The library of Alberto Ronchey (Rome, 1926-2010) was donated by the family in 2010. Consisting of 3060 volumes, the collection, which represents almost the entirety of the original library, reflects the course of study, reading and research of the well-known journalist. On 27 October 2010 in the Ancient Monastery of Santa Chiara a round table took place entitled: Journalism and history, with speeches by Luciano Canfora, classical philologist and historian; Antonio Carioti, essayist; Paolo Zaninoni, former editor of non-fiction and foreign fiction. Guest of the study day was Professor Silvia Ronchey, daughter of Alberto Ronchey, historian, Byzantinist, professor at the School of Historical Studies of the University of San Marino, author of numerous successful publications. On the same day, precisely to underline the importance of this act, and as a particular expression of thanks, the Most Excellent Regency received Prof. Silvia Ronchey in audience.
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Alberto Ronchey was born in Rome on September 27, 1926. His father, a registered anti-fascist, often had to deal with the police. This circumstance and the famine of the war years made family subsistence precarious. While attending the "Virgilio" high school, where he was taught by the Italianist Carlo Dionisotti, he came into contact with anti-fascist groups and wrote for the clandestine republican press in Rome already before 25 July 1943, as well as during the German occupation. After the war on Rome, after high school he would have liked to devote himself to historical studies, but the need to find work immediately did not allow it. Enrolled in the faculty of jurisprudence because it allowed him not to attend courses and therefore to work, he graduated with a thesis in constitutional law, supervised by Gaspare Ambrosini (Regional autonomies and the Constitution, Bocca, 1952).
Later, on the wave of clandestine militancy, he was director of the Republican Voice. But in a party newspaper, not having a party mentality, he felt restricted, he wrote in Mario Pannunzio's Mondo. On Pannunzio's relationship with Ronchey, the first director of Espresso Arrigo Benedetti wrote: “He liked to spend time with the young director of La Voce Repubblicana who later became a correspondent for the major dailies. And he appreciated it, he brought it to us as an example, almost as if he wanted to criticize himself and all of us, his companions on a long amateurish yet not useless (had we not done it, we would be different) journey into politics, for which we lacked precisely the qualities that he noticed in Ronchey, the readiness to evaluate, in addition to ideas, the forces present, and the ability to distinguish between ideologies ... The literate-journalist and the journalist-politician walked together in Fregene, talked about journalism, as of the art of grasping the sense of elusive reality, of a journalism that is material of culture” (Il Mondo, 19 April 1973).
He then wrote in the Resto del Carlino, directed by Giovanni Spadolini. In 56, he moved to Gaetano Afeltra's Corriere d'Information as political correspondent from Rome, and together with Mario Missiroli's Corriere della Sera as a columnist. In 59, Giulio De Benedetti offered him the choice of a correspondence office for La Stampa in Turin between Moscow and New York. The choice was obligatory for a journalist suffering from a "mania for verification", as Ronchey defines himself. The years of Moscow, and of de-Stalinization, of the sputniki, of the challenges of the USSR to America he remembers as the most formative of his experience. That period was the subject of his first successful books (La Russia del thaw, Garzanti 1963, Russians and Chinese, Garzanti 1965).
After Moscow, he began traveling as a special envoy. Above all in the United States (L'ultima America, Garzanti 1967). But the special envoy must have his suitcase ready for any destination, so he has known all the continents. In the Congo, he had to be the first to enter Kindu after the 61 massacre, with a supply of UN "blue helmets" and machine guns drawn. From that period of travel between Europe and Africa, India and Japan, again America and again the USSR, other books were born (Atlante ideologico, Garzanti 1973, Ultime news from the USSR, Garzanti 1974 , The American crisis, Garzanti 1975, Usa-Ussr: the sick giants, Rizzoli 1981).
The editorship of La Stampa and Stampa Sera, from '68 to '73, was a break in that continuous travelling. He recalls with pleasure that he hired writers such as Giovanni Arpino, Guido Ceronetti, Natalia Ginzburg, Fruttero and Lucentini, Leonardo Sciascia and journalists such as Arrigo Levi, Giulio Anselmi, Andrea Barbato, Paolo Garimberti, Giampaolo Pansa, Gianfranco Piazzesi, Carlo Rossella at La Stampa , Lietta Tornabuoni, Vittorio Zucconi and to have hired, as an Italian exclusive for La Stampa, the famous illustrator David Levine. He was the author of expressions that in the current political lexicon have had widespread acceptance (the "K factor" on the PCI, the "subdivision" on Rai, the "underdeveloped superpower" on the USSR).
From 74 on and off he was a columnist and correspondent for Corriere della Sera and Repubblica, from 81 he was also the owner of the "Doubt" column in L'Espresso, then a collaborator for Panorama. He taught sociology at the Ca 'Foscari University of Venice, participated in collective works such as the History of political, economic and social ideas of the Utet, directed by Luigi Firpo, wrote the prefaces to the latest works of Raymond Aron translated by Mondadori . He has worked extensively for television, with documentaries on the USSR, the United States, Germany, southern Italy and general socio-economic problems. He has also published various essays on Italian politics (It happened in Italy, Garzanti 1977, Interview on non-government with Ugo La Malfa, Laterza 1977, White paper on the latest generation, Garzanti 1978, Who will win in Italy?, Mondadori 1982, Different opinion, Mondadori 1983, newspaper against, Garzanti 1984). The limits of capitalism was published by Rizzoli in 1991. He was Minister for Cultural and Environmental Heritage from June 1992 to May 1994, in the Amato and Ciampi governments. When he left his ministerial office, in 1994, he was called to the top of RCS Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera and to the board of directors of Rizzoli Libri e Grandi Opere, the latter in a difficult budgetary situation. In June 1998, by handing over the RCS to Cesare Romiti who became its new president, he was able to go back to being a journalist. In fact, from that moment on he continued to write regularly in the Corriere della Sera. He has entrusted three books to his first publisher, Garzanti, Fin di century in fax minor, 1995, Atlante italiano, 1997, Accadde a Roma nel anno 2000, 1998. Rizzoli is the publisher of Il Fattore R, 2004, and Garzanti of Travels and landscapes in distant lands, 2007. Indro Montanelli, in reviewing the essay End of the century in fax minor, commented in the Corriere "I believe that Ronchey is the European journalist who has delved more deeply into the problems of the world, who has granted the least to sensationalism and colour”.
[Total journalism, Alberto Ronchey, Aragno 2010, pp. 233-236]
