- Italia Contemporanea: Essays re-published
The editors of the review Italia Contemporanea have decided to republish online one essay from each issue, beginning with issue number 234. We thank the publisher, Carocci, for having allowed this reproduction.
Read the re-published essays:
- Sofia Serenelli
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 255, giugno 2009
- Abstract:
Through an oral history methodology, this article
focuses on the case-study of a commune in Ancona,
founded in 1977 by a group of six extra-parliamentary
and feminist ex-militants as an ideological
attempt to overcome the institution of family.
It concentrates on a rural area of the Marche
region, where the role of the family has traditionally
been hegemonic. Through memory analysis
and through the use of comparative sources from
the group, the article shows how the sticking
points for many other 70s communes are, in this
case, deeply affected by the socio-cultural context
from which the commune stemmed from.
Firstly, the article will explore the commune’s specific
ideological project. On the basis of ‘conflicting
memories’, it will be shown how the absence of
theoretical models enhanced the complexity of an
alternative family model shaped by the Marxist
cultural background and declined in the forms of
internal reciprocity typical of the ‘family firm’ deriving
from the old sharecropping system.
Secondly, the article will analyse how this project
slipped into the complex forms of ‘mirroring’ the
sharecropping family of local tradition in the kind
of ‘organic convergence’ of the individuals in their
collective ‘work’, as well as of the ideological
sharing of interior forms of the private.
In conclusion, the concept of ‘failure’ (with regard
to 70s communes) will be revised in the light of a different
form of historicity, and in relation to what
still remains of the experience into the present day,
in the current inter-familial relationships and social
behaviours.
- Luca Baldissara
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 254, marzo 2009
- Abstract:
Developed in the domain of social sciences, chiefly to help explain political and institutional changes of regime (e.g. from dictatorship to democracy) as well as transformations of economic systems (e.g. from planned to market economy), the concept of "transition" has been later imported into the historiographic debate. Its use in historical studies is however controversial, since the notion of transition has so far privileged change rather than continuity, thus stressing the moment of passage and attach value and significance in relationship with the outcome – what amounts to a linear, almost ineluctable image of the historical process.
Reflecting on 1945, the A. wonders instead about the possibility and usefulness of a notion of "transition" capable of coping with the contradictions of historical processes, with the dialectics between persistency and innovations. Hence the proposal of assuming transition as a historical problem in itself: historians should not focus the result of the change process, but rather the acceleration and trigger phases, when short-run events and long-duration factors shatter the precarious balance to lead toward new conditions of stability. In conclusion, to historicize transition means to single out the actual catalyst of change, that is to say what sparks off the conditions of change by making them fully operative.
- Mireno Berrettini
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 252-253, settembre-dicembre 2008
- Abstract:
The Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) was an
agency created by the British during World War II
after the French collapse and the Italian entry into
the war. Established by Churchill in July 1940, its
task was to direct the anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist resistance
movement and the subversive operations
in the part of Europe occupied by the Axis powers.
It therefore carried out this task also in Italy, operating
at two distinct but interconnected levels: on
the military field, by a network of agents capable
of organizing subversion and sabotage, and on the
political one, so as to hasten the fall of Fascism.
The difficulties met by the British in penetrating
and operating in Italy — together with their fiasco
in the recruitment of agents amongst the P.O.W.
and the Italian "enemy aliens" — explain the poor
outcomes of the S.O.E. operative approach. Even
poorer, however, proved to be result of their "political"
effort. With the scope of favouring a soft exit
of Italy from the war, the S.O.E. contacted such anti-
Fascist exiles as Emilio Lussu and other members
of the Partito d’Azione, exponents of the military
opposition such as Badoglio, anti-Fascist industrialists
such as Adriano Olivetti, but their relations
with the opponents of the regime drew soon to
a stalemate: at first owing to the absence of whatever
political framing, then as a consequence of the
"hard line" adopted by the War Cabinet, which
implied the uttermost disregard of the more or less
formal requests of negotiating peace coming from
the Italian counterparts. What is more, the Foreign
Office estimated too weak the Italian anti-Fascist
alignment, unreliable the "institutional" opposition
to the regime and, finally, dangerous the pursuit
of initiatives that might arouse the least doubt
over British loyalty toward the allies.
- Ken Ishida
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 251, giugno 2008
- Abstract:
This essay examines the issue of the war crimes
perpetrated respectively by Italy and Japan
through a comparative approach grounded on three
basic viewpoints. The first viewpoint is the long-period
perspective: Italy and Japan, last-arrived among
the imperialist powers, since the early XX
century did not refrain from using similar measures
in order to annihilate local resistance and gain
quick control over their colonies — extreme measures
that would reach their climax when Japan’s
desire to overcome white supremacy on the one
hand, and Italy’s claim to enjoy the same rights of
the other imperial powers on the other, enhanced
their ruthlessness during the Thirties.
The second viewpoint concerns the attitude adopted
by the intellectuals of both countries toward the
painful consequences of colonial warfare on indigenous
populations. Ignorance and indifference
characterized even most of the Italians who had
changed their mind on Fascism in face of the Spanish
civil war, while in Japanese society anti-colonialist
feelings still remained confined to a minority.
The assumption of the "supremacy on colonies"
dominated the perception of both the intellectuals
and the people at large. After the Second World
War, a lot of Italians, convinced to have gained
freedom by themselves, forgot quite easily what
they themselves had done against other peoples,
while the consciousness of being they themselves
"victims of the war" (enhanced by the experience
of the atomic bombardments of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
often outdid public debate.
Finally, the third viewpoint regards the fact that
during the second post-war period in Italy no less
than in Japan war criminals were not really prosecuted
nor there took place any serious purge. The
A. analyzes the reasons, different in kind for Italy
and Japan, why the political elites evaded such a
commitment; how in both countries the law continued
to be administered by the same personnel of
the previous regimes; how the Allies, holders of
colonies in their turn, showed themselves acquiescent;
and how international factors, such as the
rise of anti-colonial movements and the Cold War,
favoured a rapid forgetfulness.
