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Title: Autobiographical Notes Author: Raffaele Schiavina (Max Sartin) Date: Early 1980’s Language: en Topics: autobiography, autobiographical, Luigi Galleani, Sacco and Vanzetti, Source: Retrieved on April 29, 2012 from http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/ngf2s6 Notes: Probably written during the early 1980s: from Bollettino Archivio G. Pinelli (Milan). No 13, August 1999, pp. 43–45.
I was born in San Carlo in the province of Ferrara on 8 April 1894 into
a peasant family. When I finished school in 1912 I had the chance to
satisfy my desire to go to America the following year and settled in
Brockton, Massachusetts.
In those days I regarded myself as a socialist, not really out of
reasoned conviction but simply lest I give the impression that I was a
conservative. During summer 1914, at an Italian-American picnic, I made
the acquaintance of a man considerably older than me who told me that he
was an anarchist and offered me, to read, a book that he said that he
had enjoyed reading. In fact it was Kropotkin’s Memoirs which held my
attention, for I discovered in it feelings and ideas that it seemed had
always been a part of me. I went on reading what he lent me and took out
a subscription to Cronaca Sovversiva which, in a very short space of
time, had become essential reading for me. The war in Europe was just
beginning at the time and there was widespread revulsion at the horrors
being perpetrated. I had occasion to hear a few talks given by Galleani
and to make the acquaintances of persons of my own age living in the
Boston area. In April 1916, with all of the zeal of the convert, I
accepted the post of administrator with Cronaca Sovversiva. Towards the
end of 1915 I had even made so bold as to send an article to that weekly
paper and it had been published, albeit completely revamped by the
editors.
The following year the United States entered the war and I, like many
another, refused to register as a potential soldier, so I was arrested
for breaching the law making registration a requirement and then was
sentenced to a year in prison. Having served my time, I was then sent
back to Italy, arriving along with eight other comrades, including the
Sanchinis with their two young babies, on 9 July 1919.
In Naples I was detained by the military police as a deserter in time of
war and committed to the military prison of Sant’Elmo where I stayed
until the 2 September amnesty meant that I was taken to the district
military headquarters and drafted into the King’s army. Leave for my
draft started on 12 September and I was allowed furlough along with
them, which is how I came to turn up at my parents’ home, not having
seen them in six years.
At the start of 1920 Cronaca Sovversiva resumed publication in Turin and
I returned to the post of administrator. But after twenty issues
Galleani was indicted over some anti militarist articles and, being
threatened with arrest, he went on the run, except that later he showed
up at the trial which took place towards the end of October 1922.
Publication of Cronaca Sovversiva ceased after twenty issues.
In August 1922 I set off on a speaking tour in the Marches. But on
arriving in Fabriano, I was arrested by a carabinieri patrol; after
holding me overnight they bundled me on board a train with two
carabinieri who escorted me to Turin where the courts had initiated
proceedings against me. After a brief stay at police headquarters, I was
taken to the remand cells to await trial. I was charged with having
taken part along with about ten communists upon whom I had never set
eyes, in the organising of the Arditi del Popolo, with which I had had
nothing to do. After fifteen months of inquiries we were taken to the
Turin Assizes (one of the communists having died in prison in the
interim) where we were all acquitted and freed because the frame-up fell
apart.
In March 1923, whilst I was looking around for some way out of the
situation created by fascism’s arrival in power, comrade Emilio Coda,
having arrived from America, suggested to me that I go to France in an
effort to inject some vigour into the campaign to save Sacco and
Vanzetti. I of course accepted and I crossed the frontier with comrade
Giuseppe Mioli, striking up a friendship that has survived to this day.
In Paris we published a four page newspaper called La Difesa (Defence),
managing to bring out four or five issues thanks to the solidarity of
French comrades. But during that summer Coda had to return to the United
States and publication was suspended. After a short stay in London I
went back to France where I found work in the textile industry and I
might even have become a half-decent weaver, had not encouragement from
several comrades and my own enduring desire to be of service to the
movement inspired me to return to Paris where, in 1925, we started
publishing Il Monito, a newspaper that appeared fairly irregularly up
until 1928. In the years that followed, the Sacco-Vanzetti campaign was
stepped up to such an extent that when Luigia Vanzetti passed through
Paris, the French comrades successfully organised a popular
demonstration in which 250,000 people were said to have taken part. The
tragic denouement of the campaign was a profound upset to avant garde
groups and to the Paris proletariat generally. After that — I was to be
expelled from France after a couple of years — I went to Marseilles
where I lodged with the family of a comrade who had spent some time in
the United States and where I was treated like one of the family. I
stayed there up until the end of that year, once more contributing
regularly to L’Adunata (dei Refrattari). It was at this point that the
idea came to me to go back to America. The first person to mention it to
me was comrade Luigi Pitton, a veteran of our Italian-American movement,
and with the help of some comrades on both sides of the Atlantic I was
able to make the trip the following March. The rest of my life is
recorded in the fifty bound annual editions of Adunata.
Partly out of modesty and partly out of necessity, I have used lots of
pen names. Even so, I used my own name when I had to face up to my
personal responsibility. In 65 years of life as a militant I contributed
to the following publications, Cronaca Sovversiva of Lynn, Massachusetts
and Turin, La Difesa and Il Monito in Paris, and the odd single edition
publication from Paolo Schicchi in Marseilles, the English-language
California newspaper Man! in the 1930s, La Frusta of Pesaro and finally
L’Adunata dei Refrattari (as a contributor up until 1928 and from May
1928 to April 1970 as editor).
These have been my noms de plume:
Cesare; Nando; Michetta; Calibano (used only once in Il Monito in
Paris); Max Sartin; Labor; Manhattanite; Bob; Juan Taro; X.Y.; R.S.; and
M.S., in more recent contributions to L’Internazionale of Ancona.
I should also say that ever since I took over as editor of L’Adunata I
have always published general articles as spokesman for the editorial
team and therefore without signature. Into this category fall the
Cronache Sovversive which I would send in to the paper on a weekly basis
even when, for whatever reason, I happened to be far away from the
editorial offices or because I was otherwise unable to be there. I ought
to add that those of my writings published in Man! were signed Melchior
Seele. I cannot guarantee that I may not have left out one or two things
in this list but this is what comes to mind right now and were in any
event the pen-names I used most frequently. In one of the few issues of
the review Veglia that Virgilia D’Andrea published in Paris there is a
piece by me on Sacco and Vanzetti, signed with my own name.