Vittorio Foa

Vittorio Foa (18 September 1910 – 20 October 2008) was an Italian politician, trade unionist, journalist, and writer who was one of the founding fathers of the Italian Republic and a key figure of the political left. A libertarian and liberal socialist of the non-communist Italian left, he took part to the Italian Resistance against fascism and in the post-war years was a member of the Constituent Assembly of Italy from 1946 to 1948. As a member of several socialist parties, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from 1953 and 1968 and to the Senate of the Republic from 1987 to 1992.

Early life and education Foa was born on 18 September 1910 in Turin into a middle-class Jewish family. For his sixth form and senior high school studies, he attended Liceo Classico Massimo d'Azeglio, where two sports and cultural institutions like Juventus and Einaudi were born and where other key figures who were contemporaries of Foa, such as Giulio Carlo Argan, Norberto Bobbio, Giorgio Colli, Leone Ginzburg, Primo Levi, and Massimo Mila, also studied. In 1931, Foa graduated in law from the University of Turin and worked in a bank.

Political career Anti-fascism and post-war years In 1933, Foa joined Giustizia e Libertà, a liberal and liberal socialist anti-fascist political movement. He shared his cell with Riccardo Bauer, Mila, and Ernesto Rossi. When the PdA dissolved in 1947, Foa joined the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI), becoming one of its national leaders, which would later inspire the foundation of several extra-parliamentary leftist groups of which Foa was to become a member, including the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity (Partito Socialista Italiano di Unità Proletaria, PSIUP), the Proletarian Unity Party (Partito di Unità Proletaria, PdUP), and Proletarian Democracy (Democrazia Proletaria, DP), of which he was the co-founder after the dissolution of the PSIUP in 1972. One of his last public appearances took place in 2002 when he joined a rally of the , a spontaneous anti-Berlusconi civil movement that developed between 2002 and 2003 in several Italian cities, including one held in Rome at Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano.

Defined as the critical voice of the Italian left, Foa devoted his life to Italian and European politics in their widest sense, and constantly expressed his confidence in the young. From the role of the trade unions to the place of science in our contemporary society, his interests embraced crucial aspects of modern life and society. In 2005, Foa received best wishes for his 95th birthday from the then Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. supporting Walter Veltroni. On 21 October 2008, Italian newspapers were filled with tributes to Foa. In La Repubblica, Mafai recalled his impatience when asked what the beleaguered Italian left should do. Mafai recalled Foa as saying: "It's a waste of time and sense to try to define a leftist identity. You have to do what is right and necessary for the country. It is up to posterity to decide whether it came from the right or the left." He is considered a protagonist of the 20th century, a free and restless man. In 2010, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, the volume Scritti politici. Tra giellismo e azionismo (1932-1947), edited by Chiara Colombini and Antonio Ricciardi were published, along with the prison letters Lettere della giovinezza, edited by Montevecchi. In 2018, his daughter Anna published the text La Famiglia F., a historical-family narrative in which she reconstructed the life path of her parents. he preferred chess. As an avid chess player, he viewed the game not simply as a hobby but as a space for both strategic reflection and political discussion, such that chess played a central role in his personal and intellectual life. He became known for the "horse move" (mossa del cavallo), which Foa loved to encourage and was described as "the surprise to be reserved for the interlocutor, the tear in the clothes that the potential opponent would like to sew on us." Foa was also known for a quote (Se aveste vinto voi, io sarei ancora in prigione. Siccome abbiamo vinto noi, tu sei senatore) that he uttered during a television show to then senator Giorgio Pisanò, a voluntary of Decima Flottiglia MAS in the Italian Social Republic and member of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI). In a 2009 interview with the historian Isabella Insovibile, Foa recalled the episode by stating that Pisanò was making "grand speeches of pacification" (quoting him as saying "Deep down, we were all patriots... Each of us had our homeland in our hearts..."), at which point he interrupted him to explain "a fundamental difference", elaborating: "Wait a moment. If we're talking about the dead, fine. The dead are dead: let's respect them all. But if we're talking about when they were alive, they were different. If you had won, I'd still be in prison. Since we won, you're a senator."

Selected works Riprendere tempo. Un dialogo con postilla (1982, with Pietro Marcenaro) La cultura della CGIL. Scritti e interventi 1950-1970 (1984) La Gerusalemme rimandata. Domande di oggi agli inglesi del primo Novecento (1985) Il difficile cammino del lavoro (1990, with Vittorio Rieser) Il cavallo e la torre. Riflessioni su una vita (1991) Le virtù della Repubblica (1994, with Paul Ginsborg) Del disordine e della libertà. Padre e figlio tra incertezze e speranze (1995, with Renzo Foa) Il sogno di una Destra normale (1995, with Furio Colombo) Questo Novecento (1996) Lettere della giovinezza. Dal Carcere, 1935-1943 (1998, edited by Federica Montevecchi) Lavori in corso, 1943-1946 (1999, edited by Federica Montevecchi) Il tempo del sapere (2000, with Andrea Ranieri) Il ritorno dell'individuo. Cosa cambia nel lavoro e nella politica (2000, with Massimo Crosti) Passaggi (2000) Sulle montagne (2002) Il silenzio dei comunisti (2002, with Miriam Mafai and Alfredo Reichlin) Un dialogo (2003, with Carlo Ginzburg) La memoria è lunga (2003, with Federica Montevecchi) Il linguaggio del tempo (2004, with Valter Casini) Cent'anni dopo. Il sindacato dopo il sindacato (2006, with Guglielmo Epifani) Le parole della politica (2008, with Federica Montevecchi) Lavoro e libertà. Scritti scelti e un dialogo inedito con Vittorio Foa e Andrea Ranieri (2008, with Bruno Trentin) Scritti politici. Tra giellismo e azionismo (1932-1947) (2010, edited by Chiara Colombini and Andrea Ricciardi) Lettere della giovinezza (2010, edited by Federica Montevecchi)

Electoral history ElectionHouseConstituencyPartyVotesResult 1946 Constituent Assembly Italy at-large PdA – Elected 1948 Chamber of Deputies Turin–Novara–Vercelli FDP 32,191 Not elected 1953 Chamber of Deputies Turin–Novara–Vercelli PSI 15,906 Elected 1958 Chamber of Deputies Turin–Novara–Vercelli PSI 15,202 Elected 1963 Chamber of Deputies Turin–Novara–Vercelli PSI 16,079 Elected 1987 Senate of the Republic Piedmont – Turin Fiat Aeritalia PCI 93,745 Elected