Turin workers staged a five-day armed insurrection in August 1917

Evidence

Gramsci recalls the incident: “Th e insurrection exploded on 23 August 1917. For fi ve days the workers fought in the streets of the city. Th e insurgents, armed with rifl es, grenades and machine guns, managed to occupy some quarters of the city and attempted three or four times to possess the city centre where the government institutions and military commands were located… . Th e people erected barricades, dug trenches, surrounded some districts with barbed wire and electric current and held back for fi ve days all the attacks of the troops and the police. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1673

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Cambridge School material and to Gramsci’s later theoretical work on hegemony as a response to this kind of mass action — worker seizures of quarters as pre-figuration of soviets versus the passive revolution that followed. — connects to: Turin’s strikes escalated from economic to political insurrection by 1917; Spontaneous insurrection outpaced organized socialist leadership in Turin 1917; Turin’s textile women workers led the 1917 wave of industrial struggles

Broader Connections

• Turin’s strikes escalated from economic to political insurrection by 1917 #corroborates (0.90)
• Spontaneous insurrection outpaced organized socialist leadership in Turin 1917 #expands (0.75)
• Turin’s textile women workers led the 1917 wave of industrial struggles #complicates (0.75)