Giacomo Matteotti (Italian: [ˈdʒaːkomo matteˈɔtti] ; 22 May 1885 – 10 June 1924) was an Italian socialist and anti-fascist politician who served as the opposition leader and as secretary of the Unitary Socialist Party (PSU) from 1922 to 1924. Born in the province of Rovigo in Fratta Polesine, he was a militant socialist from a young age, joining the youth wing of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in 1898 and then the main party around 1900. In 1907, he graduated in law at the University of Bologna. A lawyer by degree and a journalist by trade, Matteotti was a follower of Filippo Turati, a co-founder of the PSI and leader of the gradualist wing. Politically, his name is associated with democratic socialism and social democracy, and his thought is summarised as reformist socialist, radical reformist, and revolutionary reformist.
Matteotti was elected mayor of Villamarzana in the Italian region of Veneto in 1912. In line with the law allowing the possibility of being elected in all the towns where taxes were paid, he also entered the municipal councils of several towns of Veneto, and was appointed deputy mayor of Fratta Polesine and councillor of Frassinelle Polesine. In 1914, Matteotti was re-elected to the provincial council. Matteotti's opposition to the Great War resulted in his being interned in the Italian region of Sicily. In the 1919 Italian general election, Matteotti was elected a member of the Chamber of Deputies, where the PSI was the most voted party and became the largest political group.
While the 1921 Italian general election saw him re-elected for a second term as the PSI remained the most voted and largest party despite losses and fascist violence, Matteotti and the PSI were not part of the government. At the 1922 party congress in Rome, the gradualist wing led by Turati was expelled from the PSI, and Matteotti followed Turati in establishing the PSU. An anti-Leninist socialist, Matteotti grew critical of Bolshevism, whose violence and authoritarianism he saw as antithetical and useless in establishing socialism, and excluded them from the anti-fascist bloc. In turn, he was criticised by the Soviet and Italian Bolshevik parties, which continued by some exponents of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) into the 1970s; other PCI members rejected the criticism and celebrated Matteotti for his socialist anti-fascism. Matteotti led the PSU into the 1924 Italian general election and was re-elected a third time.
On 30 May 1924, Matteotti openly spoke in the Italian Parliament, alleging the National Fascist Party (PNF) and its supporters committed electoral fraud, and denounced the violence they used to gain votes. Eleven days later, he was kidnapped by a fascist squad led by Amerigo Dumini and killed by the secret political police of Benito Mussolini due to his denunciations of the illegalities committed by the nascent dictatorship of Mussolini. While some historians debated and questioned whether the murder came on Mussolini's orders, Matteotti's death and the subsequent speech where Mussolini assumed responsibility are generally considered the beginning of Mussolini's dictatorship and a turning point of Fascist Italy. By 1926, Fascistissime laws were enacted by the Mussolini government, which turned Italy into a one-party state, and the deputies who had participated in the Aventine Secession to protest Matteotti's assassination were dismissed and excluded from the parliament. After the fall of Mussolini's regime and the end of World War II, Matteotti was officially commemorated and in the history of the Italian Republic is celebrated as a martyr, with numerous places named after him and established in his honour, including the centenary of his assassination.
Matteotti was born on 22 May 1885, a Friday, into a wealthy family in Fratta Polesine, near Rovigo (around 15 to 23 kilometres south of Rovigo), which at that time had about 3,000 inhabitants. He was given Lauro as the middle name. His parents were Girolamo Stefano Matteotti (1839–1902) and Elisabetta Garzarolo (1851–1931), known as Isabella, who got married in Fratta Polesine on 7 February 1875. Matteotti had six siblings, four of whom (Ginevra, Dante, Aquino, and Giocasta) died at a young age; of the adults, Matteotti was the second-born between Matteo (1876–1909) and Silvio (1887–1910) and the only one to survive his brothers who died young of tuberculosis. They all became involved in politics in the ranks of the PSI following the example of their father who had been a municipal councillor of Fratta Polesine between 1896 and 1897. The Matteotti family was originally from Comasine in Val di Peio, in the Trentino region.
