Bandiera rossa trionferà

Bandiera rossa trionferà is a socialist refrain whose meaning in the book grows through repetition: sung by newspaper workers, printed as a headline, and echoed in Nicola Bombacci’s declaration about Russia. The phrase binds political hope to collective performance, even as the surrounding narrative sets socialist mobilization against armed opponents and the commemorative rituals of the victorious nation.

A song in a divided Milan

In the private room beside Benito Mussolini’s table, the staff of Avanti! sing “Bandiera rossa trionferà!” at full volume. The neighboring tables hold a different mood: Mussolini’s meal is quiet, while the song recalls a city divided over what victory in the war has brought. The toast is to February 17, when Milan’s socialists had marched in numbers against the victorious war and demanded land and amnesty for deserters. The refrain is therefore more than a musical interruption; it carries the political memory of an earlier mass demonstration into the intimate space of the restaurant.

That memory includes a procession of forty thousand striking workers, accompanied by thirty bands and thousands of red flags. The book places the demonstrators’ demands beside the nationalist perception of them as a threat to the peace that had supposedly followed victory. In this setting, the song’s confidence sounds both communal and defiant: it asserts a future that the patriotic Milan surrounding Mussolini’s table sees as a danger.

From headline to political claim

The refrain returns in July 1919 as a headline in Avanti!’s Turin edition: “RED FLAG WILL TRIUMPH.” La Difesa, the Florentine socialist paper, publishes its own urgent appeal for decisive action. By placing the words in print, the narrative shows how a chant becomes part of a wider political language, circulated through newspapers as well as gatherings.

At a Milan rally on July 20, Nicola Bombacci begins with the statement, “The red flag has triumphed in Russia.” He then draws the conclusion, “We want Russia to be here as well.” The refrain’s promise is given a concrete political reference: Russia is presented not as a distant emblem alone, but as a model whose revolution socialists hope to bring home. The sequence from headline to speech turns the slogan into an argument about possibility and action.

A promise amid confrontation

The phrase belongs to a narrative in which mass politics is repeatedly staged in the street. On April 15, 1919, an enormous socialist procession in Milan breaks into a smaller march toward the Duomo. At the confrontation, women at the head of the socialist column carry Lenin’s portrait and a red flag, singing songs of liberation and calling for a better life for their children. Opposite them stand a smaller group of men shaped by years of wartime killing. When the police cordon opens, gunfire from the officers, Arditi, and Futurists silences the marchers’ singing. The contrast gives the red flag and its promise a vulnerable, embodied presence: it is carried by people who have come to march, while armed opponents determine how abruptly the procession ends.

The refrain’s hope also stands against the organization of political force beyond the city. In Bologna, labor organizations and socialist influence extend into the countryside; in Ferrara, peasant leagues regulate hiring and agricultural work across a broad membership. The book describes these structures through their practical reach into employment, crops, and the distribution of bread. Against this expanding socialist organization, a Ferrara punitive expedition is planned with armed groups, simultaneous targets, surprise, and trucks supplied by the Agrarian Association. The slogan does not itself describe these local struggles, but its recurring promise of triumph belongs to the same contested political landscape.

Revolution and competing public rituals

The book repeatedly sets socialist expectation beside rival forms of collective ceremony. In January 1920, Gabriele D’Annunzio presents Fiume as youth, life, and a future backed by the dead, in contrast to the exhausted world represented by Versailles. His language of renewal offers a competing vision of political rebirth, while the socialist refrain locates its promised future in the triumph of the red flag and the example of Russia.

The contrast becomes ritualized in November 1921, when the Unknown Soldier is buried in a solemn national ceremony. An unidentifiable fallen soldier is chosen by lot to represent all the dead, and the marble coffin becomes an altar for a war experienced as collective and impersonal death. The founders of the National Fascist Party kneel there in prayer. The book’s juxtaposition of this ceremony with the socialist refrain reveals two rival ways of binding a political community: one through the promise of revolutionary victory, the other through reverence for national sacrifice.

The later return of Giacomo Matteotti’s remains to Fratta Polesine brings yet another public language of political memory. His funeral draws tens of thousands, and the crowd calls for vengeance, justice, retribution, liberty, and Matteotti. The scene does not repeat the red-flag refrain, but it recalls the book’s pattern of political words becoming collective acts: a song, a headline, a march, or a cry at a funeral gathers people around a shared claim. Across these settings, Bandiera rossa trionferà remains a compact expression of socialist confidence, made more charged by the violence and competing ceremonies surrounding it.