- Andrea Argenio
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 250, marzo 2008
- Abstract:
The end of the war, the making of the democratic state and the coming into force of the Constitution raised new issues to the Army high commands. Compared with the broad autonomy granted to the armed forces by the past regimes, the constitutional chart prescribed a strict political control on the armed forces, since the post-Fascist political class harboured an attitude of distrust toward the military, to such a point that, during the early postwar years, the politicians in power — though formally respectful of the bureaucratic autonomy of the armed forces — had somehow tried to gain full control on them. Nor was it easy to rebuild a new army, since the political establishment was not so much interested in technical and strategic questions, as rather anxious to keep the armed forces outside the political contest and provide for their intervention only in the case of menace against the integrity and safety of the State. As a response to this extraneousness feeling, the high commands closed the barracks gates to politics, professing a sort of technicality deprived of any reference whatever to the political life of the country. This attitude would be further encouraged by a tendency to grant the armed forces a kind of self-government, what in turn favoured the spreading of forms of patronage and bureaucratisation. Yet the armed forces cannot be regarded as an institution detached from the context in which it operates, as is perfectly clear to the A. in his exploration of the relationships existing in a democracy between the military and the political elites.
- Gabriele Hammermann
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 249, dicembre 2007
- Abstract:
After decades of stalemate, the compensation of the Italian military internees returned at issue in the course of the negotiations on the establishing of the E.V.Z. Foundation, as part of the German-Italian agreement of June 2, 1961. Clearly enough, on the German side the arguments tending to cut compensation were marked by great stubbornness, due mainly to financial concerns. Moreover, the acknowledgement of such a right to internees involved the serious risk of a mounting tide if similar claims by all the remaining former war prisoners. As for Italy, the payments resulting from the 1961 compensation agreement humoured the current national rhetoric. Since long associated with the military disaster of September 8th, 1943, the fate of these prisoners was to be erased from the public conscience. Nor there has been a single notable initiative concerning an adequate recognition of the I.M.I.'s suffering in more recent years. This is true for the Berlusconi government, utterly inactive on the matter within the E.V.Z. Foundation, as well as for most of the Italian judiciary. The initial hopes of the former internees to be indemnified by the E.V.Z. Foundation were crushed by expert in international law entrusted by the federal government of the time, and few doubts remain that the proceedings still in course may reach a positive issue one day. Yet the E.V.Z. Foundation can be proud of its remarkable record, that could have been even more impressive if not only the Italian internees, but also the Soviet war prisoners had obtained the due compensation.
- Antonio Fiori
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 247, giugno 2007
- Abstract:
At the outburst of the First World War, while both Great Britain and France could rely on efficient services of intelligence and counter-intelligence – respectively, the Intelligence Service, created in 1908 in anticipation of an armed conflict with Germany, and the Deuxième Bureau – Italy did not possess a similar "civil" service. Presumably not regarded as a priority, intelligence and counter-intelligence tasks were carried out by the so-called Ufficio Riservato della Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, that is a secret branch of the Police Headquarters, together with a number of other government agencies.
During the period of her neutrality, Italy became the most important crossroads of European espionage – Switzerland being bound to gain this "primacy" only after 24th April 1915 – but the response of the Police authority was impaired by poor appropriations, lack of skilled personnel and the absence of a central organ of coordination. Actually, the top officials in charge of the service would often limit themselves to complying with the requests of the Prime Minister and the military Headquarters.
After the entry into the war and the shocking chain of "accidents" and sabotages that struck Italian ships and plants, while indiscriminate suspicion fell on foreigners and Italian "neutralists" and "defeatists", also under the pressure of the most firebrand interventionist circles, there emerged the need of a "modern" agency, exclusively charged with intelligence and counter-intelligence tasks, under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior. The question was brought to a successful issue only a few months after the installation of the national unity cabinet led by Boselli, whose supreme priority was the implementation of "total war".
- Paul Corner
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 246, marzo 2007
- Abstract:
The events surrounding the conquest of Ethiopia in 1935-36 are often seen as marking the high point of consensus for the Fascist regime. This article, which looks at popular opinion in Italy during the period as it emerges from an examination of police and party files, suggests that, while there was an undoubted consensus for the war in some areas of society, among other groups there existed strong doubts and serious reservations. Through an examination of the grande adunata nazionale of 2 October 1935, which preceded the invasion, the Giornata della fede of December 1935, and the reactions to the war once it was ended, the article concludes that many ordinary Italians were not convinced by Fascist imperialism, which failed dramatically to realise its many promises. Thus the much-vaunted “spontaneous enthusiasm” for the war was in part manufactured by the regime itself, with people — of necessity — going through the motions of enthusiastic participation and observing the formal public rituals required by the regime, while doubting in many cases that the war, the conquest of Ethiopia, and the disruption of European stability provoked by the war, could produce lasting benefits for Italy and the Italians. It is argued that, unlike the Germans under Hitler, many Italians remained unconvinced by the politics of expansion and found it difficult to believe that Empire could resolve the problems of a people whose requirements were much more linked to the difficulties of everyday existence.
- Maria Ferretti
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 245, dicembre 2006
- Abstract:
The aim of this essay is to reconstruct the story of the memory of the Second World War in Russia since the end of the conflict, both before and after the fall of the Soviet Union, thus providing the Western reader with a clear insight into the different public uses involved in this collective remembrance, deeply felt by the Russians. The A. explains in particular the reasons why in the Russian territories the memory of the war ha so far played a role radically different from the one it has exerted in Western Europe as to the transmission of values and the forming of a collective identity. The starting point in the peculiarity of the Russian memory of the war – an ambiguous double-faced memory, because such turned out to be the victory itself in the USSR: the liberation of the country and the whole of Europe from the Nazi yoke and yet, at the same time, the strengthening of the oppressive Stalinist grip over Russia in the name of her restored great power. Two contrasting memories, each radically opposed to the other, sprang off from the collective remembrance of the war, transmitting two irreconcilable value systems, the former being based on freedom and the latter on national power: on the one hand the memory of the war experienced in day-by-day life, with its drive for freedom that fostered hopes of democratization, and on the other the memory of the victory, that celebrated the authoritarian State. In the conflict between the two memories, the former was destined to succumb, while the latter would nourish the resurgent nationalism since Brežnev times, thus contributing to the building of a new State ideology after the wreck of the Soviet Union and the disenchantment toward the West.
