The road to this slogan had been a long and winding one. But how seriously did he take the proposal for land reform? A chance to show where he now stood was given as the Russian and Italian crises deepened. Between the end of the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo and the beginning of the Austro-German Isonzo offensive on 24 October Mussolini published fifty-one articles, made one short speech (published in IL Popolo d’ltalia) and sent a telegram (also published in IL Popolo d’ltalia) to the mother of Filippo Corridoni on the anniversary of the syndicalist’s death. The content of these pieces reveals a radical shift from his principal concerns in July and August. Only two articles out of this substantial block of material (3.8 per cent) addressed territorial disputes with the Yugoslavs (OO, IX: 178-80, 240-22). The Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo received no specific treatment, but was touched upon in various pieces (OO, IX: 188-9, 197). What, then, replaced the previously vital theme of the victorious offensive and territorial gain? Quite simply an obsession with domestic matters which accounted for 48 of the 53 published pieces, or a staggering 91 per cent, the majority of which were directed against the government, the parliament and Orlando’s refusal to suppress civil liberties (OO, IX: 157-8, 159-61, 162-3, 164-7, 168-70, 171-3, 174-7, 181-3, 184-5, 186-7, 188-9, 193-6, 197, 198-9, 200-1, 202-3, 207-8, 209-14, 215, 216-17, 218-20, 221-3, 224, 225-6, 227-28, 229-30, 231-3, 234-6, 237-9, 243-5, 246-8, 249-52, 253-4, 255-7, 258-60, 261-3, 264-6, 267-9, 270-1, 272-4, 275, 276-8, 279-81, 282-4, 285-8, 289-92, 293-5, 296-8).
The fact is that the events of 22-26 August in Turin continued to plague Mussolini. Like the references to the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo, one has to comb over fifty pieces for references to the insurrection. But those events colour his writing, as revealed by one question asked in an article of 17 October: ‘Since the episode of Turin has there really and substantially been a change of direction in our internal policy?’ (OO, IX: 267-9). From the first article of this series he was arguing that ‘facts such as those of Turin require that those responsible, high up and low down, be identified’ (OO, IX: 157-8). In attacking Orlando, Mussolini insinuated a direct link between Giolittism, the PSI, Turin, and a possible Italian defeat similar to the Russian one. On 8 September he remarked that ‘it is precisely in Turin that the Socialist Party declares “with all its heart” that it is in solidarity with Lenin, whose decidedly reactionary and Germanic work is one of the main causes of the Russian defeat on the Riga front’ (OO, IX: 168-70. Riga had in fact fallen into German hands on 3 September). On 10 September: ‘From the grain point of view, the responsibility for the so-called facts of Turin falls in part on Orlando and, from the political point of view, totally on him. All this with the aggravating factor of the extraordinary chronological coincidence between these facts and our offensive, a coincidence which gives things a slightly, I say only slightly, Leninist aspect’ (OO, IX: 174-7).
What, then, did he propose as an alternative to the government’s internal policy? The call for land reform appears only once, on 14 October. Even then, the article was not dedicated to the land question as such but to ‘productivity’ in general. Mussolini did not mention anything about how and when the land was to be taken away from its present owners. Indeed, the article finished by remarking that things were still ‘premature’ and that it was ‘difficult to establish today how these great transformations are to come about’. He argued that if the government raised this issue immediately, it would ‘give the combatants the firm persuasion that the State is orienting itself towards these principles’ and that this in turn would ‘bring to the front among the soldiers, and inside their families, an unbreakable block of energies which will be the best and absolute guarantee of our victory’ (OO, IX: 258-60). In short, by raising the slogan ‘Land to the peasants!’ the government would increase morale and hence the possibility of victory without having to commit itself to anything concrete (since it was, after all, only ‘orienting itself towards these principles’).
Mussolini’s ongoing refusal to embrace the cause of social reform is shown, amongst other things, by his attitude to events in Russia. Between 26 and 27 August a government-organized State Conference in Moscow attempted to show how unified the various sectors of Russian society were. The Bolsheviks, however, whose key leaders were still in hiding (Lenin) or in prison (Trotsky), had somehow managed to organize a massive counter-demonstration in the shape of a 400,000 strong strike, while Kornilov was preparing a military putsch. Kerensky originally supported Kornilov’s idea, leading Trotsky to comment ironically that Kerensky was both the bearer of supreme State power and at the same time a criminal conspirator against it (Trotsky, 1967, II: 212). However, Kerensky only adopted this rather contradictory position so long as he believed that the putsch was designed to wipe out the Bolsheviks and destroy the political effectiveness of the Soviet. When he realized that the abolition of the Provisional Government was also part of Kornilov’s plans he switched to oppose the putsch, even asking the Bolsheviks to use their influence in the army to convince the soldiers to fight Kornilov. Kornilov’s putsch collapsed on 10 September having met with rapidly organized countermeasures in which the increasing influence and military organization of the Bolsheviks were evident (Trotsky, 1967, II: Chs 8-9; Lincoln, 1994: 412-25). Mussolini’s treatment of these events relied on vague information which he nevertheless converted into clear conclusions. He argued that the February Revolution had not seen a clash of conservative and revolutionary forces, which only emerged in the present struggle. He informed readers that ‘Kornilov is not a counter-revolutionary’ and that ‘we should be grateful to [him] for having posed the either-or’. The Soviet, on the other hand, was defined as ‘irresponsible’, and who won between Kerensky and Kornilov was therefore of no consequence, since what mattered was that either would ‘pose a brutal end to the irresponsible annoying demagogy of the thousands of rallies and committees in Petrograd’ (OO, IX: 190-92).
