Emilio Lussu was a Sardinian and Italian writer, anti-fascist intellectual, military officer, partisan, and politician. He is also the author of the novel One Year on the High Plateau. Lussu was elected multiple times to Parliament, serving as a member of the Constituent Assembly of Italy for the constituency of Cagliari and twice as a minister. He founded the Sardinian Action Party and co-founded the Justice and Freedom movement. As an anti-fascist, he was assaulted, wounded, and sent to confinement to Lipari in the Aeolian Islands by the Italian fascist regime as a direct decision of Benito Mussolini. After escaping, with Carlo Rosselli and Fausto Nitti, he spent about fourteen years as a refugee abroad. He served as an officer in World War I, where he received multiple decorations, and participated in the Spanish Civil War as a political leader and in the Italian Resistance.
Gaetano Salvemini was an Italian socialist and anti-fascist politician, historian, and writer. Born in a family of modest means, he became an acclaimed historian both in Italy and abroad, particularly in the United States, after he was forced into exile by Benito Mussolini's Italian fascist regime.
Alessandro "Sandro" Pertini was an Italian socialist politician and statesman who served as the president of Italy from 1978 to 1985.
Ventotene is one of the Pontine Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, 46 kilometres off the coast of Gaeta right at the border between Lazio and Campania, Italy. The municipality of Ventotene, of the province of Latina (Lazio) had 708 permanent residents as of 2008.
Santo Stefano is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy, and part of the Pontine Islands. It is roughly circular, with a diameter of less than 400 metres, and it is located 2 kilometres east of the nearby island of Ventotene.
Altiero Spinelli was an Italian communist politician, political theorist and European federalist, referred to as one of the founding fathers of the European Union. A communist and militant anti-fascist in his youth, Spinelli spent 10 years imprisoned by the Italian fascist regime. Having grown disillusioned with Stalinism, he broke with the Communist Party of Italy in 1937. Interned in Ventotene during World War II, he, along with fellow democratic socialists, drafted the manifesto For a Free and United Europe in 1941, considered a precursor of the European integration process.
The Italian Liberal Party was a liberal political party in Italy.
The European Federalist Movement was founded in Milan in 1943 by a group of activists led by Altiero Spinelli. The principles which inspired its foundation are contained in the Ventotene Manifesto, drawn up in 1941 by Spinelli himself, Eugenio Colorni, Ursula Hirschmann and Ernesto Rossi, and circulated by the in May 1943 circulated L'Unità europea periodical. Vayssière notes that the manifesto is widely seen as the birth of European federalism. Spinelli (1907–86), a former Communist, became a leader of the federalist movement due to his primary authorship of the Manifesto and his postwar advocacy. The manifesto called for a break with Europe's past to form a new political system through a restructuring of politics and extensive social reform. It was presented not as an ideal, but as the best option for the Europe's postwar condition.
Count Nicolò Carandini was a leader of Italian post−World War II liberalism and a champion of European Federalism. He was the first Italian ambassador to Britain after World War II, and the first president of Alitalia from its foundation in 1948 until his retirement in 1968.
The Ventotene Manifesto, officially entitled For a Free and United Europe. A Draft Manifesto, is a political statement written by Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi, and Eugenio Colorni, while they were imprisoned on the Italian islet Santo Stefano of the island of Ventotene during World War II. Completed in June 1941, the manifesto was circulated within the Italian Resistance, and it soon became the programme of the Movimento Federalista Europeo. It called for a socialist federation of Europe and the world. In the text, European federalism and world federalism are presented as a way to prevent future wars. Vayssière notes that the manifesto is widely seen as the birth of European federalism. Spinelli, who was later elected to the European Parliament within the Italian Communist Party lists, became a leader of the federalist movement due to his primary authorship of the Manifesto and his postwar advocacy. The manifesto called for a break with Europe's past to form a new political system through a restructuring of politics and extensive social reform. It was presented not as an ideal, but as the best option for Europe's postwar condition.
The Action Party was a liberal-socialist political party in Italy. The party was anti-fascist and republican. Its prominent leaders were Carlo Rosselli, Ferruccio Parri, Emilio Lussu and Ugo La Malfa. Other prominent members included Leone Ginzburg, Ernesto de Martino, Norberto Bobbio, Riccardo Lombardi, Vittorio Foa and the Nobel-winning poet Eugenio Montale.
Giustizia e Libertà was an Italian anti-fascist resistance movement, active from 1929 to 1945. The movement was cofounded by Carlo Rosselli, Ferruccio Parri, who later became Prime Minister of Italy, Emilio Lussu, Sandro Pertini, who became President of Italy, and other Italian anti-fascist refugees.
Carlo Alberto Rosselli was an Italian political leader, journalist, historian, philosopher and anti-fascist activist, first in Italy and then abroad. He developed a theory of reformist, non-Marxist socialism inspired by the British labour movement that he described as "liberal socialism". Rosselli founded the anti-fascist militant movement Giustizia e Libertà. Rosselli personally took part in combat in the Spanish Civil War, where he served on the Republican side.
The Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, written by Benedetto Croce in response to the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals by Giovanni Gentile, sanctioned the irreconcilable split between the philosopher and the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, to which he had previously given a vote of confidence on 31 October 1922. The idea of an anti-Fascist manifesto came to Giovanni Amendola, who wrote to Croce, a proclaimed anti-Fascist, for his opinions on 20 April 1925:
Dear Croce, have you read the Fascist manifesto to foreign intellectuals? ... today, I have met several people who feel that, following the publication of the Fascists' document, we have the right to speak and the duty to respond. What is your opinion? Would you be willing to sign such a document, or even write it yourself?
Eugenio Curiel was an Italian-Jewish physicist, a prominent figure of the Italian resistance movement. He was awarded a gold medal (posthumously) for military valour.
The Italian Radical Party, also known as the Historical Radical Party, was a political party in Italy. Heir of the Historical Far Left and representative of Italy's political left in its beginning, with the rise of the Italian Socialist Party, it came to represent centre-left politics. The party was associated with classical radicalism, republicanism, secularism, social liberalism, and anti-clericalism.
Ursula Hirschmann was a German anti-fascist activist and an advocate of European federalism.
Guido De Ruggiero was a historian of philosophy, university professor, and Italian politician.
The Fascio Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista was a political movement that advocated Italy's participation in World War I on the side of the Triple Entente against the Central Powers. The movement's manifesto was drawn up on 5 October 1914 by revolutionary syndicalists and left interventionists former members of the Unione Sindacale Italiana. The usefulness of the First World War was asserted as an indispensable historical moment for developing more advanced societies in a political-social sense. The manifesto inspired the formation of the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria.
Ivan Matteo Lombardo was an Italian politician.
