International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Pietro Ingrao was a prominent leader of the left wing of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), post-World War II. Born in Lenola, Latium in 1915 to a family of declining landowners with Sicilian origins, his first interests were poetry and cinema. He won the 1934 Littoriali in Florence with a poem about the foundation of Littoria in the land reclamation of the Pontine. As a law student in Rome he used Littoriali to build the first anti-fascist association, and soon came in contact with other anti-fascist students: Paolo Bufalini, Franco Rodano, Lucio Lombardo Radice, Aldo Natoli, Antonello Trombadori, and Giuseppe De Santis. In the following years these students animated an anti-fascist underground opposition in Rome (the Roman Group) and later became leaders in the PCI. Ingrao joined the Communist Party in 1940 and soon took to the underground, first in Milan, then hiding out in Calabria, then back to Milan where, in July 1943, he witnessed the fall of Fascism and was, with writer Elio Vittorini (1908–66), an organizer and speaker at the first anti-fascist mass rally. After the German takeover of Italy, he worked at the clandestine paper of the Communist Party, L'Unità , first in Milan, then later back to Rome. After the liberation of the capital in November 1944 he volunteered for the Italian army, eventually returning to journalism and becoming, after 1947, director of L'Unità ... log in or subscribe to read full text