- Andrea Rapini
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 244, settembre 2006
- Abstract:
This essay reconstructs the origins of an idea: the Vespa motor scooter, officially launched on the market by Piaggio company of Pontedera in 1946. In the first part the A. examines the development of a specific motor scooter segment within the Euro-American market area in the course of the twentieth century — a segment that, differing from motor cycle on account of its own peculiar specifications, counted several exemplars, known also in Italy, well before 1945. In the second part, the A. proves the existence of a number of Italian motor scooters before the appearance of the Vespa, and above all brings to light a multilateral public talk on the necessity of a "people’s motorbike" going on since the end of the Thirties. One of the most persuasive and influent advocates of an economy motor cycle was Renato Tassinari, editor of "The Littoriale" and national Councillor of the Camera dei Fasci for the Corporation of paper products and the press, a great admirer of Nazi Germany. Tassinari, who became the editor of the Piaggio house organ in the post-war years, can be regarded as the connecting link between the Vespa and the motor scooters of the pre-1945 period. In the final part, the A. underlines the remarkable entrepreneurial skills of Piaggio company since the Thirties, the good technological level of its plants and its long-term commitment in diversification within the transport sector — a set of features that allowed a painless conversion from aeronautics to motor scooters after 1945. Yet the very keystone in the origins of the Vespa remains the social career of Corradino D’Ascanio, the engineer who invented it. In short, this essay deals with all the pre-requisites, both within and outside the concern field, for the birth of the most famous motor scooter of the world.
- Lucio Ceva
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 243, giugno 2006
- Abstract:
The projects conceived by Balbo since the years 1935-1936 show certain common features, among which the absence of reflections on the tactics to adopt in the desert, the lack of studies on the problems concerning transport on coastal tracks and internal routes (together with the availability of the vehicles needed), the numeric overestimation of the enemy forces matched by insufficient attention to their specific training and the means at their disposal. A double mistake, the last one mentioned, resulting in a misjudgement of the real strength of the British, who had been relying upon the efficiency of armoured units since the early Thirties. This essay examines the evolution of Balbo’s military planning, from the aired offensive toward Egypt and Suez, soon sunk by Badoglio, up to the projects fostered by Balbo himself well beyond September 1939, when only his plans of attack against Greece and Yugoslavia came to impair the policy of absolute defence on all fronts. But in May 1940, when the decision was taken to enter into the war, Balbo’s offensive plans were well on the wane, while increasingly clear were to his own eyes the Italian deficiencies in terms of armaments. His short war — Balbo was shot down by the Italian anti-aircraft fire on June 28th — speaks volumes on Italy’s lack of preparation for the armed conflict, a condition — it is true — principally imputable to Pariani and Badoglio. Like all the Italian big brass, however, Balbo kept on estimating military force first and foremost in terms of number, a gross blunder when facing an enemy capable, by means of limited but well trained troops, to stage such a military pressure as the quadrumvir could hardly suspect, despite his occasional moments of lucidity.
- Antonio Morone
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 242, marzo 2006
- Abstract:
The trusteeship of the United Nations was an experiment meant to reform colonial administration. In particular, it had the purpose of allowing the domination of the European powers on colonial peoples by a new kind of administration, in the interest of world peace and security no less than for the shake of the indigenous populations on their way toward independence. The experiment was however to suffer from its hybrid character at all levels, political, factual and ideal: it fostered more or less important steps toward the goal of independence underlying trusteeship, but independence was generally reached only thanks to the growing interconnection with the major issue of non-autonomous territories and the whole of the decolonization process.
Italy took active part in this historical experience through the Amministrazione fiduciaria italiana della Somalia (Afis). Despite several local peculiarities, the Somaliland trusteeship was involved in the antagonism that developed within the U.N. between the administrators’ club, tied to a narrowly legal attitude, and the anti-colonialist countries, advocate of an extensive and progressive reading of the trusteeship mandate. Italy operated in association with the rest of the trustee powers, not without turning to her own advantage the malfunctions of the United Nations Advisory Council of Somaliland. On the other hand, the highly strict discipline of the Somali convention, Italy’s status of former colonial power in every respect and the purpose of the Italian government to use Afis as a means to reintegrate the country in the international concert after its recent Fascist past, all this secured a progressive interpretation of her trusteeship
- Ana Aguado
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 241, dicembre 2005
- Abstract:
This article explores the meaning of the Second Republic from a gender perspective. That is to say, it examines the changes undergone by gender relationships, both public and private, in the new republican context, enlightening at the same time the limits and continuities of the relevant cultural models.
To this end, special attention is devoted to feminine vote and divorce, then both introduced for the first time in the legislation of Spain, with major repercussions on the public and private life of the Spanish women. Of the two acts, the former in fact granted political citizenship to women, bringing about truly universal suffrage for the entire nation, while the latter meant the reshaping of marriage as a contract susceptible of break-up, thus accomplishing a fundamental goal of republican secularization.
