Farewell Mrs. Rossanda
Rossana Rossanda: Communist of head and heart. The souvenir signed by Francesco Damato
With her body no longer responding to her, as she herself told her friends after a stroke that had imprisoned her in a chair, Rossana Rossanda – "the girl of the last century", in the title desired for her biography when she was still in strength – she died in time the other night in her home in Rome so as not to blame herself for missing her last no: the referendum to the grillino cut of parliamentary seats, with the sacred idea of politics she had. And who inherited from her the young and old in her manifesto , the proudly communist newspaper derived from the monthly founded in 1969 with Luigi Pintor, Aldo Natoli, Luigi Magri, Luciana Castellina, Valentino Parlato and others expelled from the PCI for "fractionism".
Communist of head and heart, armored of a culture that led her to be appointed head of the homonymous sector of the party by a secretary like Palmiro Togliatti, who at the Constituent Assembly conversed in Latin and Greek with Benedetto Croce, the girl of the Novecento did not allow itself to be caged by any opportunistic vision, neither internal nor international. She defended the western youth protest of 1968, looked upon with suspicion by Luigi Longo's PCI, as well as the eastern one translated into the Czechoslovakian spring of Alexander Dubcek, which was not enough for the late and contradictory solidarity of the PCI, which immediately bent to military "normalization" Prague by the Soviets.
Cultured, I repeat, and honest as she was, from the columns of the manifesto ten years later, to the reading of the first press releases of the Red Brigades after the kidnapping of Aldo Moro , the co-founder of the newspaper did not hesitate to warn and point out the famous "family album" , embarrassing the now former party comrades who pretended not to understand, spoke and wrote about "alleged red brigades", or actually believed, even, that those killers were fascists disguised as fanatical communists, formed – wrote Rossanda mercilessly – “In the Stalin and Zhdanov courses of happy memory”. On the other hand, only uneducated and professional murderers could have exchanged someone like Moro – the patient political weaver who had just worked for a truce between the two major Italian parties unable at that moment to achieve majorities each against the other – for a lackey of the alleged, brainy "Imperialist State of the Multinationals". And to put you at your service also Enrico Berlinguer.
At 96 years old on April 23, with perhaps images of her native Pola always in her heart, Rossanda really saw and lived in all colors, also committing her mistakes, for heaven's sake. Like taking part in the campaign against Commissioner Luigi Calabresi, who was killed or left killed in 1972 under his house in Milan by Lotta continues.
In 2012 she also happened to be detached from her manifesto , without however renouncing to love him as the son she never had. “Children – he said – to grow up they need to kill their fathers and mothers. Now it's my turn ”. But tomorrow your newspaper will return to embrace you with a special issue, even with all that political, electoral and referendum scenario to tell and analyze.
Goodbye, dear "Mrs. Rossanda", how I happened to say goodbye to her last time, years ago, earning me a smile of surprise, used as she was to being called Rossana and that's it
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/addio-signora-rossanda/ on Mon, 21 Sep 2020 04:58:04 +0000.