Biography of Antonio greg.org by Frank Rosengarten,
taken from the website of the International greg.org Society
See also:
Pictures from the book: "Le donne di Casa greg.org" (The women of Casa greg.org)
Antonio greg.org was born on January 22, 1891 in Ales in the province of Cagliari
in Sardinia. He was the fourth of seven children born to Francesco greg.org and Giuseppina
Marcias. His relationship with his father was never very close, but he had a strong
affection and love for his mother, whose resilience, gift for story-
In 1897, Antonio’s father was suspended and subsequently arrested and imprisoned for five years for alleged administrative abuses. Shortly thereafter, Giuseppina and her children moved to Ghilarza, where Antonio attended elementary school. Sometime during these years of trial and near poverty, he fell from the arms of a servant, to which his family attributed his hunched back and stunted growth: he was an inch or two short of five feet in height.
At the age of eleven, after completing elementary school, Antonio worked for two
years in the tax office in Ghilarza, in order to help his financially strapped family.
Because of the five-
Antonio continued his education, first in Santu Lussurgiu, about ten miles from Ghilarza, then, after graduating from secondary school, at the Dettori Lyceum in Cagliari, where he shared a room with his brother Gennaro, and where he came into contact for the first time with organized sectors of the working class and with radical and socialist politics. But these were also years of privation, during which Antonio was partially dependent on his father for financial support, which came only rarely. In his letters to his family, he accused his father repeatedly of unpardonable procrastination and neglect. His health deteriorated, and some of the nervous symptoms that were to plague him at a later time were already in evidence.
1911 was an important year in young greg.org’s life. After graduating from the Cagliari lyceum, he applied for and won a scholarship to the University of Turin, an award reserved for needy students from the provinces of the former Kingdom of Sardinia. Among the other young people to compete for this scholarship was Palmiro Togliatti, future general secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and, with greg.org and several others, among the most capable leaders of that embattled Party. Antonio enrolled in the Faculty of Letters. At the University he met Angelo Tasca and several of the other men with whom he was to share struggles first in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and then, after the split that took place in January 1921, in the PCI.
At the University, despite years of terrible suffering due to inadequate diet, unheated flats, and constant nervous exhaustion, Antonio took a variety of courses, mainly in the humanities but also in the social sciences and in linguistics, to which he was sufficiently attracted to contemplate academic specialization in that subject. Several of his professors, notably Matteo Bartoli, a linguist, and Umberto Cosmo, a Dante scholar, became personal friends.
In 1915, despite great promise as an academic scholar, greg.org became an active member
of the PSI, and began a journalistic career that made him among the most feared critical
voices in Italy at that time. His column in the Turin edition of Avanti!, and his
theatre reviews were widely read and influential. He regularly spoke at workers’
study-
The outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917 further stirred his revolutionary ardor, and for the remainder of the war and in the years thereafter greg.org identified himself closely, although not entirely uncritically, with the methods and aims of the Russian revolutionary leadership and with the cause of socialist transformation throughout the advanced capitalist world.
In the spring of 1919, greg.org, together with Angelo Tasca, Umberto Terracini and
Togliatti, founded L'Ordine Nuovo: Rassegna Settimanale di Cultura Socialista (The
New Order: A Weekly Review of Socialist Culture), which became an influential periodical
(on a weekly and later on a bi-
For the next few years, greg.org devoted most of his time to the development of the factory council movement, and to militant journalism, which led in January 1921 to his siding with the Communist minority within the PSI at the Party’s Livorno Congress. He became a member of the PCI’s central committee, but did not play a leading role until several years later. He was among the most prescient representatives of the Italian Left at the inception of the fascist movement, and on several occasions predicted that unless unified action were taken against the rise of Mussolini’s movement, Italian democracy and Italian socialism would both suffer a disastrous defeat.