- Andrea Mammone
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 239-240, giugno-settembre 2005
- Abstract:
Italian neo-Fascism, at least as a psychological attitude, was born and developed since 1943, later finding its natural political and parliamentary representation with the birth of the Movimento Sociale Italiano by the end of 1946. One cannot therefore understand the profile of the party militants — their ideological entrenchment, their almost maniacal defence of their own identity, their sort of closed-mindedness towards the outer world, their permanent cult of the myth of Mussolini — without due consideration of the period going from 8th September 1943 up to the party foundation on 26th December 1946, during which Mussolini’s followers had to face the armistice, the civil war, the republican experience, clandestine activity, the problems of veterans in the post-war period and the burden of being Fascist in a country willing to repudiate its recent past. This historical transition, marked by mixed feelings of loyalty, loneliness and revenge, would indeed mould the neo-Fascist people and ideals. Hence the present reconstruction, strictly focused on those who refused to betray the Duce and joined the Salò republic, and inspired by the assumption that those eventful years were to influence the MSI more than any other party of the reborn Italian democracy.
- Diego Giacchetti
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 238, marzo 2005
- Abstract:
Challenging the well rooted habit, rather popular among the historians of social movements and in particular of 1968, of comparing this latter movement with the European upsurge of 1948, this essay establish a parallel between the two "red biennia" (1919-1921 and 1968-1969) in the Italian history of the 20th century. In examining the two events the A. resorts to the category of "generation" in order to explain the vicissitudes and conflicts of the two periods also in terms of a generational clash that breaks and splits the social classes and the unions no less than the political movements and parties. Quite different of course appear the historical contexts and the economic, social and cultural backgrounds of the two periods; different also the short-term political outcomes, on the one hand a "black biennium" after the red one, soon resulting in Mussolini’s takeover of power, on the other hand an enlargement and strengthening of the parties and unions of the Left, both old and new, in a framework of a major social change affecting costumes, mentalities and habits rather than the political and institutional system.
- Mimmo Franzinelli
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 237, dicembre 2004
- Abstract:
Ever since the pioneer work by Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli on the letters of militants sentenced to death in the Italian Resistance, originally published by Einaudi in 1952, the retrieval and study of correspondence by partisans executed have persistently marked time, as if that anthology summed up the whole of the existing materials and the sacredness of such a special documentation would discourage historical treatment. The Ultime lettere di condannati a morte e di deportati della Resistenza [The Last Letters of Resistance Militants Sentenced to Death or Deportation], edited by Mimmo Franzinelli for Mondadori on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Liberation, re-launch research along four different lines: the executed, the deported under a political charge, the deported under a racial charge and the authors of spiritual testaments. What we present here below is the beginning of Franzinelli’s introductory essay, together with the materials concerning ten anti-Fascist figures (four of whom not included in the above mentioned volume): biographical notices, letters and photos. The personalities whose last writings appear in this selection are Alessandro Baroncini, a professional revolutionist former volunteer in the International Brigades in Spain; Dino Beretta, a Genoese partisan; Ernesto Bocchiotti, an Alessandria Christian-democrat; Evandro Crippa, a young Lombard; Ernesto D’Andrea, a Venetian G.A.P. member; Gerardo De Angelis, a Roman conspirer slain at the Fosse Ardeatine; Vittorio Grasso Caprioli, a Brixian catholic executed under the charge of having deserted the Monterosa Division to join the Liguria partisans; Mario Modotti, a partisan commander in Friuli; Gino Onofri, a Bologna socialist; Emanuele Tiliacos, an Italian-Greek officer, former refugee in Switzerland after the 8th September combats, who turned back with a group of comrades to fight against the Nazi-Fascists.
- Massimo De Giuseppe
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 236, settembre 2004
- Abstract:
While better known and studied by historians appear La Pira’s records both as a "Mediterranean" man and a promoter of East-West dialogue in the cold war years, a survey of his relations with Central and South America casts a new light on his peculiar pacifism and his idea of "structural charity".
Starting from the first contacts of the Florence Mayor with Latin-American diplomats, this essay reconstructs his manifold experience of collaboration, information, political denouncement and cultural commitment during the Sixties and Seventies. There emerge, on the one hand, La Pira’s ability in perceiving the signs and ferments of extra-European worlds, and on the other hand, his catalyst role for a great many young committed to the denouncement of human right breaches and political and social deprivation.
Typical were the efforts he spent for the liberation of Régis Debray and for saving Ernesto Che Guevara’s life in Bolivia. But even more relevant appear in this work his relationships with the Brazilian bishop Helder Camara and the President of Chile Salvador Allende: a long-run friendship the former one (since Vatican Council II up to La Pira’s death in 1977), a far shorter frequentation the latter (from his Santiago journey, fall 1971, to Pinochet putsch three years later), but both intense under all respects, political as well as spiritual. This survey ends with La Pira’s highly topical appeal to the "unity in diversity" and to the supremacy of international law in foreign relations, pronounced at the 1974 Seminary of the Association for Latin-American Social Studies.
Most of the sources referred to by the A. are still unpublished and come from the personal papers held by the La Pira Foundation in Florence.
- Claudia Baldoli
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 235, giugno 2004
- Abstract:
While the Italian emigration to Germany in the XIX century has been researched widely, very few studies exist on the Fascist period, except for the forced emigration of 1938, a compulsory relocation of workforce rather than real phenomenon of migration. This article reconstructs the relationship between emigrants and Fascism in Germany during the 1930s, by analysing patriotic celebrations (the Great War, the March on Rome and the Decennial), Italian cinema and schools. Cinema was one of the main sources of propaganda and represented the values to be exported among Italians abroad. The schools were the most important institution in the relationship between fasci, consulates and communities; this research describes their impact on the Italian communities, by investigating the programmes, the difficulties met by teachers and the results.
The history of Italian Fascism in Germany is one of continuous frustration for the fascists, who found it impossible to create Little Italies among the Italian communities: besides the poor economic conditions, Italians in Germany were still blamed for the "betrayal" of the First World War. Hitler’s seizure of power had a positive impact on the fasci’s activities; however, these activities did not mean a sudden transformation of Italians into fascists, but were rather the result of an agreement between two regimes in search for a common cultural policy.
