to go on in terms of archive material. Murgia, Il vento, uses the very high figure (for May 1945) of 4, 000 Fascists, 800 ‘comuni’ and ‘more than a thousand’ partisans, p. 128. Even for San Vittore, 6, 000 prisoners would seem to be an exaggeration.Google Scholar

39. ‘Rivolta a San Vittore’, Il Mattino, 16 March 1946; Vento, , ‘Milano’, p. 171. For Murgia the ‘absurd proximity’ between Fascist and partisan prisoners often provoked ‘extremely violent incidents and massive fights’, Il vento, p. 128.Google Scholar

40. Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, p. 11.Google Scholar

41. Some of these are reproduced by Bella, Di, ibid., pp. 12–13. See also the claims of Regonini (see below) at his trial for the ‘revolt of San Vittore’: ‘the Fascists ate chicken, drank cognac, had their pockets full of money, some of them took cocaine’, Corriere Lombardo, 7 May 1946. Neppi Modona argues that a call by justice minister Togliatti for all prisoners to be treated equally was proof of the privileges being allowed to Fascist inmates, ‘Togliatti’, p. 301.Google Scholar

42. It is also worth noting that the new prison director at San Vittore, appointed in August 1945, was an ex-partisan and Communist, Bocca, G., Palmiro Togliatti, L'Unità, Rome, 1992, pp. 413–14. Togliatti and the Prefect of Milan at the time, Lombardi, clashed over this appointment.Google Scholar

43. See the fascinating discussion in Pavone, C., Una guerra civile. Saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 1991, pp. 450–9 and passim. In the early days of the Resistance the need to raise funds often led to robberies, and to a blurring of the demarcation line between partisans and bandits, ibid., p. 450. In the absence of ‘legality’, partisan groups had to invent their own: see Solaro, G. (ed.), ‘La giustizia partigiana’, pp. 399–489, Istituto milanese per la storia della resistenza e del movimento operaio, Annali 4, Studi e strumenti di storia contemporanea , Marcialis, G. and Vignati, G. (eds), Franco Angeli, Milan, 1995; Bendotti, A., ‘Un processo partigiano’. See Botta, R., ‘Il senso di rigore. Il codice morale della giustizia partigiana’, in Legnani, Massimo el al. (eds), Guerra, guerra di liberazione, guerra civile. Franco Angeli, Milan, 1990, pp. 205–20 and pp. 141–61 for descriptions of the rigid punishments for thieves within the partisan bands, which ranged from ‘il palo’ (tying the partisan to a pole for a period of time) to the death sentence for armed robbery. For a chilling account of one death sentence meted out to a partisan for armed robbery by another partisan see Chiodi, , Banditi, p. 121. See also, for Milan, Pesce, Quando cessarono, pp. 181–4, 206.Google Scholar

44. See De Martino, , Dal carcere, Chiodi, , Banditi; the film directed by Lizzani, Carlo, Achtung banditi! (1948); Secchia, , Il Partito comunista, p. xx; Pavone, , Una guerra civile, p. 459; Vitali, , Una città, p. 177; and Revelli, N., La guerra dei poveri, Einaudi, Turin, 1962.Google Scholar

45. ‘Le tre guerre: patriottica, civile e di classe’, in Legnani, et al. (eds), Guerra, pp. 25–6, 36.Google Scholar

46. See also Klinkhammer, , L'occupazione, p. 323; Borioli, D., ‘La percezione del nemico. I partigiani di fronte al nazifascismo’, in Legnani, et al. (eds), Guerra, pp. 119–40; and Bermani, C., ‘Giustizia partigiana e guerra di popolo in Valsesia’, in ibid., pp. 163–204. Bermani rightly notes that ‘Guerilla warfare was hard to reconcile with the long-term holding of prisoners’ and that prisoner exchanges were really possible (in this region) only after February 1945, pp. 194, 198. Partisan leader Giovanni Pesce refers to the ‘Fascist bandits’ in his Quando cessarono, p. 215.Google Scholar

