Pietro Nenni

Pietro Sandro Nenni (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpjeːtro ˈnɛnni]; 9 February 1891 – 1 January 1980) was an Italian socialist politician, the national secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and lifetime Senator since 1970. He was a recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. He was a central figure of the Italian left from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Pietro Nenni
Deputy Prime Minister of Italy
In office 4 December 1963 – 24 June 1968
Prime Minister	Aldo Moro
Preceded by	Attilio Piccioni
Succeeded by	Francesco De Martino
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office 12 December 1968 – 5 August 1969
Prime Minister	Mariano Rumor
Preceded by	Giuseppe Medici
Succeeded by	Aldo Moro
In office 18 October 1946 – 2 February 1947
Prime Minister	Alcide De Gasperi
Preceded by	Alcide De Gasperi
Succeeded by	Carlo Sforza
Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party
In office 16 May 1949 – 12 December 1963
Preceded by	Alberto Jacometti
Succeeded by	Francesco De Martino
In office 22 August 1943 – 1 August 1945
Preceded by	Giuseppe Romita
Succeeded by	Sandro Pertini
In office 18 April 1933 – 28 August 1939
Preceded by	Ugo Coccia
Succeeded by	Committee
Senator for Life
In office 25 November 1970 – 1 January 1980
Appointed by	Giuseppe Saragat
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office 8 May 1948 – 24 November 1970
Constituency	Rome (1948–1958) Milan (1958–1970)
Personal details
Born	9 February 1891 Faenza, Emilia, Italy
Died	1 January 1980 (aged 88) Rome, Italy
Political party	Italian Republican Party (1909–1921) Italian Socialist Party (1921–1980)
Spouse(s)	Carmen Emiliani
Children	Giulia, Eva, Vittoria, Federico
Profession	Journalist

Early life and career

He was born in Faenza, in Emilia-Romagna. After his peasant parents died, he was placed in an orphanage by an aristocratic family. Every Sunday, he recited his catechism before the countess and if he did well, he received a silver coin. "Generous but humiliating", he recalled.[1]

He affiliated with the Italian Republican Party. In 1908, he became editor of a republican paper in Forlì. The socialist paper in the town was edited at the time by Benito Mussolini, later the Fascist dictator of Italy. Nenni was imprisoned in 1911 for his participation in the protest movement against the Italo-Turkish War in Libya with Mussolini.[2]

First World War

When the First World War broke out, he advocated the intervention of Italy in the war. In 1915, he volunteered for the Isonzo front. After he was wounded and sent home, he became an editor of the republican paper Mattine d'Italia. He defended Italy's participation in the war but tried not to alienate his socialist friends. In the last years of the war Nenni served at the front again.[2]

When the war was over, he founded, together with some disillusioned revolutionary ex-servicemen, a group called "Fascio", which was soon dissolved and replaced by a real Fascist body.[2] While the socialist Mussolini became a fascist, the republican Nenni joined the Socialist Party in 1921 after its split with the wing that would form the Italian Communist Party (PCI).

In 1923, after the Fascist March on Rome, he became the editor of PSI's official organ, Avanti!, and engaged in antifascist activism. In 1925 he was arrested for publishing a booklet on the fascist murder of Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti. When the Avanti offices were set aflame and the paper prohibited in 1926, he took refuge in France, where he became secretary of the PSI.

In exile

In Paris, where he had worked as correspondent of the Avanti in 1921, he became acquainted with Léon Blum (socialist Prime Minister of France from 1936 to 1937), Marcel Cachin, Romain Rolland and Georges Sorel. Nenni went on to fight with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. He was the cofounder and the political commissar of the Garibaldi Brigade. After the defeat of the Spanish Republic and the victory of General Francisco Franco he returned to France. In 1943, he was arrested by the Germans in Vichy France and then imprisoned in Italy on the island of Ponza.

His third daughter, Vittoria, was active in the French resistance. She was captured and deported to Auschwitz, where she died on 25 July 1943, aged 28.[3]

After being liberated in August 1943, he returned to Rome to lead the Italian Socialist Party, which had been reunified as the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity. After the surrender of Italy with the Allied armed forces on September 8, 1943, he was one of the political officials of the National Liberation Committee, the underground political entity of Italian Partisans during the German occupation.

Postwar politics

In 1944, he became the national secretary of the PSI again, favouring close ties between his party and the PCI. After the Liberation, he took up government responsibilities, becoming Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Constituent Assembly in the government of Ferruccio Parri and the first government of Alcide De Gasperi. He was Minister for the Constitution, and in October 1946 he became Minister for Foreign Affairs in the second De Gasperi government.

