ARTURO COLOMBO

Tre battaglie di Ivanoe Bonomi  

N. 3/1987

Summary — In defining Ivanoe Bonomi "a protagonist among battles and disputes" the a. intends to emphasize the foreground role fulfilled by this personage during three decisive moments of the Italian contemporary history. First of all, at the beginning of the century, with the publication of the work "Le vie nuove del socialismo" (1907) which would constitute the foundation of his conception of "social democratic" (as Filippo Turati will define him) and would include him in the debate, not only Italian but European, concerning the so-called "revisionism" Successively, in the first post-war period, as stateman, engaged in two fronts (against the maximalism of the extreme Left and against the fascism of the extreme Right), as President of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale, and, again, as Prime Minister during the terrible period of the last world conflict, between the armed resistance and the fascist defeat.

Bonomi fought always, the a. explains, against the illusion that every State should have disappeared, as the socialist of the Left and the pro-soviet demanded. He always maintained that the socialist movement must approach again the principles of democracy and human rights, if it does not want to end in a new autocratic by-way (as would demonstrate the experience of Soviet Union’s Stalinism). Moreover, in Bonomi’s opinion, political parties need the leaven of participation to avoid degenerating in close apparatus, and likewise the exercise of power must be constantly linked with the guarantee of freedom and defence both of singles and of groups.

This is the reason why, concludes the a., the cultural and political experience of a personage ("uneasy" even nowadays, at least in the opinion of many historians) like Bonomi must be proposed every time the crisis of parliamentary and democratic institutions points out urgency to undertake together, not indeed to wait for risky (perhaps impossible) reforms from the top, as rather to construct "from the bottom" the conditions of a political-social order, less narrow and less unjust.