Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Armando Cossutta" in English language version.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)Mitrokhin was a self-described loner with increasingly anti-Soviet views ... Maybe such a potentially dubious type (in KGB terms) really was able freely to transcribe thousands of documents, smuggle them out of KGB premises, hide them under his bed, transfer them to his country house, bury them in milk cans, make multiple visits to British embassies abroad, escape to Britain, and then return to Russia, and carry the voluminous work to the west, all without detection by the KGB ... It may all be true. But how do we know?
... despite the harshness of our expulsion, to which the group of comrades who were inspired by Cossutta gave a substantial contribution, mutual esteem has remained. Which allowed us to find ourselves together, committed on the same front, starting from the start of the process of dissolution of the PCI, in 1989. ... Even today I wonder the why of his pro-Sovietism, which he himself rethought when in the early 1990s he came one day to the editorial staff of [il] manifesto to discuss it calmly, recognizing the validity of our objections which had instead only been hastily condemned. It is a question that concerns the entire PCI, even if the 'Cossuttian' current protracted its loyalty for a long time, in controversy with the break that Berlinguer had instead made in 1981. I believe that more than a judgment on the merits of that socialism already since the 1960s so marked by 'Brezhnevism', it was a question of the fear that, in condemning that experience, the horizon of otherness would disappear in the large body of Italian communists, the awareness that despite acceptance by part of the PCI of the rules of the representative democratic system, its full inclusion in its institutions, the strategic objective had not been lost: the construction of an alternative society to capitalism. A need that perhaps he felt the most for having been in charge of the policy of the party's local bodies for years, which he oriented towards the most reckless moderate alliances. In short, the link with Moscow was for him a sort of security policy, a certification of the persistence of a revolutionary identity.
Many years later, moreover, in the first phase of the life of Communist Refoundation, when a strong agreement was reached between Armando Cossutta (not with all his followers) and the former PDUP comrades who had entered that party, on the connotations that the new formation should have, there was no dissent on the political document prepared for the founding Congress, in which the distance from the Soviet experience was clear. (Not the cancellation of the importance of the October Revolution, as the PDS then hastened to do, which it was good – he reaffirmed – that it had existed, even though 'it had exhausted its [progressive] driving force', to quote Berlinguer's phrase).
Mitrokhin was a self-described loner with increasingly anti-Soviet views ... Maybe such a potentially dubious type (in KGB terms) really was able freely to transcribe thousands of documents, smuggle them out of KGB premises, hide them under his bed, transfer them to his country house, bury them in milk cans, make multiple visits to British embassies abroad, escape to Britain, and then return to Russia, and carry the voluminous work to the west, all without detection by the KGB ... It may all be true. But how do we know?
On 13 October 1991, 'La Repubblica' published a sharp letter of denial from Cossutta himself, who stated that he had 'never received anything – I mean nothing – either in cash or in checks or in any other way from and on behalf of Soviet exponents or persons.' Evidently, however, the denial in '[La] Republica' did not interest either Professor Hellman or the Commission, because it has not been talked about since then. Just as the extensive interview that at the time Cossutta gave to Correre della sera (25 October 1991) in which he explained that in particular a Soviet loan to 'Paese sera' had taken place at the request of Enrico Belinguer's secretary, Antonio Tato. After that, for both Hellman and Andrew-Mitrokhin and the Commission, only what Evlakhov said counted.
In the final part of the proposed report, a certain parallelism is mentioned between certain political events that took place between 1995 and 1999 and the publication, or rather the non-publication, the inertia, in the face of the arrival of what was reported in the documentation. In particular, attention is paid to the attitude of the honourable Armando Cossutta, who, together with an important part of the party to which he belonged, made significant changes in his political position, being decisive, first of all for the continuation of the Dini government and, subsequently, for the birth of the D'Alema government.
And as for Hellman, he thought well of transforming the 'personally' affirmed by Evlakhov into 'into the pockets', which had a very different meaning because it could suggest that Cossutta had pocketed that money out of private interest. In other words, it was a substantial (and politically oriented) forgery by this Canadian political scientist, then taken up verbatim by Andrew–Mitrokhin.
Both in the draft and in the Italian and English text, after those quotation marks there is a note stating that the sentence comes from an essay by Stephen Hellman published in an English book of 1992 (The Difficult Birth of the Democratic Party of the Left, in Italian Politics. A Review, Pinter, London 1992, pp. 80 and 86). And it's true, the phrase comes exactly from there. Stephen Hellman was then and still is a professor at York University, Toronto. The essay was dedicated to Occhetto's 'turn', which had led to the transformation of the Italian Communist Party into the PDS, a turn towards which Cossutta had been hostile. Hellman, for his part, instead sided completely with Occhetto. As can be seen from the footnote to the aforementioned passage, Hellman relied on the statements of the journalist Alexandr Evlakhov released on 11 October 1991, according to which the honourable Cossutta 'personally' (i.e. 'in person ', not out of self-interest) had received some money from a KGB agent. Moreover, Evlakhov himself also declared that he did not physically have the documents he referred to, but that he had seen them 'with his eyes'.
