Red Saints: Gendering the Cold War, Italy 1943–1953

Molly Tambor holds a PhD in Modern European History from Columbia University and specializes in political history and the history of women and gender. She is Assistant Professor at C.W. Post Long Island University.

Abstract

The particular intensity of Italy's Cold War rivalries was subverted, critiqued, and even outright rejected by a coalition of women from both Left and Right. These women, brought together by their participation in the antifascist Resistance and held together by a particular vision of women's equal citizenship as the only guarantee of democracy in Italy, presented an ideal image of womanhood to the public endorsing both a Christian inspiration and a progressive militancy. Indeed, this conviction more accurately reflected the average Italian voter's own identity, in which Catholicism and communism were both thoroughly hybridised in local culture; and the real, if strategically complex, commitment in both mass parties' hierarchies to remain loyal to the new constitution rather than acquiesce to the covert sabotage constantly suggested to them by their interlocutors in Moscow or Washington. These women's success is a testament to an important women's movement before neofeminism, all too often forgotten; but it is also an important confirmation of our evolving understanding of the real significance of the Cold War as an interplay of forces which influenced, but could not determine, Italian and other local outcomes.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the American Academy in Rome and the German Marshall Fund for funding portions of the research used in this article.

Notes

Molly Tambor holds a PhD in Modern European History from Columbia University and specializes in political history and the history of women and gender. She is Assistant Professor at C.W. Post Long Island University.

 [1] Del Pero, L'alleato scomodo, 180–6; idem, ‘The United States and “Psychological Warfare” in Italy’, 1320–2; Barnes, ‘The Secret Cold War’ II, 663–4; Cassamagnaghi, Immagini dall'America, 91–102; Hatch, Ambassador Extraordinary, 214–8.

 [2] Leonide Repaci, ‘La santa rossa’, Noi donne, 10 May 1953.

 [3] ‘Le nostre candidate’, Noi donne, 10 May 1953.

 [4] On women's ‘peace’ organisations as fronts, see Laville, Cold War Women, in particular chapter 5, ‘“Positive Peace”: American Women's Response to the “Peace Offensive”’, 124–43. On American disenchantment with the Christian Democrat party, see below and especially Del Pero, L'alleato scomodo; Mistry, ‘The Case for Political Warfare’, 318–9. Key to my overall understanding of this interplay are Del Pero's further contributions, including ‘The United States and “Psychological Warfare” in Italy’, and ‘Containing Containment’.

 [5] Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem, 21, 26.

 [6] In this argument I concur with and make use of that school of Italian Cold War history, and Cold War history in general, which tries to dispense with binaries in its analysis – Italy completely dominated by foreign relations or Italy cunningly exploiting American aid for domestic agendas unrelated to the struggle against communism; communism and anticommunism as solely and universally applicable bipolar axes in all political situations – and instead sees a complex ‘intreccio’ or intertwining of foreign and domestic politics heightened in their urgency by Italy's nature as a frontier between East and West, North and South, and by its historical character as a laboratory for political experimentation given all its ‘cleavages’ along socio-economic, geographic, and religious lines (to which we may perhaps also add gender). See Giovagnoli, Il partito italiano, 38 for a close articulation of the above. Also see Formigoni, ‘La rifondazione’; Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem; idem, Italia e L'Egemonia nel Mediterraneo; Tosi, Politica ed economia nelle relazioni internazionali; Rossi, ‘Una democrazia a rischio’; Del Pero, L'alleato scomodo; Lundestad, ‘Empire By Invitation’; idem, No End to Alliance ; idem, The United States and Western Europe; Lundestad and Westad, Beyond the Cold War; Westad, Reviewing the Cold War .

 [7] This is the case, for example, with the recent issue of the Journal of Women's History; Laville, in an otherwise excellent piece, argues that US women saw outright legislative struggle for rights as ‘old-fashioned’ and felt that the proper sphere for women to succeed was in social and professional associationism; these associations ended up participating in the Cold War not by entering into transnational alliances with other women's groups but by cosying up to US governmental efforts to export and promote American-style democracy and civil society. In their case the model to export was the productive efficient consumer housewife, which Laville presents as an unquestioned model for American women activists, pace Betty Freidan. Laville, ‘A New Era in International Women's Rights?’

