Ilio Barontini

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Ilio Barontini
Member of the Italian Constituent Assembly
In office
25 June 1946 – 31 January 1948
Parliamentary groupCommunist
ConstituencyPisa
Member of the Italian Senate
In office
8 May 1948 – 22 January 1951
Parliamentary groupCommunist
ConstituencyTuscany
Personal details
Born28 September 1890
Cecina, Kingdom of Italy
Died22 January 1951
Scandicci, Italy
Resting placeCimitero comunale dei Lupi, Livorno
CitizenshipItalian, Soviet
Political partyItalian Communist Party
Other political
affiliations		Italian Socialist Party (1905-1921)
Nicknames
  • Fanti
  • Paulus
  • Giobbe
  • Dario
Military service
Allegiance
Branch/serviceInternational Brigades
UnitXII International Brigade
Garibaldi Battalion
Battles/warsSiege of Madrid
Battle of Guadalajara

Ilio Barontini (Cecina, Tuscany, 28 September 1890 - Scandicci, 22 January 1951) was an Italian Communist politician and guerrilla fighter. He notably fought in the Spanish Civil War and in the Italian resistance.

Biography[edit]

Ilio Barontini was born into a peasant family in Cecina, in the province of Livorno, in Tuscany. He joined the Italian Socialist Party at a young age and was a metalworker, first at Breda in Milan and then for the Italian state railways in Livorno. In January 1921 he joined the newly-formed Communist Party of Italy and was the first secretary of the Livorno chapter of the party, as well as a local union leader.[1]

After Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy Barontini lost his job due to his anti-fascist convictions and faced political persecution.[2] In July 1928 he was on trial before the Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State for distribution of subversive propaganda, but was acquitted.[3]

In 1931 he went in exile in France, and two years later moved to the Soviet Union, where he worked as a technician and attended classes at the International Lenin School,[1] an institution which trained Communist cadres, and the Frunze Military Academy.[4] During this period he travelled to China to receive guerrilla training with Mao Zedong's Red Army.[2]

He volunteered in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. He took part in the defense of Madrid and, in January 1937, replaced Antonio Roasio as political commissar of the Garibaldi Battalion, a unit consisting of Italian volunteers. Since battalion commander Randolfo Pacciardi was absent for medical reasons, in March 1937 Barontini was de facto in command of the unit during the battle of Guadalajara, where Republicans won. This was also the first time where Italians fought each other on opposite side during the civil war.[1]

In December 1938 he traveled to Ethiopia through Egypt and Sudan on request of the Communist International. Based in the Gojjam region, Barontini and a handful of Italian Communists helped organize and train resistance groups to the Italian occupation under the command of degiac Mangascia Giamberie. They also printed a bilingual clandestine newspaper, La Voce degli Etiopi.[a] The group returned to France in the spring of 1940, after suffering injuries and losing radio contact with Europe.[5]

After the German invasion he was interned in Le Vernet until the Soviet government, which was still cooperating with the Axis at the time, claimed him as his citizen and requested his release.[1] Once released Barontini worked with the FTP-MOI in Marseilles area,[6] which he organized among Italian emigrants, and the GAP and the Garibaldi Brigades (of which he was regional commander in Emilia-Romagna) in Italy.[7]

After World War II he became a member of the Central Committee of the now-renamed Italian Communist Party (PCI). He sat in the National Council, a provisional legislative body created in the months immediately following the end of the war. In 1946 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and in 1948 to the first Senate of the Italian Republic. As a Senator he was secretary of the body's Defense Committee.[8]

He died in 1951 in a road accident near Florence, while returning from a party meeting.[9]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Sometimes cited as La Voce degli Abissini.

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d Trentin, Luciana (1964). "BARONTINI, Ilio in "Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani"". Treccani. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
  2. ^ a b "Donne e Uomini della Resistenza: Ilio Barontini". ANPI. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
  3. ^ Tribunale speciale per la difesa dello Stato. Decisioni emesse nel 1928 (in Italian). Rome: Ufficio Storico SME. 1981. pp. 469–471. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
  4. ^ Traverso, Enzo (2021). Revolution: An Intellectual History. Verso. p. 441. ISBN 978-1-83976-333-5.
  5. ^ Del Boca, Angelo (2001). Gli italiani in Africa orientale (in Italian). Vol. III. La caduta dell'impero. Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. p. 334.
  6. ^ Buck, Julia A. (May 2021). Making the Resistance French: bureaucracy, memory, and space in postwar Marseilles (Thesis). Rutgers University. p. 236. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
  7. ^ Pesce, Giovanni (1967). Senza tregua. La guerra dei GAP (in Italian) (2nd ed.). Milan: Feltrinelli.
  8. ^ "Scheda di attività di Ilio BARONTINI". senato.it. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
  9. ^ "Il mortale scontro a 9 km. da Firenze" (PDF). l'Unità (in Italian). 23 January 1951. p. 1. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
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