18. Antonio Gramsci’s Letters that Piero Sraffa did not Forward to the Italian Communist Party

On 21 December 1926 Gramsci had written to Sraffa: “Our financial situation is still good: they give us, the political prisoners, ten lire a day: the mazzetta of the common detainees at Ustica amounts to four lire a day […] six of us […] live in a small house that costs us ninenty lire a month each, all services included” (Gramsci 1994, p. 53). On 2 January 1927 he had come again on the same subject: “I’ve received the books that you mentioned in your penultimate letter and a first batch of the ones I ordered. So I have plenty to read for some time. I thank you for your great kindness, but I would not want to abuse it. Yet I assure you that quite frankly I will turn to you whenever I am in need of something. As you can imagine, there is no opportunity to spend much here, just the opposite; sometimes one can’t spend one’s money even when the purchase is necessary”(Gramsci 1994, p. 57).

See also note 8 below.

See Sraffa (1924, p. 4) (English translation in Naldi 2000, pp. 106–7).

Sraffa’s position had already been extremely dangerous and difficult in December 1922, when Mussolini (who had been nominated Prime Minister less than two months before) tried to force him to retract the content of a short article on the state of Italian banks he had published in a supplement to the Manchester Guardian Commercial edited by Keynes (Naldi 1998a, b; Lattanzi and Naldi 2018, pp. 69–70).

For further details, see Naldi (2012, p. 1405) and Lattanzi and Naldi (2018, pp. 77–8).

See the letter from Antonio Gramsci to Giulia Schucht of 2 February 1925 (Gramsci 1992, pp. 412–13).

See Sraffa to Angelo Tasca (not to Togliatti, as stated by the editor), 26 December, 1928, in Spriano (1979, pp. 169–71).

In 1962, writing to Camilla Ravera, Sraffa hinted at the copies of Gramsci’s letters he still had with himself (SP C342/2). de Vivo’s analysis was substantially based on a list of Gramsci’s letters prepared by Palmiro Togliatti between May 1937 and January 1941. Togliatti presumably studied the copies of the letters forwarded by Sraffa to centro estero as well as letters held by Gramsci’s wife in Moscow (Daniele and Vacca 2005, pp. 233–88). de Vivo also drew on the list of photocopies of documents relating to Gramsci that Sraffa gave to Giorgio Napolitano in 1972 (SP C115/5/25/1-7), and on the lists of copies of Gramsci’s letters that Sraffa gave to Elsa Fubini in 1974 (FG, “Gramsci dopo la morte 1970–1977” and SP C115/5/13/1-4).

The exceptions, justified by their unique characteristics, are the letters dated January 4 and November 6, 1932 (Gramsci 1994, pp. 123–4, 224–5). In the first of these, in answer to a question posed by Sraffa himself based on a query from a friend, Gramsci discussed the transcription of Russian names into Italian. It is therefore possible that upon receiving his copy Sraffa forwarded it just to this friend, and not to the centro estero, and that Tatiana Schucht did not forward it to Giulia. On the other hand, it is likely that the 6 November letter (formed by two parts, respectively addressed to Tatiana and to Julia) was never sent to Tatiana Schucht. Indeed, the subsequent letter of 9 November opens with a phrase suggesting that Gramsci had asked prison authorities to re-write the letter he had written few days before: “Dearest Tania, on Sunday I had already written a letter for you with a section for Giulia, but I have asked [prison authorities] to please let me do the letter over again because it was too much under the influence of a telegram sent me by Carlo that gave credibility to the wild rumors circulating among the prisoners [on potentially upcoming release]” (Gramsci 1994, p. 226—an amnesty law had actually been enacted, but the sentence Gramsci had to serve was only marginally reduced).

Strictly speaking, any letter included by Togliatti in his list could have been forwarded by Sraffa or shown him by Julia Schucht. Therefore, that list can only tell us which letters Sraffa did not forward (possibly underestimating their number); it cannot tell us which letters Sraffa did forward. However, additional evidence allows us to extend our assessments, with a certain degree of confidence, also to the latter set (see, for instance, Sraffa to Togliatti 4 May 1932, where Sraffa explicitly mentioned letters he was forwarding to Togliatti (Sraffa 1991, pp. 224–5).

Over the course of the years following 1933, when he was no longer in jail but in a clinic, Gramsci penned only two letters to Tatiana Schucht, on 22 July and 11 August, 1935 (Gramsci 1994, pp. 348–9, 350–1).

See Gramsci to Giulia Schucht, 30 April, 1928 (Gramsci 1994, pp. 201–2) and Tatiana Schucht to Giulia Schucht 12–14 May, 1928 (Rossi and Vacca 2007, p. 82; Vacca 2012, p. 55).

