having naively embraced a cause that might lead, at best, to the replacement of an oppressive government (the Turkish one) by another (the Greek one) no less authoritarian.75 Nevertheless, L’Agitazione reported the conflict sympathetically, hailing the Italian fallen as “our comrades.”76
Just as at the beginning of the decade, the goal of turning anarchism from a movement into a party did not lead Malatesta to renounce the abstentionist stance. The polemic with Merlino, in view of the upcoming political elections of March 1897, gave him the chance to clarify matters. We need not discuss in detail a controversy that has been amply covered by historians,77 but suffice it to say that, on the eve of the elections, Merlino sent a letter to the director of Il Messaggero announcing that he planned to vote. His declaration—besides marking the Neapolitan lawyer’s departure from the anarchist side and his landing on the socialist one—carried a patent intention of criticizing the anarchist formula according to which parliaments and governments, no matter how made up, are all equally oppressive. Malatesta answered his old friend from the columns of the same Rome paper, then the debate shifted to Avanti! and finally to L’Agitazione, where it was to carry on well past the date of the elections.
In 1897, Merlino and Malatesta agreed that the liberal system, undermined by the defeat at Adowa and the resultant downfall of Crispi, was approaching a turning point. Merlino imagined that turning point would lead to the broader electoral involvement of the lower classes and a truly democratic government, which would not be the absolutely best option, but would be preferable in any case to a messianic wait for the revolution. As ever, Malatesta confided instead in an upheaval that would unfold through a spontaneous mass uprising, without any parliamentary mediation. Committed to this perspective, on the eve of polling day, L’Agitazione published an abstentionist manifesto that caused quite a stir across Italy.78 Malatesta’s repudiation of the ballot box also extended to the ploy of protest candidacies, backed by the socialists (as well as by Merlino) as a way of rescuing militants of popular parties from jail and forced residence.79
While highlighting a number of fundamental ideological and strategic differences, Malatesta expressed his conviction that there were important points of contact between anarchism and the Italian Socialist Party, starting with their common battle against the capitalist system. Though the two movements could not find a common ground in the electoral struggle, economic and labor struggles offered such an opportunity. Hence, Malatesta encouraged anarchists to promote resistance societies and worked concretely to create the bodies that were to constitute the first trade union flourishing in Ancona.80 He also highlighted the importance of the strike as a trigger of the virtuous circle that would lead to a popular uprising. After the disappointing experiences of the start of the decade, the 1st of May began to seem again like a potentially revolutionary event,81 or at least a valuable opportunity for anarchism and the broader labor movement to come together.82
4. The riots of ’98 and their consequences
Three things about the bread riots need emphasizing. The first relates to timing: the revolt in Ancona (January 17–18) preceded the better-known and more tragic May events by four months.
Secondly, the police and local authorities did not hesitate to blame the anarchists for organizing and leading the riots. In reality, the crowd that hailed the social revolution in January was not made up exclusively, or even chiefly of libertarian movement militants, but Malatesta and the Social Studies Circle were identified as having chief political responsibility for the revolt.83
The third point is that the revolts at the end of the century and, even more, the trial mounted against the Ancona anarchist group, offered Malatesta and the then-young Luigi Fabbri an opportunity to start a friendship that would last for over thirty years. As a student at the law school of Macerata, Fabbri was already an organizer of subversive circles and newspapers84 and had met Malatesta a few months earlier, with Agostinelli as a go-between.85 After the bread riots, the arrest of a large part of L’Agitazione’s editorial group would have led to the paper’s folding, if Nino Samaja86—a doctor from Romagna who managed to elude the police—had not taken it upon himself to keep up publication, with help from Fabbri and other militants. Fabbri closely followed the April 1898 trial,87 and L’Agitazione offered detailed coverage by printing a daily supplement that achieved the exceptional circulation of eight thousand copies.
Just as he had done in Benevento in 1878 and in Florence in 1884, and as he would do in Milan about the Diana theater outrage, in Ancona too Malatesta avoided turning the proceedings into a trial against anarchism.88 Thus he did not turn the court into a showcase for the libertarian cause, but rather aimed at circumscribing the anarchists’ role in the bread riots. The defense strategy espoused by the lawyers representing L’Agitazione—Gori, Merlino, and Enrico Ferri—managed to keep the sentencing down to a few months in prison.89 Within days of the verdict, the same paper—which was the real accused in the Ancona trial90—issued a declaration of solidarity with the convicted men, signed by three thousand Italian anarchists.91
After serving his sentence, Malatesta was not freed, but was sent into forced residence on Ustica Island and then on to Lampedusa Island. This further restrictive measure was part of the special punitive actions taken by the government against anarchists, socialists, and republicans on account of the fin de siècle riots. During those months, the Italian archipelagos received hundreds of libertarians, including many members of L’Agitazione’s editorial staff. The newspaper—as the other anarchist periodical—was suppressed by the authorities on May 9, 1898.92 Samaja eluded arrest by fleeing to France, but Fabbri was arrested in Macerata, jailed, and then taken to Ponza and thereafter to Favignana, where he was to stay until the autumn of 1900.93
In April 1899, Malatesta escaped from Lampedusa. He managed to reach Tunis and then Malta, London, and, eventually, New York.94 A long period in exile was beginning again for him and it would not end until 1913, when he returned to Ancona to, once again, throw himself into another insurrectional attempt. Malatesta was welcomed by the reconstituted Social Studies group and some old comrades such as Agostinelli, Smorti, Felicioli and, above all, Fabbri, who, now an elementary school teacher, managed to have his job transferred from the schools of Crespellano, near Bologna, to Fabriano where he could contribute, at close quarters, to the new publication launched in Ancona (Volontà).95 The rebirth of the Social Studies group, following the fin de siècle turmoil, was also due to the activism of militants who had not had a hand in the bread riots. One of them was Alberigo Angelozzi.
A republican in his youth, Angelozzi had been drawn to anarchism through the end of the century agitations, following which he had come into contact with what was left of the city’s libertarian group. In March 1900, L’Agitazione resumed publication,96 mainly thanks to his and Giardini’s work. That April, however, Giardini was arrested and subsequently convicted for his activities in connection with the Ancona paper. In December, it was Angelozzi’s turn to be convicted to a fifteen month jail term. In 1902, he replaced Smorti as secretary of the Ancona labor chamber, a commitment to which, in the following years, he added the foundation of some libertarian groups and two fairly significant newspapers (La Vita Operaia and Lo Sprone).97 In 1912, in search of work, Angelozzi relocated to Paris with his family, but by January 1914 (or perhaps earlier) he was back in Ancona, flanking Malatesta in the intense propaganda activity underway at that point.98
Angelozzi’s political trajectory over the fifteen years between the bread riots and the Red Week highlights the legacy of Malatesta’s experiment at the end of the nineteenth century. It was a legacy that can be summed up by the term “organization,” sometimes taking the form of a new periodical, or a new circle, or indeed that of the Ancona Anarchist Socialist Federation, founded in the summer of 1901 without ever actually becoming operational;99 other times, it took the form of a particularly combative syndicalism.
Moving along the path outlined by Malatesta and L’Agitazione—in keeping with which the anarchists engaged during 1897–98 in promoting resistance societies—at the start of the twentieth century, the Ancona libertarian group, reinvigorated by the return of its chief exponents from forced residence, had a leading role in the birth of the local labor chamber. Not only did the anarchists join it, but they actually
