Nullo Baldini

Nullo Baldini is a sixty-year-old moderate socialist deputy and founder of a cooperative devoted to the farmworkers of Romagna. His brief appearance during the fascist attack on Ravenna’s cooperative building gives the violence a human scale: the building’s destruction is not merely an assault on a political stronghold, but the destruction of work to which he has devoted his life.

Identity and Work

Baldini is presented through his public commitments rather than through a separate account of his life. He founded the cooperative and spent his life serving Romagna’s farmworkers. The narrative also identifies him as a moderate socialist deputy, distinguishing his politics from the militant conflict engulfing the countryside without suggesting that moderation can protect the institutions he helped build.

The Fire in Ravenna

The attack follows the killing of Clearco Montanari, a founder of the Bolognese fascio, and is launched as revenge. The old cooperative building, described as a bastion of the red leagues, is destroyed by fire. Ravenna has no aqueduct, and the accumulated material in the building burns for hours without being brought under control. The destruction turns the cooperative’s accumulated labor into a public spectacle.

Baldini arrives as the crowd parts. In despair, he pleads with the firefighters to intervene and tries to rush toward the flames. He is not physically harmed, and none of the young squadristi lays a hand on him; nevertheless, he stands before the ruin of what he built. The contrast between his age and theirs sharpens the scene: at sixty, he is an old man to the twenty-year-old militants, but his vulnerability does not soften the violence’s effect.

Terror and Significance

Italo Balbo’s diary treats the opponents’ sense of terror as an intended result. Baldini’s distress therefore registers more than personal grief: the burning building makes intimidation legible to everyone watching. The march resumes afterward, with its songs and bivouacs, while Baldini remains before the shattered work of a lifetime. His scene sets the cooperative’s destruction against the movement’s performance of momentum, showing what that performance leaves behind.