Communications

ARTICLES

To the Editor:

Alfred J. Rieber's "Stalin, Man of the Borderlands" [/journals/ahr/106.5/ah0501001651.html] is insightful and interesting. But on page 1662, it states that Stalin's "first born, Iakov (Jacob), was named for the son of the biblical Joseph." Shouldn't that be "the father of the biblical Joseph?"

Ron Cantor

Jefferson Community College, Watertown, New York

Alfred J. Rieber replies:

Ron Cantor is correct, of course. Jacob was Joseph's father and not his son, and I regret the slip that inverted the relationship between them. My error does not, however, invalidate the point I was trying to make. Namely, Stalin selected a name for his son that expressed a filial relationship within the Old Testament tradition, which reflected, it must be assumed, his wife's religious outlook and his own training in the Tblisi Seminary.

Alfred J. Rieber

Central European University

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

To the Editor:

In his review of Filippo Sabetti, The Search for Good Government: Understanding the Paradox of Italian Democracy [AHR 106 (October 2001): 1498–99], Joseph LaPalombara writes that the Milan magistrates investigating corruption in the early 1990s "not only created a political power vacuum with their so-called 'clean hands' exposés of corruption, they themselves have tried to fill that power vacuum as well, sometimes with frightening success." This statement leaves much to be desired as a description of recent Italian events. If by power vacuum, LaPalombara means the collapse of the Christian Democratic and Socialist parties in 1992–1993, this was brought about largely by public revulsion against the corruption of those parties, which (though downplayed by some) had flourished during decades of uninterrupted power. After 1989, the anticommunist parties became vulnerable to judicial investigations into their activities of the kind that were practically inconceivable during the Cold War. They were also vulnerable to a potent new protest movement, the Northern League. That a group of magistrates were (and are) conspiring to run the country against the will of the people is a typical charge made by former supporters of the Christian Democrats and Socialists. The vacuum on the center right has not, however, been filled by the so-called "red togas." That task has been ably performed by Silvio Berlusconi, who founded the Forza Italia ("Go Italy!") Party in 1993. Berlusconi, the owner of three television networks (and a defendant in several ongoing trials), is now prime minister and foreign minister of Italy.

John L. Harper

The Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins University

Joseph LaPalombara replies:

John Harper is correct: it is indeed Silvio Berlusconi, and not the "red togas," who has filled the vacuum created by the "clean hands" investigations. The "public revulsion" he mentions, however, would never have reached the levels it did were it not for the not always admirable behavior of the magistrates. Some of the latter actually ventured far abroad to describe their own heroics. Willfully or otherwise, they gave Italy a big and undeserved black eye.

     This time around, and in contrast to their erosive work of 1993–1994, the magistrates face tougher sledding. Berlusconi's parliamentary majority is solid. His political opponents, aided by partisan magistrates, will not find it as easy to reverse by dubious political maneuvering what the voters have now twice mandated at the polls, namely, that Italy should be governed by the center-right.

     Politicized magistrates, of course, pre-date Berlusconi. About this aspect of the Italian polity, I wrote in my Democracy, Italian Style (1987, p. 228), "in recent months the cry has been raised that the judicial arm, even when turned to the best of causes, is actually in the narrow service of one political party or another. It has also been charged with the flagrant use of the judicial power as a weapon against political opponents."

     In the ensuing years, the situation has worsened. Magistrates have pursued apparent political vendettas, not just against Berlusconi but, even more shamefully and notoriously, against Giulio Andreotti, seven times Italy's prime minister. But these number only among the most prominent abuses.

     Civil libertarians would find hair-raising the powers of Italian magistrates and their misuse. People are selectively arrested at their discretion. Magistrates have frequently leaked to the press the names of those who receive the infamous avviso di garanzia. This letter is nothing more than a simple and required notice that a magistrate is contemplating a possible investigation of the person addressed. In the "clean hands" years, thousands of these avvisi were mailed, most of which came to naught. Nevertheless, this flood of innuendo destroyed reputations. It also created the false impression that most of these persons had already been caught red-handed in acts of political corruption. The Italian and the world mass media gorged on such sensationalism.

     Magistrates also practice de facto preventive detention, a police power that is anathema to advocates of procedural civil rights. In theory, Italians arrested must either be charged with a specific crime or released after 120 days. In practice, inventive magistrates, with the concurrence of only one other of their brethren, can (and do!) start the incarceration clock running again and again—on the vague and flimsy claim that the person so released might "contaminate the evidence."

     The magistrates publicly and ferociously oppose all efforts to separate by law their powers to investigate from their powers to judge. In the United States, the analogy would be public prosecutors who are also empowered to judge those whom they have succeeded in having arrested! The Berlusconi government, along with many others, wants this situation corrected. Toward these efforts, a leader of the Milan Pool, fully draped in the toga and other symbols of his judicial authority, has recently urged Italian citizens to "Resist! Resist! Resist!"

     Such political incursions by some magistrates are now so dramatic, even a few prominent leaders of the Left have come out in favor of reform. One does not have to be (as John Harper ungenerously implies) a former supporter of Italy's discredited Christian Democrats or Socialists to condemn these judicial excesses. That Silvio Berlusconi, or for that matter any other Italian citizen, may require official investigation is no reason to continue to treat the magistracy as a sacred cow.

     Harper is perhaps also correct in his surmise that wearers of the "red toga" do not conspire "to run the country against the will of the people." But, precisely because so many of them seethe with political bias and ambition, more of the aggressive magistrates might be encouraged to follow in the footsteps of Antonio Di Pietro. This most prominent of the "clean hands" magistrates courageously resigned from the magistracy, ran for and won public office, and has now formed a new political party. In short, unlike his former colleagues, he no longer hides his political agenda behind the increasingly transparent mask of judicial objectivity.

     Italy's political institutions and, indeed, Italian democracy, will be on surer footing if the much-needed reforms of the magistracy materialize soon.

Joseph LaPalombara

Yale University

ERRATUM

In the review of Me You Them (Eu, Tu, Eles) and Maids by Darién J. Davis, AHR 107 (February 2002): 322–24, the name of the first film was accidentally omitted at one point (323, col. B), leaving a blank space, and the words "activities" and "related" were rendered as "ctivities" and "elated." The editors regret these errors.

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