See the notes Gennaro submitted to the centro estero a few weeks later (Rossi and Vacca 2007, pp. 209–17). The original of Grieco’s letter is not extant, but a picture taken by Italian police in 1928 is conserved at the Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, 1929, b.196); the latter has been reproduced (with minor imprecisions) and translated in Spriano (1979, pp. 151–3) (see also de Vivo 2009).

See the letter from Tatiana Schucht to Piero Sraffa written on 11 February 1933 (Sraffa 1991, p. 228). That Gramsci did not communicate this view before 1933 does not necessarily mean that he had not conceived of it earlier. The restrictions he had to face in his communication (his letters were read by prison censors and his conversations with relatives always took place under strict surveillance by prison agents) certainly made it extremely difficult for him to express the notion that Ruggero Grieco’s letter had significantly contributed to the failure of a Soviet government attempt to obtain his release. Recent research has argued that the view Gramsci had adopted is contradicted by documents kept in both Russian and Vatican archives (Fabre 2015, pp. 115–17). However, it has also been argued that in Gramsci’s view his release was a dossier constantly open between Soviet and Italian governments, but that it would have had no chance of positive development if the PCI presented it as its own initiative—which could be read in Grieco’s February 1928 letter (Vacca 2012, pp. 239).

See Tatiana Schucht to Piero Sraffa 16 and 28 September 1937, and Piero Sraffa to Tatiana Schucht 18 September 1937—forthcoming (see also Tatiana Schucht to Giulia Schucht 5 July 1934—Edizione Nazionale, forthcoming, and Sraffa 1991, pp. 187–8).

In this letter Gramsci referred to his wife with the nickname Iulca. It has been suggested that Gramsci may have been using this variation of her name as a code word, with Giulia actually referring to his wife and Iulca to indicate the PCI. Although close examination of Gramsci’s letters does not reveal evidence to support such an hypothesis, it is nevertheless noteworthy that when Tatiana Schucht sent Sraffa the February 27 letter, she described it as “an Aesopian masterpiece” (Tatiana Schucht to Sraffa, 9 March, 1933—Gramsci and Schucht 1997, p. 1228) and that on the following day she added: “I wrote to him to let him know that I understood perfectly what he meant by referring to either Iulca or Giulia, (naturally using carefully selected wording)” (Tatiana Schucht to Sraffa, 10 March 1933, Edizione Nazionale, forthcoming; see also Tatiana Schucht to Gramsci, 10 March, 1933—first letter—Gramsci and Schucht 1997, p. 1227). It is our opinion that Gramsci was not employing a code in his February 27, 1933 letter, but was superimposing considerations about his wife with those about the PCI, thus expressing himself on both a private and a political level—and one can easily discern a reference to Party leaders, with no need to resort to any prearranged code, while the reference to his wife can also be understood in the light of other letters written by Gramsci from prison which we shall not go into at this time (see the letters from Gramsci to Tatiana Schucht on 3 October, 1932 and from Tatiana Schucht to Gramsci October 11, 1932—Gramsci 1994, pp. 214–5; Gramsci and Schucht 1997, p. 1093; see also Gramsci to Tatiana Schucht 6 March, 1933 and Tatiana Schucht, to Gramsci, 10 March, 1933—Gramsci 1994, pp. 278–81; Gramsci and Schucht 1997, p. 1227; see also Gramsci to Giulia Schucht, 16 June, 1936—Gramsci 1994, pp. 357–8).

The last letter Gramsci was referring to is most certainly his letter to Tatiana Schucht written on 14 November, 1932 (Gramsci 1994, pp. 228–30). We are unable to identify a group of letters akin to that one written in earlier years. Even though Gramsci’s prison corrispondence contains several critical analyses of the relationship between his wife and himself, and on several occasions he stated he would have not written again to his wife unless she had first sent him some letters, no letter is equally dramatic to the one written on 14 November, 1932.

See Canali (2013, pp. 174, 251–4).

See Pons (2004, pp. 92–5 and 106–10), Daniele and Vacca (2005, pp. 19–20), Vacca, pp. 348–9 and Canali (2013, pp. 174–5).

See Daniele and Vacca (2005, pp. 191–8).

Today, both copies are housed in the Fondazione Gramsci; a photocopy of the one belonging to Sraffa, with his handwritten note identifying it as “second photocopy,” is preserved in SP C115/1/167/1-2. We have no information regarding any “first photocopy,” but we may speculate that it was sent to the Gramsci Institute in a dossier entrusted to Alessandro Roncaglia in 1973–1974, before July 1974 (see Naldi 2020, pp. 258–66).

This list, first examined by de Vivo (2017, p. 46), is kept in SP C115/1/182/1-10.

Compare Sraffa’s 19 December 1932 letter to Tatiana Schucht (Sraffa 1991, pp. 100–1) with Gramsci’s 12 December 1932 letter to Tatiana Schucht (Gramsci 1994, pp. 239–41).

Sraffa left England for the 1932–1933 winter holidays around 15 December.

This question is considered in detail in Naldi (2020, pp. 258–66).

