Abstract:
Born in Tivoli in 1900, Dante Corneli can be considered a key figure in the history of
political emigrants in the Soviet Union. A Communist since the creation of the PCI in
1921, he found refuge in the USSR after being accused of murdering the secretary of the
Tivoli fascist party, Guglielmo Veroli in 1922. In the Soviet Union, he held several
important positions for the Party, actively participating in the construction of
socialism; thanks to his charisma, his good level of Russian and his faith in his
principles, he became a political and human reference point for his comrades. His vote
in favour of the Trockist bloc in 1927 cost him expulsion from the Party and
subsequent conviction for Trockism at the beginning of the Stalinist terror; Dante
Corneli spent around 20 years in a concentration camp and in exile.
On his return to Italy in 1970, Dante Corneli decided to publish his memoirs motivated
by the promise he had made to his comrades he had met in the camps not to let their
story be forgotten. He approached various publishing houses and after several refusals
and silences he managed to publish his memoirs in 1977, thanks to the intervention of
Umberto Terracini, at the La Pietra publishing house. Not satisfied with the revision of
the text and the censorship of his writings concerning the Stalin period and the PCI
members directly involved, he decided to publish his memoirs at his own expense,
which he called 'samizdat'. Dante Corneli's biography is reconstructed, against the
backdrop of historical events in the Soviet Union, thanks to his memoirs and archive
material found at various Italian and Russian organisations and institutions to give a
voice to Italian emigration to the USSR that is still obscured by censorship by the PCI.
