Dante Corneli. A lifetime journey through the Soviet Union and Italy

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.