 [8] Pojmann, ‘Join Us in Rebuilding Italy’; Francisca de Haan followed the same path with ‘Transnational Women's Organizations in the Early Cold War: The ICW, IAW, and WIDF in Comparative Historical Perspective’ in their panel at the American Historical Association's Annual Meeting on 3 January 2009 in New York City.

 [9] While the examples of gender and women's history works reshaping the fields of contemporary social and political history are by now too numerous to list comprehensively, some of the works which most inform this article include: Bock and Thane, Maternity and Gender Policies; Bonacchi and Groppi, Il Dilemma della cittadinanza; Heineman, What Difference Does a Husband Make?; Higonnet et al., Behind the Lines; Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies; Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity; Moeller, Protecting Motherhood; Pateman, The Sexual Contract; Rossi-Doria, Diventare cittadine; Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer; de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women; idem, Irresistible Empire; Gaiotti de Biase, ‘Impact of Women's Activity’; Bellassai, Morale comunista; Una donna, un voto (special issue of Genesis ); and Fillippini and Scattigno, Una democrazia incompiuta.

[10] Scoppola, La repubblica dei partiti; Barbagallo, Storia dell'Italia repubblicana, vol. 1 La costruzione della democrazia; Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy; Barnes, ‘The Secret Cold War’; Mammarella, l'Italia contemporanea; Clark, Modern Italy, esp. 334–47; Morris, Women in Italy, 1945–1960, ‘Introduction’; McCarthy, Italy Since 1945.

[11] Romero, ‘Gli Stati Uniti in Italia: il Piano Marshall e il Patto atlantico’; idem, ‘L'Europa come strumento di nation-building’; idem, ‘La scelta atlantica e americana’; idem, ‘Americanization and National Identity’; Ellwood, ‘Italy, Europe, and the Cold War’; idem, Rebuilding Europe; Varsori, ‘Reflections on the Origins of the Cold War’; idem, ‘Italy's Policy Toward European Integration’. Also Neri Gualdesi, ‘L'ancoraggio dell'Italia all'Europa’; Formigoni, ‘La rifondazione della politica estera nella democrazia repubblicana’; Giovagnoli, Il partito italiano.

[12] Cultural historians alone among those studying the Cold War have taken advantage of the literature on women and gender, two fields that otherwise seem to ignore each other totally. For the cultural history of Italy's Cold War, especially the transformation of women's lives and the (not uncontested) rise of consumerism, see: Cassamagnaghi, Immagini dall'America; De Grazia, Irresistible Empire (esp. ‘The Model Mrs. Consumer’); Piccone Stella, La prima generazione; D'Attore, Nemici per la pelle; Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow; and Duggan and Wagstaff, Italy in the Cold War , particularly the essays of Allum and Caldwell; Foot, ‘The Family and the “Economic Miracle”’.

[13] Parisella, Cultura cattolica e Resistenza nell'Italia repubblicana, 28-9 gives extensive bibliographic notes on the postwar publications on martyred and heroic clergy and laypeople who sacrificed and saved others in the Resistance. It is interesting to note that Italians would have been familiar with this invitation to venerate the ‘new saints’ of Italy. Other excellent essays on the memory of the Resistance as produced and used by the mass political parties are in Miccoli et al., La grande cesura; and see also Bianchi and De Marchi, Per amore ribelli. Cattolici e Resistenza.

[14] Lunadei and Motti, ‘A scuola di politica’, 142. A useful comparison and analysis of UDI and CIF sponsored publications is Pieracci, ‘Progetti, immagini, modelli’.

[15] The literature on women and the Resistance is by now vast and generally in agreement about the specificity of women's experience in it and the powerful politicisation of women it accomplished. Important works include de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women; Slaughter, Women and the Italian Resistance; Bravo and Bruzzone, In guerra senza armi; Mafai, L'apprendistato della politica; idem, Pane nero; Gagliani et al., Donne guerra politica; de Luna, Donne in oggetto.

[16] Discussed in Boneschi, Santa pazienza, 9–10; Gabrielli, Il club delle virtuose, 59. Other examples of flyers and early clandestine copies of Noi donne, individually produced by groups in each province, in UDI National Archives, Archivio cronologico, 1944, Box 2, Folder 2, ‘Gruppi di difesa della donna’.

