Ornella Labriola: the loneliness of an irreducible memory

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the particular case concerning Ornella Labriola (1908-1991), who lived between Italy and Soviet Union. She was a guest of the famous hotel “Lux” in Moscow, the dwelling place of international Communism during the years of Stalinism. In that place, happened her love story with Giuseppe Rimola (1905-1938), delegate of Italian young communists in the Kjm (the Young Communist International). He was arrested and condemned to death as ”people’s enemy” in the gyre concerning he terror of Stalinism. During all her life, Ornella Labriola only desired to show people the truth about the death of her own partner, also to rescue the sense of her own existence and choices. The biographical approach of our research permits to emphasize witness’s feelings, believes, values and auto-reflexivity. Labriola was interviewed a year before her death. Her narration is focused on her relationship with ideology, with the revolutionary time when she grew, with the political treat as it was perceived during the thirties and forties; but also she talked about her love relation with her partner in a cultural context in which it was normal to sacrifice own private life on the altar of revolutionary necessities.