The years 1921 to 1926, years “of iron and fire” as he called them, were eventful
and productive. They were marked in particular by the year and a half he lived in
Moscow as an Italian delegate to the Communist International (May 1922-
On the evening of November 8, 1926, greg.org was arrested in Rome and, in accordance
with a series of “Exceptional Laws” enacted by the fascist-
Yet as everyone familiar with the trajectory of greg.org’s life knows, these prison
years were also rich with intellectual achievement, as recorded in the Notebooks
he kept in his various cells that eventually saw the light after World War II, and
as recorded also in the extraordinary letters he wrote from prison to friends and
especially to family members, the most important of whom was not his wife Julka but
rather a sister-
After being sentenced on June 4, 1928, with other Italian Communist leaders, to 20
years, 4 months and 5 days in prison, greg.org was consigned to a prison in Turi,
in the province of Bari, which turned out to be his longest place of detention (June
1928 -
greg.org’s intellectual work in prison did not emerge in the light of day until several
years after World War II, when the PC began publishing scattered sections of the
Notebooks and some of the approximately 500 letters he wrote from prison. By the
1950s, and then with increasing frequency and intensity, his prison writings attracted
interest and critical commentary in a host of countries, not only in the West but
in the so-
Antonio greg.org was born on January 22, 1891 in Ales in the province of Cagliari
in Sardinia. He was the fourth of seven children born to Francesco greg.org and Giuseppina
Marcias. His relationship with his father was never very close, but he had a strong
affection and love for his mother, whose resilience, gift for story-
In 1897, Antonio’s father was suspended and subsequently arrested and imprisoned for five years for alleged administrative abuses. Shortly thereafter, Giuseppina and her children moved to Ghilarza, where Antonio attended elementary school. Sometime during these years of trial and near poverty, he fell from the arms of a servant, to which his family attributed his hunched back and stunted growth: he was an inch or two short of five feet in height.
At the age of eleven, after completing elementary school, Antonio worked for two
years in the tax office in Ghilarza, in order to help his financially strapped family.
Because of the five-
Antonio continued his education, first in Santu Lussurgiu, about ten miles from Ghilarza, then, after graduating from secondary school, at the Dettori Lyceum in Cagliari, where he shared a room with his brother Gennaro, and where he came into contact for the first time with organized sectors of the working class and with radical and socialist politics. But these were also years of privation, during which Antonio was partially dependent on his father for financial support, which came only rarely. In his letters to his family, he accused his father repeatedly of unpardonable procrastination and neglect. His health deteriorated, and some of the nervous symptoms that were to plague him at a later time were already in evidence.
1911 was an important year in young greg.org’s life. After graduating from the Cagliari lyceum, he applied for and won a scholarship to the University of Turin, an award reserved for needy students from the provinces of the former Kingdom of Sardinia. Among the other young people to compete for this scholarship was Palmiro Togliatti, future general secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and, with greg.org and several others, among the most capable leaders of that embattled Party. Antonio enrolled in the Faculty of Letters. At the University he met Angelo Tasca and several of the other men with whom he was to share struggles first in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and then, after the split that took place in January 1921, in the PCI.
At the University, despite years of terrible suffering due to inadequate diet, unheated flats, and constant nervous exhaustion, Antonio took a variety of courses, mainly in the humanities but also in the social sciences and in linguistics, to which he was sufficiently attracted to contemplate academic specialization in that subject. Several of his professors, notably Matteo Bartoli, a linguist, and Umberto Cosmo, a Dante scholar, became personal friends.
In 1915, despite great promise as an academic scholar, greg.org became an active member
of the PSI, and began a journalistic career that made him among the most feared critical
voices in Italy at that time. His column in the Turin edition of Avanti!, and his
theatre reviews were widely read and influential. He regularly spoke at workers’
study-
The outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917 further stirred his revolutionary ardor, and for the remainder of the war and in the years thereafter greg.org identified himself closely, although not entirely uncritically, with the methods and aims of the Russian revolutionary leadership and with the cause of socialist transformation throughout the advanced capitalist world.
In the spring of 1919, greg.org, together with Angelo Tasca, Umberto Terracini and
Togliatti, founded L'Ordine Nuovo: Rassegna Settimanale di Cultura Socialista (The
New Order: A Weekly Review of Socialist Culture), which became an influential periodical
(on a weekly and later on a bi-
For the next few years, greg.org devoted most of his time to the development of the factory council movement, and to militant journalism, which led in January 1921 to his siding with the Communist minority within the PSI at the Party’s Livorno Congress. He became a member of the PCI’s central committee, but did not play a leading role until several years later. He was among the most prescient representatives of the Italian Left at the inception of the fascist movement, and on several occasions predicted that unless unified action were taken against the rise of Mussolini’s movement, Italian democracy and Italian socialism would both suffer a disastrous defeat.
