Stalin recognises Badoglio

Wellred

Core Argument

Stalin’s recognition of the Badoglio-Victor Emmanuel government in March 1944 is denounced as a calculated betrayal of the Italian working class and a decisive break with Leninist internationalism. The chapter argues that this diplomatic move was not a pragmatic concession but a deliberate act of counter-revolution, designed to shore up a reactionary regime that could not survive without Anglo-American bayonets. Badoglio and the king are presented as fascist accomplices, no less guilty than Mussolini, whose apparatus remained staffed by former fascists who switched sides only when Allied victory seemed assured. The Italian masses had already demonstrated their hatred of this regime through strikes and protests, forcing even the Italian Communist Party to demand Badoglio’s resignation and the king’s abdication. The British Daily Worker had reported on a five-thousand-strong demonstration in Naples where denunciations of the monarchy drew cheers for Russia, while Churchill’s name went unmentioned. The British Communist Party had feigned opposition to Churchill’s defence of Badoglio, publishing editorials that condemned the “court camarilla” and praised the anti-fascist parties as the true leaders of popular revolt.

Yet within days, Stalin recognised the same regime, exposing the hollowness of these protests. The chapter argues that the Stalinist bureaucracy feared the socialist revolution brewing in northern Italy, where workers under Nazi occupation were already moving towards class struggle. To remove Badoglio, it is claimed, would unleash forces beyond Stalinist control, smashing the popular front strategy and threatening the Kremlin’s usurpers. The recognition is therefore presented as a manoeuvre to contain revolution, not advance it. A secondary motive is identified in inter-imperialist rivalry: Stalin, while allied with British and American imperialism against the socialist revolution, sought to outmanoeuvre them in power politics, recognising Badoglio before the Western powers could consolidate their own puppet regime. The Times is quoted with evident satisfaction, noting that Stalin’s move would tilt Italian opinion towards the monarchy and discredit the Soviet Union among those who had seen it as a democratic model. The British Communist Party’s embarrassed response—welcoming the recognition as proof that the “Bolshevik bogey” had been exorcised—is held up as the final proof of its degeneration into a tool of counter-revolution. The chapter concludes by asserting that no amount of Stalinist treachery or Allied bayonets can suppress the coming European revolution, and that British and American workers will refuse to be used against their class brothers.