47. Wilson, , Europe, p. 217.Google Scholar

48. La Volante Rossa was a semi-official organization, linked to the PCI at Lambrate, which carried out a series of political assassinations in Milan in 1945–9. See, above all, Bermani, C., ‘La Volante Rossa (estate 1945—febbraio 1949)’, Primo Maggio, 9–10, 1977–8, pp. 81–106; but see also Fiori, G., Uomini-Ex. Lo strano destino di un gruppo di comunisti italiani, Einaudi, Turin, 1993, especially pp. 82–94; and Di Bella, , Italia ‘nera’, chapter 3. The non-left press made much of the Volante Rossa, especially in 1949: see for example, ‘Arrestato l'assassino di Ghisalberti e Massaza’, Corriere Lombardo, 11–12 February 1949; ‘Chi ha dato l'ordine?’ ibid., 28–9 January 1949, and passim. The arrest of certain members of the Volante Rossa was linked to further revelations about the missing ‘Dongo Gold’ and the beginning of the trial of Communist militants for the murder of the priest Don Pessina in Emilia: see ibid., 16–17 February 1949 and 5–6 February 1949. For the debates concerning the ‘Triangolo Rosso’ in Central Italy, see Onofri, N.S., Il triangolo rosso (1943–1947), Sapere 2000, Rome, 1994; Di Loreto, P., Togliatti e la ‘doppiezza’, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1991; Storchi, Uscire della guerra; and (for a ‘Fascist’ account) Pisanò, G. and Pisanò, P., Il triangolo della morte. La politico della strage in Emilia durante a dopo la guerra civile, Mursia, Milan, 1992.Google Scholar

49. See all the references under the previous footnotes; also Borgomaneri, , Due inverni, p. 373; Harris, C.R.S., Allied Military Administration of Italy, 1943–1945, London, HMSO, 1957, p. 310; and Il Tempo, 1 May 1945. For the 3, 000 estimate for Milan, see Pavone, , Una guerra civile, p. 512 (citing Bocca). See also, Simiani, C., I ‘giustiziati fascisti’ dell'April 1945, 2nd edn, Omnia, Milan, 1949, who settles on a figure of 3, 400 for Milan (for the period 25–30 May 1945) and 40, 000 for the whole of Italy.Google Scholar

50. For example, on 23 April there was an attack on the Milanese Camera del Lavoro which led to the death of a door-keeper who had been attending a union meeting; on 1 May the target was the PCI headquarters; and during the night of 25 April 1946, shots were fired at the PSI central office at Milan (see Milano-Sera, passim, especially ‘Dentro i primi macabri neofascisti’, 3–4 May 1946). For incidents across the rest of Italy, see Canosa, , Storia della criminalità, pp. 13–20.Google Scholar

51. See Barbieri's account of why he became a ‘bandit’, given in an interview on his release in 1971 and reproduced in Giovine, U., Il banditismo in Italia nel dopoguerra, Bompiani, Milan, 1974, p. 183.Google Scholar

52. Bermani, C., ‘Dopo la guerra di liberazione (Appunti per una storia ancora non scritta)’, in Begozzi, M. (ed.), Conoscere la resistenza, Edizioni Unicopoli, Milan, 1994, pp. 89–128, p. 93.Google Scholar

53. The rhyme is lost in translation: ‘quando passa la squadra volante/si rivolta ridendo la gente/perché sa che al medesimo istante/in Isvizzera è già il delinquente’, satirical song (circa 1945–6), reported in Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, p. 14.Google Scholar

54. Ignatieff, , A Just Measure, p. 205.Google Scholar

55. Questura, (Agnesina). Report no. 014886 Gabinetto 15 July 1946, now in ASMi, Gab. Pref., Il serie, Cat. 21, b. 451.Google Scholar

56. Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, p. 52.Google Scholar

57. It was not until 1949 that Barbieri was finally convicted for the armed robberies of 1945: see Corriere della Sera, 20 September 1949. Only in 1953 was this sentence confirmed. Barbieri continued to proclaim his innocence with regard to the revolt at this trial, see ibid., 4 October 1949. Later he narrowly failed to escape from Pianosa because of stormy seas: see ‘Per Ezio Barbieri rinvio in Cassazione’, Corriere Lombardo, 14–15 January 1956 and ‘Tornerò a Milano scrive Ezio Barbieri’, ibid., 16–17 November 1955. The myth lives on (in the prison) right through to the present day. In an interview published in 1997, Bruno Brancher wrote about the ‘Bezzi and Barbieri tower, symbol of the first post-war revolt’, ‘La mia città vista dal tram’. La Repubblica, 25 November 1997.Google Scholar

58. See ‘La rivolta domata’. La Libertà, 23 April 1946. This account (of Barbieri's membership of the Muti) is not, however, supported either by Bella, Di or Giovine, . It is certainly true that Barbieri's gang also included Giacomo Regonini, apparently an ex-soldier of the X Mas Fascist militia (and another participant in the revolt of San Vittore), Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, p. 63. Barbieri is mentioned as having had a shoot-out with members of the Muti in Scott, H. (ed.), Enciclopedia del crimine e dei criminali, Longanesi, Milan, 1961. In the long biography in Milano-Sera (‘Ezio Barbieri & c. Il gangster che sorride’, 17–18 September 1949) no mention is made of Muti membership, and it is even alleged that Barbieri pretended to be a partisan for a time in 1945. This latter allegation is refuted in ‘Barbieri continua a sogghignare e commisera Bezzi’, Avanti!, 28 February 1946.Google Scholar

