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Rating: There are books that are good for the heart, the mind and the soul, and every now and then there are symbols to cling to, stories we like to tell others, especially the younger ones, or have them told by more experienced companions, our older siblings, those little great teachers who have lived through all the many battles of the 20th century, and who, in some way, can continue to be a point of reference, a guiding star for those who, directly or indirectly, want to commit to making Italy a better country, more livable, open, and confident towards the future.
Among these points of reference, I would like to place Enrico Berlinguer, as a man and as the protagonist of a unique existential journey, even before being a politician and leader of the Communist Party in years of difficult transformations and challenges for our country, emerging from the defeat of World War II and the tragedy of Nazifascism.
Much has been said about Berlinguer in political debates, mainly within the left, which is in an identity crisis in recent years, and he has often been brought up in recent television programs, highlighting, on one hand, his detachment from post-Stalinist Soviet Union and his gradual shift towards social democracy (as part of a project unfortunately interrupted by his premature death), and, on the other hand, his ability to foresee and anticipate the evils that would afflict Italy from the 1990s onwards, whether it was the "moral question" or the risk of authoritarian and Caesaristic drifts, well epitomized by his opposition to Bettino Craxi, both ideologically and historically.
These are aspects that link Berlinguer to his time, to the challenges of an era now past but which, at the same time, tell us a lot about the tenacity with which the communist leader was able to interpret historical events in their harsh reality, without losing sight of the long-term goals of a policy that, first of all, should have freed man from his own chains and biases, allowing him then to freely pursue, in a dutiful agreement with his fellow humans - a democratic pact, we would call it - the paths of liberation from any kind of dictatorship, whether political, ideological, economic, or simply related to social norms.
Summarizing, even for the younger ones reading, the Berlinguerian trajectory, I would like to emphasize how he aimed to emancipate Italy from all the constraints that plagued our country, also due to the geopolitical situation or historical events that exploded in the '60s and '70s: an Italy emancipated from the NATO-Comecon chessboard, from the violence of the maximalist terrorism of the left itself during the Moro affair, from the madness of right-wing terrorism, as well as from the temptation to break the mold by resorting to forms of charismatic, anti-democratic and authoritarian drift, typical of plebiscitary systems where new leaders - whether then Craxi or today Berlusconi - are hailed as solvers of all problems, as men of providence, with all the burden of pain and suffering that this concept itself recalls.
Reading Walter Veltroni's book can then be instructive, even for younger people, where he outlines the importance of Enrico Berlinguer's figure and recognizes his moral stature, existential, of a man who knew how to behave in private as he appeared in public, banning, in the clarity of his actions and the austere language that distinguished him, any form of embellishment and rhetoric that, first of all, offend the listener, trapping and placing them in a position of constant "minority".
Veltroni, here as a writer but inevitably as a politician, seems to see in Berlinguer not only and not so much a Noble Father of our Republic, but more importantly, a model of behavior and consistency that should be imitated by a Democratic Left which, over the last twenty years, seems to have forgotten its true mission, namely to make men free without sacrificing the essential value of their Equality and Fraternity, considering that the individual left to himself can only return to a state of nature where the savage instinct of the strongest prevails, a war of everyone against everyone else where the dangerous shadow of a Cain or a Romulus looms, ready to strike the weak to assert their power and desire for supremacy over the Other.
Having the Other as a respected interlocutor, believing in a federative pact between individuals, in a unity of intentions and in the constant improvement of human conditions, are the foundations on which it is possible to build, even in a time of crisis of ideologies and even politics, a new way of being Left.
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