Ottavio Pastore

Ottavio Pastore (15 July 1887 – 25 June 1965) was an Italian communist politician and journalist.

Biography

Early career A supporter of socialism since his teenage years, Pastore joined the Federation of Young Socialists in 1902. In 1903, he founded and directed the periodical La nuova parola. In 1912, he moved to Turin and in 1914 he was elected secretary of the Turin federation of the Italian Socialist Party.

He was imprisoned for the first time in 1917, with other socialist leaders, for his anti-war stance. He was a delegate to the socialist congress in Rome in 1918, and he became close towards the positions of the newspaper L'Ordine Nuovo. On 1 May 1919, he was the official speaker of the united demonstration of socialists, anarchists and democrats in La Spezia. In 1921, at the Livorno congress, he was among the founders of the Communist Party of Italy. He was active in the party leadership, dealing with the organisation and founding of the daily newspaper l'Unità, of which, in 1924, he was the first director.

Between wars Close to the positions of Angelo Tasca, he couldn't participate in the internal debate of the party because he was wanted by the fascist police. Arrested in October 1926, he was freed six months later and eventually fled to France. In his exile in France, Pastore was involved in trade union activities. In 1928, he moved from France to Brussels, where he collaborated on the edition of the anti-fascist periodical Il Riscatto. Threatened by OVRA spies, Pastore left the Belgian capital to reach Moscow, as a delegate to the sixth congress of the Communist International.

In 1938, he returned to France, where he directed the periodical La voce degli italiani, the newspaper of the anti-fascist emigrants of which Emilio Sereni was editor-in-chief.

World War II At the outbreak of war, he managed to escape from the French police and survived by working as an accountant. In 1943, he was arrested by the Nazis while trying to cross the border to join the Resistance forces and sent to Italy to serve his sentence. Imprisoned in Vercelli, he managed to escape thanks to his brother, in fact contacting the prison management and explaining that his arrest was a mistake, since Ottavio Pastore was a friend of Benito Mussolini. Released in the evening, he managed to join the partisans in Val di Susa before the prison management realised the mistake.