[17] The full name was Gruppi di difesa della donna e per l'assistenza ai combattenti della libertà (Women's Defence Groups and for Assistance to Freedom Fighters). Membership number from Hellman, Journeys Among Women, 34. On the creation and makeup of the GDD, Merlin, La mia vita, 67; throughout Gobetti, Diaro Partigiano; and Odorisio, Donna o cosa, 153–8. On the postwar history of UDI, Ascoli, ‘L'Udi tra emancipazione e liberazione’; and Michetti et al., Udi:laboratorio di politica delle donne. See also Gabrielli, Il club delle virtuose.

[18] Scaraffia, ‘Christianity Has Liberated Her’, 274.

[19] Gaiotti de Biase, ‘Impact of Women's Activity’, 253 n. 26.

[20] Maria Weber analyses the UDI and the CIF as recruitment and training grounds for women's political participation in Weber, ‘Italy’. On page 189, her estimate of membership is much lower: only 151,000 men and 370,000 women in the AC's groups in 1946. I tend to believe the higher numbers: UDI reached a million in the postwar period, and the Catholic groups always had larger numbers than the communists. On women's changing role in Church activism in these years, Scaraffia, ‘Christianity Has Liberated Her’.

[21] Olga Prati in Ricci, Senza camelie, 97.

[22] Gaiotti de Biase, ‘Introduzione’, in Il voto alle donne cinquant'anni dopo , 8.

[23] Giovagnoli, Il partito italiano, 37–9. On the nature of the Catholic political world, party and non-party, and its intense and institutional factionalism, which perhaps only Alcide De Gasperi was truly successful in dominating and keeping unified, see also Craveri, De Gasperi; and Formigoni, L'Italia dei cattolici.

[24] Gabrielli, Il club delle virtuose, 170 (also 38–147).

[25] Memo W. Dowling to H.F. Matthew, 21 November 1946; reported in Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem, 28–9; and Di Nolfo, ‘Italia e Stati Uniti’.

[26] Brogi, A Question of Self Esteem, 26–9, quote from the memoirs of Egidio Ortona, Italian minister of the Italian embassy in Washington, on p. 27. The whole of Brogi's excellent book begs for a gendered reappraisal, hinging as it does on the very masculinised notions of respect, rank, and self-esteem in international relations.

[27] The decree was Decreto legislativo luogotenenziale n. 23 del 1 febbraio 1945, ‘Estensione alle donne del diritto di voto’, passed by the Bonomi government. On the modality and significance of the suffrage see Rossi-Doria, ‘L'Avvento del voto alle donne in Italia’; idem, Diventare cittadine, 20–6; Gaiotti de Biase, ‘The Impact of Women's Political and Social Activity’, 221; and idem, ‘Donne e politica nella Repubblica’, 101–10.

[28] Anne O'Hare McCormick, ‘Spring Finds Italy Facing a Vital Decision’, New York Times, 3 March 1948.

[29] Laville, Cold War Women, 56. On the concept of women's lack of responsibility for fascism making them more acceptable interlocutors for reconstruction programs, see ibid., 71, Heineman, ‘The Hour of theWoman’, 359; Mariano, ‘Public and Private in Anne O'Hare McCormick's Journalism’.

[30] Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem, 76; Romero, ‘L'Europa come strumento di nation-building’; Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State.

[31] Accounts of the speech and of women's reactions to it come from Bonacchi and Groppi, Il Dilemma della cittadinanza, 155; Rossi-Doria, Diventare cittadine, 12; and (including the last quote) Mafai, L'apprendistato della politica, 161.

[32] Mafai, L'apprendistato della politica, 111.

[33] Angela Maria Guidi Cingolani was appointed a member of the Consulta, the advisory organ which preceded the Constituent Assembly during the provisional government of 1945–46, the venue in which on 1 October 1945 she gave the above quoted speech. La Navicella: Leg. I, 250–1; Atti Parlamentari. Discussioni, indice alfabetico vol. 1, 860–1. She went on to be elected to the Constituent Assembly and then in 1948 to the 1st legislature; in 1951 she became the first woman in a government cabinet as Undersecretary in the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.

[34] Noce, Rivoluzionaria professionale, 382, 396–7.

[35] The constitution contains several articles that women delegates to the Constituent Assembly fought for passionately and which continue to serve as the basis for the parity movement in Italy today: article 3 guarantees equal treatment to all citizens regardless of sex; article 29 announces the legal equality of spouses, article 37 guarantees women's right to work and their right to equal pay for equal work, as well as the right to special and adequate provisions for working mothers; and article 51 declares women eligible for all public offices and elected positions on equal terms with men. But article 29's complete text declares that the Republic protects families as institutions ‘founded on matrimony’ and qualifies the equality of spouses within the family ‘within the limits laid down by law to guarantee the unity of the family’. On the elaboration and mixed legacy of the Constitution, and the contribution of the 21 women constituents, see Tambor, ‘An Essential Way of Life’; Miserocchi et al., Le donne nel Parlamento; Iotti, ‘Presenza nelle istituzioni’; Federici, ‘L'evoluzione socio-giuridica della donna’ and Caldwell, ‘The Family in the Fifties’.