The article thus demonstrates that although Hitler’s regime appeared to benefit the fasci, it eventually became an obstacle to their development. While in 1935-36 fascistisation of Italians in Britain took the form of anti-British nationalism, the fasci in Germany were controlled by the Nazi regime and germanisation of Italians could not be opposed. Co-operation nevertheless continued among the two regimes, as shown by the agreement on forced emigration of Italians to Germany in 1938.
- Lucia Ceci
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 233, dicembre 2003
- Abstract:
Drawing on a large archival evidence, the A. outlines the positions held by the Italian missionaries in Ethiopia during the Italian Abyssinian conflict. On the eve of the war, the only Italian clergy in Ethiopia were the fathers of the Consolata of Turin, who had till then succeeded in establishing collaborative relationships with the Ethiopian government. The Italian operations, meant as a propaganda effort as well as a political and military campaign, induced a radical change in the attitude of the missionaries, who tended to second the requests of the Italian government, both by their involvement in the strategic planning of the casus belli and by their valuable knowledge of the Ethiopian populations, languages and territory. At the outburst of the hostilities, the Italian missionaries were forced to leave the country. Some of them enlisted as military chaplains and played a significant role in military actions. The Consolata magazine devised a transcription of the war in missionary terms, in line with the numerous Catholic pro war stances. In the Empire years, however, the Fascist government curbed the role of the Italian missionaries, who were finally swept away by the Second World War, with the arrival of the British in East Africa.
- Filippo Focardi
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 232, settembre 2003
- Abstract:
On October 16th, 1948, the Military Court of Rome convicted four German military men of war crimes. Gen. Otto Wagener, Maj. Herbert Nicklas, Capt. Walter Mai and Corp. Johann Felten were found guilty of the shooting of 29 Italian war prisoners in the Rodhes Island and sentenced to terms of imprisonment spanning from 9 to 15 years. The four of the so called "Rodhes party" represented the most numerous group of German war criminals brought to trial in Italy. Their story speaks volumes on the course of Italian justice. Since Summer 1949 a series of actions were undertaken in order to obtain their liberation. The first move was made by the Holy See, a particularly important role being played by the Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal, the Rector of the Teutonic College by S. Maria dell’Anima in Rome. Then, in 1950, it was the turn of the government of the German Federal Republic itself, thanks to its close political contacts with De Gasperi’s cabinet. Decisive resulted the meeting that took place on the 27th of November in Rome between Virgilio Zoppi, general secretary of the foreign ministry, and Adenauer’s envoy, Heinrich Höfler, in which an agreement was reached concerning the liberation of all German war criminals convicted with final judgement in Italy. The Italian party requested the utmost secrecy so that no information whatever might filter to the public opinion. Between February and March 1951 the President of the Italian Republic, Luigi Einaudi, signed four acts of pardon for the military men of the "Rodhes party", who were therefore set free. The last of them went back to Germany on the 7th of July 1951, a few days before Chancellor Adenauer’s visit of State in Rome.
- Giuseppe Maione
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 231, giugno 2003
- Abstract:
It’s a rather common notion that the Italian postwar economy was characterized by a dramatic but markedly distorted growth. Instead of "civil" and socially oriented consumption, such as hospitals, schools and public transport, a privileged role was allegedly played by private consumption, expecially of the "affluent" kind, such as cars, white goods and family owned houses. Yet a sheer comparison with other European countries would prove that during the Fifties and Sixties Italy was but last in the development of the so called "modern" sectors, i.e. the spear heading ones of all advanced economies. Indeed, not earlier than the Eighties or thereabouts were the Italians to line up with their EC partners. And one may suggest that the social inequalities and political troubles marking their postwar history had a good deal to do with such economic and productive lag.
- Leonardo Rapone
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 229, dicembre 2002
- Abstract:
This essays sketches a comparison between Italian anti Fascism and international anti Fascism as political categories. Anti Fascism as a common flag of a plurality of forces - a political resource discovered and exploited by international Communism - stemmed out of a peculiar Italian experience that throughout the Twenties was to remain a strictly Italian case. Only with the Weimar crisis anti Fascism acquired an international dimension, twofold in content: political passion combined with political innovation. While the expansive force of the former aspect is historically evident all over Europe, the effectiveness of anti Fascism as a factor of political innovation appears highly questionable. The isolation of Italian anti Fascism in Europe ended only with the advent of the Popular Fronts, when the particular Italian experience joined up into the battle of an international array of political forces. The identification with the spirit of the Popular Fronts concerned also GL, though the "giellist" intellectual synthesis remained unequalled in the European political culture of the period. The crisis of the Popular Fronts shattered the image of the ideal unity of anti Fascism, but unlike elsewhere the Italian case did not recorded a split between communist and non communist forces. After a period of eclipse, international anti Fascism rose from its own ashes when the world war, burst out as a "war without ideology", became the military expression of the "international civil war".
- Paul Corner
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 228, settembre 2002
- Abstract:
The article argues against current tendencies to utilise the concept of a popular consensus for fascism in order to revise previous negative judgements on the regime. It analyses the role of the considerable repressive mechanisms of fascism, discusses the ways in which the PNF and the fascist syndicates conditioned people’s choices, and examines the fascist welfare and assistential organisations in order to answer the key question of who was allowed to have access to the benefits of these organisations. The picture that emerges is of a very extensive level of social control exercised by fascism, which permitted people no real choice in their decisions. On the basis of these findings, it is argued that the term "consensus" is not applicable to the reality of fascism for the majority of the population; there is no justification, therefore, for using the concept of consensus in order to legitimise the regime in historical perspective.
