Luigi Longo (15 March 1900 – 16 October 1980), also known as Gallo, was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 politician and secretary

General secretary

-International intergovernmental organizations:-International nongovernmental organizations:-Sports governing bodies:...

 of the Italian Communist Party

Italian Communist Party

The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...

 from 1964 to 1972.

Early life

Luigi Longo was born in Fubine

Fubine

Fubine is a comune in the Province of Alessandria in the Italian region Piedmont, located about 60 km east of Turin and about 15 km northwest of Alessandria....

, in the province of Alessandria

Province of Alessandria

The Province of Alessandria is an Italian province, with a population of some 430,000, which forms the southeastern part of the region of Piedmont. The provincial capital is the city of Alessandria....

, Piedmont

Piedmont

Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...

.

As a student at the Politecnico di Torino, he became active in the youth wing of the Italian Socialist Party

Italian Socialist Party

The Italian Socialist Party was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy founded in Genoa in 1892.Once the dominant leftist party in Italy, it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party following World War II...

 (PSI), and engaged in political propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

 from a Marxist

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 perspective. He was a regular visitor to the offices of Ordine Nuovo

Ordine Nuovo

Ordine Nuovo , full name Centro Studi Ordine Nuovo, "New Order Scholarship Center") was an Italian far right cultural and extra-parliamentary political and terrorist organization founded by Pino Rauti in 1956...

, the newspaper founded by Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...

, and became acquainted with Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti

Palmiro Togliatti

Palmiro Togliatti was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death.-Early life:...

. In 1921, at the Livorno

Livorno

Livorno , traditionally Leghorn , is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of approximately 160,000 residents in 2009.- History :...

 Congress of the PSI, he was one of the instigators of the split in the party, when supporters of Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

's Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

 line left to form the Italian Communist Party (PCI). He became a leading figure in the new PCI along with Togliatti, Gramsci and others.

Longo was a fervent anti-fascist

Anti-fascism

Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...

, and, when Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

 established his Fascist regime

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 in Italy in 1922, he emigrated to France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 where he became one of the principal leaders of the PCI. In the same year he was a member of a delegation to the Comintern

Comintern

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...

 Congress in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, where he met Lenin. He would return to Moscow several times in the following years, and was to meet Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 and other members of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 leadership. In 1933 he became a member of the Comintern's political commission. In 1934 he signed a joint action agreement between the PCI and the PSI.

Spanish Civil War and Resistance

Longo took part in the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

 as an inspector of the Republican troops in the International Brigades

International Brigades

The International Brigades were military units made up of volunteers from different countries, who traveled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939....

 under the leadership of Randolfo Pacciardi

Randolfo Pacciardi

Randolfo Pacciardi was an Italian politician, a member of the Italian Republican Party . He was also an officer who fought during World War I and in the Spanish Civil War.-Biography:...

, and took the nom de guerre Gallo. After the defeat of the Second Spanish Republic

Second Spanish Republic

The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....

 by General Franco

Francisco Franco

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...

, he returned to France.

Following the 1940 invasion of France

Military history of France during World War II

The military history of France during World War II covers the period from 1939 until 1940, which witnessed French military participation under the French Third Republic , and the period from 1940 until 1945, which was marked by mainland and overseas military administration and influence struggles...

, the Vichy-based

Vichy France

Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...

 collaborationist government was established under Philippe Pétain

Philippe Pétain

Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...

. Longo was arrested and detained in an internment camp at Vernet

Vernet

-Painters:*Antoine Vernet , French painter, father of Claude Joseph Vernet* Claude Joseph Vernet , French painter* Antoine Charles Horace Vernet , also known as Carle Vernet, French painter, the son of Claude Joseph Vernet...

 from 1939 to 1941. There he made the acquaintance of Leo Valiani

Leo Valiani

Leo Valiani was an Italian politician and journalist.He was born in Rijeka , on the Adriatic, which is today in independent Croatia but was then a leading seaport for the largely landlocked Austro-Hungarian Empire...

, among other left-wing radicals. In 1941 he was handed over to the Italian fascist authorities and interned at Ventotene

Ventotene

Ventotene, in Roman times known as Pandataria or Pandateria from the Greek Pandoteira, is one of the Pontine Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the coast of Gaeta right at the border between Lazio and Campania, Italy...

. When Mussolini fell from power on 25 July 1943, Longo was released. After Mussolini regained control of Northern Italy (which he led as the Italian Social Republic

Italian Social Republic

The Italian Social Republic was a puppet state of Nazi Germany led by the "Duce of the Nation" and "Minister of Foreign Affairs" Benito Mussolini and his Republican Fascist Party. The RSI exercised nominal sovereignty in northern Italy but was largely dependent on the Wehrmacht to maintain control...

), Longo took command of the Garibaldi

Giuseppe Garibaldi

Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian military and political figure. In his twenties, he joined the Carbonari Italian patriot revolutionaries, and fled Italy after a failed insurrection. Garibaldi took part in the War of the Farrapos and the Uruguayan Civil War leading the Italian Legion, and...

 Brigades, the communist forces in the Italian partisan resistance

Italian resistance movement

The Italian resistance is the umbrella term for the various partisan forces formed by pro-Allied Italians during World War II...

. Longo became deputy commander of the Gruppo volontari per la liberta ("Group of Volunteers for Freedom"), and a close collaborator of Ferruccio Parri

Ferruccio Parri

Ferruccio Parri was an Italian partisan and politician who served as the 43rd Prime Minister of Italy for several months in 1945. During the resistance he was known as Maurizio.-Biography:...

; in April 1945 Longo was one of the leading figures of the uprising in northern Italy. It was at Dongo on Lake Como on 27th April 1945 and whilst being escorted by the Garibaldi Brigade Partisans that Mussolini and his mistress Claretta Petacci were executed; the extent (if any) to which Longo took part in the killings has been the subject of dispute by historians.

Post-war politics

After the war he was a member of the National Congress and in 1946 was elected to the Constituent Assembly

Constituent assembly

A constituent assembly is a body composed for the purpose of drafting or adopting a constitution...

. He was subsequently elected, and repeatedly re-elected, to the Italian Chamber of Deputies

Italian Chamber of Deputies

The Italian Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of the Parliament of Italy. It has 630 seats, a plurality of which is controlled presently by liberal-conservative party People of Freedom. Twelve deputies represent Italian citizens outside of Italy. Deputies meet in the Palazzo Montecitorio. A...

 on the PCI list and was a member of the party leadership. In 1964, after the death of Palmiro Togliatti, he became secretary of the PCI, declaring that he was "a secretary, not a boss". In this role, he continued Togliatti's line, known as the "Italian road to Socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

", playing down the alliance between the Italian Communist Party and the Soviet Union. He reacted without hostility to the new left movements that sprung up in 1968 and, among the leaders of the PCI, was one of those most disposed to engage with the new activists, although he did not condone their excesses.

Longo was the first to realise the capabilities of Enrico Berlinguer

Enrico Berlinguer

Enrico Berlinguer was an Italian politician; he was national secretary of the Italian Communist Party from 1972 until his death.-Early career:...

 and when in 1972, due to ill health, he resigned the position of party secretary, he supported the choice of Berlinguer as his successor. From that year until his death, he was honorary president of the PCI. In that capacity, he expressed his opposition to the "national solidarity" line the PCI was later to espouse.

In 1947 he published a book entitled A people in the Maquis. He died eight years later in Rome.

Longo is cited in the bibliography on Pope Pius XII as one the originators of the black legend on the role of the sovereign pontiff during the Second World War.