Pacifist and pro-European Italian socialism between the two World Wars. G. E. Modigliani’s proposals and requests in the international context

The research is founded on my precedent studies with an adequate and renewed insertion of Socialist internationalism in the debate on Peace and Europe, widespread between WWI and the 1930’s. Such an interlacement finds its synthesis in the formula “between the League of Nations and the United States of Europe”, in front of the novelties, crisis and international confrontations inside both Pacifist and Europeanist movements between the two World Wars. After the season of important antimilitaristic efforts – as in the Congress of Stuttgart in 1907 -, in 1914 the biggest European socialist parties submitted to the “call of the country” and chose the “union sacrée” with their own governments. The Italian Socialist Party remained absolutely pacifist. Within its files G. E. Modigliani (brother of the famous painter), reformist leader, syndicalist organiser and elected in Parliament in 1913, had a prominent role in the Zimmerwald pacifist movement. Because of his gradualist conception of socialism, he was strongly against the transformation of the imperialistic war into an international class-war. Anyway, the intervention of masses in the struggle for peace was as well necessary for him. And since Socialist leaders were the “spokesmen” of masses, their duty was to stop the fratricidal massacre, even asking for a “paix quelconque”. Firm in his pacifist ideas, he opposed Lenin whose ideas forecast a revolutionary exit for the war. Meanwhile he timely expressed doubts about the League of Nations - promoted by the American President Woodrow Wilson but unable to run the international order. Afterwards Modigliani denounced the incapacity of the League of Nations in front of the Peace Treaties, which nourished nationalism and conflicts among the countries. Since 1916 he had aimed at the United States of Europe: with the passing of time, such an aim became dramatically urgent, beforehand in the attempt of blocking the fascist phenomenon on an international level, and afterwards in front of WWII. Modigliani operated in the recreated Socialist International (Labour and Socialist International - LSI) and collaborated with the bulletin “Informations Internationales”. The request for a more incisive role for the League of Nations preserved a constant actuality inside the progressive change of the frail European balances especially after Hitler’s advent to power. Modigliani asked for a Europeanisation of the League of Nations; attempted to guarantee a pacified international order through international juridical instruments; supported international arbitration in order to avoid and overcome international disputes. At the same time he was always unswerving adverse to bolshevism theory and practice and especially to the dictatorial Stalin regime: on the eve of WWII he therefore refused the “pact for unity of action” between international democratic forces and communists. The temporary proof that he was right came with the signature of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact which joined Soviet Union and Nazi regime. And also afterwards - during the war - Modigliani went on in referring to the Zimmerwald spirit. Convinced that wars are always imperialistic, one time more he sustained that the cause of socialism couldn’t be identified with the cause of a single power, since only peace could preserve proletariat’s autonomy. A firm point still remained the United States of Europe. Modigliani’s sensitivity and commitment to such an issue place him among the standard-bearers of the peaceful and integrated Europe of the second post-war period.