Qualcuno era comunista [English translation]

Someone1 was a communist because he was born in Emilia.

Someone was a communist because his grandfather, uncle, dad... mom wasn't.

Someone was a communist because he saw Russia as a promise, China as a poem, and communism as "Heaven on Earth."

Someone was a communist because he felt alone.

Someone was a communist because he had an education that was too Catholic.

Someone was a communist because the cinema demanded it, the theater demanded it, the painting demanded it, the literature demanded it...everything demanded it.

Someone was a communist because: "History is on our side!"

Someone was a communist because they had said so.

Someone was a communist because they weren't told everything.

Someone was a communist because first he was a Fascist.

Someone was a communist because they understood Russia was going slowly, but far.

Someone was a communist because Berlinguer was a good person.

Someone was a communist because Andreotti was not a good person

Someone was a communist because he was rich but he loved the people.

Someone was a communist because he drank wine and was moved to tears at working-class rallies.

Someone was a communist because he was such an atheist that he needed another God.

Someone was a communist because he was so fascinated by workers that he wanted to be one of them.

Someone was a communist because he didn't want to be a workingman anymore.

Someone was a communist because he wanted his salary increased.

Someone was a communist because of the bourgeoisie - the proletariat - the class struggle. Easy, isn't it?

Someone was a communist because of the revolution... today no, tomorrow perhaps, but after tomorrow surely…

Someone was a communist because: " Long live Marx, long live Lenin, long live Mao Tse-Tung".

Someone was a communist to anger his father.

Someone was a communist because he always watched RAI TRE.2

Someone was a communist to be fashionable, someone for principle, someone due to frustration.

Someone was a communist because he wanted to nationalize everything.

Someone was a communist because he didn't know any government workers, civil servants or their kind.

Someone was a communist because he had exchanged "dialectical materialism" for the "Gospel according Lenin".

Someone was a communist because he was convinced the working class was behind him.

Someone was a communist because he was more of a communist than others.

Someone was a communist because there was the great Communist Party.

Someone was a communist despite the fact that there was the great Communist Party.

Someone was a communist because there was nothing better.

Someone was a communist because we have the worst Socialist Party in Europe.

Someone was a communist because when it comes to government the only state worse than us is Uganda.

Someone was a communist because he couldn't take more than forty years of slimy ass-kissers governing.

Someone was a communist because of Piazza Fontana, Brescia, the Bologna train station, the Italicuc Ustica, etc. , etc. , etc. , etc.3

Someone was a communist because anyone against things was a communist.

Someone was a communist because he could no longer stand that dirty thing that we persist in calling democracy.

Someone believed he was a communist and perhaps he was something else.

Someone was a communist because he dreamed of a different freedom than that in America.

Someone was a communist because he thought he could only be alive and happy if others were too.

Someone was a communist because he needed a thrust toward something new; because he was prepared to change every day; because he felt the need for a different morality; because maybe it was only a force, a flight, a dream... movement... a desire to change things, to change life.

Someone was a communist because with this movement everyone was more than himself; he was like two people in one. On the one hand daily toil and on the other hand the sense of belonging to a race that wanted to fly and to truly change life.

No, no regrets. Perhaps even then many had opened their wings like "hypothetical" seagulls without being able to fly.

And now? Even now you feel like you are split in two, on the one hand the man put here that obsequiously moves through the squalor of his own daily survival, and on the other hand, the seagull, without even the intention to fly, because now the dream has been crippled.

Two miseries in only one body.

1. "Qualcuno" could be translated as someone, somebody, anyone, anybody or even some guy.2. RAI TRE is a TV station3. piazza Fontana, Brescia, la stazione di Bologna, l’Italicus, Ustica: were all intentional and mysterious mass murder, the Italicus was a train that blew up.

• Artist:Giorgio Gaber