Mussolini’s views on the Russian crisis were equally applicable to Italy. More than once he declared that ‘we do not want reaction’, but he then specified that this was ‘in the political sense’. Beyond the ‘big words of liberty and reaction’ on 17 October Mussolini sought a compromise concept. He argued that ‘on the eve of the third winter of war a word can and must be launched to the Italian people from the benches of the ministers, and it’s this: Discipline!’ (OO, IX: 267-9; Mussolini’s emphasis). But six days earlier he had specified that ‘wherever this discipline is not accepted freely and consciously it must be imposed, with violence if necessary, and even adopting that . . . dictatorship that the Romans of the first republic resorted to in the critical hours of their history” (OO, IX: 249-52. Mussolini’s emphasis). In the same period, he again called upon the social force which he deemed capable of salvaging Italy’s increasingly threatened mission in the present and, more importantly, the future - the interventionists. In an article of 18 September he wrote: ‘And now a question to the interventionists of all schools and ideas: will we allow Italy to be the next nation, after Russia, to be dishonoured by German Leninism? It is time to intensify the activity of our organizations to find ourselves ready for the day on which the [Italian socialists] try to transform their “highly respectable” opinions, which marvellously coincide with those of Boroevic, into facts’ (OO, IX: 168-70). On 1 October he returned to this alternative vision of wartime authority: ‘If the government doesn’t take the necessary measures, then it is a suicidal government and, what is worse, it is a government which leads the Nation to suicide. The interventionists must therefore prepare themselves to confront the increase in social-neutralist “energy”’ (OO, IX: 231-3). Seeking a symbolic expression of this alternative basis for national remobilization, Mussolini returned to the legitimizing moment of Italian entry into the war. Evoking the power of those ‘memorable’ days of May 1915, he wrote in September 1917:
Sometimes we still seem to hear in the air the echo of songs and the rumbling of multitudes in movement . . . We stop and ask ourselves - riddled with that ‘doubt’ that is the hallmark of recognition of the intellectual aristocracies: has interventionism outlived its day? Is there still subject matter, opportunity, ability, necessity of intervention? Yes. Interventionism still has reason to exist for foreign policy, to keep watch so that Italy’s admirable effort is recognized and not only exploited. Interventionism is above all needed for internal policy. Here interventionism assumes a politico-moral character.
He claimed that in 1915 interventionists had intervened to save the day from neutralism. Now ‘we will intervene again’ and, as before, ‘we will sabotage the saboteurs’ (OO, IX: 218-20).
Archive documentation shows that the fasci interventisti had been of a like mind in 1917. The Prefect of Ferrara informed the Ministry of the Interior on 25 May 1917 that in a meeting held two days previously, called to commemorate Italian intervention, the fascio di difesa nazionale voted in favour of adopting a concluding statement which felt ‘the patriotic duty to energetically recall the attention of the governing authorities to the work of saboteurs of our Enterprise’ and invoked ‘energetic and timely measures against subjects of enemy states which still live undisturbed in Italy and in such conditions as to freely work against our Nation’. They further demanded that the government ‘install an inflexible internal policy and inexorably strike anyone who conspires in any way against the supreme interests of the Nation’. Only in this way could the government ‘count on the unconditional support of those parties which love their Country’ (ACS, A5G, b. 94, fasc. 211, s. fasc. 7). In Rome, the Prefect reported on 6 June that the day before, ‘in the offices of . . . ILPopolo d’ltalia, various fascists met, among whom, apart from [Francesco] Paoloni [Rome correspondent of IL Popolo d’ltalia], were the lawyers Pascazio and Guerazzi and the [Il Popolo d’ltalia] journalist [Gaetano] Polverelli’. In another report from the capital dated 29 June 1917 we read that the Rome group was arguing that ‘if the King and the Government are unable to fully carry out their duties against the external enemies and against the internal enemies of the Nation, then it will be left up to us to offer the solution to the problem, and with us there will be perhaps the most beautiful forces of the nation, that is military chiefs, high magistrates, the press and a large part of the bureaucracy’ (both reports in ACS, A5G, b. 41, fasc. 77). Mussolini was less inclined to openly declare such dependence on the entrenched core of the State. In an article of 9 October he described interventionists using futurist-type adjectives such as ‘young’, ‘without prejudice’, ‘elastic’ and ‘aggressive’. This left them ‘in a privileged position when it comes to fighting what is old’. There was ‘nobody who can block, limit or inhibit us’. And since they had ‘no positions to lose or conquer’ they could ‘fight for the love of art’. This was ‘a public of elites’; it was ‘the public of the cities. The public that seeks, wants, walks’ (OO, IX: 246-8). In alliance with industrialists, agrarians, army chiefs, magistrates and the State bureaucracy, this, in a word, was a fascist public in the making.