59. His only real challenger was probably Paolo Casaroli, an ex-member of the Fascist X Mas militia who also graduated to armed robbery (in Bologna) and also took part in a prison riot: see the entry in Scott, (ed.), Enciclopedia del crimine.Google Scholar

60. The day before the revolt of San Vittore, Barbieri's son was born. Di Bella recounts an apocryphal story about this event. Apparently, some prisoners shouted out to Barbieri, , ‘Congratulations’, and he replied, ‘I haven't seen him yet but they say he is worthy of his father—he weighs nine kilos with a rifle’, Italia ‘nera’, p. 58. For a portrait of the Milanese middle class see Borgomaneri, , Due inverni, pp. 374–5.Google Scholar

61. This is not the place to go into an analysis of the crime statistics. For further information, see Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, p. 90 and passim; Canosa, R., Storia della criminalità in Italia: 1946–1995, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1995, pp. 13–24 and Storia della criminalità in Italia: 1845–1945, Einaudi, Turin, 1991, pp. 324–7. See also Modona, Neppi, ‘Togliatti’, pp. 288, 296–7 and for attempts to raise sentences to combat armed robberies, p. 296. For a discussion of the general problem of law and order in the post-war period (which ignores the prison riots) see Flores, M., ‘Governo e potere nel period transitorio’, in Flores, M. et al. (eds), Gli anni della costituente. Strategic dei governi e delle classi sociali, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1983, p. 47–56.Google Scholar

62. Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, p. 17. To get a feel of this period, see the ‘tabloid’ press and their Milan pages, especially Corriere Lombardo or Milano-Sera. Robberies rose (in Italy) from 1, 254 in 1940 to 18, 382 in 1946, Canosa, Storia della criminalità, p. 9. See also the cartoons in Guerino Meschino, ‘Le rapine quotidiane’, 24 February 1946 and ‘Icontri di notte’, 10 March 1946.Google Scholar

63. L'Unità, 26 August 1945, reported in Vento ‘Milano’, p. 169. Later, a more sophisticated account laid the blame for the crime wave at the door or unemployment, ibid. See also the headline ‘Sparate sui banditi. Non su chi difende il lavoro’ (Shoot at the bandits, not at those who are defending jobs), Milano-Sera, 6–7 September 1949.Google Scholar

64. Giovine, , Il banditismo, p. 184. It is also clear that some of these ‘bandits’ were ex-partisans: in Milan one gang was grouped around Bruno Galbiati (‘Capitano Marino’). Communist organizer Giuseppe Pajetta (who was based in Milan) told the PCI central committee in 1946 that the reason for the lack of success [in the administrative elections] at Legnano [an industrial town just outside Milan] is due to remaining groups of partisans (the secretary of that section was caught whilst robbing a bank). (Martinelli, , La politico, p. 160) In general, the PCI leadership was very critical of the continuing use of ‘partisan-type methods’ in 1945–6, see Secchia, and in Martinelli, Togliatti, La politico, pp. 128, 149.Google Scholar

65. Giovine, , Il banditisimo, p. 186. It is also clear that many of the gangs consisted of ex-Fascist policemen or autonomous groups who had operated in Milan during the war and continued to operate (without uniform) afterwards. For some of these groups and their activities during the war see ASMi, Gab. Pref., II series, b. 365. For military-style measures taken to defeat these criminals, see the reports under the title ‘Repressione brigantaggio’, Questura to Prefect, 11 November 1946, ASMi, Gab. Pref., II serie, Cat. 21, b. 451.Google Scholar

66. Cited in Di Bella, , Italia ‘nera’, p. 89.Google Scholar

67. This lack of clarity is common in the history of prison riots, as Adams has shown in his Prison Riots. In fact, Adams theorizes these riots as ‘contested concepts, both in their definition and character’, pp. ix, 7–14, and argues that it is impossible to undertake a ‘complete history of prison riots’, p. 29.Google Scholar