- Agostino Giovagnoli
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 227, giugno 2002
- Abstract:
Since June 1950 the Italian political situation was mainly influenced by the Korean war, a consequence of which was a turn toward dirigisme in the economic policy: contrasts and divisions in this field led the Direction of the Christian Democratic party to resign in the spring of 1951. This resignation was discussed at the National Council held in Gottaferrata the following June, in a situation markedly changed by the response of the recent local elections, which sanctioned a dramatic drawback for the Christian Democrats. The resignation was withdrawn, but that National Council paved the way to a new government cabinet, Dossetti’s retirement and, later on, the advent of Fanfani as party Secretary. In Baget Bozzo’s opinion, the Christian Democrats would have then lost their "soul", by betraying their catholic roots to fall into a sort of ideological subjection to communism. But such a result would imply a curious swapping of roles between the former popular wing, whom the young guard reproached with excessive secularism, and Dossetti’s followers, whose marked "catholic" attitude is well known. Whatever judgement one may maintain on that generational turn, documental evidence shows that the road toward the so called "heavy party" was indeed opened by the old generation, anxious to put up an effective barrier against communism. Under this respect, Dossetti’s retirement may be better associated to the end of the season begun with April 18th 1948 general elections, while it appears similarly reductive to talk of a sliding of the Christian Democrats toward pragmatism because of Fanfani’s "treason": regardless of the choices of the protagonists, the "secularisation" of the party was primarily determined by transformations the Christian Democrat did not actually want, but rather suffered.
- Paul O' Brien
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 226, marzo 2002
- Abstract:
The present article deals with the general presumption that a causal link exists between the following two sentences: "In February 1917 Benito Mussolini was injured during the accidental explosion of a friendly grenade launcher. He did not return to the front". Biographers of Mussolini have never seriously examined this question despite the existence of important medical documentation in the Central State Archive in Rome. On the one occasion this material was referred to it was used to confirm the link between Mussolini’s injury and his absence from the front. By calling on professional medical opinion, the author casts serious doubts over the gravity of Mussolini’s injuries, and even argues that grounds exist to legitimately question his first hand involvement in the abovementioned accident. O’Brien also raises another crucial issue. Although Mussolini’s injuries did not warrant the extended convalescence that he received, the medical records for 1917 reveal that he may in fact have already at that stage been gravely ill. If the diagnosis of one of the author’s consultants is correct, then a long standing problem regarding the nature of Mussolini’s illness in his later years has been resolved and the entire question of his medical history must be reviewed.
- Gianpasquale Santomassimo
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 225, dicembre 2001
- Abstract:
The public memory of anti-Fascism lived a hard and controversial life in Italian society up until the Sixties. There were different anti-Fascist traditions rooted in diverging analyses and purposes and often one in conflict with another. The july 1960 turn marked a sharp change in such a trend. It took almost twenty year since the fall of Fascism to see anti-Fascism become a widespread and shared attitude, a commonsense "paradigm" for the overwhelming majority of the Italians.
In the years of the centre-left governments the Resistance was regarded not only as the "foundation event" of the Republic, but also as a springboard for the democratic and social growth of the Country. But starting from this seemingly solid settlement of the Resistance in the Republican Pantheon, streams of empty rhetorics would be spent not without inspiring distrust in the younger generations. Official celebrations repeated all over again the illusory and rather groundless formula of "the people united in the struggle against tyranny". The problem of Fascism in Italian history, sidestepped during the Fifties, was then resolved by reducing its weight to the lowest terms. Once again there emerged the tendency to self-absolution, the repression of the problem of "collective responsibility" in front of Fascism.
The Seventies appeared to close once and for all the long period in which anti-Fascism had gone through the history of the Republic in the double role of both the winner and the loser; now anti-Fascism, on the eve of its eclipse, was indeed "officialdom" and passed for the winner, even though at odds with new and unprecedented menaces. In that period an unforeseen "mass anti-Fascism" really existed, yet was internally divided down to its very core.
In retrospective, it is clear enough that the Moro affair marked the burning out of "democratic solidarity", and anti-Fascism paid for the huge investment made on it by the contractors of that policy. With the decline of anti-Fascist centrality, Italy was to take a different road with respect to the evolution of Western conscience, which was soon to rediscover, through a reappraisal of the Shoah, the purport of the historical issue of European Fascism, of its success, of the consensus it had won and the catastrophe it had engendered. The terms of a new "Italian anomaly" were thus to be set up and carried on to the present day.
- David Bidussa
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 223, giugno 2001
- Abstract:
The writings of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (1893-1945) are a valuable term of reference for the study of the origin and development of the political language of the Right in the course of the twentieth century. The feminine figure, the issue of decadence, the political imagery underlying the idea of Europe, the exaltation of a community of anti-modern knights, the contempt of politics as a terrain of public debate where subordinates are granted the right to speak, the disdain for the "slav" as a "barbarian" and yet the glorification of his indifference to the mermaids of technology and Americanization, all these are crucial themes and motives substantiating a concept of political community that, far from indulging to the maudit myth of Céline, finds its genealogical key in Drieu’s pages.
- Donatella Alesi
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 222, marzo 2001
- Abstract:
After analyzing the editorial vicissitudes of the women’s magazine "La Donna", founded in Turin as a supplement of the newspapers "La Stampa" and "La Tribuna" in December 1904, and later published on its own as a fortnightly, the A. outlines the main topics dealt with by this journal during the Giolittian age, stressing the peculiarities of an experiment sprung both from the modernization process of the Italian press in the Liberal era and the political and cultural prestige of Marianna Clelia Abate Arcostanza, an exponent of the emancipationist movement of Turin also known under the nickname of Donna Maria. In the perspective of a radical change of attitude as compared with the current eighteen century patterns of the female press, the A. illustrates the guidelines of a modernization project aimed at enhancing the access of Italian women to the arts and professions. Due attention is finally paid to the role played by the magazine in the theoretical and political debate within the emancipationist movement during the first decade of the twentieth century
- Patrizia Gabrielli
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 220-221, settembre-dicembre 2000
- Abstract:
The A. suggests some possible lines of approach to the intellectual experience of Annarita Buttafuoco, a historian of the women political movement who came to an untimely death on May 26, 1999. Her conspicuous scholarly works cover over two centuries, from the echoes of the French revolution in Italy to the struggles for women suffrage and emancipation in liberal Italy, and up to the second post-war period, with the conquest of women vote and the foundation of the Republic. In the broader context of the debate concerning gender and political history, Gabrielli reconstructs the different stages and underlines the methodological innovations of a dense research haul, that began in the mid-Seventies with the first essays in critical historiography published in the review "DWF donna woman femme", which had Buttafuoco as a co-founder. The crucial role of subjectivity in history, the political and social expressions of the women movement and their relationships with institutions and citizenship are the three interpretation keys suggested by the A., who emphasizes the introduction of new categories of inquiry, unprecedented chronological partitions and the resort to a wide range of documentary materials, which allowed Buttafuoco to open unexpected sceneries in the history of the emancipation movements in Italy, designing at the same time other possible fields of investigation. In Annarita Buttafuoco, the "job of the historian" cannot be separated from a permanent attention to the advancement of women scientific and political centers, as well as to the renewal of history teaching both in universities and within other settings, as witnessed by the Summer school of women history and culture which saw her play a leading role and has now come to bear her name since August 1999.