Among them we mention in particular that of the president of the [2002] Commission, Paolo Guzzanti, who sent a letter to 'Corriere della sera', published on 29 July 2004, in which he maintained that for the honourable Cossutta the SISMI, following the directives of Government, decided to carry out a sensational 'white washing' on Mitrokhin's book which accused him of pocketing the money intended for the party.' In the meantime, what has simply been 'forgotten' so far is that that sentence – which in the book, according to the Italian exegetes, would have been removed on the recommendation of SISMI – was not Andrew–Mitrokhin's. The sentence, on the other hand, was from a specific 'commentator' ('observer' in the Italian ed.), of whom Andrew and Mitrokhin in fact spoke and who they quoted in highly visible quotation marks.
Immediately after the passage regarding Cossutta's 'pockets' that we have just considered, and therefore in the text, in the book with respect to the 'draft' 5 lines against Cossutta were added ex novo (and complete with a new note) with data on dollars of the alleged loans received in 1985–87 (p. 390 English ed. and p. 374 Italian ed.). As stated in the footnote, these were data taken from two newspaper articles (Il Giorno and Il Tempo of 30 April 1998) and which reported on the funding of the CPSU to the PCI, and in particular to Cossutta, passed by the prosecutor of Moscow to that of Rome. Now, precisely those articles, together with three others (from the newspapers 'L'Avanti!', 'La Padania', 'Il Giornale', all, like 'Il Giorno' and '[Il] Tempo', hostile to Cossutta and the Government of centre-left) were requested by the British Service and delivered by SISMI on 12 June 1998. At that point, as we know, SISMI knew perfectly well that the British were preparing a book and therefore could at least suspect that those articles would be used there, that is, in a published text.
The case of Armando Cossutta ... is radically different from those just considered – indeed opposite – because in this case it was not at all, as has been stated in an undocumented or irresponsible way, a 'bleaching' in the transition from the 'draft' to the book – which had no reason for being accomplished – but rather, on the contrary, for a worsening of the judgment on him. ... 1) In one passage of the book, with respect to the draft, the surname of Cossutta, defined as 'the Soviet loyalist on the Directorate' was removed and replaced with the anonymous indication, taken from report no. 132, which listed him as 'a KGB informant on the Directorate'. It is difficult to say whether it was a better qualification (because it cannot be referred to him with certainty) or worse (because it attributes to him the title of 'informant', even if it was not difficult then, from the context, to trace his name). In any case it should be remembered that Andrew himself, presenting his book in Italy, has excluded that Cossutta could be considered a 'real and proper agent', or rather 'a fifth column of the Soviet regime in Italy'. 2) Another explicit reference to Cossutta is further on in the 'draft', where we read: 'It soon became clear that if Soviet funds has been channeled into Italy, they went through the hands, and sometimes directly into the pockets of, Cossutta.' In the book, on the corresponding page, 390 (374 of the Italian ed.), the phrase 'and sometimes directly into the pockets of' does not appear and is replaced by ellipsis. It is a detail referred to several times and in a scandalous way both during the work of the Commission and above all in interventions in the press.
What follows is the text written by the Prime Minister to retract the accusations made against Armando Cossutta when, during an episode of Porta a Porta, he defined the current president of the Italian Communists as an organizer of armed gangs. Cossutta agreed to withdraw the lawsuit on condition that Berlusconi, in addition to writing the text of the retraction, published it for a fee in some important newspapers. The Hon. Silvio Berlusconi in the television broadcast 'Porta a Porta' of April 2000 declared that the Hon. Armando Cossutta 'managed armed gangs in the distant post-war years and had continued until a few years ago to keep an armed organization in Italy.' Following the legal action brought, the Hon. Berlusconi made it clear that these statements were a consequence of the exasperated electoral climate existing at the time and that it must be irrefutably excluded, also on the basis of the subsequent verification of historical, judicial, and parliamentary sources, that the Hon. Cossetta of such activities. The Hon. Berlusconi was keen to confirm the sentiments of esteem he always had towards the Hon. Cossutta whose life was entirely dedicated to the creation of a democratic regime in Italy and to the defense of democracy. The Hon. Cossutta, following this clarification, remitted the lawsuit.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)Mitrokhin was a self-described loner with increasingly anti-Soviet views ... Maybe such a potentially dubious type (in KGB terms) really was able freely to transcribe thousands of documents, smuggle them out of KGB premises, hide them under his bed, transfer them to his country house, bury them in milk cans, make multiple visits to British embassies abroad, escape to Britain, and then return to Russia, and carry the voluminous work to the west, all without detection by the KGB ... It may all be true. But how do we know?