TURATI, FILIPPO. - Politician, founder of the Italian Socialist Party, b. at Canzo (Como) on 27 Nov. 1857, d. in exile in Paris on 30 March 1932.
He made his debut in 1883 with some pamphlets of a political-social character, and with Anna Kuliscioff, a Russian nihilist who had later accepted Marxist doctrines, he collaborated on the social review Cuore e critica, which in 1891 changed its title to Critica sociale, and he assumed its editorship. In 1892 he founded with Claudio Treves (v.), in Genoa, the Italian Socialist Party, and in 1896 he was elected in a contested race in one of the Milan constituencies. Tried and convicted for the riots of 1898 and released from prison in 1899 (from that period date the Lettere alla madre, from the prison of Pallanza: Nuova antologia, 81 [1926], pp. 105-20, 219-40), he imparted to the party, in which he always held a pre-eminent place, a reformist tendency. He opposed the war in Libya (1911-12) and Italy's intervention in the First World War of 1914-1915. Nevertheless at Reggio Emilia, at the party Congress, facing Mussolini, then a fiery revolutionary, he together with Treves took the leadership of the forces that later became the reformist party.
In the post-war period he did not succeed in keeping the party within the lines of its program (cf. Rifare l'Italia, [of 1920], Rome 1944). With a minority he gave rise to the Unitary Socialist Party (Congress of Rome, 1923), and he tinged Marxist principles with a sentimentalism derived from the tradition of Lombard democracy, without deciding in the practical sphere either for collaboration with the liberal-democratic government or for openly revolutionary action. Only at the advent of fascism to power did he, with the minority, propose the acceptance of the responsibilities of government, in defense of constitutional liberties. But it was too late; and he fled into exile in Paris. Alongside his journalistic activity stands his activity as an orator. Some speeches have been republished after the fall of fascism, such as the two in which he commemorated Giacomo Matteotti (Milan 1945, Cremona 1945). Also in his religious ideas there is a tempering of Marxist materialism into a vague religious sentimentalism (cf. the preface to M. Bakunin's book, Dio e lo Stato, Rome 1946).
Bibliography5 works
Michele Lecce