- Enzo Collotti
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 219, giugno 2000
- Abstract:
In this paper submitted to the Conference on the fifty years of the National Institute held in March 2000, the A. reconstructs the stages of the rise and development of this peculiar scholarly association in its interaction with the political evolution of the Country and the progress of historical research, sketching a critical assessment of its accomplishments as well as of its limits and failures. After pointing out the two basic assumptions which have never ceased to mark the activity of the Institute — namely, autonomy and pluralism in scientific work — the A. focuses on the problems still unresolved, starting with the poor public appropriations which have resulted in a state of permanent structural weakness. This however has not broken the link established between research and civil commitment, as shown by the growing involvement of the Institute and its associated bodies in teaching and teacher training initiatives in recent years. The Institute has nowadays to cope with new and complex challenges being brought forth by a radical change in the political and cultural situation of the Country, a change demanding a global re-examination of the very role and purposes of the Institute itself, just while a generational turn is coming about with the inevitable loss of any existential tie with the Liberation war. The safeguard of the memory of the Resistance and the renewal of research, together with a revived international cooperation with similar institutions of other countries, appear to be the priorities of the present stage of development in the life of the National Institute, whose concern should not merely be to coordinate the activities of the associated peripheral bodies, but above all to take the lead of a common cultural project fit to revitalize the energies and resources existing both at central and local level.
- Perry R. Willson
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 218, marzo 2000
- Abstract:
The historiography on the Fascist attempts to mobilise women for party and nation has, up to now, focused mainly on the girls’ organisations and the largely middle class members of the Fasci femminili. The huge organisation for peasant women discussed here — the Sezione Massaie rurali — has, by contrast, received virtually no historical attention. Founded in 1933 initially as part of the Sindacati fascisti dei lavoratori agricoli, the following year, to emphasise its essentially political role, it was absorbed directly into the Pnf as a special section of the Fasci femminili. From small beginnings, its membership grew gradually to an impressive two and a half million by 1942, the majority of whom were women who had never previously been members of a political organisation of any kind. Drawing on contemporary press and archival sources, this article examines the aims and ideology of this enormous organisation, and its programme of activities, many of which were concerned with technical training in farming techniques relevant to the role of women in sharecropping and small-holding families such as conigliacoltura, pollicoltura, orticoltura and also in economia domestica. The training programme, however, was seen only as secondary to its political role by the Fascists and all of the activities contained a good dose of political propaganda. Lastly, there is a consideration of some of the varied reasons why such large numbers of women joined this organisation and the recruitment techniques, which included both the carrot and the stick, deployed by the Fascist organisers in their attempts to attract new members. Attention is also paid to the reasons for significant regional differences in membership levels and on how the Fascists themselves attempted to tailor their recruitment techniques to local conditions.
- David W. Ellwood
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 217, dicembre 1999
- Abstract:
Anti-Americanism as a cultural and psychological phenomenon can be defined by its history, or rather by a study of the evolution of all the commonest forms of antagonism to the nation, people, civilization and actions in the world of the United States. The article identifies four roots of anti-Americanism and places them in historical order: representations, images and stereotypes (from the birth of the Republic onwards); shared common experience (from the age of mass emigration on); the challenge of the American model of modernization (from the 1920’s on); the organised projection of U.S. economic, political and cultural power (from World War II on). Expressions of the phenomenon in the last half-century have contained ever-changing combinations of these elements, the configurations depending on internal crises within the groups or societies articulating them as much as anything done, said or produced by American society in all its forms. With the ascendancy of U.S. power post-1945 came the decisive change, but without the three categories of precedents and pretexts supplied by history, this development alone would never have provoked or attracted the resentments, envies and antagonisms which classical anti-Americanism has expressed.
- Carlo Spagnolo
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 216, settembre 1999
- Abstract:
Through the analysis of italian and American archival sources, this article aims at showing that the Italian anticommunist stabilization can be understood starting from its relationship to international relations. Since June 1947 the Marshall Plan provided the framework for Italian "centrism" and De Gasperi’s policy. The 18 April 1948 elections were affected by the official approval of the Marshall Plan legislation. The dynamic of centrism was earmarked by the decision to rapidly reintegrate the country in the world market according to the Bretton Woods rules.
The DC’s mediatory role and the need to extending it constantly were largely prompted by the extreme difficulty of reconciling the world market reintegration with a backward and dualistic socio-economic structure. The spread between the country and the Western block imposed the cabinet to develop a political mediation based upon State intervention and American aid. This problem, present since 1945, became a dramatic one after the start of the Cold War, due to the latter’s repercussions on the Italian working class. The dynamics and the main contradictions of centrism were reflected in a tension between a repressive policy of "negative integration" of the working class and a more positive, reformist one. In order to avoid any loss of her international and domestic political centrality, the DC avoided or prevented any choice that could loosen the tension with the working class.
The use of the Marshall Plan funds in Italy reflects therefore political motivations. Among them there was an implicit pact between the DC and the employers for low fiscal levies and the return to the conditions for profit through public contracts.