The close ties between the PSI and the PCI caused the Giuseppe Saragat-led anticommunist wing of the PSI to leave and form the Italian Socialist Workers' Party in 1947 (later merged into the Italian Democratic Socialist Party, PSDI).

Aldo Moro and Pietro Nenni at Quirinale in Rome

In 1956, Nenni broke with the PCI after Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary.[4] He returned the Stalin Prize money ($25,000).[1] Subsequently, he slowly led his party into supporting membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and closer European integration, and he sought co-operation with the leading party, the Christian Democrats.

Opening to centre-left

In the early 1960s he facilitated an "opening to the centre-left" enabling coalition governments between the PSI and the Christian Democrats and leading the socialists back into office for the first time since 1947.[5] He formed a centre-left coalition with Saragat, Aldo Moro and Ugo La Malfa, and favored a reunion with the PSDI. From 1963 to 1968 he was Deputy Prime Minister in the three successive governments led by Moro and in December 1968 he became Minister for Foreign Affairs in the first government of Mariano Rumor, but resigned in July 1969, when the centre-left alliance collapsed.

Although the reunification attempts between the socialists and Giuseppe Saragat's breakaway Social Democrats resulted in the formation of a joint list Unified PSI–PSDI, both parties fared poorly in the 1968 Italian general election. In 1969, a disillusioned Nenni virtually retired and Francesco De Martino took his place.[6] He resigned as head of the PSI and was made a senator for life in 1970 and in 1971 he ran unsuccessfully for President of Italy. He died in Rome on 1 January 1980. A daughter, Vittoria "Viva" Daubeuf, died in Auschwitz. She is memorialized in the writings of Charlotte Delbo.

He was an atheist.[7]

Electoral history

Election	House	Constituency	Party		Votes	Result
1946	Constituent Assembly	Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone		PSIUP	24,961	Y Elected
1948	Chamber of Deputies	Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone		FDP	57,020	Y Elected
1953	Chamber of Deputies	Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone		PSI	53,435	Y Elected
1958	Chamber of Deputies	Milan–Pavia		PSI	30,138	Y Elected
1963	Chamber of Deputies	Milan–Pavia		PSI	38,458	Y Elected
1968	Chamber of Deputies	Milan–Pavia		PSI	53,483	Y Elected

References

1. Italy's New Partnership, Time Magazine, December 13, 1963
2. Crisis of Italian Socialism, Europe Speaks, March 3, 1947
3. "Vittoria Nenni – Fondazione Pietro Nenni" (in Italian). Retrieved May 5, 2020.
4. Pietro & Paul, Time Magazine, April 23, 1965
5. "A Sinistra?", Time Magazine, January 12, 1962
6. Obituary Francesco De Martino, The Guardian, November 22, 2002
7. Giuseppe Tamburrano, Pietro Nenni: una vita per la democrazia e per il socialismo, Laicata, 2000, p. 366.

External links

• Where the Italian Socialists Stand, Pietro Nenni, Foreign Affairs, January 1962
• Address given by Pietro Nenni on the military intervention in Czechoslovakia, Rome, August 29, 1968
• Newspaper clippings about Pietro Nenni in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Political offices
Preceded by Title jointly held	Minister without portfolio as Deputy Prime Minister 1945–1946	Succeeded by Title jointly held
Preceded by Alcide De Gasperi	Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs 1946–1947	Succeeded by Carlo Sforza
Preceded by Title jointly held	Minister without portfolio as Deputy Prime Minister 1963–1968	Succeeded by Title jointly held
Preceded by Giuseppe Medici	Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs 1968–1969	Succeeded by Aldo Moro
Italian Chamber of Deputies
Preceded by None, Parliament re-established	Member of Parliament elected at-large Legislature: CA 1946–1948	Succeeded by Title jointly held
Preceded by Title jointly held	Member of Parliament for Rome Legislature: I 1948–1953	Succeeded by Title jointly held
Preceded by Title jointly held	Member of Parliament elected at-large Legislature: II 1953–1958	Succeeded by Title jointly held
Preceded by Title jointly held	Member of Parliament for Milan Legislature: III, IV, V 1958–1970	Succeeded by Title jointly held
Italian Senate
Preceded by Title jointly held	Italian Lifetime Senator Legislatures: V, VI, VII, VIII 1970–1980	Succeeded by Title jointly held
Party political offices
Preceded by Ugo Coccia (caretaker)	Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party 1931–1945	Succeeded by Sandro Pertini
Preceded by Alberto Jacometti	Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party 1949–1963	Succeeded by Francesco De Martino