Already in 1837, his great-grandfather Stefano Matteotti was active in the buying and selling of copper and iron in Arquà Polesine, which at that time was part of the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia. His grandfather Matteo Matteotti and his wife Caterina Sartori, whom he had married in 1813, moved permanently to Fratta Polesine in 1845, carrying on his father's business. Matteotti's grandfather died in 1858 at the age 47 due to injuries resulting from a fight, and Matteotti's father continued and expanded the family business by opening two shops: the first in Fratta Polesine and the second in Costa di Rovigo. In the 1860s, Matteotti's father invested his capital in the purchase of land expropriated from parishes, thus also starting the interest-bearing lending business and reaching a wealthy economic position.
In 1912, while on holiday in Abetone, Matteotti met Velia Titta, a 22-year old poet who was deeply religious and the younger sister of Titta Ruffo, a famous baritone. They married in a civil ceremony in 1916. Together, they had three children: Giancarlo (1918–2006), Gianmatteo (1921–2000), and Isabella (1922–1994). Matteotti's middle child, also known as Matteo, became a PSI parliamentary deputy after World War II. He was later a member of the Italian Democratic Socialist Party (PSDI) and the Italian Democratic Socialists (SDI). With the PSDI, he served as Italy's Minister of Tourism from 1970 to 1972 and Minister of Foreign Trade from 1972 to 1974. After his assassination in 1924, Matteotti's wife was under house arrest until September 1933; her heart and her health was broken and she died in 1938. Several people who helped her, such as Carlo Rosselli, were also imprisoned.
After attending the public elementary school of Lendinara, Matteotti was enrolled in the Liceo Classico Celio (named after Caelius Rhodiginus) in Rovigo. The Liceo Classico Celio was also attended by other notable figures, including among others Umberto Merlin, historians Benvenuto and Roberto Cessi, and writer Guido Voghera. Matteotti had very good grades, and graduated on 15 December 1903 at the age of 18. Not much interested in the family business, he enrolled in the faculty of law at the University of Bologna, graduating on 7 November 1907 with 110 cum laude, presenting a thesis on recidivism written in collaboration with professor Alessandro Stoppato. To write his thesis, Matteotti travelled to the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Germany, France, and England, learning French, English, and German. He then revised his thesis in 1910, publishing La recidiva. Saggio di revisione critica con dati statistici (Recidivism: A Critical Review with Statistical Data) with Fratelli Bocca Editori in Turin, and during the same year made a trip to Oxford to study the British penal system. Between 1909 and 1910, he lost first his brother Matteo and then Silvio to tuberculosis, remaining the only surviving son.
Following the example of his brother Matteo, Matteotti approached socialist ideas from a very young age, joining the youth group of the Italian Socialist Party in 1898 at 13, and writing in 1901 his first article for a local weekly of socialist inspiration called La Lotta. An atheist, he was from early age an activist in the socialist movement and the PSI, which he joined around 1900. In a 1904 article in La Lotta, the socialist newspaper of Rovigo, he was described as the local PSI's reference point in Fratta Polesine. Also in a 1904 letter, Matteotti declared himself a militant socialist "for some time", and that he was committed to promoting clubs, leagues, and cooperatives for the rural proletariat of Polesine. In January 1908, he was elected to the municipal council of Fratta Polesine, and then by virtue of the existing law also of Villamarzana and Boara Polesine where he served as mayor, as well as Lendinara, Badia Polesine, and Bellino. Due to his opposition to Italian entry into World War I, he was interned in Sicily during the years of the Great War. As a result, he was excluded from the provincial council of Rovigo that he joined in 1910; however, he re-joined it after the 1920 Italian local elections, where the PSI as a whole achieved notable success, particularly in the Polesine region, where it won all comuni.