[36] Vittoria, Storia del PCI, 62, 63; Gozzini and Martinelli, Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano.

[37] Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem, 68, 79–81; the quote is from Churchill's lament to Eisenhower over the weakness of the French legislature in the same period; see p. 17.

[38] Barnes, ‘The Secret Cold War’, 412–3.

[39] Vittoria, Storia del PCI, 64.

[40] Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem, 83, 92, 137, 142, 266; Giovagnoli, Il partito italiano, 43–4.

[41] Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem, 61–2, 72–3 n. 50; Pons, ‘Togliatti e Stalin’, 209–10.

[42] Togliatti was explicit about this from the beginning: see Togliatti, ‘L'emancipazione della donna’. On Togliatti's ‘partito nuovo’ and the argument that both he and de Gasperi steered a centrist course of stability and avoidance of escalated conflict and civil war, see Pons, L'impossibile egemonia; and idem, ‘Stalin, Togliatti, and the Origins of the Cold War in Europe’. On mass politics and constitutional implementation as women's rights strategies, see Tambor, ‘An Essential Way of Life’, and Filippini and Scattigno, Una democrazia incompiuta.

[43] Italo Calvino, ‘Nel primo incontro nazionale delle donne della Resistenza, De Gasperi e Schuster battuti dalle donne di tutta Italia’, L'Unità, 6 March 1948; quoted in Gabrielli, La pace e la mimosa, 146.

[44] Gabrielli, La pace e la mimosa, 146–7.

[45] Ventresca, From Fasicsm to Democracy; Mistry, ‘The Case for Political Warfare’; Lundestad, ‘Empire by Invitation’; idem, The United States and Western Europe Since 1943; De Luna, ‘Il 18 aprile’; Divine, ‘The Cold War and the Elections of 1948’; Woolf, The Rebirth of Italy.

[46] Anne O'Hare McCormick, ‘Spring Finds Italy Facing a Vital Decision’, New York Times, March 6, 1948.

[47] Del Pero, ‘United States and “Psychological Warfare”’, 1307.

[48] Election results, Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, 442; Vittoria, Storia del PCI, 65. That the 1948 electoral results were ‘read in Washington as proof of America's ability to influence the domestic affairs of other nations’ is the convincing argument of Mario Del Pero, who further shows that this conditioned the approach of US policymakers and CIA operatives in other places and other phases of the continuing Cold War. Del Pero, ‘United States and “Psychological Warfare”’, 1306; see also Mistry, ‘The Case for Political Warfare’, 302.

[49] Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, La donna italiana dalla Resistenza ad oggi, 30. Statistics on the makeup of the first parliament were compiled from La Navicella: I Deputati e Senatori del Primo Parlamento Repubblicano (Rome: Camera dei Deputati, 1949) but can also now be found online at www.legislature.camera.it/.

[50] These and other examples of 1948's election excesses are reported in Ventresca, From Fascism to Democracy, 197–212 and photographic insert. Spano, Mabruk, 86.

[51] The final text of the law as passed is published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale del 3 novembre 1950, n. 253, as Legge 26 agosto 1950 n. 860, ‘Tutela fisica ed economica delle lavoratrici madri’.

[52] For these and other stories of the formation and parliamentary careers of the ‘first forty five’, see Tambor, ‘The Lost Wave’.

[53] Formigoni, ‘La rifondazione’, 185; Rossi, ‘Una democrazia a rishio’, 916–7, 928–31. Scelba purged the police and carabinieri of former partisans, then encouraged them ‘to intervene incisively and brutally against all working-class or peasant protests that transcended certain narrow boundaries’. He invented flying squadrons known as ‘celere’ to impose law and order, but popular recollections are that they fired upon striking and protesting workers at the slightest provocation. Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, 112–5; Gozzini and Martinelli, Storia del Partito Comunista; Del Pero, ‘United States and “Psychological Warfare”’, 1330.

[54] Vittoria, Storia del PCI, 68, 70.