68. The discussion is based upon what secondary literature there is, above all the long account in Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, pp. 73–89, but also Giovine, , Il banditismo, pp. 187–9 and Modona, Neppi, Carcere, p. 1982. I have looked to reconstruct events through the use of newspaper reports, using Milano-Sera, Corriere d'informazione, Avanti!, L'Unità, Il Mattino d'Italia, Il Popolo, La Libertà, Secolo Nuovo, L'Italia, and Corriere Lombardo, Of course, much of the reporting in these papers was inaccurate and based on rumour, and I have tried to balance out these problems through the use of a number of different kinds of newspaper.Google Scholar

69. One contemporary account claims that ‘it was impossible to distinguish the political from the criminal prisoners’, Fariello, Antonio, Una città, una questura, Questura di Milano, Milan, 1986, p. 26.Google Scholar

70. Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, p. 54; ‘Seconda notte di sangue a San Vittore’, Corriere Lombardo, 23 April 1946, 26 April 1946.Google Scholar

71. ‘I ribelli di San Vittore pagano’, Corriere Lombardo, 1 May 1946.Google Scholar

72. For the Barbieri-as-leader version, see most of the press over the early part of the riot (and afterwards, for example, ‘Barbieri & C.’, Milano-Sera, 17–18 September 1949); Modona, Neppi, Carcere, p. 1982; Fariello, , Una città, p. 29; Scott, (ed.), Enciclopedia del crimine; and The Times, which reported that ‘the riots are led by a well-known gangster [Barbieri] and several former Fascist leaders’, ‘Mussolini's body stolen’, 24 April 1946. The alternative version (Regonini or ‘no leaders’) was given by certain papers in the immediate aftermath of the riot (and in some cases, changed again with the trials of Barbieri and Regonini in May). But see also Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, pp. 73 and 81, and Barbieri's own version (‘I was not the leader … but if I was a leader, it was in order to calm them [the rioters] down, not incite them’), in a 1971 interview, now in Giovine, , Il banditismo, pp. 187–9. Besozzi, Tomaso (‘La Rivolta di San Vittore’, Historia, June 1963, pp. 71–3) downplays the seriousness of the riot and criticizes the use of force by the authorities. The ‘authoritative’ Enciclopedia dell'antifascismo e della Resistenza, V., R–-S, La Pietra, Milan, 1987 (‘San Vittore, carcere di’, p. 363) also repeats the myth of Barbieri's being the leader. But the small entry on the revolt is full of errors: Barbieri is called Carlo not Ezio; Bezzi (already dead by April 1946) is called ‘Bozzi’; and Giuseppe Caradonna is also named as one of the leaders of the revolt, but confused with his nephew Giulio Caradonna a leading figure in the MSI in the post-war period (see Ferraresi, Franco, Minacce alla democrazia. La Destra radicale e la strategia della tension in Italia nel dopoguerra, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1995, pp. 52–3). It is rather worrying that such an error-filled and unsubstantiated entry should be allowed into an encyclopaedia of this type (the author is the distinguished Resistance historian Mario Giovana).Google Scholar

73. Corriere Lombardo, 24–25 April 1946.Google Scholar

74. The prisoners called on the people ‘to rise against the law in favour of us’, ‘Insurrection at Milan prison’, The Times, 23 April 1946. Sec also for Barbieri's dubious claim that ‘the Milanese people are with us’ (which is also reported in Corriere Lombardo, 23–24 April 1946): Bella, Di, Italia ‘nera’, p. 84; ‘Intermezzi’, L'Illustrazione Italians, 19, 12 May 1946, p. 300; Modona, Neppi, Carcere, p. 1980. One newspaper reported that shots had been fired from nearby houses in support of the rebellion, ‘San Vittore è in rivolta’, Milano-Sera, 22–23 April 1946,Google Scholar

75. Quoted in Giovine, , Il banditismo, p. 187. See the various (and contradictory) press reports for the rumours about weapons, ranging from ‘an enormous number of modem weapons’, Il Mattino d'Italia, 23 April 1946 to a ‘few’ pistols, Avanti!, 30 April 1946.Google Scholar

76. L'Unità, 24 April 1946, Modona, Neppi, Carcere, p. 1982; Di Bella (who mentions only two deputies), Italia ‘nera’, pp. 80–1, Vento, , ‘Milano’, pp. 171–2. For the ‘Fascist plot’ analysis, which was helped by the timing of the riot and the subsequent theft of Mussolini's body from Milan, see: L'Unità ibid, and 25 April 1946; also Milano-Sera, ‘Tagliare le radici’, 22–23 April 1946 and 23–24 April 1946. Interestingly, the Socialist daily, Avanti!, was far more cautious, calling the riot ‘pure criminality’, 25 April 1946.Google Scholar