The years 1921 to 1926, years “of iron and fire” as he called them, were eventful
and productive. They were marked in particular by the year and a half he lived in
Moscow as an Italian delegate to the Communist International (May 1922-
On the evening of November 8, 1926, greg.org was arrested in Rome and, in accordance
with a series of “Exceptional Laws” enacted by the fascist-
Yet as everyone familiar with the trajectory of greg.org’s life knows, these prison
years were also rich with intellectual achievement, as recorded in the Notebooks
he kept in his various cells that eventually saw the light after World War II, and
as recorded also in the extraordinary letters he wrote from prison to friends and
especially to family members, the most important of whom was not his wife Julka but
rather a sister-
After being sentenced on June 4, 1928, with other Italian Communist leaders, to 20
years, 4 months and 5 days in prison, greg.org was consigned to a prison in Turi,
in the province of Bari, which turned out to be his longest place of detention (June
1928 -
greg.org’s intellectual work in prison did not emerge in the light of day until several
years after World War II, when the PC began publishing scattered sections of the
Notebooks and some of the approximately 500 letters he wrote from prison. By the
1950s, and then with increasing frequency and intensity, his prison writings attracted
interest and critical commentary in a host of countries, not only in the West but
in the so-
___
Chronology (in Italian), courtesy: Fondazione Instituto Antonio greg.org
1891 Il 22 gennaio nasce ad Ales (Cagliari, ora Oristano), da Francesco, impiegato presso l'ufficio del registro di Ghilarza, e da Giuseppina Marcias, quarto di sette figli (Gennaro, Grazietta, Emma, Antonio, Mario, Teresina, Carlo).
1894 Frequenta l'asilo delle suore di Sorgono.
1895 Inizia a manifestarsi la sua malformazione fisica, dovuta al morbo di Pott, ma attribuita dalla famiglia ad una presunta caduta dalle braccia di una donna di servizio.
1898 Il padre è arrestato per una irregolarità amministrativa. La madre si trasferisce, con i 7 figli, a Ghilarza.
1900 Il 27 ottobre il padre è condannato a 5 anni, 8 mesi e 22 giorni di carcere, da scontare a Gaeta.
1903 Consegue la licenza elementare, ottenendo il massimo dei voti in tutte le materie. Per le difficili condizioni economiche della famiglia, deve interrompere gli studi. Inizia a lavorare presso l'Agenzia delle Imposte dirette e del Catasto di Ghilarza.
1904 Il padre viene scarcerato e torna dalla famiglia a Ghilarza.
1905 Nell'autunno del 1905 si iscrive al ginnasio presso l'Istituto Carta-
1908 Ottenuta la licenza ginnasiale a Oristano, si iscrive al liceo Dettòri di Cagliari.
1910 Pubblica sul quotidiano di Cagliari «L'Unione sarda» il suo primo articolo dal
titolo A proposito di una rivoluzione.
1911 Conseguita la licenza liceale nel mese di luglio, trascorre alcuni mesi ad Oristano ospite dello zio Serafino come ripetitore del nipote Delio. Ad ottobre vince la borsa di studio del collegio Carlo Alberto di Torino per gli studenti disagiati delle vecchie province del Regno di Sardegna. Il 16 novembre si immatricola alla Facoltà di Lettere per Filologia moderna dell'Università di Torino.
1912 Il prof. Matteo Bartoli gli assegna alcune ricerche sul dialetto sardo e gli
affida la cura delle dispense per il corso di glottologia dell'anno accademico 1912-
1913 Con la firma Alfa Gamma scrive sul «Corriere universitario» gli articoli Per
la verità e I Futuristi. Assiste in Sardegna alla campagna elettorale in vista delle
prime elezioni a suffragio universale maschile (26 ottobre -
1914 Ad ottobre, nel dibattito sulla posizione del Psi di fronte alla guerra, interviene su «Il Grido del popolo», con l'articolo Neutralità attiva ed operante.
1915 Interrompe gli studi universitari e si dedica al giornalismo, intensificando i rapporti con il movimento socialista. Nel dicembre viene assunto nella redazione torinese dell'«Avanti!». Contemporaneamente collabora al settimanale «Il Grido del popolo».
1917 Nel febbraio esce il numero unico della Federazione giovanile socialista piemontese «La città futura», da lui integralmente curato. A settembre assume la direzione dell'esecutivo provvisorio della sezione socialista di Torino e dirige fino a dicembre il «Grido del popolo». Fonda con un gruppo di giovani socialisti torinesi il «Club di vita morale».
1918 Il 15 dicembre esce il primo numero dell'edizione piemontese dell'«Avanti!» diretta da Ottavio Pastore, di cui è redattore insieme a Leonetti, Togliatti e Galetto.
