Emilio Lussu


Emilio Lussu was a Sardinian and Italian writer, anti-fascist intellectual, military officer, partisan, and politician. He is also the author of the novel One Year on the High Plateau. Lussu was elected multiple times to Parliament, serving as a member of the Constituent Assembly of Italy for the constituency of Cagliari and twice as a minister. He founded the Sardinian Action Party and co-founded the Justice and Freedom movement. As an anti-fascist, he was assaulted, wounded, and sent to confinement to Lipari in the Aeolian Islands by the Italian fascist regime as a direct decision of Benito Mussolini. After escaping, with Carlo Rosselli and Fausto Nitti, he spent about fourteen years as a refugee abroad. He served as an officer in World War I, where he received multiple decorations, and participated in the Spanish Civil War as a political leader and in the Italian Resistance.

Biography

The soldier

Lussu was born in Armungia, province of Cagliari and graduated with a degree in law in 1914. Lussu married Joyce Salvadori, a notable poet, and member of the noble Paleotti family of the Marche, who were counts of Fermo. Prior to the entry of Italy into World War I, Lussu joined the army and was involved in several skirmishes. As a complementary officer of the Brigade "Sassari" in 1916 he was stationed on the Asiago Plateau. The brigade had arrived on the plateau in May 1916 to help in the Italian effort to stop the Austrian Spring offensive. In the month of June 1916 the brigade conquered Monte Fior, Monte Castelgomberto, Monte Spil, Monte Miela and Monte Zebio. After the war Lussu published the novel "One Year on the High Plateau" about his experiences of trench warfare on the Asiago Plateau. The 1970 movie Many Wars Ago by Francesco Rosi is based on this book.

Politics and exile

After the war Lussu, together with Camillo Bellieni, founded the Partidu Sardu-''Partito Sardo d'Azione, that blended social-democratic values and Sardinian nationalism. The party took a formal position in 1921, opposing the increasing power of the Fascist movement. Lussu was elected to the Italian parliament in 1921 and, in 1924 was among the Aventine secessionists who withdrew from the Italian Parliament after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti.
Lussu's anti-Fascist position was, at the time, one of the most radical in Italy. Lussu was physically attacked and injured by unknown aggressors several times. In 1926, during one of these attacks, Lussu shot one of the squadristi (italian blackshirts), in self-defense. He was arrested and tried, being found non-guilty due to the right to self defense, only to be later sentenced to 5 years of confinement on the island of Lipari, within the Aeolian Islands near the northern coast of Sicily.
In 1929 Lussu escaped from his confinement and reached Paris. There, together with Gaetano Salvemini, Carlo Rosselli, Riccardo Bauer, Ernesto Rossi and other anti-fascist refugees he founded Giustizia e Libertà'', an anti-Fascist movement that proposed revolutionary methods to upset the [Fascist Italy|Italian Fascist Regime]. While in exile, he came to be known as "Mister Mills".
In 1938, Lussu's novel "One Year on the High Plateau" was published in Paris. This thinly fictional account tells of the lives of soldiers during World War I and the trench warfare they encountered. One Year on the High Plateau underlines, with chill rationalism, how the irrationalities of warfare affected the common man. Gifted with a keen sense of observation and sharp logic, Lussu demonstrates how distant the real life of soldiers is from everyday activities. In a notable passage, he describes the silent terror in the moments preceding an attack, as he is forced to abandon the "safe" protective trench for an external unknown, risky, undefined world: "All the machine-guns are waiting for us".

Return to Italy

Lussu took part in the civil war in Spain. Between 1941 and 1942 he was the protagonist of the most important "episode" of the collaboration between British Special Operations Executive and Italian antifascism in exile. He tried to get the clearance for an antifascist uprising in his home island of Sardinia, which the SOE supported at some stage but did not receive approval from the Foreign Office. He returned to Italy after the armistice of 1943 when joined the Italian Resistance and became the secretary of the Sardinian Action Party for southern Italy. He became the leader of the left wing of the party and later joined forces with the Italian Socialist Party. After World War II he served as the Minister for Post-War Assistance in the government of Ferruccio Parri and later as a minister without portfolio in Alcide De Gasperi's government.
In 1964 Lussu separated from the PSI, creating the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity. Ideological differences with the political line of Partito Sardo d'Azione deepened and Lussu left Sardinia.
Emilio Lussu died in Rome in 1975.

Works

Many political meanings have been drawn from Lussu's works, but his works are perhaps more important at a personal level. Morally and philosophically, Lussu's books reflect his need to repent, having been previously an interventista and a revolutionary ; his works soberly describe what war, in its cruellest moments, was like for him.
The alteration of Lussu's opinion of war is quite apparent in the range of his works: first an interventista, then the author of a manual for revolution, soon afterwards the author of a pacifist book, then again a revolutionary and a volunteer in the Spanish civil war. Anyway, One Year on the High Plateau combines well the repulse of the war with the bravery of the fighter. Lussu's consistency has been questioned and politics often invades evaluations of his works.

Honours and awards