Italian Communists are joined to Sraffa by an ineradicable political and human debt of gratitude. It is hard for us even to grasp his full significance for Gramsci: the role he played during Gramsci’s long years in fascist jails is a priceless and crucial element in our own history. It is above all for this reason that we are devoting several pages of Rinascita to a tribute on the occasion of Sraffa’s eightieth birthday. We hope that he will value the feelings of affection and respect which inspired this tribute, and that he will recognize the sincerity of our greetings as he turns these pages in the sober and unassuming atmosphere of his Trinity College study. In vain we have tried these last years to draw him away from that study and bring him back to Italy as a friend and teacher.

In a short, yet exhaustive and definitive account published last year, Paolo Spriano has reconstructed the tormented history of Gramsci’s relations with the Party during his incarceration.footnote1 Considerable light is thrown on Sraffa’s important role as an able and conscientious link in the chain passing from Gramsci through Tatiana to the Party’s external centre, and most notably to Togliatti.footnote2 Basing himself on the letters which Sraffa entrusted some time ago to the Gramsci Institute, Spriano brings out in particular Sraffa’s key role in the various practical steps taken to secure Gramsci’s release. He also elucidates a number of long-controversial incidents which were a source of anguish to Sraffa himself: from the ‘odd’ letter sent by Grieco to Gramsci during the judicial enquiry of February 1928 to the Party centre’s initiatives which cut across, and objectively hindered, the steps being taken to secure Gramsci’s release.footnote3 From all this emerges more clearly than ever the remarkable extent to which Sraffa was involved in Gramsci’s political and personal vicissitudes.