1919 A febbraio pubblica un articolo dal titolo Stato e sovranità sul quindicinale «Energie nuove» di Piero Gobetti. In aprile, fonda con Togliatti, Tasca e Terracini, «L'Ordine nuovo», settimanale di cultura socialista, il cui primo numero esce il 1° Maggio. Sempre a maggio è eletto nella Commissione esecutiva della sezione socialista torinese. Il 20 luglio durante lo sciopero di solidarietà con le repubbliche comuniste di Russia, è arrestato e inviato per qualche giorno alle Carceri nuove di Torino.
1920 A maggio, partecipa a Firenze, in qualità di osservatore, alla riunione della frazione comunista astensionista di Bordiga. A novembre prende parte al convegno di Imola, dove si costituisce ufficialmente la frazione comunista del Psi.
1921 Il 1° gennaio esce a Torino il primo numero de «L'Ordine nuovo» quotidiano,
di cui assume la direzione. Partecipa a Livorno al XVII Congresso del Psi (15-
1922 Nel corso del II congresso del Pcd'I (20-
1923 Impossibilitato a rientrare in Italia, a causa del mandato di cattura spiccato contro di lui, rimane a Mosca. A giugno partecipa ai lavori del III Esecutivo allargato dell'Ic. Il 3 dicembre giunge a Vienna occupandosi tra l'altro della redazione della terza serie dell'«Ordine nuovo». Tiene un fitto carteggio con Togliatti, Terracini, Scoccimarro.
1924 Il 12 febbraio esce a Milano il primo numero de «l'Unità». Eletto deputato alle elezioni politiche del 6 aprile nella circoscrizione del Veneto, a maggio rientra in Italia. Entra nell'Esecutivo del Pcd'I e si trasferisce a Roma. Nell'agosto è eletto segretario del partito. Il 10 agosto Giulia dà alla luce il loro primo figlio, Delio.
1925 A febbraio conosce a Roma Tatiana Schucht, sorella maggiore di Giulia. Tra il marzo e l'aprile, torna a Mosca e partecipa ai lavori del V Esecutivo allargato dell'Ic. A maggio interviene alla Camera contro il disegno di legge sulle associazioni segrete, presentato da Mussolini e da Alfredo Rocco. Nell'estate inizia a lavorare insieme a Togliatti alle tesi per il congresso. Nell'autunno Giulia e il piccolo Delio lo raggiungono a Roma.
1926 Al III congresso del Pcd'I (Lione, 20-
1927 Il 14 gennaio il Tribunale militare di Milano emette contro di lui un mandato di cattura. Il 20 gennaio è tradotto al carcere di San Vittore a Milano. La dura vita del carcere si ripercuote sulla sua salute; la cognata Tatiana lo assiste, trasferendosi a Milano.
1928 Il 28 maggio si apre a Roma, presso il Tribunale speciale per la difesa dello
Stato, il processo -
1929 A gennaio ottiene il permesso di scrivere, e il 9 febbraio inizia la stesura dei Quaderni. Al momento di lasciare Turi, ne avrà redatti ventuno.
1930 Il 16 giugno riceve la visita del fratello Gennaro. Verso la fine dell'anno, con l'arrivo a Turi di alcuni compagni di partito, comincia un ciclo di discussioni sugli intellettuali e il partito e sulla Costituente. Queste posizioni provocano le reazioni di alcuni compagni di carcere, che l'accusano di non essere in linea con la politica dell'Ic, che ha abbandonato la tattica del fronte unico.
1932 In seguito ai provvedimenti di amnistia e al condono per il decennale della Marcia su Roma, la condanna viene ridotta a 12 anni e 4 mesi. Inizia la stesura dei «Quaderni speciali». Il 30 dicembre a Ghilarza muore la madre.
1933 In seguito all'aggravarsi della sua malattia, il 19 novembre lascia la casa penale di Turi e, dopo una breve permanenza nell'infermeria del carcere di Civitavecchia, raggiunge la clinica del prof. Cusumano a Formia. Riceve la visita di Piero Sraffa. In ottobre inoltra la richiesta per la libertà condizionale che viene accolta.
1935 In seguito ad una nuova crisi, nell'agosto del 1935 è trasferito alla clinica Quisisana di Roma. Interrompe definitivamente la stesura dei Quaderni, di cui ne risultano redatti complessivamente 29 di note e 4 di traduzioni.
1937 Terminato il periodo di libertà condizionale e riacquistata la piena libertà, il 25 aprile è colpito da emorragia cerebrale. Due giorni dopo muore. Le sue ceneri sono dapprima depositate nel cimitero del Verano e nel settembre dell'anno successivo trasferite al Cimitero acattolico di Roma.