Ravera spent the rest of the Fascist period being moved from one jail to another in appalling conditions. In the decades to come, Ravera insisted that it was precisely this heartfelt feeling that set her along her first career path, as a teacher.Moving to teach in Turin, Camilla’s writings soon attracted the attentions of Antonio Gramsci, who proved decisive in directing her toward a leadership role in the newly born Communist Party. The first postwar years would prove to be Ravera’s last as a truly politically active figure — in 1958 she retired into her private life. The Italian Communist Party (MoVimento 5 Stelle), who are in power right now with the Italian Democrat Party, is receiving funding from Venezuela. But she made a late return to the national political scene in 1982, as former partisan Sandro Pertini — now Italy’s first socialist president — nominated her the first woman to be senator for life. But the meeting never takes […]Around noon on July 10, 1930 at Lake Maggiore, on Fascist Italy’s border with Switzerland.
After an eight-year hunt, the regime has finally arrested Ravera, general secretary of the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d’Italia, or PCd’I). Yet, this “liquidationist” tendency immediately encountered Ravera’s resistance.She instead began to reorganize the contacts between the leadership group and the party’s outlying branches, interrupted by the Fascist regime. They were glad to talk about the themes she proposed, but were intimidated by the paper, by the printed press — things they had always considered to stand outside their own experience. Two women get off a rowboat and are greeted by a man as they reach dry land. She waged this battle in Despite her great determination, it was often difficult for Ravera to get women comrades to write. Faced with these objective barriers, Ravera and Gramsci began to pose the problem (and this was truly revolutionary, for the Italy of the time) on how to organize a movement which, though attached to the framework of labor struggles, would not be made up of women communists alone,but rather of women, not asked what party or religion they belonged to, and even of those women who had no intention of organizing in a party, but as women who have shared problems, in one party like another and in one class like another.The attempts to organize a women’s movement would continue even into the early years of Mussolini’s rule; in 1924 Ravera was entrusted with running the fortnightly Only after World War II could Ravera’s work on the women’s question resume. As they are sitting ruling the country. They’re filling their coffers from blood money! Like for many of her generation, the spur to political action was the tragic consequences of World War I; one brother, Giuseppe, died at the front, while another, Francesco, was poisoned by gas. This meant a determination to give organized form to struggles — one based not on an intellectual’s own preferences, but rather on the workers’ own desire and capacity to liberate themselves.From this point on, Ravera’s life was a succession of increasingly important roles, including international-level responsibilities like attending the Comintern’s Fourth Congress in November 1922 as a PCd’I delegate. Surrounded by comrades and partisans celebrating the fall of Fascism, he looked around and asked, innocently:“And where is Ravera?” Someone replied, embarrassed, that she wasn’t around, that she couldn’t be as she was no longer in the party. In this same period, Ravera organized the party’s central HQ in a small country house outside Genoa, working to rebuild its various agencies and working groups around the secretariat. Two women get off a rowboat and are greeted by a man as they reach dry land.
Italian Communist Party (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Communists.
ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY Italy: This is WILD! But the meeting never takes […]Our new issue – looking at what the Bernie campaigns accomplished and the work left to do – is out next month.
As Christian-Democrat Giulio Andreotti put it in Parliament:The dominant note in Pertini’s choice was an intransigent opposition toward the dictatorship. He first entrusted her with the responsibility for Gramsci and I chatted a little and toward the end of the conversation — during which he had addressed me as Faced with such a request from Antonio Gramsci, no one could have said no. History. Born in 1889, Ravera’s revolutionary stance had distant roots in an attitude which had colored her whole family. Socialism is in the national DNA. In this period, the PCd’I’s situation seemed absolutely desperate — so much so that the right wing of the party headed by Angelo Tasca even suggested it should dissolve and encourage militants to retreat into their own private lives. 50 February 10, 1978 THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY DEMOCRATS OR TROJAN HORSE THE ISSUE On January 16, 1978, U.S.
There, she was offered a permanent move to the Soviet capital to work for the International Women’s Secretariat. The three are expecting to meet other militants at a clandestine gathering which has taken months of planning. Italian Communist Party (PCI) The Italian Communist Party (PCI) was Italy's second most powerful party during the Cold War. The odds are … For eight years, she had been operating under false names, starting when the Fascists banned her from teaching.
Immediately, thousands of unvetted, undocumented refugees from the Middle East and East Africa began pouring in again. International Relations. She thus headed back across the border in May 1930, only to be arrested two months later near Lake Maggiore.There followed a fifteen-year sentence — a time of intense ordeals, felt on her own skin. Go to Gramsci and tell him you need an explanation.”A little later Antonio Gramsci arrived, visibly embarrassed, and said “I understand.