Abstract
The outbreak of the First World War was undoubtedly a turning point in European history, and its centenary provides us with an important opportunity to reflect on the context in which it happened; the consequences it brought; the people that tried to avoid or prevent it; and, finally, to propose solutions for a new international order. These people were defeated after 1917 and up until the Second World War, but what they proposed and requested very often anticipated the pacified Europe of the second post-war period. Among the pioneers of pacifism and Europeanism between the two world wars, the Italian socialist Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani (brother of the famous painter) played a prominent role.
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Notes
- 1.
D. Cherubini, Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani. Un riformista nell’Italia liberale, Milano 1990. See J. Modigliani, Modigliani, senza leggenda, Florence 1958; C. Parisot, Modigliani, Paris 2005; M. Secrets, Modigliani. A life, New York 2011.
- 2.
D. Cherubini, Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani from the paix quelconque to the Europeanisation of the League of Nations, in Pour la Paix en Europe. Institutions et société civile dans l’entre-deux-guerres—For Peace in Europe. Institutions and Civil Society between the World Wars, M. Petricioli, D. Cherubini (éds), Bruxelles 2007. Several parts of this essay—summarizing Modigliani’s political activity beyond the Zimmerwald Movement—are reproduced here in italics; the reader is referred to the essay for the references, except for some classical or more recent texts relevant to the Zimmerwald Movement.
- 3.
As well as Filippo Turati, Claudio Treves, Britain’s Ramsay MacDonald and Arthur Henderson, the Belgian Emile Vandervelde, and the Austrians Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler.
- 4.
Ernst Nobs Papers, Letters from Giuseppe E. Modigliani 1928–1931, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (IISH), ARCH01018.
- 5.
State protectionism, militarist requirements of heavy industry, anti-liberal and nationalist tendencies led to the colonial war for the conquest of Libya in 1911 and finally to intervention in World War I. Modigliani quickly denounced the curbs on Italian development.
- 6.
The Italian Socialist Party managed to remain united: the formula of ‘neither adhering nor sabotaging’ combined condemnation of the war with the desire for commitment to immediate peace that would ensure the recovery of Italy, Italian socialism and socialist internationalism. Nevertheless, there were many internal differences, and Modigliani’s position became increasingly more original.
- 7.
Discorsi parlamentari di Giuseppe E. Modigliani, published by resolution of the Chamber of Deputies, Vol. I.
- 8.
On the League of neutral countries, see C. Malandrino, Gobetti, Treves e la SdN, in Alle origini dell’europeismo in Piemonte. La crisi del primo dopoguerra, la cultura politica piemontese e il problema dell’unità europea, Torino 1993.
- 9.
Avanti!, 19 June 1915.
- 10.
This was a fairly tormented process, complicated by the diverging positions of socialists belonging to the Entente countries on one hand and the Austrians and Germans on the other, and by opposition between those who saw the war as an opportunity to favour the proletarian revolution and those who remained faithful to the pacifist stance.
- 11.
Avanti!, 25 May 1915.
- 12.
After a few meetings, not only in Switzerland, the Zimmerwald Conference was attended by about 40 delegates: official delegates of Polish, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Swedish, Dutch, and Norwegian parties, ‘personal participation of the Swiss party’, the entire Russian Central Committee, and the French and German minorities. See Y. Collart, Le parti socialiste Suisse et l’Internationale: 1914–1915: de l’union nationale a Zimmerwald. Genève 1969; Die Zimmerwalder Bewegung. See also Zimmerwald movement Collection, IISS, ARCH01775.
- 13.
See Die Zimmerwalder Bewegung.
- 14.
See L. Rapone, La socialdemocrazia europea tra le due guerre. Dall’organizzazione della pace alla resistenza al fascismo, Carocci 1999.
- 15.
L. Trotsky, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography, New York 1930; J. Humbert-Droz, L’origine de l’Internationale communiste de Zimmerwald à Moscou, Neuchâtel 1968; R. Craig Nation, War on war: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left, and the origins of communist internationalism, Durham 1989.
- 16.
A. Balabanoff, Die Zimmerwalder Bewegung 1914–1919, Leipzig 1928.
- 17.
Avanti!, 19 September 1915.
- 18.
See for example: A. Rosmer, Le mouvement ouvrier pendant la Première Guerre Mondiale, tome I, De l’Union sacrée à Zimmerwald, Paris 1936; Le mouvement ouvrier pendant la Première Guerre Mondiale, tome II, De Zimmerwald à la Révolution Russe, Paris 1959.
- 19.
Die Zimmerwalder Bewegung.
- 20.
H. König, Lenin Und Der Italienische Sozialismus 1915–1921, Tübingen 1967.
- 21.
R. Craig Nation, War on war: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left.
- 22.
Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, 15 April 1915.
- 23.
R. Craig Nation, War on war: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left.
- 24.
Ibid .
- 25.
Avanti!, 7 May 1916.
- 26.
A. Balabanoff, Die Zimmerwalder Bewegung.
- 27.
D. Cherubini, L’altro Modigliani, in Giuseppe Emanuele, l’altro Modigliani. Pace, Europa e Libertà, Rome 1997.
- 28.
H. König, Lenin Und Der Italienische Sozialismus.
- 29.
See the above quoted bibliography.
- 30.
See Zimmerwald movement Collection.
- 31.
D. Cherubini, Pacifist and pro-European Italian socialism between the two World Wars. G.E. Modigliani’s proposals and requests in the international context, in Pela Paz! For Peace! Pour la Paix! (1849–1939), I. Valente. M. M. Tavares Ribeiro, M. F. Rollo, I. M. Freitas Valente, Alice Cuhna (eds), Brussels 2014.
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Cherubini, D. (2017). G. E. Modigliani in the Zimmerwald Movement: ‘War Against War’ and the United States of Europe. In: Olmstead, J. (eds) Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0_5
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