77. Corriere Lombardo, 5 May 1946. In the end, Barbieri and Regonini were both given long prison terms (18 and 24 years, respectively), whilst a certain Marino De Matteis successfully argued that he had abstained from any role in the revolt, and had been mistaken for another Marino (‘Capitano Marino’—Bruno Galbiati) in the same prison, ‘Ed ora, nessuno li vuole’, Corriere d'informazione, 7–8 May 1946.Google Scholar

78. Sec ‘Attentati’, Avanti!, 23 April 1946, ‘San Vittore is a bad place, we know from our own experiences’; and Modona, Neppi, Carcere, pp. 1979–85. Corriere Lombardo called conditions ‘shameful’, 23 April 1946. Most of these demands, including the immediate removal of the prison director, were met, ‘San Vittore com'era e come sara’, Milano-Sera, 26–27 April 1946.Google Scholar

79. The Monarchist Il Mattino d'Italia called the causes of the revolt ‘positive’, ‘La commedia degli assurdi’, 23 April 1946. The public prosecutor, Caccia, was sympathetic to the rioters' demands, calling for a ‘general amnesty’ and arguing that ‘the revolt should not be suppressed, but the demands of the rioters should be, as far as is possible, met’, Milano-Sera, 22–23 April 1946.Google Scholar

80. Corriere Lombardo reported ‘clamorous agreement’, applause for Barbieri's defence lawyer and an ‘indescribable tumult’ which led to the clearing of the courtroom, 5 May 1946. Avanti!'s journalist wrote of ‘a disgusting sympathy for the accused’, 5 May 1946. See also ‘MALAVITA, attenta. Barbieri non ride più’, Milano-Sera, 3–4 May 1946, whose colourful account wrote of ‘young girls … with strange passion in their eyes’ in the courtroom and ‘strange heroes with pistols in their hands and just enough barbarism to shake up their useless existences’. This popular support for Barbieri is also cited in an interview with a newsagent in the zone, who remembers people clapping Barbieri as he escaped from the police and claims that Barbieri helped the poor, this is the truth … he gave money to those who needed it. Everyone acknowledged him as he walked through the neighbourhood. (Villa, Andrea, cited in Milano Zona Cinque, Comune di Milano, Milan, 1981, p. 97) Google Scholar

81. Vomini-Ex, p. 7.Google Scholar

82. See Flores, M., ‘L'epurazione’, in Quazza, G. et al, L'Italia dalla liberazione alla Repubblica, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1977, pp. 413–67; Ferraresi, , Minacce alla democrazia, pp. 35–42; Pavone, , Una guerra civile, p. 562; Alle origini della Repubblica, p. XVIII, pp. 107–8, 126–55, 175; Lanaro, S., Storia dell'Italia repubblicana, Marsilio, Venice, 1992, pp. 26–8; Ginsborg, , A History of Contemporary Italy, pp. 91–2.Google Scholar

83. 27 January 1946, p. 5.Google Scholar

84. See Barbagallo, F., Dall'43 al'48. La formazione dell'Italia democratica, L'Unità, L'Unità, Rome, 1996, p. 167, see also pp. 65–7, 168 and Sereni's comments to the PCI direzione in 1946 which are in Martinelli, and Righi, (eds), La politico del Partito Comunista italiano, p. 165. For the purging process in Milanese factories after the war, see Behan, T., The Long Awaited Moment. The Working Class and the Italian Communist Party in Milan, 1943–1948, Peter Lang, New York, 1997, chapter 5.Google Scholar

85. Conti, , La repressione antipartigiana, p. 19. There was particular hostility to the amnesty amongst the militant partisan base (including that of the PCI). Sometimes this opposition manifested itself in violence, or even attempts to ‘return to the mountains’, as took place in Asti (22 August 1946) in the wake of the amnesty, see ‘Nessun incident per il “ritomo alla montagna’”, Milano-Sera, 27–28 August 1946. La Volante Rossa in Milan chose its targets precisely amongst ‘the unpunished Fascists’ released after the amnesty. For these events and debates see Fiori, , Uomini-Ex, p. 53 and especially pp. 82–94; see also Pavone, , Una guerra civile, p. 436; Modona, Neppi, ‘Togliatti’, pp. 308–9.Google Scholar

86. In fact, the amnesty was followed by a rush of releases from prison, Bemardi, L., ‘Il fascismo di Salò nelle sentenze della magistratura piemontese’, in Bemardi, L. et al, Giustizia penale e guerra di liberazione. Franco Angeli, Milan, 1984, p. 78.Google Scholar

87. Broggi, C., Com'eravamo. Trentacinque anni di vita milanese. Pan Editrice, Milan, 1980, p. 27.Google Scholar