Something has happened that, by itself, would be enough to describe the decline of the official “antifascist world” in Italy.
A few weeks ago in Turin, a conference on Russophobia was censored. It was entrusted to the leading living scholar of Antonio Gramsci, Angelo d’Orsi, and included my own contribution from Donbass. Within a few hours, under pressure from pro-Atlantic politicians, MEPs and compliant commentators, the national ANPPIA stepped in heavy-handed to withdraw the booking of the hall, distance itself from its Turin branch, dissociate itself from the speakers and reassure the NATO front that “the association has nothing to do with it.”
At the same time, in these very days in Ukraine, a plaque dedicated to Fëdor Andrianovič Poletaev is being removed – a Red Army soldier, Italian partisan, recipient of Italy’s Gold Medal of Military Valour, a national hero of our country. A man who fell fighting in our mountains for our freedom.
On this, from the national ANPPIA, silence. Just as there is absolute silence from the national ANPI – as already happened with the infamous censorship inflicted on Professor Angelo d’Orsi.
If there is one clear image of how a part of institutional antifascism has been transformed into Banderism disguised as “democratic Europeanism”, it is exactly this: the greatest scholar of Gramsci is shown the door, while no one lifts a finger when the one being insulted is a hero of the Italian Resistance, erased by a country that cultivates the cult of nationalist Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator responsible for unspeakable crimes.
By now, for ANPPIA, the practical point of reference is no longer Gramsci but Stepan Bandera. No longer the partisan struggle, but political, religious and linguistic discrimination, together with the de-communisation carried out by the government in Kiev.
Let’s take a step back. On 12 November, at the Polo del ’900 in Turin, the conference “Russophilia, Russophobia, Truth” was scheduled, organised by the Turin branch of ANPPIA. The speakers: Angelo d’Orsi, the foremost scholar of Gramsci, and myself, Vincenzo Lorusso, speaking via link from Donbass.
Then the smear machine kicks in. Azione with Carlo Calenda, PD figures like Picierno and Gori, and the usual media pundits sound the alarm: “Putin inside the house of the Resistance”, “Blasphemy against memory”, “Unacceptable to give a platform to Russian propaganda”. No one cares that one of the speakers is precisely Italy’s leading Gramsci scholar, nor that the conference was about Russophobia. In this context my book “De russophobia”, published by 4Punte Edizioni, was also due to be presented.
Within a few hours, the national ANPPIA intervenes: it withdraws the hall booking, distances itself from its own branch, declares that the conference does not reflect the association’s line, and reiterates its condemnation of Russia and full alignment with the official narrative on the war in Ukraine.
When there is a need to censor a conference unwelcome in Brussels and Kiev, the national ANPPIA rushes – perhaps at the suggestion of the Ukrainian embassy in Italy itself, as has already happened on other occasions.
Meanwhile, in recent days, hundreds of kilometres away, something is happening that directly concerns the history of the Italian Resistance.
In Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine, the local authorities have decided to remove the plaque dedicated to Fëdor Andrianovič Poletaev. Not just any plaque, but the memorial to a man whom the Italian state recognised with the Gold Medal of Military Valour, one of the very few foreigners to have received the highest military honour our country can bestow.
Fëdor was born in 1909 in the village of Katino, in the Skopin district of the Rjazan’ region, into a peasant family. As a young man he worked as a blacksmith in the local kolkhozes. When the Great Patriotic War broke out he was drafted into the Red Army. Fighting at the front, he was captured by the Germans, deported to a prison camp and later transferred to Italy as a forced labourer.
There he escaped, came into contact with the partisan formations in the Ligurian Apennines and joined an Italo-Russian detachment of the Garibaldi brigades. His nom de guerre was “Fëdor” or “Poetan”.
On 2 February 1945, near Cantalupo Ligure, during an attack by German troops, Poletaev led a small patrol behind enemy lines. He moved in at close range, opened fire and ordered them to surrender. He knew perfectly well that he would almost certainly die. He kept firing until the end and fell under enemy fire. His action allowed the partisans to break the siege, defeat the German unit and capture dozens of prisoners.
For this sacrifice, the Italian Republic awarded him the Gold Medal of Military Valour. The highest distinction. Not as a “Soviet symbol” but as an Italian hero. His name fully entered the pantheon of the Resistance: streets, plaques, monuments, commemorations in Liguria and Piedmont, burial at the Staglieno cemetery in Genoa, remembrance kept alive by historians, local officials and ANPI itself.