[55] Brogi points out how matters such as the claim on Trieste, full membership in the UN, diminishment of reparations, and economic cooperation in an integrating Europe all improved in relation to Italy's recognition as a democratic and autonomous nation-state. Correspondingly, the government's ability to refute PCI charges of subservience to the US improved with higher rank within these European and Atlantic alliances. That is, for De Gasperi, his requests for status and shows of independence ‘were consistent with [his] alarms about [the] nation's internal instability’. Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem, 3.

[56] Del Pero, L'alleato scomodo, 25–34; idem, ‘United States and “Psychological Warfare”’, 1312–3; Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem, 132–4, 225–6.

[57] Chaperon, ‘L'Ingresso delle donne nella vita politica’, 132–3; Lunadei and Motti, ‘A scuola di politica’, 140, 144, 150; Ellwood, ‘Comments’, 229; Giovagnoli, Il partito italiano, 36–40; Martin Clark was insightful about this: see Clark, Modern Italy, 327–35.

[58] CIF National Archives, some examples include Corso per propagandiste ‘Lo Stato e la funzione dei partiti nell'ordinamento democratico (1957)’ which included Lezione 9: ‘Puntualizzazione dei principali problemi femminili’, and Corso per propagandiste ‘La vita pubblica ed il Cif (1952)’. (CIF National Archives, Serie 11: Corsi, Scheda 176 Busta 877 ‘Corsi Vari’).

[59] Miceli, Tra storia e memoria, 163–8; Taricone, Centro Italiano Femminile, 128–9.

[60] Giovagnoli, Il partito italiano, 59; Craveri, De Gasperi, 463–5, 542–51 (though Craveri argues in the end this was a moment of weakening for the DC as a whole).

[61] Lunadei and Motti, ‘A scuola di politica’, 150.

[62] Parisella, Cultura cattolica e Resistenza, 91–2; Craveri, De Gasperi, 533–72. Further useful discussion of De Gasperi's ‘democratic choice’ and his linkage of that choice with the fate of a unified nation of new citizens (including women) is found in Formigoni, ‘La memoria della guerra e della Resistenza’; idem, L'Italia dei cattolici; and Monticone, ‘Alcide De Gasperi e la scelta politica per la democrazia occidentale’.

[63] Giovagnoli, Il Partito italiano, 59–60. De Gasperi died in August 1954. In addition to Craveri's reconstruction, I have used the women's accounts of these events which appear not only in Miceli's memoirs but also in Fortunato, ‘Testimonianza a confronto’, 150; Gaiotti de Biase, ‘The Impact of Women's Political and Social Activity in Postwar Italy’, n. 97, 266; idem, Question femminile e femminismo, 30; and Taricone, Centro Italiano Femminile, 128–9.

[64] Pons, ‘Stalin, Togliatti, and the Origins of the Cold War in Europe’; Vittoria, Storia del PCI, 77–9; Ginsborg, History of Contemporary Italy, 199–200.

[65] Cassamagnaghi, Immagini dall'America, 97; Mistry, ‘The Case for Political Warfare’, 318–9; Del Pero, ‘United States and “Psychological Warfare”’, 1320; Hatch, Ambassador Extraordinary, 217–8.

[66] Taricone, Centro italiano femminile, 134–5, n. 28.

[67] Noce, Rivoluzionaria professionale, 396–7, 415–6.

[68] For a fuller account of the struggles for autonomy from their respective parties and their echoes in association records and publications see Tambor, ‘The Lost Wave’, 68–79.

[69] Lunadei and Motti, ‘A scuola di politica’, 160–1; Michetti et al., Udi: laboratorio di politica, 61–70, 83–5, 92–6. On Rodano and her election as turning point, see Repetto Alaia, ‘Women and Mass Politics in the Republic’, 135; Rossi-Doria, Diventare cittadine, 67–70; Taricone, Centro italiano femminile, 34. On the significance of the Rodano family and the catholic communist movement, Fanti, Nilde Iotti. Signora del Palazzo, 169–70.

[70] Giovagnoli, Il partito italiano, 67–8.

[71] Giovagnoli, Il partito italiano, 6, 61–4.

[72] Giovagnoli, Il partito italiano, 99; Michetti et al., Udi: laboratorio di politica, 11.

[73] Brogi, A Question of self-Esteem, 238–9.

[74] Del Pero, ‘United States and “Psychological Warfare”’, 1333.