A similar point was to be raised by the Soviet ambassador in Italy (V.P.Potëmkin) in summer 1933 (see letter from Tatiana Schucht to Sraffa 27 August 1933—Gramsci and Schucht (1997, p. 1343).

See Table 18.1.

See Table 18.1.

See note 35 below.

“Due disastri di prim’ordine” are the exact words used by Sraffa in a letter to Paolo Spriano on 18 December, 1969 (Sraffa 1991, pp. 271–2); similar words can be found in a couple of Sraffa’s notes cited by de Vivo (2009, pp. 90–1)—the original documents can be found in SP E44 and J13.

See the letter from Angelo Sraffa to Piero Sraffa, 11 June 1933 (FIG, Fondo Sraffa; photocopy in SP C115/1/153). The reduction of Gramsci’s sentence by 3 years and 4 months’ detention, based on article 134 of the 1889 Penal Code, meant that his release date would have been January 19, 1936 instead of 19 May, 1939. The documentation on Castellett’s petition to the Court is held in ACS, Tribunale Speciale, Esecuzioni, 1927–1943, 14, 394).

The letter has been reproduced (albeit wrongly dated 29 May) in Spriano (1979, pp. 175–6). From a letter from Togliatti, dated 24 May (Spriano 1979, pp. 173–4) we also know that Sraffa had written to him on 19 May, not yet informed of the publication of Arcangeli’s report (this letter from Sraffa to Togliatti does not seem to have been preserved).

The documents Sraffa gave to Napolitano in 1972 included only one letter from Gramsci to Tatiana Schucht: the letter dated 5 June 1933.

One letter from Gramsci to Tatiana Schucht, the one of 30 April, 1933 (Gramsci 1994, p. 292), is on both the list compiled by Elsa Fubini in 1974 and that of Togliatti drafted between 1937 and 1941. The reason for this may be that, although Sraffa did not forward it to the centro estero, Togliatti may have been able to read and transcribe it at the Schucht residence. There is another notable element to be seen in comparing the two lists: neither of them contain Gramsci’s 21 March, 1933 letter to Tatiana Schucht (Gramsci 1994, pp. 282–3). In it Gramsci spoke about the state of his health, following his health crisis on 7 March and Dr. Arcangeli’s medical visit to him in prison. Schucht most likely received this letter while she was still in Turi, in the same period that Sraffa was there, or managed to show it to him when they met in Rome sometime between March and April. We may presume that this letter was absent from both lists because Schucht did not transcribe it, due to all the worrisome and arduous occurences and undertakings going on at the time. In fact, no transcription of the letter exists among the archives, only the original itself. Another letter missing from the lists, for obvious reasons, is that of 23 April, 1933 which Schucht never received, as it had been confiscated by the Turi prison authorities (Gramsci 1994, pp. 289–92—this letter is now housed in the Archivio Centrale dello Stato).

We may provide two instances from letters written at the beginning and at the end of the relevant period: “My condition has somewhat improved, but the least little thing is enough to make me ill again. From one day to the next, due to the merest trifle, I fall back into serious prostraction” (Gramsci to Tatiana Schucht, 17 April 1933—Gramsci 1994, pp. 288–9); “You must inititate an urgent petition for my transfer as soon as possible from the Turi prison to the infirmary of another prison where there are specialists who can examine me thoroughly enough to establish what combination of ailments I am afflicted with and can take an x-ray of my lungs that will solve the doubts of both Professor Arcangeli and the prison inspector Dr. Filippo Saporito. I beg you to believe that I cannot bear it anymore. The pain in cerebellum and my cranium drives me wild. The difficulty in using my hands has increased and increases progressively, and this cannot simply be due to arteriosclerosis” (Gramsci to Tatiana Schucht, 6 July 1933—Gramsci 1994, p. 307).

“I want to remind you again and urge you about the two letters to be written that I mentioned to you already in January. I don’t understand why the attorney, who had not rejected the idea, was then so dilatory” (Gramsci to Tatiana Schucht, 10 July 1933—Gramsci 1994, p. 311).

“In 1927–1928 […] the pretrial judge was right to say that it really seemed as though my friends were collaborating to keep me in prison as long as possible” (Gramsci to Tatiana Schucht, 16 May 1933—Gramsci 1994, p. 295).

The 1 December, 1933 letter from Angelo Sraffa to Piero Sraffa is kept in SP C300/4 and partially reproduced in Spriano (1979, p. 89, n.17), cfr. de Vivo (2017, p. 49).

See the letters from Tatiana Schucht to Piero Sraffa of 5 November, 1933 (Gramsci and Schucht 1997, pp. 1370–1) and 9 November, 1933 (forthcoming) and those from Gramsci to Tatiana Schucht of 29 October and 5 November, 1933 (Gramsci 1994, pp. 330–2, 334–5).

See Naldi (2013, pp. 383–4).

See Naldi (2020, pp. 258–66).