The Manifesto of the 101 was a document expressing strong dissent from the Soviets, following the Soviet invasion of

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

in October 1956, signed by 101 prominent Italian communists.

History

After the

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

uprising and its ruthless repression by the U.S.S.R. Red Army the manifesto was signed by 101 Italian communist intellectuals. The document (known as "Il Manifesto dei 101"- "The Manifesto of 101") was conceived and initially drafted by philosopher

Lucio Colletti Lucio Colletti (8 December 1924, Rome – 3 November 2001, Venturina Terme, Campiglia Marittima, Province of Livorno) was an Italian Western Marxist philosopher. Colletti started to be known outside Italy because of a long interview that Mar ...

, historians Luciano Cafagna and Francesco Sirugo, all three

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

( PCI) members. It was co-signed by 98 more intellectuals, among whom were historians Renzo De Felice and Alberto Caracciolo, and strongly endorsed by

Antonio Giolitti Antonio Giolitti (12 February 1915 – 8 February 2010) was an Italian politician and cabinet member. He was the grandson of Giovanni Giolitti, the well-known liberal statesman of the pre-fascist period who served as Prime Minister of Italy five ...

, a leading personality and member of parliament. The "manifesto" was submitted to the Direction Bureau of the PCI with the intent of initiating an internal debate on the

events. It was leaked to the press and provoked a brutal reaction by the Party's leadership and the Direction Bureau; any debate attempt was rejected while the document's authors, labelled as "traitors", were threatened with heavy political consequences. First worried by the public diffusion of the "manifesto" then more seriously intimidated by the Party leadership's reaction, a few of the signatories retracted their adhesion while others, who refused to do so, resigned. MP Antonio Giolitti left the following year, in 1957. This episode of dissent was followed by a more general re-thinking on the legitimacy of Communism and its compatibility with democracy and intellectual freedom. Among the Manifesto's promoters, some (Cafagna, De Felice, Sirugo, Colletti) ended up, although at different stages, cutting ideological ties with Communism.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Manifesto Of 101 Political history of Italy 1956 in Italy Communism in Italy Hungarian Revolution of 1956 1956 documents