Adunata Dei Refrattari

ADUNATA DEI REFRATTARI. The Italian-language anarchist journal L’Adunata dei Refrattari (The Gathering of the Incorrigibles) began publication in New York City on 15 April 1922 and ceased fifty years later in April 1971. Its name—literally “The Call of the Refractory Ones”—was a defiant, if rather arcane, reference to words—refrattario (It.)/réfractaire (Fr.)—that had been used as a code by European governments before the turn of the century, during the heyday of “the propaganda of the deed,” to identify anarchists in laws meant specifically to suppress their movement. The anarchism propagated by L’Adunata reflected the exceptional influence of Luigi Galleani, editor of the suppressed anarchist paper Cronaca Sovversiva (Barre, Vermont, and Lynn, Massachusetts, 1903–1919), who had been deported to Italy in 1919 by the U.S. government. L’Adunata’s mixture of Kropotkinesque anarcho-communism, belief in direct action and revolution, and absolute antiorganizationalism continually involved it in many a passionate polemic within the Left and within the anarchist movement itself. It played a major role in anarchist activities not only in America but throughout the world, especially where concentrations of Italians were to be found. At its peak, during the antifascist struggle in the thirties, L’Adunata counted between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand militants as its supporters. It always represented the dominant trend within the Italian anarchist movement in America.

L’Adunata appeared in 1922, shortly after the Red Scare had run its course in the United States and when it was clear that social revolution in Italy, whose coming had seemed so imminent after the war, was not going to materialize. It was founded by anarchists who wanted to carry on the legacy of Cronaca Sovversiva. L’Adunata played a leading role in the abortive struggle to save Sacco and Vanzetti, fellow anarchists who had been caught up in the postwar web of repression and were facing death in Massachusetts. Members of its editorial group were always among the most influential members of the defense committee formed to support the pair, and both Sacco and Vanzetti always considered themselves an integral part of the journal, as they had been part of Cronaca Sovversiva. They accepted the militant ideals of L’Adunata wholeheartedly and wrote for it, particularly Vanzetti, most of whose political writings were smuggled out from prison article by article and appeared in L’Adunata under various noms de guerre—Il Picconiere, the man with the pickax, La Vedetta Solitaria, the solitary steersman. L’Adunata also made several preparations to break the men out of prison, but they never came to fruition.

The seizure of power by the fascists in Italy (1922) and the cessation of mass immigration by newly enacted U.S. laws (1924) severely limited the growth of L’Adunata in America and in Italy, its two most natural fields of activity. Because of the determined hostility of both the American and Italian governments, a significant part of the movement also had to become clandestine. Further energy was dissipated in bitter ideological and personal disputes, but L’Adunata managed nonetheless to summon sufficient force to aid political prisoners, to rally fuorusciti (Italian antifascist refugees) throughout the world, and to fight fascism on the streets of Little Italies throughout America.

After the tragic close of the Sacco and Vanzetti case—they were executed on 22 August, 1927—in order to resolve internal personal and political differences the paper called back one of its most experienced and trusted comrades from Europe to assume the editorship. Raffaele Schiavina (1893–1987), who, as administrator of Cronaca Sovversiva, had been deported from the United States in 1919 along with Galleani, was to have one of the most remarkable and least known careers in the story of twentieth-century American radicalism. After his deportation, Schiavina, with Galleani, started to publish Cronaca Sovversiva in Turin, Italy, but after the rise of fascism had halted its publication, Schiavina escaped to France. In Paris Schiavina edited several Italian-language journals, La Difesa per Sacco e Vanzetti (1923) and Il Monito (1925–1928), and was deeply involved in many antifascist activities. When in 1927 Luigia Vanzetti passed through Paris on her way to see her brother in Boston just days before his execution, Schiavina helped to organize a massive demonstration on behalf of his two comrades, both of whom he had known well in America. Because of his earlier deportation and the unrelenting search for him by OVRA, the fascist secret police, Schiavina had to reenter the United States clandestinely in 1928. Despite his illegal status, Schiavina, under his assumed name, Max Sartin, managed to publish L’Adunata week after week for the next forty-three years, until it ceased publication in 1971, and succeeded in eluding all authorities until he died in 1987. He was one of the most incisive, militant, and enduring pens in the service of the anarchist movement; he wrote books, articles, editorials, pamphlets, translations, memorials, obituaries, and maintained a vast correspondence with anarchists throughout the world. His papers contain the fundamental source materials for the as yet unwritten history of the Italian anarchist movement in America. Ironically, for a group with a strong antiorganizational bias, L’Adunatisti managed to sustain one of the anarchist movement’s longest-lasting and most regularly published journals. During critical times they were always among the movement’s most dependable elements.

Berman, Paul. “The Torch and the Axe: The Unknown Aftermath of the Sacco-Vanzetti Affair.” Village Voice, 17 May 1988.

D’Attilio, Robert. “La Scomparsa di Max Sartin.” L’Internazionale (Ancona, Italy) 23 (January–February 1988).

D’Attilio, Robert, and Jane Manthorne, eds. Sacco-Vanzetti: Developments and Reconsiderations—1979. Conference proceedings. Boston: Boston Public Library, 1982.