- Mario G. Rossi
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 215, giugno 1999
- Abstract:
A matter of harsh discussion for years, the story of the Historical Institute of the Resistance in Tuscany (ISRT) is still running the risk of being read in terms of a local issue, whereas it involves crucial questions of national relevance both at political and cultural level. The effort to reform the old statute by increasing the democratic character of its electoral procedures has been stubbornly opposed by a minority of members nostalgic of the traditional CLN balance, substantially based on a rigid sharing out of power among political parties. Hence the suppositious scandal of the Salvemini’s papers, so far unpublished on account of an alleged bias of the ISRT establishment against "an unwelcome historical and political culture". A heavy blow was thus waged against the National Institute, in order to depreciate not only such major initiatives as the conference on "Fascism and anti-Fascism" of April 1998, but its very role in the field of historical research as well as its new tasks in the official projects for the training of history teachers. The rising tide of press and parliamentary attacks has not as yet been effectively countered either by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs or by the political forces most directly concerned in the matter. A silence which, added to the growing difficulties of the National Institute and to the perhaps irreversible collapse of the Isrt, seems to corroborate the mounting wave of a revisionism capable of corroding the political and cultural heritage itself of the Italian left.
- Paola Ferrazza
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 214, marzo 1999
- Abstract:
Fascist projects for civil mobilization and the setup of the internal front started in the Twenties and went on until the fall of Fascism. Yet such long term planning of ready mobilization of economic, alimentary, human and "spiritual" resources never produced the desired effects. At the outburst of the war the mobilization of civilians was in fact judged superfluous;
since mid-1941 it proved increasingly necessary but far from being at hand; only by 1942 a significant segment of the population was finally being mobilized. The organization of the internal front was also overlooked for a long time. The Regime limited itself to harshen the criminal law so as to enhance an inexistent war discipline; the loss of control on the trend of prices and wages caused an extended mobility of labour, which was hardly discouraged by Mussolini’s decrees on civil mobilization. The war economy generated in its turn a marked rigidity in the labour market, which badly lacked skilled manpower. Repeated attempts on the part of the Ministry of Corporations and the former Commissariat for migrations and colonization to manage the scanty ranks of skilled workers resulted in complete failure. According to official sources, in October 1942 the mobilized personnel reached 2,5 million, with some 180,000 in the civil service. By December the total number of the
mobilized was over 5 million, but the ambitious Fascist plans were far from being accomplished. The present essay offers a thoghtful reconstruction of the different stages and apparent contradictions of the civil mobilization set up by Fascist Italy during the first three years of war.
- Massimo Legnani
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 213, dicembre 1998
- Abstract:
The A. discusses two crucial issues of the history of the RSI in the light of the political, economical and social interests therein involved: the nature of the conflict between the "extremists" and the "moderates" and the characters of the socialization bill of February 1944. The contest between the "extremists" and the "moderates" marked both the foundation stage and the subsequent period of the "social republic", reflecting not so much the contradictory relationships between the State and the Party as a sheer showdown within the Party itself, the stake being the conquest of power in the shade of the decisive German domination. This resulted in violent clashes between parallel police corps and a consequent dramatic reduction of the operative capacity of the Salò Republic. Once examined the different forms and outcomes of this conflict at local level and the lack of control on the part of the central government, the A. affords an overall assessment of the developments in the economic situation. From 1943 to 1945 there emerges a deterioration of all the negative factors already at work in the fall of 1942, with the add-up of the heavy German requisitions and the coercive recruiting. Against this background, the socialization project is described as a recoup and development of the corporative one, in a context respectful of the right of property. The underlying concept (practically contrasted by several passionate trade-unionists inside the PFR) was to insist on the preservation of the productive structure while encouraging a technocratic reorganization of society which would last well beyond the war conjuncture and Salò.
- Valentina Pisanty
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 212, settembre 1998
- Abstract:
The "negationists" are a group of would-be historians who claim that the Shoah is just "the biggest lie of the 20th Century" and Auschwitz and the gas chambers sheer inventions of Zionist propaganda, aimed to extort enormous reparations from defeated Germany. In support of such theses the negationists have adopted quite a peculiar way of reading the historical documents: first, they examine any single witness of the extermination of the Jews without the very least reference to its probatory background and context; second, they spasmodically search and emphasize whatever slightest inaccuracy the analyzed testimony ( as a product of human memory ) may contain, to undermine its credibility, on the assumption that provided a witness be wrong about a single point, it might also be wrong about the rest; and finally, they argue that the "smudges" thus found out, far from being casual, trace back to a deliberate purpose of ideological manipulation "on the part of certain circles of international Zionism". The reasonable conclusion is that negationism is but the latest version of the old myth of the Jewish conspiracy for the world conquest, the best known expression of which are the false Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
- Giovanni D'Anna
published on Italia Contemporanea Review, n° 211, giugno 1998
- Abstract:
This work is meant as a contribution to the study of what appears to have been the most significant operation run in postwar Italy in the field of cultural policy-making. Starting from an accurate reconstruction of the unremitted campaign of "popularization" of Gramsci’s figure carried out by Palmiro Togliatti since his coming back from the Soviet Union, the A. revisits the story of the postumous publication of Gramsci’s prison writings, ending with the wide echo they aroused since their appearance within both the catholic and the liberal great "families", confronted with a thinker who literally upset the current interpretative patterns of Italian history. Among the catholics, Gramsci’s thought gained a good hold over Dossetti’s followers, while suffering ostracism by the "Civiltà cattolica". The lay circles on their part wawered between the temptation of turning Gramsci into a left-wing "crocian" and a total rejection motivated by his assent to such a totalitarian ideology as was communism, in inevitable synthony with the attitude held by Benedetto Croce himself, who soon drifted from the praises tributed to the Letters at their first coming out to the unconditional refusal shown during the publication of the Prison Notebooks.
INSMLI uses Consorzio Interuniversitario Lombardo per la Elaborazione Automatica
