The path (and merits) of the Republic

Let's face it, we do not read the history of the Republic with the same eye. The admiring benevolence with which we view its beginning is counterbalanced by the overall more negative than positive judgement of what followed. In front of 2 June 1946 we are all, or almost all, convinced that it was a happy moment for us: the sovereign vote of all Italians, and of Italian women for the first time, which chose the Republic and elected a Constituent Assembly, and then the same Assembly that was able to prevail over the differences, albeit profound, between its members in order to give Italia a Constitution that belonged to everyone and that belonged to everyone in the following decades. True, very true. But is it really true that the Republic's past worth remembering is all here, perhaps with only the addition of its early years, no less praised for reconstruction, the Autostrada del Sole, the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, at least that of the initial years? Is it really true what we usually read about the aftermath, an aftermath more of vices than virtues, of opportunities missed rather than exploited, of ruling classes more lacking, if not corrupt, than capable? Yet this is precisely the recurring judgement on the 1960s as the years of the watered-down reforms of the centre-left, on the 1970s as the years of lead, on the 1980s as years dominated by nothing but the disease and the collapse of the old parties, on radicalised and fragile democracy as a feature of the last few decades. The first of these is the one we read about the aftermath of the crisis

Mind you, these are not unfounded judgements, they are indeed nourished by certain elements of truth. But they are one-sided and, on their own, prevent us from grasping what has happened to the new building constructed eighty years ago. In short, putting together the positive judgement on the beginning and the negative judgement on the continuation, it is as if the founding fathers had handed over to their successors a perfectly functioning machine and the successors, with their shortcomings and vices, had polluted its operation. Well, this is not the case. The founding fathers did an excellent job, but Italian democracy found itself faced in the post-war period with a society in which there were still many nostalgics of Fascism and there were, on the other side, leftists attracted by the 'outflow' towards a regime modelled on Moscow. The path to take root, therefore, was long and tortuous. It was the merit of De Gasperi on the one hand and Togliatti on the other to move the social areas that listened to them towards the acceptance of democratic principles and the dialogue that followed. But it was not an instantaneous operation; hostility and mistrust remained. There remained segments of the right, economic before political, fearful of any enlargement to the left of the government majority. Extremist groups remained on the left, ready to set themselves in motion in the name of the revolution increasingly betrayed by the PCI.

And here, starting in 1964 (do you remember the Solo plan?) the attempted subversions and piloted massacres that began with Piazza Fontana. Here, on the other hand, are the murders of the Red Brigades, culminating with the assassination of Aldo Moro, an authentic protagonist, in all its developments, of the strengthening of our democracy, broadening its social base. It was he, in 1964, who convinced President of the Republic Antonio Segni that, despite the Solo plan, the government with the socialists had to continue. Just as it was he, years later, who promoted the end for the PCI of the conventio ad excludendum.

Let us ask ourselves, then, where and why subversive attempts like the ones we suffered in Italy in those years are made and repeated. They are made where the existing democratic regimes are deemed so weak that they collapse under the shocks of massacres and bombs, thanks to the panic that this can generate by making authoritarian turns acceptable. This has happened a few times, and some thought then that our democracy was in exactly that condition and could fall under the blows that were dealt to it. But it did not. It not only resisted and did not need to resort to special laws to do so, as we usually do. No, it did more - and we notice this much less - because it proved capable, first of firming itself up, then of responding to the demands for modernisation that came from society at the same time, producing sequences of civil and social reforms that were among the most extensive in our history.

Did the centre-left of Moro and Nenni that governed Italy between 1964 and 1968 make reforms that were more watered down than promised? Maybe so, but the merit that historically must be acknowledged to them was precisely that of consolidating a weak democracy, of giving it the strength to withstand the blows, of giving it the ability, in the following decade, to enact the workers' statute, the institution of the Regions, the new family law, divorce, the termination of pregnancy, the new prison system, the abolition of mental hospitals, the national health service. All fruits of the years we call the 'years of lead'. All pillars of the Italia we are living in. All expressions of a democracy that we owe not only to those who built it, but also to those who helped consolidate it, including the citizens who gave it support and trust, despite sometimes being its protagonists.