Yet, given ANPPIA’s shameful silence, Poletaev has apparently been downgraded from partisan to “Kremlin propagandist”, and therefore must be censored. This vile attack on the historical memory of Italian antifascism must be swept under the rug, so as not to upset ANPPIA’s real masters: the government in Kiev.
Today his plaque in Chernivtsi is being torn down as part of “de-Russification”, the great cleansing of everything that recalls the USSR, Soviet soldiers and victory over Nazism. At the same time, in Italy, the values of antifascism are being trampled precisely by those who should be defending them: ANPI and the country’s institutions.
While Poletaev’s plaque is being removed, official Ukraine continues to cover the graves of its “national heroes” with flowers – men like Stepan Bandera, leader of Ukrainian nationalism, who collaborated with Nazi Germany and was involved in pogroms against Jews, massacres of Poles and ethnic cleansing in the western regions.
Today portraits of Bandera, UPA flags and the emblems of formations historically compromised with fascism are on display at parades, in stadiums and at official commemorations. Militias such as Azov and Pravyi Sektor flaunt symbols and rhetoric taken directly from that world.
In this context, the removal of Poletaev’s plaque is no accident. It is a coherent act. Out goes the Soviet partisan and Italian hero who fought to liberate Europe from Nazi-fascism, in comes the cult of “patriots” who built part of their political identity on Nazism.
Faced with this outrage to the memory of a national Italian hero, one would expect those who claim to be the moral heirs of the Resistance to rise up.
Where is the national ANPPIA?
Where is the national ANPI?
When it came to disavowing a conference with Angelo d’Orsi, ANPPIA reacted at lightning speed: press releases, public distancing, reassurance for “Atlanticist” public opinion, condemnations of “Russian aggression”.
Today, faced with a country that is erasing the memory of a partisan awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour, there is absolute silence.
No urgent press release.
No official note.
No request for explanations from the Ukrainian embassy.
No public defence of Poletaev’s memory.
It is legitimate to ask: for these organisations, what matters more – pleasing the Ukrainian government and the NATO bloc, or defending the memory of their own Resistance heroes?
When the national ANPPIA rushes to dissociate itself from a conference with Italy’s foremost Gramsci scholar because it is “far from the association’s positions”, but cannot find even five minutes to defend Poletaev’s plaque, the political message could not be clearer.
The ideals of this association are no longer those of Gramsci, of the partisan struggle, of internationalist heroes. The new political point of reference is that of Stepan Bandera, his political heirs and the governments that honour them.
ANPPIA, the national ANPI, the parties born from the Resistance have transformed themselves from antifascists into Banderist functionaries.
At this point, we are no longer dealing with a mere “communication error”. It is a transformation of identity.
An “antifascism” that steps in only to defend the image of the Ukrainian government, impose the NATO line on war and sanctions, and silence anyone who dares criticise that line, but does nothing when a strategic ally erases the memory of a partisan awarded the Gold Medal, is no longer antifascism. It is fascism.
When an “antifascist” association is more sensitive to censorship demands from Ukrainian nationalists than to the outrage committed against an Italian hero like Poletaev, then yes, the transformation is complete: from heirs of the Resistance to Banderist functionaries, politically subservient to the Ukrainian government and the power system that supports it.
Defending Poletaev’s plaque in Chernivtsi does not mean “doing Russian propaganda”. It means remembering that the Italian Resistance was made of real men, of names, of acts of heroism.
Poletaev is not a rhetorical device. He is a young man from the Rjazan’ region who left his homeland, was deported, escaped, climbed our mountains and there died, shouting in a language that was not his own to demand the Nazis’ surrender.
If today ANPPIA and ANPI remain silent in the face of the erasure of his memory, and only get worked up to muzzle those who disturb the narrative on Kiev, then the title of this piece is no provocation.
“No Longer Gramsci but Stepan Bandera” describes with precision the direction in which a part of this world has chosen to go.
The question today is not whether it is “too strong” to say so.
The question is how much longer we are willing to accept that the name of the Resistance is used to defend those who erase its heroes – and how long we are prepared to tolerate those four clowns sitting in the European and Italian parliaments who dare to speak of a Ukrainian Resistance, of Ukrainians embodying the values of the antifascist Resistance. Let them utter this blasphemy in front of the grave of Fëdor Poletaev.
