De Gasperi and Togliatti: political leadership and personality cults in post-war Italy

Abstract

Summary After twenty years of Fascism, political leaders were faced with the need to rediscover or invent new ways of relating to the mass public and, in the first place, to distance themselves from the type of relationship consolidated under Fascism. This article is based on an examination of the representations of De Gasperi and Togliatti in illustrated weeklies and in the satirical press, as well as their more or less hagiographical biographies. From the sources it emerges that, in the case of the Christian Democrat leader, the hypothesis that there was a personality cult is hard to sustain. By contrast, in the case of Togliatti, it does seem possible to argue that there were manifestations of a genuine cult, but these were set within the context of an institutional charisma.