On several occasions, Gramsci attributed to the judge in charge of the pre-trial investigation which culminated in his conviction behaviors or intentions favorable to himself or, more generally, to the defendants in the case. This judge was the military examining magistrate Enrico Macis, serving at the Tribunale del corpo d’armata territoriale in Milan.
This essay examines Judge Macis’s conduct in light of both new documents and previously known documents to assess the extent to which Gramsci’s claims reflected reality or stemmed from distortions for which the judge himself was responsible.
Gramsci’s statements —along with those made by other defendants—are first presented (Section 1) and then analyzed based on a reconstruction of the investigation’s key stages and of the specific issues raised in those claims (Sections 2 and 3). For instance, the study addresses the circumstances surrounding Gramsci’s transfer from Ustica to Milan (Section 3.1) and Gramsci’s interpretation of the letter Ruggero Grieco wrote to him on February 10, 1928 (Section 3.5).
Our conclusions suggest that Macis repeatedly attempted to manipulate Gramsci and other defendants. This confirms the assessment made by Piero Sraffa as early as 1937—shortly after Gramsci’s death—that Macis’s conduct followed the standard handbook of an examining magistrate, a key part of which involved manipulating defendants to sow distrust.
Our research demonstrates that the success of this strategy relied heavily on fortuitous events that allowed the judge to blend truth with falsehoods. Of particular importance is the detailed reconstruction of how the order to arrest Gramsci and transfer him to Milan was transmitted to Palermo and Ustica and the fact that, in all likelihood, Macis expressed genuine astonishment when Gramsci complained about the manner in which he had been transported from Ustica to Milan. Equally important are the hypotheses we can formulate regarding the circumstances that allowed Macis to convince Gramsci that Grieco’s letter had had dire consequences for his fate—by blocking an attempt to secure his release through an exchange for Catholic priests held in the Soviet Union—even though it is probable that Macis had possessed no information about such an exchange proposal and that the letter had had no such effect.
Macis succeeded in presenting himself to Gramsci as trustworthy and in planting the suspicion that someone within his party was working to thwart efforts to secure his release; yet his success was not total. Gramsci never abandoned his political allegiance or his party—neither before, during, nor after the trial—nor did he yield to attempts to induce him to renounce his principles and petition for a pardon from his jailer, Benito Mussolini. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Macis inflicted a wound upon Gramsci, the effects of which continued to manifest themselves over the years.