Letters from Prison

Autumn. He resumed his collaboration with "Il Grido del popolo," directed by Giuseppe Bianchi, with a series of notes and articles on social and literary topics. On December 10, he joined the Turin editorial staff of "Avanti!"

1916 He began intense journalistic activity as a theater critic, author of sketches of customs, and polemicist in the "Sotto la Mole" column of "Avanti!" Among his targets were nationalist and interventionist rhetoric and intellectual and social malfeasance. He gave lectures in Turin workers' circles on Romain Rolland, the Paris Commune, the French Revolution, Marx, and Andrea Costa, etc.

1917 February. G., then—as he would later remember—"tendentially rather Crocean a follower of the philosopher Benedetto Croce," edited a single issue of the Piedmontese Socialist Youth Federation, "La città futura" (February 11), where he published the articles: Three principles, three orders, The Indifferent, Discipline, Margins, and some writings by Croce, Salvemini, and Armando Carlini.

April and July. In some articles and notes in "Il Grido del popolo," he praised the figure of Lenin and emphasized the socialist aims of the Russian Revolution.

August. He collaborated on the preparations of the socialist section for the visit to Turin of a group of Russian Soviet delegates. The visit concluded on August 13 with a large workers' demonstration in favor of the Russian Revolution and Lenin.

September. After the workers' riot of August 23-26 and the arrest of almost all the Turin socialist leaders, G. became secretary of the provisional Executive Commission of the Turin section and assumed, in fact, the direction of "Il Grido del popolo," to which he dedicated "a good part of his time and his often-convulsed activity," until October 1918.

October. He published an issue of "Il Grido del popolo" entirely dedicated to the problem of customs freedom, with articles by Togliatti, U. G. Mondolfo, U. Cosmo, B. Buozzi.

November 18 and 19. As a representative of the provisional executive of the Turin section and director of "Il Grido," he participated in the clandestine meeting of the "intransigent revolutionary faction" in Florence, which was established in...