“At the end of the sixties I had joined the Leninist Marxist Communist Party of Italy, I went to the streets waving Mao’s red book. They told us: you are four cats. We answered: at our side there is a billion Chinese. But at a certain point that billion disappeared ”. Sergio Staino, born in 1940, is one of the most famous Italian political cartoonists. From his pen came Bobo, the communist (and post-communist) militant who for forty years has endured the decisions of the top management sighing. He loves challenges: critic from the left, in 2016 he agreed to direct the Renzian Unity (it didn’t end well); a declared atheist, he publishes the Hello Jesus series on “Avvenire”. In his latest book “Sentimental history of the PCI. Even the Communists had a heart ”(Piemme) retraces – between enchantment and disenchantment – his long political formation: Togliatti and Berlinguer, Castro and Che Guevara, the USSR and China.
The Communist Party of China turns 100 years old. Not her, but will Bobo wish him well?
Bobo’s first cartoon ever comes to mind. I sat down at the drawing table on the morning of October 10, 1979. I left the Marxist-Leninist Party in May and spent months camping with my comrades. I wanted to detox, think about bathrooms and not politics. But I was not in prosperous economic conditions: I was teaching technical education at school, I could not yet marry Bruna, who is Peruvian… I thought of becoming a satirical designer, not politics but social humor. I said to myself: in a year I will sum up and see if I can make ends meet.
In short, it was not the happiest moment. Poor Bobo.
I passed on to him my attitude of the time: I was 39, I had spent ten years propagating China far and wide and I was left with a handful of flies. I had the feeling that I had missed all the trains. I drew it on the typewriter a little frustrated. He said: “They hired Tizio in the bank, Gaius in Panorama …”. In short, everyone had placed themselves except Bobo: “I feel like Gastone di Petrolini. Only the war ruined him, China ruined me ”.
His comic alter ego was born cursing China. A beautiful nemesis. It has been difficult?
I stayed half an hour with the suspended pen before drawing it. I was very ashamed of being screwed by China, but it was true. They had pushed me to an absurd vision as if the revolution were just around the corner. When I wrote the word China it was like uncorking a bottle of champagne. At that point I drew 50 strips in 15 days, one more effective than the other. A release.
How was that love born that ended so badly?
My family was very small-bourgeois, there was a communist atmosphere in the house, at 16 I sided with the USSR against the workers in Budapest. A little later I looked at other shores: Cuba, Castro and Che Guevara, then the Vietnam War. Certain leaders of the party that with today’s eyes I find good, seemed to me too social democrats, “bestists”. And in the extreme element of youth the Chinese propaganda wedged: I subscribed to their magazine, it came home in French, “La Chine”. It was ’67, I was graduating with a thesis on the contrast between city and countryside. I met two fundamental women who made me passionate about China: Enrica Collotti and Joyce Lussu. I believed everything I heard.
And he joined the Leninist Marxist Communist Party of Italy.
He was the only one in those positions, the secretary was Fosco Dinucci. It was a sect, but it was received by Mao himself. On the walls were photos with all the mandarins of the Chinese party. Others were born, including Brandirali’s “Serving the People”, but the only delegations received in Beijing were ours.
Was there a time when the illusion collapsed in the face of reality? Or was it a gradual process?
For me it was Nixon’s visit to China in ’72, the dawn of a different direction of the country towards the West. At that time we went to the streets to brandish the little red book, which is a sum of sectarian clichés but it seemed wonderful to us. Even in the simplicity of the language which – we thought – could be understood by peasants and proletarians. They told us: you are four cats. We answered: no, we have a billion Chinese alongside us. At some point that billion disappeared. They no longer called us, they no longer invited us. Only Albania remained with us.
You have written a very critical book on that experience. But doesn’t progress also need utopias?
I no longer recognized myself in anything in Mao’s history, but I rediscovered the solidarity utopia in anarchists. We Italians and Europeans have a splendid utopia, from there the socialist and communist parties were born. I do not deny anything, but today I feel anarchist-reformist. They are two ideologies that offset each other: anarchy alone ends up in the Red Brigades, reformism alone ends up in corruption. It sounds like an oxymoron but it isn’t.
At the suggestion of oxymorons, Grillo and D’Alema wished the Communist Party of Beijing well …
I consider Grillo a political calamity, I am sorry that even reputable people do not grasp his selfishness and anti-solidarity values. Despite the effort, nothing good will come from that side. I believed in D’Alema, he cheated me and I forgave him many times, but in the end I realized that it was the worst damage for the Italian left of the twentieth century. He has lost his presumption, like Renzi. But compared to the latter, at least D’Alema thought he was acting for the good of the people.
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