Fiuméből a nagyvilágba

Leo Valiani was a politician, historian and journalist born in the town of Fiume in 1909. He was first sentenced to prison as an anti-fascist in 1928. He befriended Arthur Koestler while both men were detained in the Le Vernet camp in France in 1939. In 1943, the Allies sent Valiani behind enemy lines, and he became a leading member of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Alta Italia, one of the leading groups of the victorious uprising of Milan in April 1945. In 1946, Valiani was elected to the Italian Constituent Assembly. After the dissolution of his party, the Partito d’Azione, Valiani chose to work as an economist, an analyst for a leading bank. He maintained his ideals of democracy, and published the history of the Italian resistance movement, as well as essays on the socialist movement, the Spanish Civil War, etc. He was also a scholar of Hungarian history. He was one of the promoters of the international campaign for the liberation of Hungarian intellectuals arrested after the defeat of the revolution of 1956. In 1966, he published his most important work: The End of Austria–Hungary. He became senator for life in 1980, and continued his work, publishing essays and leading articles right until his death in 1999.